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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • Technically all Christians have a version of this. Though even in “Bible Churches” it is usually tempered by the second bit below, and processes of repentance and whatnot.

    9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. 11 But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister[c] but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.

    12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13 God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”

    I Corinthians 5

    15 “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. 16 But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ 17 If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

    Matthew 18

    As an aside, that Corinthians bit spells it out in plain-ass English that any “Christian” screaming at non-Christians about being gay, trans, or whatever either do not know their Bible or only use it when it supports the actions they already want to take.

    As a second aside, it is kind of funny what one still remembers even after being out of the church for a couple decades.










  • Are you claiming children haven’t been abused because their parents found out they were LGBTQ?

    Of course not, that would be nonsense.

    I was just avoiding attributing anything like reason to the abusers. The choices of abuse victims are not typically the cause of abuse. The pieces of shit willing to abuse children don’t need a particular reason to do it, and I am not interested in claiming something the victim did was the cause. Even if the abuse ramped up after coming out, it still sounds a bit like victim blaming any way I word it. Which in turn makes me wonder how many of them were already being abused.



  • The examples listed are examples of violent victories not political ones. Even then, they imply backtracking instead of maintaining the status quo until victory.

    This was not a change in policy, it maintained the existing one, so that they could finalize their “divorce” amicably. There is a ton of properties as well as pensions involved. Properties that the UMC technically owns but was paid for by local congregations.

    It might be worth noting that those gay bishops that I mentioned aren’t actually allowed under current church rules. If they forced the issue and the conservative churches brought them to court instead, there is no telling what the courts would decide. Making deals was likely the smart choice, even if it meant waiting a bit until they start offering gay marriages to their parishioners.



  • Probably because they want to avoid the children getting abused at home, or worse

    Most abusers do not wait for some specific reason to start abusing. I would be interested to see data how many abused LGBT kids were never abused before they came out to their parents.

    Edited in all of the above.

    Hmm, I wonder what would happen in we’d apply this to past social issues…

    This might be splitting hairs a bit, but it basically is what happened.

    Edits in italics: For US women’s suffrage they gained the right to vote in a number of cities, territories, and states then eventually gained the right to vote nationally.

    Also when slaves were freed, they certainly did not become equal members of society the next day. It has however gotten significantly better over time.

    If you want to push in a certain direction, you take a few steps forward, show people that the world did not burn down, and then take a few more steps forward.



  • This was a really interesting read, thank you for laying it out.

    Are PDFs like that Direct Democracy common releases from the UK parties? It really spells things out, at least as far as I made it through before getting distracted.

    There did seem to be a couple sections that I read that the data didn’t seem to match what was being claimed. Particularly the section on the Broken Pendulum (Pages 8,9). The authors seem to claim that in 2001 and 2005 were unique in that the opposition party wasn’t able to gain from losses in the government. If however you look at 1964 and 1983 they seem to be even more stark examples of the same. Seems like the pendulum was a general trend at best.




  • My problem with your stance is that you seem very quick to jump at “bigoted hate speech from LGBTQ+ people”

    Show me a Christian or conservative acting like a bigot in this post, community, or even instance and I will gladly call them out. I am sure a few are hiding somewhere around here but they are few and far between. I do understand that there are instances where it is more common from them, but I do not regularly visit those places.

    admittedly, but understandably, quite vitriolic - responses to that trauma.

    This is my main issue right here. None of this conversation would be happening u/I_Fart_Glitter had just acknowledged that u/gravitas_deficiency had spit out some vitriolic bigotry instead of defending. Their opinions may be understandable to you, but a public News forum is the wrong place to be spewing that kind of bigotry. If they gravitas has unresolved issues they need to get off their chest, there are plenty of appropriate forums for it.

    This fear mongering is reinforced every single Sunday when they go to their church and get told these things directly by their leadership

    This may be true for many Christians, but there are millions of American Christians that believe quite the opposite and would never tolerate that in a church.

    I live in BFE Texas and there are ten Affirming Churches in the area; five of them are within about 45 minutes of me. As a comparison there are only two Cowboy Churches in the same area. Every major City I checked had several Affirming Churches.

    https://www.gaychurch.org/find_a_church/

    https://www.npr.org/2022/09/25/1124101216/trans-religious-leaders-say-scripture-should-inspire-inclusive-congregations

    https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2023-07-06/one-in-five-united-methodist-congregations-in-the-us-have-left-the-denomination-over-lgbtq-conflicts

    A belief system is much more mutable than intrinsic characteristics like gender identity, skin color, and sexuality

    Belief is as fundamental to a person as sexuality or gender identity. Some people’s beliefs, gender identity, and sexuality change several times through their lives, others stick with the one assumed at birth, and anywhere in between.

    assume you simply misspoke and meant “gender identity”.

    You are right, I meant transitioning gender identity, not “gender transition”

    based only on the inherently Christian idea that your parents are the sole deciders in the welfare of their children

    What? I am sure there are cultures and religions where something different would be the norm, but do any of them represent a significant chunk of the world’s population? I did a bit of web-searching but can’t seem to find anything remotely related to this. I am getting swamped with references to child welfare laws and related court cases.

    what’s the transitional stance between “trans rights are human rights” and “we need to eradicate gender ideology from the public world”?

    This is the first time I have gotten this deep into trans topics in a loooong time, but off the top of my head, I see two middle grounds between those stances.

    “If you want to live your life as a different sex than you were assigned at birth, that is fine but don’t expect everyone else to agree with or support that choice.”

    “Let adults live their lives as the sex they choose, but kids need to wait until they are out of high school if their parents refuse to accept it.”

    I am sure there are other middle grounds between those stances even if both sides are offended by them.

    How might it impact them? That brings me to your direct question.

    Who does trans identity affect other than the trans person?

    Really? Is this just a setup to call me a bigot instead? Fine, I will express the opinions I have seen or heard from women who could probably be described as TERFs even if they don’t see themselves as such, but only with a spoiler tag and a few caveats.

    Trigger warning. These are not my personal feelings. If someone taking oppositional stances or undercutting your self-identity will hurt you, please do not click this.

    Caveat: I am neither a woman nor trans, nor do I have daughters or sisters, nor have I ever had any close trans friends or family, only regular acquaintances, nor am I strongly opinionated about whether trans-women are actually women. I really do not have a leg to stand on when taking a stance around this issue.

    Another caveat: These are areas where the belief of what a trans person actually is controls the perspective. If you think a trans-woman is a woman, full stop, then this doesn’t make any sense at all. If you believe that a trans-woman is a man that prefers to live as a woman then it does, so in an effort to answer your question, I am going to frame it from that perspective.

    A final caveat, from my admittedly limited perspective these particular issues only typically apply to trans-women and not usually trans-men. Though I am sure there are some exceptions to that.

    First, the first woman X. I happened to have a conversation with a relatively young lady that went on a rant about Biden naming Rachel Levine as the first woman 4 star general of the Public Health Services Human Corps. She made quite the impassioned rant that it was undercutting women everywhere to call a “biological male” the first woman anything.

    Second, women’s sports. The Riley Gaines and Lia Thomas thing last year was hard to miss. The main point of women’s sports seems to be related to fields where men absolutely dominate the standings. Though there are definitely some women’s leagues for certain things where I can’t see how it would matter. As I understand it, many men’s leagues around the world have no rule against women, it is just exceptionally rare that a woman is selected for them. The NHL for example has had exactly one female player and it was for an exhibition game back in the 90s. Should leagues be based off of physical size like boxing? Or should there be a testosterone check? No idea, but some people assigned female at birth definitely think it affects them.

    Third, the old bathroom example. Men are feared in our society. Every one of us is viewed as a potential rapist. Women feel exceptionally uncomfortable in certain situations where a man is present or might be. It isn’t right, but it is the way things are. As long as bathrooms exist in their current form, some women, and some parents of young girls, are not going to be okay with people they see as men using the one for ladies.