Gay civil rights bill passes Senate in WA

Parent Cafe
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<p>We’re fighting a bunch of mullahs and ayahtollahs who want to impose their narrow sectarian beliefs in societies abroad and who are anti-gay, anti-abortion, and believe in subordinating women. I feel as if I’m treading very near to irony here.</p>

<p>One may be struck, when reading the New Testament, about the times when Jesus says something, Peter leaps up and gives his wrong-headed explanation, only to have Jesus smack his forehead and look upwards, saying, “Why me?” </p>

<p>And take a look at Pharisees then, Pharisees now. Little difference.</p>

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<p>Hey, if you going to violate one of the 10 commandments, you just go right ahead.</p>

<p>I’ll bring the wine. ;)</p>

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<p>Irony violates the 10 Commandments? Who knew?</p>

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<p>Coveting a laugh, maybe?</p>

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<p>Irony and stroganoff.</p>

<p>Where should we meet? </p>

<p>(SB Mom - covetousness is not among the 10 commandments written on the tablets; see Exodus 34; but your firstborn male doesn’t belong to you, and if you do not buy back the first born of an ass, you must break its neck. This is the 5th commandment (nothing about honoring fathers and mothers; see Exodus 34:19-20).</p>

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<p>My firstborn male IS born of an ass. What do I do now?</p>

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<p>You can buy him back, or break his neck - the choice is yours. It’s the 5th commandment, and not to follow it is worse than murder, dishonoring your parents, or adultery.</p>

<p>And this is what they wanted to put up in courthouses!</p>

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<p>Garland,</p>

<p>“the Bible … People often find what they want, if it’s important enough to justify their judgment of someone else.”</p>

<p>I would agree with you that if you approach the Bible with an agenda rather than an open mind with intellectual honesty, that you can convince yourself that it says many things contrary to what it actually says (mini’s posts are an excellent example). Fortunately, we have the actual Bible available to read, and although some passages may be subtle and/or difficult to understand, other portions are extremely straightforward.</p>

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<p>'k. So tell me where Jesus speaks out against homosexuality.</p>

<p>And tell me why you’re not following the rest of the Levitican code.</p>

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<p>mini,</p>

<p>Can I just wring his neck and call it a day? ;)</p>

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<p>“I would agree with you that if you approach the Bible with an agenda rather than an open mind with intellectual honesty, that you can convince yourself that it says many things contrary to what it actually says (mini’s posts are an excellent example).”</p>

<p>Excuse me, but I happen to know my Old Testament very well (and can read Biblical Hebrew). Exodus 34 specifically says that the tablets handed down contain EXACTLY the commandments as handed down on Mt. Sinai, and lists ten of them on the tablets. </p>

<p>There is not only “no contrary”, there is not even a question as to what they say.</p>

<p>In case you don’t remember the 10 Commandments, let me remind you:</p>

<p>10 And he said, “Behold, I am making a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you.</p>

<p>11 “Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 12 Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. 13 You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim 14 (for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), 15 lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice, 16 and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods.</p>

<p>17 “You shall not make for yourself any gods of cast metal.</p>

<p>18 “You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month Abib, for in the month Abib you came out from Egypt. 19 All that open the womb are mine, all your male [2] livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep. 20 The firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem. And none shall appear before me empty-handed.</p>

<p>21 “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest. In plowing time and in harvest you shall rest. 22 You shall observe the Feast of Weeks, the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the year’s end. 23 Three times in the year shall all your males appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel. 24 For I will cast out nations before you and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet your land, when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in the year.</p>

<p>25 “You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, or let the sacrifice of the Feast of the Passover remain until the morning. 26 The best of the firstfruits of your ground you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.”</p>

<p>27 And the Lord said to Moses, “Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” 28 So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.</p>

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<p>Without singling out PAFather–for I simply don’t know him well enough to know–most fundamentalists have an appalling lack of understanding of the history of the Bible and of the Christian religion, which in many cases seems, if you look at their theology, to have sprung full-grown from Zeus’ brow like Athena’s ■■■■■■■ brother in about 1840 if not later.</p>

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<p>Mini,</p>

<p>Congratulations on mastering Biblical Hebrew. But unfortunately, with your approach to the Bible, you will never be able to understand the Bible for one simple reason. Whether you realize it or not, your objective is effectively to try to find difficulties within the Bible, rather than looking to see if there is really any way that everything can be logically and beautifully connected. I am sure you are quite intelligent, well-read, etc., but whenever I read your posts regarding the Bible your approach is always the same as a militant atheist – one who is simply trying to show that it is not easy to understand the Bible.</p>

<p>You may believe that you are approaching the Bible with an open mind. But your analysis is indistinguishable from those of many others that can easily be found by Googling “atheist exodus 34 commandments.” In other words, you may believe you have an open mind, but your analysis is INDISTINGUISHABLE from those who are intent on trying to disprove the Bible. For people who want to spend their time trying to show that it is not easy to reconcile everything in the Bible, WHY WASTE YOUR TIME? I have never met a Christian or a Jew who has spent a lot of time studying the scriptures who would not readily admit this. That is why we are compelled to study the Bible – to read and re-read it to determine exactly what it means, including things that seem to be difficult to resolve or that seem to be contradictory.</p>

<p>The issues you bring up with regard to Exodus 34 were resolved thousands of years ago by Jews, and subsequently also by Christians when Christianity began. There is no major controversy within the Jewish faith or within the Christian faith that we may be confused as to what was written on the tablets. Exodus 34 certainly includes God describing laws to Moses. And it also involves Moses making stone tablets for God to write the ten commandments upon, which in later chapters will result in the tablets being placed in the ark of the covenant.</p>

<p>With your approach, I can guarantee you will certainly find verses that APPEAR to contradict each other. You do not need to go very far. For example, even within Exodus 34, how can one possibly reconcile verse 1 and verse 28 (i.e. did God write on the tablets or did Moses?)? If your objective is to point out APPARENT inconsistencies and difficulties within the Bible, you have completed your job, and you can now justifiably (in your own eyes) feel quite smug in refusing to ever read the Bible again, because all of the Christians and Jews for thousands of years must have never recognized this apparent inconsistency you have discovered. Deuteronomy 10:1-4 might help clarify things. But if you are bent on trying to look for inconsistencies, it will not help at all. If you are at all interested in trying to see if there is any way to resolve everything, then you may also consider New Testament verses such as Matthew 19:16-19, in which Jesus talks about His commandments. By the way, as you and I both know, the ten commandments that were written on the tablets are not the only laws of God anyway. The “ten commandments” are simply a relatively brief set of commandments that encapsulate much of what godly behavior is all about. Certainly, if anyone could simply obey the first commandment (as most people number them), obedience to all others would necessarily fall into place.</p>

<p>There is certainly a continuum of approaches to the Bible, from those who excuse away all apparent inconsistencies in the Bible without ever resolving anything (intellectually wimpy Bible-believers) to those on the other end of the spectrum who would refuse to recognize any truth at all in the Bible (atheists with their heads in the sand). </p>

<p>Since I am completely confident that God knows what He is doing, my objective when reading the Bible is now to try to see HOW, not IF, I can reconcile the various verses. But I never worry that I will have to put my brain on hold when reading the Bible, or that some atheist will find the key inconsistency that unravels all of Biblical truth. I have found God’s word to be true.</p>

<p>Pafather</p>

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<p>The Bible is written by man, several men, a committee, enough said.</p>

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<p>BHappyMom,</p>

<p>That was deep. It demonstrates your respect for the lifestyles and behaviors of those that differ from your own. At least you seem consistent. As do many others in this thread…not.</p>

<p>Pafather,</p>

<p>I enjoyed your post #59. I’ve heard something similar, in the past, from a very wise man. It put me back on my heals as he spoke–as if I believed history waited for me to come along and set it straight, as if all those who preceded me were oblivious.</p>

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<p>Pafather: It seems to me that you are the one who is picking and choosing. I agree with you on one thing, I have faith in God’s goodness and love, and I also think he knows what he is doing. Therefore since he doesn’t apparently expect us to follow the rest of the Levitican Code literally (at least no one seems to think so now), I think I’d have a lot of nerve picking out the three or four verses that I have decided are correct, though not the other several hundred that I choose not to follow, which is what you are doing.</p>

<p>You have a lot of nerve accusing other people of being unChristian because they interpret the Bible differently from how you do.</p>

<p>In the nineteenth century, it was common and unquestioned to interpret the Bible to sanction slavery–even Paul appears to, right? Yet nowadays we understand that can’t be right, at least, I think we all agree on that.</p>

<p>In the middle ages, it was common to believe that witchburning and the Spanish INquisition were ok, but that doesn’t mean the weight of history tells us they were correct.</p>

<p>That people got things wrong in the past, and still do, reflects on people, I think, not on God.</p>

<p>YOu still haven’t pointed out where Jesus speaks out against homosexuality.</p>

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<p>Well, as a lesbian who has been in a commited, monogamous relationship with her partner for 25 years, and as parent of a witty, bright, beautiful, balanced, and kind daughter, soon-to-be-named NMSF, who will be attending Swarthmore in the fall, I would like to thank all of you who support gay rights. Bigotry ultimately fails in the end. And to those who wonder–daughter is straight, for which I am happy. Life is difficult enough…</p>

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<p>pafather, I am just wondering what your extensive quoting of teh bible actually is proving. Just becasue you have one belief, why in a time and place that we can all be accepting of other peoples beliefs are you pushing your own religious interpretations onto people in order to saythat they are commiting a sin? You are the type of person that requires these antidiscrimination laws. If you are against out of marraige relations, you should be pusing for same sex marraige so that all of the people who want to get married are able to! and the fact that you feel that your beliefs are so superior to other people’s is really getting annoying. How can you think that two people are wrong for loving eachother and wanting to be together, no matter if they are straight or gay.</p>