Liberal and Conservative

[Belk]

The point is its inherently wrong to violate the conscience of a person just because they charge for their creativity as services.

Even an atheist who painted portraits as a trade who personally considered public nudity to be wrong and improper to be required to paint a portrait for a nude couple just because of a stroke of the pen of legislation ruling nudist as a protected group of people.

You are claiming dismantling Jim Crow was inherently wrong because we should not of violated the conscience of those who opposed serving blacks the same as whites?

 

[Tom 1]

There is conclusive evidence that genetics is at least a factor. This is in direct contradiction to the claims I am replying to.

What do the new ‘gay genes’ tell us about sexual orientation?

Yes, it might be. It's similar to the longer term attempts to discover the causes of schizophrenia - similar in method I mean - which is equally complicated, and still unresolved.

 

[Tom 1]

There is conclusive evidence that genetics is at least a factor. This is in direct contradiction to the claims I am replying to.

What do the new ‘gay genes’ tell us about sexual orientation?

'No, says Sanders, because many other factors play a role, including the environment. “There are probably multiple genes involved, each with a fairly low effect,” he says. “There will be men who have the form of gene that increases the chance of being gay, but they won’t be gay.”

Because many genes and other factors seem likely to play a role in sexual orientation, this may explain why some people are bisexual or see sexual orientation as a spectrum.'


This is very similar to the kind of language used when talking about schizophrenia, as an example of a disorder that has been intensively and extensively studied. When I first studied psychology and for years afterwards I thought of schizophrenia as being the result of complex childhood trauma. There was a major study in the mid 2000's that very strongly supported that idea, and many other less broad but still compelling studies before that. Within their own context, studies that indicate it is a disorder passed on through genes are also compelling. Most of the people I ever talked to about it at conferences etc tended to conclude there is some combination of a genetic predisposition and some triggering factor, like trauma of some kind. More recent research suggests symptoms of schizophrenia are the result of an autoimmune disease, or come about as the result of multiple, overlapping diseases. The point is, although you can always find people who insist they do know, nobody does. It's just a steady process of trying to clarify what can be said about what is known, which is a lot more than say 100 years ago, but still very little in any objective sense. There's a lot more overlap between neuroscience and psychology these days than there was when I was at Uni, but you can recognise the ideas of the one in the conclusions of the other. For a broad overview I think David Eaglemans's book on the brain is one of the best.

 

[Tigger45]

You are claiming dismantling Jim Crow was inherently wrong because we should not of violated the conscience of those who opposed serving blacks the same as whites?

You repeated that post again? I already answered that. And its not a relevant reply to my statement.

 

[Dave-W]

The battle is not legal, it's spiritual.

A most important point.
One we should NEVER lose sight of.

Ephesians 6:12 NKJV
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

 

[Dave-W]

In that case, a blanket statement that people aren't "born that way" would also have an agenda?

Of course it has an agenda.

But IMO based on a faulty premise of naturalism as opposed to supernaturalism.

 

[Belk]

You repeated that post again? I already answered that. And its not a relevant reply to my statement.

Yes, it is. It is the exact same concept and the exact same issue. If one is allowed the other is.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

Much like it has been every time society has changed for thousands of years. Words reference reality, they do not define it.

"Wedding" has been redefined every time society changed? Really? Don't recall that happening as we moved from an industrial to an informational age. Or from a wartime society to a booming post-war society. Always one man, one woman in western society. Until an eye blink ago...

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

Nothing except being accused of unlawful discrimination if he's made a practice of doing it with all but one group of people defined by race, gender, et cetera.

Here is the basic problem: Christian vendors want to be secular business people doing whatever they want, unfettered by Jesus, until one particular group they don't like comes in. Then they want to play oh-so-holy Christian, too holy to touch evil.

I'm a photographer. A few years ago, in a men's bible study with another photographer, a barber, and a lawyer, we discussed the issue of any of us being contracted to perform personal work by homosexuals.

There are no undercover agents in Christ's body. If we're going to be Christians and businessmen, we must be openly Christian. So our businesses reflect our Christianity the moment you walk in the door or click on our websites. We're going to talk about Jesus at some point to every customer. We make it clear up front: You're dealing with a Christian here.

And that means our business practices must stand up to scrutiny as well, all the time, working always "as unto Christ."

So then, anyone who hires us knows what he's getting. And if a homosexual wants to hire us anyway, we'll take that as a holy appointment that someone has been enabled by the Father to accept Jesus. What we realized was this: The battle is not legal, it's spiritual.

That's complete biased nonsense. Christians want to run their businesses as they always have. All these cake makers were in business for decades, making wedding cakes and all kinds of other things. Suddenly, they are required to make wedding cakes for what cannot be wedding in their faith. Why can't they decline that particular business that violates their faith? There is no substantive reason. They do not have the market on cakes, and do not prevent people from getting whatever they want anywhere else that chooses to provide that.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

Actual scientists disagree with you. I'll go with their findings over your unsupported opinion.

Actual scientists like these? No, Scientists Have Not Found the ‘Gay Gene’ - The Atlantic

"As far as could be judged from the unpublished results presented in the talk, the team used their training set to build several models for classifying their twins, and eventually chose the one with the greatest accuracy when applied to the testing set. That’s a problem because in research like this, there has to be a strict firewall between the training and testing sets; the team broke that firewall by essentially using the testing set to optimize their algorithms.If you use this strategy, chances are you will find a positive result through random chance alone. Chances are some combination of methylation marks out of the original 6,000 will be significantly linked to sexual orientation, whether they genuinely affect sexual orientation or not. This is a well-known statistical problem that can be at least partly countered by running what’s called a correction for multiple testing. The team didn’t do that."

You are fooling yourself if you think there is not bias inherent in advancing this agenda.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

In that case, a blanket statement that people aren't "born that way" would also have an agenda?

Sure...it's called biological accuracy.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

Nothing except being accused of unlawful discrimination if he's made a practice of doing it with all but one group of people defined by race, gender, et cetera.

Here is the basic problem: Christian vendors want to be secular business people doing whatever they want, unfettered by Jesus, until one particular group they don't like comes in. Then they want to play oh-so-holy Christian, too holy to touch evil.

I'm a photographer. A few years ago, in a men's bible study with another photographer, a barber, and a lawyer, we discussed the issue of any of us being contracted to perform personal work by homosexuals.

There are no undercover agents in Christ's body. If we're going to be Christians and businessmen, we must be openly Christian. So our businesses reflect our Christianity the moment you walk in the door or click on our websites. We're going to talk about Jesus at some point to every customer. We make it clear up front: You're dealing with a Christian here.

And that means our business practices must stand up to scrutiny as well, all the time, working always "as unto Christ."

So then, anyone who hires us knows what he's getting. And if a homosexual wants to hire us anyway, we'll take that as a holy appointment that someone has been enabled by the Father to accept Jesus. What we realized was this: The battle is not legal, it's spiritual.

 

[Belk]

"Wedding" has been redefined every time society changed? Really? Don't recall that happening as we moved from an industrial to an informational age. Or from a wartime society to a booming post-war society. Always one man, one woman in western society. Until an eye blink ago...

That you lack awareness of it does not change the fact that it happened. For instance it changed when we stopped considering the wife to be the property of the husband. It also changed when we decided that marrying for love was better then political affiliations. It changed back in the sixties when it was no longer defined as a bond between two people similar amounts of melanin in their skin.

 

[Belk]

Actual scientists like these? No, Scientists Have Not Found the ‘Gay Gene’ - The Atlantic

"As far as could be judged from the unpublished results presented in the talk, the team used their training set to build several models for classifying their twins, and eventually chose the one with the greatest accuracy when applied to the testing set. That’s a problem because in research like this, there has to be a strict firewall between the training and testing sets; the team broke that firewall by essentially using the testing set to optimize their algorithms.If you use this strategy, chances are you will find a positive result through random chance alone. Chances are some combination of methylation marks out of the original 6,000 will be significantly linked to sexual orientation, whether they genuinely affect sexual orientation or not. This is a well-known statistical problem that can be at least partly countered by running what’s called a correction for multiple testing. The team didn’t do that."

You are fooling yourself if you think there is not bias inherent in advancing this agenda.

Oh believe me, the bias is clearly evident.

 

[Tigger45]

 

[Belk]

View attachment 246167

Since the rules forbid us from discussing the morality of SSM the legal ramifications are all we are able to discuss.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

That you lack awareness of it does not change the fact that it happened. For instance it changed when we stopped considering the wife to be the property of the husband. It also changed when we decided that marrying for love was better then political affiliations. It changed back in the sixties when it was no longer defined as a bond between two people similar amounts of melanin in their skin.

That assertion is completely false. The meaning of marriage did not change at all. It was, is, and always will be one man and one woman joined in a covenant under God (whether recognized or not) in the western world regardless of other societal changes. Until now.

 

[Belk]

That assertion is completely false. The meaning of marriage did not change at all. It was, is, and always will be one man and one woman joined in a covenant under God (whether recognized or not) in the western world regardless of other societal changes. Until now.

As I said, it changed regardless of your willingness to acknowledge that change. You can hand wave every single change I list but that will not make them go away. Definitions do not and never will dictate reality.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

As I said, it changed regardless of your willingness to acknowledge that change. You can hand wave every single change I list but that will not make them go away. Definitions do not and never will dictate reality.

It is you who are hand waving away reality. Marriage is between a man and a woman. Always was, and always will be, current legal status change notwithstanding. Those other distractions are like arguing that dress styles have intrinsically changed because they were once huge bell shapes and now are slender and form fitting. Irrelevant to the meaning of marriage which is a covenantal relationship between a man and a woman before God.

 

[Belk]

It is you who are hand waving away reality. Marriage is between a man and a woman. Always was, and always will be, current legal status change notwithstanding. Those other distractions are like arguing that dress styles have intrinsically changed because they were once huge bell shapes and now are slender and form fitting. Irrelevant to the meaning of marriage which is a covenantal relationship between a man and a woman before God.

Now we have reached Ipsie Dixit. You do not get to dictate the meaning of marriage.

It looks like we have hit the end to this conversation. Have a pleasant day RestoreTheJoy. I enjoyed our exchange.