[disclaimer: the following is a rant because I’m churned up and don’t know where else to put it- Nothing new here I’m sure its all been covered so many times on this forum:]

Wow. I’ve been surfing a few different sites this morning working myself up into more and more anger- It started with Jim Wallace from Australian Christian Lobby on Sunrise on monday (although Sunrise deliberately chose a crazy right-wing christian caricature to show how illogical and paranoid their views are). I was then reading through Why Gender Matters, where general links are drawn between homosexuality and pedophilia whilst using fairly dubious research to show that gays are promiscuous, will die earlier, get diseases, abuse drugs and their partners and are unhappy.

[http://www.gendermatters.org.au/Home_files/21%20Reasons%20Why%20Gender%20Matters(low%20res).pdf]

Then surfed to other sites such as saltshakers, and Narth, an american association concerned with reparative therapy.

It is sad how most of our opposition is based in religion- with arguments that are so misinformed and fearful. Maybe it is because hundreds of years of religious orthodox male hegemony is at stake? The discourse often seems so angry and pugnacious, talking about insidious gay activists and the gay agenda; but most of us are not political or searching to tear down happy heterosexual families, but asking only for respect and equality. If churches ceased to exist I think most prejudice would disappear. I don’t want this to happen, because the church does have some positive influence, but it means that even while my previous church was relatively tolerant, I still can’t support an institution that on a whole seeks to marginalize and repress me.

Though on the other hand I’m lucky to live in a time when there is so much mainstream acceptance, I guess in twenty or thirty years most mainstream churches will have turned around as old fogies die off- the church is always a generation or so behind.

haha I think thats my rant finished.

*takes big breath*

So, maybe it’s time for a chill pill fella’s? 😆 😆

Just a note on research and critical thinking. ALWAYS go to the original argument, reserach or study if you’re going to make a claim about something and remember that publications like ‘Christianity Today’ have a political and religious stance that goes all the way in one dirrection. Phillip Yancey almost got fired from his job writing articles for that magazine when he took a middle-of-the-road stance on homosexuality. They have an adgenda so bear in mind that all ‘evidence’ if its not from the dirrect source is skewed in some way.

The same can be said for pro-gay stuff too like the LeVay ‘experiment’ that is in almost every pro-gay book out there. *sigh* there is a reason decades old reserach is still being used and its because its the only one that comes to that conclusion using the same method. When the study was repicated ten years later the results were much more ambigious. In universities today when creating guidelines for assessment tasks lecturers will ask you for reserach and references that are five years old or less (thank God for online databases) this is because ‘science’ changes its mind constantly and what was ‘true’ five years ago isn’t necessarily so today.

Be wary of anyone who backs up their claims with old stats or studies and go looking for newer stuff online if you want vertification. These things get added to or replicated every few years.

When I was younger and people would say homosexuality was at 10% I would always reply “Ha! I wish!”. It could be as high as 10% but its dubious because that would put a hell of a lot of people in the closet. In the end no number is definative because not everyone amits to being gay and some people don’t know they are.

It’s weird, the way people justify homosexuality, as if the number of people would make a difference. Obesity affects a large percentage of Australians and its growing every year (pardon the pun) yet no one would dare suggest that its normal or healthy. It’s also further complicated by the ‘fact’–as far as we are aware to date–that there are almost double the amount of gay men as there are lesbains and more women are bisexual than men. What do you do with those kind of anomalies? Are gay men normal-er than lesbians? Is bisexuality only okay for women?

I’m almost afraid to ask what you do base your life on, then. 😉 😆

I’m almost afraid to ask what you do base your life on, then.

Youre a wise woman 😉 😆

Lol mobileguy 8) 😆