Homosexuality!

[Leonard James]

I wish someone would create a therapy for old age 💊.

It already exists, it's called death.

Spot on j p, couldn't help laughing, there's something about cruelty in humour, like it.

ippy

Oi, do you have to remind me? 

[Brownie]

Can't we just live and let live if consenting adults choose a relationship which we wouldn't choose?   It's not our business.  I do wonder if people who have objections, on religious grounds (according to religious guidelines), really feel they are right.  We must trust our instincts sometimes.  God gave them to us after all.  God certainly gave me, and others, the instinct that other people's lifestyles are nothing to do with us unless they are causing harm.  Gay couples do no harm.  Plenty of heterosexual people do harm!  Not one of us is perfect.

[trippymonkey]

WOW !!!!
Well said Brownie......

It very often seems to me, unless a person was born INTO a particular religion, that they choose that faith that most fits in with their own ideas & 'prejudices'.
Kind of reinforcing them & they can THEN say, GOD says it too !!!

If Sriram IS a Hindu, IS I suspect, then he knows as well as I do that Hinduism does NOT discriminate against anyone in this awful way.

Nick

[Nearly Sane]

Another step

http://m.stv.tv/news/east-central/1320696-church-of-scotlands-general-assembly-votes-to-allow-gay-ministers/

[Udayana]

WOW !!!!
Well said Brownie......

It very often seems to me, unless a person was born INTO a particular religion, that they choose that faith that most fits in with their own ideas & 'prejudices'.
Kind of reinforcing them & they can THEN say, GOD says it too !!!

If Sriram IS a Hindu, IS I suspect, then he knows as well as I do that Hinduism does NOT discriminate against anyone in this awful way.

Nick

hmm .. "Hinduism" doesn't but that doesn't mean that plenty of "Hindus" don't. Nick, you must have encountered outcast Hijra groups on your travels?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_%28South_Asia%29#Social_status_and_economic_circumstances

[trippymonkey]

Ha Ji BUT that. as we BOTH know is NOT Hinduism's fault but humans'.

N

[Synonym]

Can't we just live and let live if consenting adults choose a relationship which we wouldn't choose?   It's not our business.  I do wonder if people who have objections, on religious grounds (according to religious guidelines), really feel they are right.  We must trust our instincts sometimes.  God gave them to us after all.  God certainly gave me, and others, the instinct that other people's lifestyles are nothing to do with us unless they are causing harm.

I suspect that is more a Zeitgeist influence of being born into a reasonably tolerant and liberal society, rather than a "natural instinct".

Is it the case that tribes and societies were all OK with it until religion came along and tried to influence them out of this prior instinct?

If you believe that religious morality is made-up by people who were just codifying what they already believed to be right and wrong, then the antipathy must have existed before religion.

And one other point, if you do believe in God then you presumably believe he gave us freewill and that it is not necessarily the case that just because we can think or do X this will be morally OK. So I am not sure you can deduce that much about the rightness or wrongness about something just from the fact that you have been given the ability to think it right or wrong.

[Shaker]

I suspect that is more a Zeitgeist influence of being born into a reasonably tolerant and liberal society

Thank goodness for secularism.

rather than a "natural instinct".

... which implies you believe that people are more likely to be inherently and innately intolerant to start off with until and unless they absorb tolerant and liberal values from the culture around them.

[Synonym]

Did most tribes and societies start out all fluffy as "human rights" respecting bodies?

[Leonard James]

I suspect that is more a Zeitgeist influence of being born into a reasonably tolerant and liberal society, rather than a "natural instinct".

Well, obviously we are not impervious to the influence of the society that we are born in, but many of us are still able to work out what is antisocial and what isn't.

Is it the case that tribes and societies were all OK with it until religion came along and tried to influence them out of this prior instinct?

I suspect that before religion 'came along', primitive people would have been biased against any kind of behaviour that was not the norm.

Religion then came along and biased people's thinking in the direction of the wishes of 'gods'.

Then science came along and caused people to think more deeply about how we got here, and with that came the realisation that we evolved from previous existing species, and that morality was a matter of controlling antisocial behaviour.

If you believe that religious morality is made-up by people who were just codifying what they already believed to be right and wrong, then the antipathy must have existed before religion.

Probably, although we shall never know for sure.

[Brownie]

I believe we were all made in the image of God and He gave us instincts about right or wrong;  we should not be hidebound by obscure religious rules which are man made.  Jesus never said anything about homosexuality and we should only judge when people do something abusive or anti-social in some way.  Other consenting adults' sex lives are not our business.

[trippymonkey]

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A very simple 'breath of fresh air' here ?!?!!?!?

[Leonard James]

Jesus never said anything about homosexuality and we should only judge when people do something abusive or anti-social in some way.  Other consenting adults' sex lives are not our business.

My sentiments exactly!

[trippymonkey]

Is there anyone, 'sane', here that can give sensible & honest reasons why 2 of the same gender, PHYSICAL gender that is, cannot love each other EXACTLY as 2 differently organed can?

[Brownie]

There is no reason Trippymonkey, it is perfectly natural to want to love someone and to seek a partner.  It's good that in our society people are able to openly form relationships, I wish it was the same everywhere.  Give it time.

[trippymonkey]

We really need to remember we in the UK were once so inhibited at one time ....??!!?!?

[torridon]

Can't we just live and let live if consenting adults choose a relationship which we wouldn't choose?   It's not our business.  I do wonder if people who have objections, on religious grounds (according to religious guidelines), really feel they are right.  We must trust our instincts sometimes.  God gave them to us after all.  God certainly gave me, and others, the instinct that other people's lifestyles are nothing to do with us unless they are causing harm.

I suspect that is more a Zeitgeist influence of being born into a reasonably tolerant and liberal society, rather than a "natural instinct"....

I'm trying to work out if you are arguing for intolerance, as a virtue, or unnaturalness, as a virtue.

[Synonym]

Neither. Just questioning some people's notions that their sense of morality derives from "instincts".

Most societies and tribes start off not particularly "fluffy", yet someone who happens to have been born into the UK in 19xx and whose sense of morality is "fluffy", is just going by the instincts God gave them? Nothing to do with the Zeitgeist?

[Synonym]

Is there anyone, 'sane', here that can give sensible & honest reasons why 2 of the same gender, PHYSICAL gender that is, cannot love each other EXACTLY as 2 differently organed can?

Given that any such reasons will automatically be classified as non-sane, non-sensible, and/or non-honest, I find it unlikely.

You may as well ask "Can any sane person explain why they see dragons in their attic" when you have already decided that seeing dragons in one's attic is insane.

[Rhiannon]

Neither. Just questioning some people's notions that their sense of morality derives from "instincts".

Most societies and tribes start off not particularly "fluffy", yet someone who happens to have been born into the UK in 19xx and whose sense of morality is "fluffy", is just going by the instincts God gave them? Nothing to do with the Zeitgeist?

Tolerant and fluffy aren't synonyms.

[Shaker]

Tolerant and fluffy aren't synonyms.

They seem to be for Synonym, otherwise why would he introduce the word. In fact it was his use of the word "fluffy," which I interpreted to mean something along the lines of "compassionate, caring, understanding, non-judgementally tolerant and accepting," which convinced me that he was more interested in sloganeering and less interested in genuine debate and thus not worth responding to further.

[Synonym]

Neither. Just questioning some people's notions that their sense of morality derives from "instincts".

Most societies and tribes start off not particularly "fluffy", yet someone who happens to have been born into the UK in 19xx and whose sense of morality is "fluffy", is just going by the instincts God gave them? Nothing to do with the Zeitgeist?

Tolerant and fluffy aren't synonyms.

I agree but not sure what point you are making.

If someone says that their morals or tolerance is just natural instincts, the ones given by God, then I still question whether it is just a coincidence that the person who feels this way was born into a Zeitgeist that leans towards this. Considering that such attitudes seem not be the default state of how most tribes and societies start out.

[Shaker]

If someone says that their morals or tolerance is just natural instincts, the ones given by God

Is that really your definition of "natural instincts"?

[Synonym]

If someone says that their morals or tolerance is just natural instincts, the ones given by God

Is that really your definition of "natural instincts"?

How's the not responding to me any further going?

And I have not suggested a definition of my own. I am responding to another's poster's (Brownie) claims of their own natural instincts as given to them by God. Although on the point I am disagreeing with them on, it doesn't actually matter where these "natural instincts" that coincide suspiciously with those of a particular society in a particular corner of time, are meant to come from.

[Shaker]

If someone says that their morals or tolerance is just natural instincts, the ones given by God

Is that really your definition of "natural instincts"?

How's the not responding to me any further going?

Less well than your manifest refusal to answer the question I asked you a few days ago/earlier/a few pages up-thread, which you certainly chickened out of answering. For myself I prefer not to do the chickening-out thing, so can inevitably become embroiled in discussions with highly distasteful individuals (i.e. and e.g. Sriram) against my better judgement.