If I take something from you, it bothers you. It doesn't belong to me. It makes you feel that anything of yours could be taken. It feels like a violation against you.
I don't have to run to the Bible to find out if stealing is wrong.
People don't lie, not because "God says not to", but why he says not to - because people stop trusting you, they will think that everything you say is potentially a lie. They will think you a liar, so, when you are crying "wolf!" for real, they will say, "yeah, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me," and the wolf will eat you.
There is a consequence for the things that we think are "right" or "wrong."
If one thinks that you need the bible or religion to know these things, then it's like your grown children insisting that one needs to consult your parents about how late they can stay up, when they have kids of their own. They know that if you stay up late, you will pay for it the next day. Kids don't.
I think that atheists simply listen to their conscience, and have figured out that "morality" is what doesn't harm myself and others, but helps myself and others. So, while people flip through the bible, looking for loopholes of how to commit a sin but be justified, or how to accuse others with outdated laws, like Leviticus (which would condemn everyone eating at Red Lobster), they are not looking to it for morality, but to try to make their version of morality somehow justified as God's morality.
In a sense, "Licensed to Kill" began in May 1977, when the young filmmaker was attacked by gay-bashers in the Castro district of San Francisco. Dong escaped by jumping on the hood of a passing car. The bashers then turned their attentions to a priest, who was beaten so badly that the incident made the local papers.
"Anita Bryant was in full glory," said Dong. "She was the first figurehead the religious right had in their fight against homosexuals. No one was thinking of anti-gay violence at that time, and I think it took people by surprise. The terrible thing is that it's gotten much worse. It's a desperate situation."
In addition to interviews with the convicted men, the film includes clips from "The 700 Club" and other televangelist shows that promote condemnation of homosexuals.
"We were looking for a variety of motivations," he said. "We also didn't stay in one place." The killers came from New York, Texas, Minnesota, North Carolina, Illinois and Connecticut.
One of the killers talks about the televangelists' influence on his attitudes. Others have more personal reasons. One particularly articulate convict, Jay Johnson, doesn't try to hide his own homosexuality. One particularly articulate convict, Jay Johnson, doesn't try to hide his own homosexuality.
Mr. Dong has a special gift for creating a safe space in which all of the people he interviews can be open about who they are and what they believe. Sometimes they reveal more than they realize, as we see in all three films through the subtleties of body and eye movements. One of the most fascinating supplemental features is, on Licensed to Kill, an extensive follow-up interview with gay serial killer Jay Johnson conducted after he had seen the finished film. Johnson, who is himself gay, was raised in a devout fundamentalist home where homosexuality was viewed as evil and the Bible as infallible. We see his new self-understanding (he says that he has learned to take the Bible less literally in its condemnation of gay people) mingled with his continuing discomfort – some would say disconnection – with himself. Without any commentary, Mr. Dong has presented a stark, yet profoundly human, portrait of one of homophobia's most terrible victims: The man so divided against himself that he could both seek out other men for sex and then murder them. Yet there is nothing melodramatic, or even especially sinister, about the affable Jay Johnson we meet; he seems just another "nice young man" who once had political aspirations. Mr. Dong lets him present himself in all of his complexity, even as he tacitly compels us viewers to try to unravel the dimensions – the psychological/sociological/moral mystery – of this "nice" self-loathing murderer.
http://jclarkmedia.com/film/filmreviewdongdocumentaries.html
I lived in Minneapolis then. It was very scary. Gay men were being targeted and killed. The documentary interviews Jay. He was gay, but told that it was evil. So, he was torn about his natural feelings, and what he felt was temptation. So, his idea to remedy the situation? Kill gay people. Make them afraid to be so easily available in cruising places. Take away the temptation.
He was justifying murder, and at the time, even looking to Leviticus to think that God was ok with it.
