I accept your definition of sin, for the purposes of this or any other discussion. What I'm not so sure about is: How do you know it's wrong? We all get our ideas from other people but, at some point, we either internalize them or abandon them. Once you have internalized a belief about something, the fact that somebody else believes the opposite should no longer matter. You may respect his right to believe it, but that doesn't mean you have to believe it. I don't think they even believe this anymore but, if a Catholic tells you that it's wrong to eat meat on Friday, and you're not a Catholic yourself, you are under no obligation to agree with him. I think it would be wrong to try to trick him into eating meat on Friday, but it's certainly not wrong for me to eat meat on Friday. I might even agree to order a meatless pizza to share with those guys, but that would only be out of respect for their beliefs, and there would be nothing wrong with me ordering a hamburger to go afterwards. If we had all forgotten that it was Friday, I would offer to reimburse the others for their share of the pizza so that they could buy something else for themselves. If eating my share of the pizza in front of them bothered them, I might order something else for myself as well, and take the pizza home with me. Well, were getting into situational ethics here, but my original point was that something is not a sin for me just because somebody else says that it is. When I said that I don't remember ever doing something that I believed was wrong, I meant something that I really believed was wrong, not something that somebody else believed was wrong.
As for putting aside my "irrational" belief about gay marriage and voting for it, that's not going to happen. You can put aside your irrational beliefs at election time if you want to, but I don't want to and I'm not going to. The purpose of voting is to express my opinion, not somebody else's opinion. I don't vote the way I should vote, I vote the way I want to vote. If you can convince me to change my mind on an issue, that's fine, but don't expect me to change my vote without first changing my mind.
We didn't talk about sex all that much at Elsdon. I think that the rest of them just accepted that it was wrong, but I had to find out for myself. The Bible prohibits adultery, homosexuality, beastiality, and rape, but it doesn't have a lot to say about premarital sex for teenagers. I don't think they even had adolescents in Biblical times. You were a child until you turned 12, and then you were an adult. Kids were promised in marriage younger than that, but they didn't consummate until they were at least 12. It doesn't appear that Joseph and Mary were married at the time Mary became pregnant with Jesus. She is referred to as his "espoused wife", which I think means engaged to be married. When Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant, "being a just man, he resolved to divorce her quietly", but I think that means to break off the engagement, for an angel appeared to Joseph and told him not to hesitate to make Mary his wife, "for she is with child of the Holy Spirit."
What the fuss was all about was the rule that a Jewish man should only marry "one of the virgin daughters of Israel." I don't think that rule was about chastity as much as it was about ethnic purity. Moses was concerned that his people would be assimilated by the Canaanites after the coming invasion. That's why he told them to show no mercy and take no prisoners. He also laid down other rules that were designed to prevent his people from adopting Canaanite cultural customs, and he certainly didn't want them marrying or even fooling around with the native girls. He could have just told them to marry a nice Jewish girl but, by adding the "virgin" part, he insured that the first child born to the couple would have a nice Jewish father as well as a nice Jewish mother. Funny that the Christians focused so much on the "virgin" part and not the "Jewish" part.
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
casting the first stone
Oh it's a time honored practice in philosophical and other thoughty
essays to begin with a definition of terms, I believe that book we just
read did a lot of it, you generally take a word like, oh, sin, that has a
lot of different meanings to a lot of different people, but then you
say for the purposes of this discussion when I say sin will mean
doing something that you know is wrong. I did leave out that phrase, in
the future I shall include it.
Discrimination is probably one of those words like, oh, gay, that has been appropriated to include another meaning. It happens all the time, it's no big deal. You can still use it in an earlier meaning, if you say you are a discriminating beer drinker, as I, ahem, am, yellow beer indeed, nobody will think that you are a beer drinker who doesn't like Jews or whatever. And there is still some of that old meaning in the new meaning. I'm sure those cigar and brandy gents thought that keeping what they considered riff raff out of their club was being discriminating.
We have our thoughts and we have our actions. We don't really have control over our thoughts, they pop willy nilly in and out of our heads. But we can control our actions. Well not quite, but basically it's true. So like I have my disapproval of hunting, but when it comes time to vote on allowing you hunters to marry, I have to set aside that disapproval and vote to allow it because it is only fair after all. And of course I think you should likewise set aside your equally irrational disapproval of gays to allow them to marry.
I believe that is the center of the orbit we have been circling for some weeks now. I suppose it is okay to avoid them in social situations, but I assume you were civil to that former boyfriend of your daughter's and that guy who does your taxes, and I don't think you have a lot of social activities anyway.
In the book sin was used in relation to the Catholic Church, and I think you would agree that those folks know their sins. They did invent original sin, and they had all kind of sins, well they had venal and mortal, and I don't if there are other kinds too.
Remember talking to the Catholic kids on the block when they got to talking about their religion and all the different kinds of stuff in it, and realizing our turning the page to psalm 362, and reading the Sunday Pix (is that what it was called, that little two or four page comic strip of biblical stories?) Methodist Church was pretty bland dishwater indeed? I'm surprised I didn't convert right then and there, except that there was always something spooky about those Catholics, like you never knew when you were going to trip over some little detail and end up burning in hell for the rest of eternity.
We Methodists had the ten commandments, and I think we had the big sins down, but I don't think we had the little ones down like covering your head in church or eating meat on Friday. It seems like we were against drinking and gambling, I think. Because I left about the time I became a teenager, I never heard where we stood on sex. I imagine we were against adultery and heavy petting. Whatever happened to heavy petting? You never hear about it anymore.
In the case of that parish in the book, those guys were told by the Catholic church what was sin, so because they accepted the teachings of the church, and knew the church called what they were doing sin, they were sinning.
Remember the apocryphal story about how you are out with your Catholic friends on a Friday night, and realizing that they have forgotten it's Friday, you urge them to get the sausage or the pepperoni pizza, and then when it comes you remind them that it is Friday and then you get to eat the whole pizza by itself?
So that's what I mean, it has to be something you know is wrong, and you have to do it knowingly. And you are telling me that for the purposes of this discussion you have never sinned? Back in your youth, you never let your sister get the blame for something that you did, you never lied to get out of some chore, you never maybe cheated someone on a deal by pretending whatever you were selling was worth more than it actually was?
Damn, I better beware of you casting the first stone.
You know that casting the first stone thing, if nobody is without sin than nobody stones that poor woman, but if there is a sinless Beagle in the crowd once he casts the first stone I assume anybody can cast the second, the third, the forty-second. Maybe we are better off all being sinners, or at least that poor woman is.
I should probably go on to examine this, but it's late in the morning and I don't want to bother. See starting the day with a sin, the way of the sinner.
Discrimination is probably one of those words like, oh, gay, that has been appropriated to include another meaning. It happens all the time, it's no big deal. You can still use it in an earlier meaning, if you say you are a discriminating beer drinker, as I, ahem, am, yellow beer indeed, nobody will think that you are a beer drinker who doesn't like Jews or whatever. And there is still some of that old meaning in the new meaning. I'm sure those cigar and brandy gents thought that keeping what they considered riff raff out of their club was being discriminating.
We have our thoughts and we have our actions. We don't really have control over our thoughts, they pop willy nilly in and out of our heads. But we can control our actions. Well not quite, but basically it's true. So like I have my disapproval of hunting, but when it comes time to vote on allowing you hunters to marry, I have to set aside that disapproval and vote to allow it because it is only fair after all. And of course I think you should likewise set aside your equally irrational disapproval of gays to allow them to marry.
I believe that is the center of the orbit we have been circling for some weeks now. I suppose it is okay to avoid them in social situations, but I assume you were civil to that former boyfriend of your daughter's and that guy who does your taxes, and I don't think you have a lot of social activities anyway.
In the book sin was used in relation to the Catholic Church, and I think you would agree that those folks know their sins. They did invent original sin, and they had all kind of sins, well they had venal and mortal, and I don't if there are other kinds too.
Remember talking to the Catholic kids on the block when they got to talking about their religion and all the different kinds of stuff in it, and realizing our turning the page to psalm 362, and reading the Sunday Pix (is that what it was called, that little two or four page comic strip of biblical stories?) Methodist Church was pretty bland dishwater indeed? I'm surprised I didn't convert right then and there, except that there was always something spooky about those Catholics, like you never knew when you were going to trip over some little detail and end up burning in hell for the rest of eternity.
We Methodists had the ten commandments, and I think we had the big sins down, but I don't think we had the little ones down like covering your head in church or eating meat on Friday. It seems like we were against drinking and gambling, I think. Because I left about the time I became a teenager, I never heard where we stood on sex. I imagine we were against adultery and heavy petting. Whatever happened to heavy petting? You never hear about it anymore.
In the case of that parish in the book, those guys were told by the Catholic church what was sin, so because they accepted the teachings of the church, and knew the church called what they were doing sin, they were sinning.
Remember the apocryphal story about how you are out with your Catholic friends on a Friday night, and realizing that they have forgotten it's Friday, you urge them to get the sausage or the pepperoni pizza, and then when it comes you remind them that it is Friday and then you get to eat the whole pizza by itself?
So that's what I mean, it has to be something you know is wrong, and you have to do it knowingly. And you are telling me that for the purposes of this discussion you have never sinned? Back in your youth, you never let your sister get the blame for something that you did, you never lied to get out of some chore, you never maybe cheated someone on a deal by pretending whatever you were selling was worth more than it actually was?
Damn, I better beware of you casting the first stone.
You know that casting the first stone thing, if nobody is without sin than nobody stones that poor woman, but if there is a sinless Beagle in the crowd once he casts the first stone I assume anybody can cast the second, the third, the forty-second. Maybe we are better off all being sinners, or at least that poor woman is.
I should probably go on to examine this, but it's late in the morning and I don't want to bother. See starting the day with a sin, the way of the sinner.
Monday, August 17, 2015
Who Says So?
I don't usually like to argue about definitions, but I feel constrained to point out that you are not using some words the way I have been accustomed to seeing them used. That doesn't mean you're wrong, it just means that some people might misinterpret what you're saying.
To discriminate generally means to distinguish one thing from another. A discriminating beer drinker, for instance, would recognize the difference between lawn mower beer and craft beer, and would likely express a preference for one or the other. An indiscriminate beer drinker would say that all beer is the same, so you might as well buy the cheapest brand. Some types of discrimination have been made illegal, but not all types. You can still choose your beer, but you can't choose not to admit someone into your public tavern because of his race, color, or nationality. Persecution generally means to pick on someone, "to harass or punish in a manner designed to injure, grieve, or afflict". I can see where there is some overlap here, but it's possible to discriminate without persecuting. I do not believe that gay marriage and traditional marriage is the same thing, that's discrimination, but it doesn't become persecution until I throw rocks instead of rice at a newly married gay couple. I can refuse to attend a gay wedding but, if I was a county clerk, I could no longer refuse to sell a marriage license to a gay couple. When I said that gays should not be persecuted, it doesn't preclude my disliking them and avoiding them in social situations. Truth be known, of all the stuff that you said is better now than it used to be, gay marriage is the only thing I disagree about.
The word "sin" is usually used in a religious context, although it wouldn't necessarily have to be. I could live with your definition, except that I would discriminate between breaking your own rule and breaking a rule that has been laid on you by somebody else without your consent. I think the reason you resisted religion in your youth was that it was imposed upon you by your parents, who dragged you, kicking and screaming, down to Elsdon. My parents sent me to Elsdon too, but that was different. I had been asking them questions that they couldn't answer, and they said that I might have better luck asking those questions in church, so I was happy to be sent there. The Catholic kids on my block still said I was going to Hell. In their view, it was just as much of a sin to attend a Protestant church as it was to attend no church at all. Of course the people I met at Elsdon didn't believe that, and they impressed me as being nicer people, so I chose to believe them instead of those mean Catholic kids.
I still have a little trouble understanding the concept of knowing that something is wrong and doing it anyway. Do you know it's wrong because you actually believe it's wrong, or do you just mean that somebody else told you it's wrong? I don't think I ever did anything that I believed was wrong before I did it. I have done lots of things that I thought were okay at the time, but came to realize that they were wrong after the fact. I don't call that "sin", I call that "screwing up". When you stole those books, did you have conflicting thoughts, like in cartoons when the little angel and the little devil are hovering over you arguing about whether you should do it or not? I could understand that, but I don't understand how you could have believed it was wrong and did it anyway merely because you wanted the books.
To discriminate generally means to distinguish one thing from another. A discriminating beer drinker, for instance, would recognize the difference between lawn mower beer and craft beer, and would likely express a preference for one or the other. An indiscriminate beer drinker would say that all beer is the same, so you might as well buy the cheapest brand. Some types of discrimination have been made illegal, but not all types. You can still choose your beer, but you can't choose not to admit someone into your public tavern because of his race, color, or nationality. Persecution generally means to pick on someone, "to harass or punish in a manner designed to injure, grieve, or afflict". I can see where there is some overlap here, but it's possible to discriminate without persecuting. I do not believe that gay marriage and traditional marriage is the same thing, that's discrimination, but it doesn't become persecution until I throw rocks instead of rice at a newly married gay couple. I can refuse to attend a gay wedding but, if I was a county clerk, I could no longer refuse to sell a marriage license to a gay couple. When I said that gays should not be persecuted, it doesn't preclude my disliking them and avoiding them in social situations. Truth be known, of all the stuff that you said is better now than it used to be, gay marriage is the only thing I disagree about.
The word "sin" is usually used in a religious context, although it wouldn't necessarily have to be. I could live with your definition, except that I would discriminate between breaking your own rule and breaking a rule that has been laid on you by somebody else without your consent. I think the reason you resisted religion in your youth was that it was imposed upon you by your parents, who dragged you, kicking and screaming, down to Elsdon. My parents sent me to Elsdon too, but that was different. I had been asking them questions that they couldn't answer, and they said that I might have better luck asking those questions in church, so I was happy to be sent there. The Catholic kids on my block still said I was going to Hell. In their view, it was just as much of a sin to attend a Protestant church as it was to attend no church at all. Of course the people I met at Elsdon didn't believe that, and they impressed me as being nicer people, so I chose to believe them instead of those mean Catholic kids.
I still have a little trouble understanding the concept of knowing that something is wrong and doing it anyway. Do you know it's wrong because you actually believe it's wrong, or do you just mean that somebody else told you it's wrong? I don't think I ever did anything that I believed was wrong before I did it. I have done lots of things that I thought were okay at the time, but came to realize that they were wrong after the fact. I don't call that "sin", I call that "screwing up". When you stole those books, did you have conflicting thoughts, like in cartoons when the little angel and the little devil are hovering over you arguing about whether you should do it or not? I could understand that, but I don't understand how you could have believed it was wrong and did it anyway merely because you wanted the books.
defining sin
We toss these words around, discrimination, persecution, i suppose if
you are discriminating against someone you are persecuting them, that is
if you are the people who have all the money and own all the property,
and you won't let another group who has neither buy your property or
earn your wages. Way back when we were lads, an upstanding straight
white man was expected to discriminate against nonstraight, nonwhite,
nonmen. When you went to that snooty club for cigars and brandy you
certainly didn't want to rub elbows with gays, blacks, or women.
Anymore all those people can smoke and drink together. I heard they
even let a swamp Bohunk in, but the people there were not up to his
snuff, and he was sure they would disappoint him somewhere down the line
so he he went back to the swamp where he could be disappointed with
them from a distance.
You are always going on about how things have changed since we were lads, but you know things have always been changing, time is a river, blah, blah, blah. Change is kind of like winter, you may like it or you may hate it, but it's always going to be there, and it's perfectly fine to complain about it to your friends and neighbors, but these complaints become a little tiresome in a high class blog such as this one.
And anyway things were wrong back then, blacks couldn't vote or buy property in the nice parts of town or get those good jobs, gays could go to jail for practicing the love that dare not speak its name, and women had a hard time becoming doctors and lawyers. Surely you admit that that was wrong. Now it's better, quit complaining.
What i meant by sin, and this is pretty much my own definition, is knowing something is wrong and doing it anyway. I was going to trot out some examples. but not many came to mind, not that I am sinless, but I just don't do much of anything anymore. I used to steal. Way back in my hippie days I used to shoplift books. I suppose I had some halfass theory where I was liberating them from the corrupt establishment, but I knew in my heart that what I was doing was wrong, but I wanted the book and so I took it. Anymore my sins would be something like treating somebody unfair because I didn't want to take the time to treat them right, or not recycling something because it was too much bother.
And there is guilt there when I know I have sinned. I suppose that keeps me from doing it very often and that makes me a better person, and I suppose when somebody else sins it makes me more tolerant of them, so long as they admit they sinned and vow to try to not do it again, even though we both know we will because we are imperfect vessels.
Wow, sounds like I have bought into that original sin thing that I am always declaiming about. In my case I think it is more about putting yourself first, giving yourself a bit of an advantage in an unfair manner over somebody else. That's what I think of as sin.
You are always going on about how things have changed since we were lads, but you know things have always been changing, time is a river, blah, blah, blah. Change is kind of like winter, you may like it or you may hate it, but it's always going to be there, and it's perfectly fine to complain about it to your friends and neighbors, but these complaints become a little tiresome in a high class blog such as this one.
And anyway things were wrong back then, blacks couldn't vote or buy property in the nice parts of town or get those good jobs, gays could go to jail for practicing the love that dare not speak its name, and women had a hard time becoming doctors and lawyers. Surely you admit that that was wrong. Now it's better, quit complaining.
What i meant by sin, and this is pretty much my own definition, is knowing something is wrong and doing it anyway. I was going to trot out some examples. but not many came to mind, not that I am sinless, but I just don't do much of anything anymore. I used to steal. Way back in my hippie days I used to shoplift books. I suppose I had some halfass theory where I was liberating them from the corrupt establishment, but I knew in my heart that what I was doing was wrong, but I wanted the book and so I took it. Anymore my sins would be something like treating somebody unfair because I didn't want to take the time to treat them right, or not recycling something because it was too much bother.
And there is guilt there when I know I have sinned. I suppose that keeps me from doing it very often and that makes me a better person, and I suppose when somebody else sins it makes me more tolerant of them, so long as they admit they sinned and vow to try to not do it again, even though we both know we will because we are imperfect vessels.
Wow, sounds like I have bought into that original sin thing that I am always declaiming about. In my case I think it is more about putting yourself first, giving yourself a bit of an advantage in an unfair manner over somebody else. That's what I think of as sin.
Friday, August 14, 2015
The Guilt Trip
The more I think about it, nobody slipped gay marriage in the back door, people have been arguing about it for years. By the way, I never intended that "back door" statement to be a joke. It occurred to me while I was proof reading that it might be interpreted that way, but I decided not to change it. Like Pontius Pilate said, "What I have written, I have written." Anyway, as I have already stated, I don't think that gays should be persecuted, but you said "discrimination", which is not exactly the same thing. That's another word that they have changed the meaning of in our lifetimes. Time was that a person of discriminating taste was admired, but now it has come to mean denying somebody his due because of his race, gender, religion, or one of several other distinctions. Homosexuality was not one of those distinctions originally, but now it apparently is. I suppose this could go on indefinitely until even Bohemian swamp dwellers are added to the list, but I will vote against that too. I don't want to be part of any special interest group, I just want to be a regular guy. Why can't everybody be like me?
Of course everybody is not like me, in spite of the fact that you keep saying I have an ilk. There may be an ilk out there, and I may vote their way because I dislike them less than I dislike your ilk, but I don't consider myself to be one of them. My parents were joiners, like the folks in Elmhurst, and I was too for awhile but, the older I got, the less of a joiner I became. That's because every group I've ever been in has eventually done something I didn't like, so I got out. I don't join anything anymore because I know they will disappoint me sooner or later, and I don't want to spend what little time I have left on this earth being disappointed.
As I have said previously, I believe there is a difference between right and wrong, but I don't think I believe in sin anymore, if indeed I ever did. There are two definitions of sin that come to mind. One is living in a state of alienation from God, but I don't think that's the one you're talking about here. I think you mean something like breaking the rules. Of course different cultures live by different rules, so what might be sin in one culture may be deemed as virtue in another culture. in the Judeo-Christian culture, the purpose of sin seems to be to make you feel guilty, not guilty enough to prevent you from doing it in the first place, but guilty enough that you feel the need to be forgiven or redeemed after you do it.
The Jews used to sacrifice animals to atone for their sins, but they haven't done that since the last time their temple was destroyed in 70 AD, and I don't know what they do about it now. Other ancient cultures sacrificed animals on various mountain tops, but the Jews were only supposed to do their sacrificing in the temple in Jerusalem. I suppose the reasons for that were to provide job security for the priests and direct traffic to the shopkeepers of Jerusalem. Christians don't need to sacrifice because Jesus has already done that for them, all they've got to do is acknowledge it and repent of their sins. The Catholics have to go through a priest for that, but the Protestants can cut the red tape and go directly to God. Instead of priests, they have ministers who will help you find your way to God, but it's up to you to make the actual contact. At some point it occurred to me that God already knows what I have done and whether or not I'm sorry about it, so anything I say to Him on the matter will just be a redundant waste of time. Well, I suppose God has more time than I do, but that doesn't mean he should be frittering it away trying to make me feel better. That's my job.
Of course everybody is not like me, in spite of the fact that you keep saying I have an ilk. There may be an ilk out there, and I may vote their way because I dislike them less than I dislike your ilk, but I don't consider myself to be one of them. My parents were joiners, like the folks in Elmhurst, and I was too for awhile but, the older I got, the less of a joiner I became. That's because every group I've ever been in has eventually done something I didn't like, so I got out. I don't join anything anymore because I know they will disappoint me sooner or later, and I don't want to spend what little time I have left on this earth being disappointed.
As I have said previously, I believe there is a difference between right and wrong, but I don't think I believe in sin anymore, if indeed I ever did. There are two definitions of sin that come to mind. One is living in a state of alienation from God, but I don't think that's the one you're talking about here. I think you mean something like breaking the rules. Of course different cultures live by different rules, so what might be sin in one culture may be deemed as virtue in another culture. in the Judeo-Christian culture, the purpose of sin seems to be to make you feel guilty, not guilty enough to prevent you from doing it in the first place, but guilty enough that you feel the need to be forgiven or redeemed after you do it.
The Jews used to sacrifice animals to atone for their sins, but they haven't done that since the last time their temple was destroyed in 70 AD, and I don't know what they do about it now. Other ancient cultures sacrificed animals on various mountain tops, but the Jews were only supposed to do their sacrificing in the temple in Jerusalem. I suppose the reasons for that were to provide job security for the priests and direct traffic to the shopkeepers of Jerusalem. Christians don't need to sacrifice because Jesus has already done that for them, all they've got to do is acknowledge it and repent of their sins. The Catholics have to go through a priest for that, but the Protestants can cut the red tape and go directly to God. Instead of priests, they have ministers who will help you find your way to God, but it's up to you to make the actual contact. At some point it occurred to me that God already knows what I have done and whether or not I'm sorry about it, so anything I say to Him on the matter will just be a redundant waste of time. Well, I suppose God has more time than I do, but that doesn't mean he should be frittering it away trying to make me feel better. That's my job.
slipping something in the back door
Being a cat man I never felt the allure of the noble wolf. I guess it
depends on how much of a nuisance it is. Usually those cattle guys are
the ones who get fired up about this because they lose some cattle.
Sometimes though they blow it up out of proportion. I guess it would
depend on the case; I would have to put it into the crucible.
You know even though I disapprove of hunting, I know that disapproval is irrational, so I disregard it and think it is perfectly fine for you guys to bag a meal or two a few times a year, and i don't mind your hunting rifles. But there is an unmistakable allure of guns. Every gun nut I know has more than he needs and speaks about them like old and treasured friends, and that's a little strange, but that's ok. Well I am just creeping up on the old gun control argument and let's not go there on a warm summer morning.
I believe I have already made my case against discriminating against gays several times. I don't see why having had an opinion first means you don't have to defend it. I don't know why you want to have years of argument, but I do like argument. Not to crazy about a civil war though. One Ken Burns special is quite enough for me thank you. Was that slipping something in the back door 'crack,' a little Beagles sly humor?
I suppose in some circles you could get into trouble for that, like if you were running for some office or if this blog was widely read. Oh that whole thing is just crazy. Like someone posted on fb this sign, one of those things that faces the street where the owner can put in black letters and usually they are like announcing somebody's birthday or welcoming home the local conquering football team, that some local tradesman had spelled out something like it has been a year since Michael Brown (the Ferguson victim) has committed a crime. Which is kind of stupid, one could as well have put up a sign that it has been a year since Darren Wilson (the cop) had shot anybody.
Anyway the sign could have just sat there and folks could have snickered or snorted, but somebody had to put it on fb, and then there are all those messages pro and con, and I suppose I have too much time on my hands and I read through some of them, and one guy was particularly vocal on the anti Brown side, so I clicked on his page, and there was a posting of that Calvin character from Calvin and Hobbes pissing on Obama's head, and that was it, no words or anything. I suppose the guy has a right to do that, but why would anybody? Oh just venting I suppose.
One of the things about Lost City that I liked was where the guys were going to the bar before or maybe it was right after, or maybe it was instead of, church. And they knew they were sinning, and they knew that they would have to do something to make up for it, and that they would probably sin again, because that is the way the world was. What I liked about it is the owning up of the sinning. It seems to me that anymore people are all like, I was under a lot of stress, and blah blah blah, and circumstances forced me into it, so it is really not my fault at all, and so I haven't sinned. I don't like the way people don't own up to things today.
That's what I remember. I'll have to reread it. Well we have a long summer weekend do we not?
You know even though I disapprove of hunting, I know that disapproval is irrational, so I disregard it and think it is perfectly fine for you guys to bag a meal or two a few times a year, and i don't mind your hunting rifles. But there is an unmistakable allure of guns. Every gun nut I know has more than he needs and speaks about them like old and treasured friends, and that's a little strange, but that's ok. Well I am just creeping up on the old gun control argument and let's not go there on a warm summer morning.
I believe I have already made my case against discriminating against gays several times. I don't see why having had an opinion first means you don't have to defend it. I don't know why you want to have years of argument, but I do like argument. Not to crazy about a civil war though. One Ken Burns special is quite enough for me thank you. Was that slipping something in the back door 'crack,' a little Beagles sly humor?
I suppose in some circles you could get into trouble for that, like if you were running for some office or if this blog was widely read. Oh that whole thing is just crazy. Like someone posted on fb this sign, one of those things that faces the street where the owner can put in black letters and usually they are like announcing somebody's birthday or welcoming home the local conquering football team, that some local tradesman had spelled out something like it has been a year since Michael Brown (the Ferguson victim) has committed a crime. Which is kind of stupid, one could as well have put up a sign that it has been a year since Darren Wilson (the cop) had shot anybody.
Anyway the sign could have just sat there and folks could have snickered or snorted, but somebody had to put it on fb, and then there are all those messages pro and con, and I suppose I have too much time on my hands and I read through some of them, and one guy was particularly vocal on the anti Brown side, so I clicked on his page, and there was a posting of that Calvin character from Calvin and Hobbes pissing on Obama's head, and that was it, no words or anything. I suppose the guy has a right to do that, but why would anybody? Oh just venting I suppose.
One of the things about Lost City that I liked was where the guys were going to the bar before or maybe it was right after, or maybe it was instead of, church. And they knew they were sinning, and they knew that they would have to do something to make up for it, and that they would probably sin again, because that is the way the world was. What I liked about it is the owning up of the sinning. It seems to me that anymore people are all like, I was under a lot of stress, and blah blah blah, and circumstances forced me into it, so it is really not my fault at all, and so I haven't sinned. I don't like the way people don't own up to things today.
That's what I remember. I'll have to reread it. Well we have a long summer weekend do we not?
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Bingo!
Yep, that's it, I feel approximately the same about homosexuality as you do about hunting. The analogy breaks down, however, when you talk about voting to allow hunters to marry. The difference is that hunters are already allowed to marry, and we don't need your vote to do it. Now if there was a ballot initiative proposing to prohibit hunters from marrying, it would be different than the time I voted to ban gays from marrying, and here's why: Gays were not previously allowed to marry in Michigan, and we voted to keep it that way. Some other states had already allowed it, and there was concern that, if a gay couple had been married in one of those states, and then they moved to Michigan, we would have to recognize that marriage under the "full faith and credit" clause in the U.S. Constitution. I said at the time that what we needed to do was amend the federal constitution, but that wasn't put on the ballot, so I voted for the Michigan proposal as better than nothing. If a majority of the states had done the same thing, it would have sent a message to the feds that gay marriage was unpopular, but they didn't. Since the majority of the states eventually voted to allow gay marriage, the Supreme Court was actually ruling with the majority for a change. Well, it's a done deal now, and I don't see any way to undo it, the same as if you guys voted to prohibit hunters from marrying. What would you do about all the hunters that are already married?
I was surprised when you said that only four or five percent of the people in this country are gay, but I was also surprised to find that out about hunters and Indians. I seems like there should be way more people in all those groups because they make so much noise and command so much of the public's attention. It would be wrong to allow 95% of the people to pick on 5%, which is why we have safeguards against that in our laws. My ilk is fond of pointing that out every time someone brings up majority rule as an argument, so it would be hypocritical of me to argue against it. I never said that we should persecute the gays anyway, just that we shouldn't allow them to get married to each other. We have now given them something that they didn't have before, which is kind of like rewarding bad behavior, but I suppose you could say the same thing about expanding hunting opportunities for people like me. A controversy has been raging for decades about taking wolves off the endangered list and allowing limited hunting of them in areas where they are starting to be a nuisance. If you disapprove of hunting, you are bound to disapprove of adding another species to the list of legitimate quarry, regardless of the effect it might have on the species or the people who live around them.
Of course there are a lot of things that used to be legal and are no longer legal, and I suppose a certain amount of that is bound to happen as time marches on. What bothers me about homosexuality is the seemingly arbitrary way it has been legitimized over the years. You have challenged me to defend my position on the matter, but I feel that my position was here first, so you are the one who needs to justify your position. When slavery was abolished it was first argued about for decades, and then they finally had to fight a civil war to settle it. This gay thing seems to have slipped in the back door while nobody was paying attention, and now we're stuck with it. If it's really only 5%, I guess it's not the end of the world. Maybe they will quit crying about it now that they have what they want and we can all get on with our lives.
I finished "The Lost City" some time ago, so we can discuss that if you want. I agree that the author doesn't seem to have a plan to restore community life in America, although he does talk about the pendulum swinging back some day of its own accord. The book was a trip down Memory Lane for me, but I can't think of anything about the 50s that I would like to see restored. Maybe that's because I was pretty young then, and I never did like being a child. If I could turn back the clock, I wouldn't go back a day before March 1, 1967, the day I got out of the army and started my real life.
I was surprised when you said that only four or five percent of the people in this country are gay, but I was also surprised to find that out about hunters and Indians. I seems like there should be way more people in all those groups because they make so much noise and command so much of the public's attention. It would be wrong to allow 95% of the people to pick on 5%, which is why we have safeguards against that in our laws. My ilk is fond of pointing that out every time someone brings up majority rule as an argument, so it would be hypocritical of me to argue against it. I never said that we should persecute the gays anyway, just that we shouldn't allow them to get married to each other. We have now given them something that they didn't have before, which is kind of like rewarding bad behavior, but I suppose you could say the same thing about expanding hunting opportunities for people like me. A controversy has been raging for decades about taking wolves off the endangered list and allowing limited hunting of them in areas where they are starting to be a nuisance. If you disapprove of hunting, you are bound to disapprove of adding another species to the list of legitimate quarry, regardless of the effect it might have on the species or the people who live around them.
Of course there are a lot of things that used to be legal and are no longer legal, and I suppose a certain amount of that is bound to happen as time marches on. What bothers me about homosexuality is the seemingly arbitrary way it has been legitimized over the years. You have challenged me to defend my position on the matter, but I feel that my position was here first, so you are the one who needs to justify your position. When slavery was abolished it was first argued about for decades, and then they finally had to fight a civil war to settle it. This gay thing seems to have slipped in the back door while nobody was paying attention, and now we're stuck with it. If it's really only 5%, I guess it's not the end of the world. Maybe they will quit crying about it now that they have what they want and we can all get on with our lives.
I finished "The Lost City" some time ago, so we can discuss that if you want. I agree that the author doesn't seem to have a plan to restore community life in America, although he does talk about the pendulum swinging back some day of its own accord. The book was a trip down Memory Lane for me, but I can't think of anything about the 50s that I would like to see restored. Maybe that's because I was pretty young then, and I never did like being a child. If I could turn back the clock, I wouldn't go back a day before March 1, 1967, the day I got out of the army and started my real life.
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