The Link Between Gay Marriage and Mass Murders
You know, for once I think the religious right in America have actually put their finger on something which I find difficult to argue with. Robert Peters, President of Morality in Media, of whom Song, by Toad is a staunch supporter, has written this insightful little piece for Christian News Wire called “Connecting the Dots: The Link Between Gay Marriage and Mass Murder”. In it he points out the obvious fact that a decline in Judeo-Christian morality (actually, I think he means Judeo-Christian-Islamo morality because the three religions are all basically offshoots of the same sapling) has led to the permissiveness in society which leads us to tolerate both the marrying of ‘people’ of the same sex and the mass murder of innocent children.
I think it goes with out saying that knowing that our brief time on Earth is all you have, rather than having a nice safe spot in heaven to look forward to when it’s over, would lead you to be cavalier about human life. Basically, the secular Darwinian values of modern society encourage you to go and kill people, whereas no-one with a safe knowledge in a neverending afterlife of bliss would be at all tempted to be even remotely careless with the seventy or eighty odd years they might have to spend on Earth in advance of it.
The clear, rational crux of his argument is expressed beautifully in the following paragraph:
“This secular value system is also reflected in the ‘sexual revolution,’ which is the driving force behind the push for ‘gay marriage;’ and the Iowa Supreme Court decision is another indication that despite all the damage this revolution has caused to children, adults, family life and society (think abortion, divorce, pornography, rape, sexual abuse of children, sexually transmitted diseases, trafficking in women and children, unwed teen mothers and more), it continues to advance relentlessly.”
I don’t think anyone would argue that gay marriage and the sexual revolution are clearly responsible for abortions, divorce, rape and abuse of children, and the trafficking in slaves. Gay marriage has been on the agenda for the last twenty years, at most, and is only legal in a tiny number of states in the US and other countries around the world. Yet even in this short period, rape, the slave trade, abortion and the sexual abuse of children have all clearly skyrocketed out of control.
Only a staunch Darwinian, like Hitler, could try and argue that the world is undoubtedly a safer place now than it has ever been. Because don’t let the Nazi definition of a woman’s role in society: “Kinder, Kirche, Kueche” (Children, Church, Kitchen) fool you, they were self-evidently atheist liberal elitists. Allowing rationality into the law and into society in place of obedience to the dogma of the Judeo-Christian(-Islamo) values system on which the United States was founded will inevitably result in a terrifying slide into anarchy, plagues, and the rebirth of Sodom and Gomorrah in the 21st Century.
The United States is the most religious of all the first world nations, and has the highest levels of violent crime, which proves conclusively the need for more religious guidance in the law-making and social policy of developed nations. The fact that there is absolutely no correlation between the contents of the two doesn’t mean that the US Constitution and Bill of Rights weren’t clearly founded on the Bible and the Ten Commandments, as David Limbaugh recently made clear.
And if anyone needs any more proof of the direct link between gay marriage and mass murder, I offer you this little personal anecdote. I have now attended a couple of gay weddings, and since then, every single time I hear this kind of babbling, incoherent rhetoric I am overwhelmed with the desire to hunt and kill absolutely any of the retards who take this sort of shit even vaguely seriously. So there you go. Maybe Peters had a point after all.
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Robert Peters should emulate Christ, but only the Good Friday part.
Oh, the Gay. The low down dirty, filthy Gay.
I was wondering when someone had the courage to talk about this issue. They are indeed vicious creatures. Yes, creatures. Non-humans. For that is what they are. Evil, nasty, scurrilous, loathesome miscreants with one purpose on Earth & one purpose only: to stop the spread & breeding of decent human beings with their vile rhetoric, their incomprehensible demands to be heard & treated like normals (or there’ll be hell to pay!), their sex with boys, & their pre-determined nature to blame everyone & everything else for nothing going according to the plan they’ve devised on the basis of some spurious speed-read of a chapter in the Bible.
Oh, hang on. Sorry. I mean Funda”mental”ist Christians. Not the Gay. No, them so-called God lovin’ mong-brains. Them, who don’t own passports. & watch Nancy Grace, with a hard on. & have a matching holster & boots. & think the environmental crisis, organic foods & recycling are part of a wider conspiracy to get them to vote for a “nigger”. & think 9/11 was a call to arms to hunt & kill anyone who looked at home in a shemagh. & think that (if, or course, he did in fact ever live & practice/say/do anything these jerrybags believe he did) Jesus was white.
Is there anyway we can introduce a virus into their community to wipe them out?
That Morality In Media website is brilliant!
Do they do T-Shirts?!
Now that would be cool.
Oh no no no no no no no! I was feeling angry enough after my lunchtime Guardian perusal led me to a further set of mental vaccine denialists, but now I feel like I need a lie down.
These fundamentalists are fucking idiots, but godamnit if they aren’t creative…
Personally, I don’t think it’s the gays fault, it’s this newfangled rock ‘n roll music.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6984082.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/apr/13/amazon-gay-writers
i can’t even say the word gay without my gums bleeding
#AmazonFail
Gay bashing appears ot the rage at the moment. & we all thought Obama would do some good…
Obama did very publically invite gay couples to the White House Easter Egg thingy, which is a good public endorsement, and will make a big difference in the long run.
I would imagine that the religous right are upping their hysteria at the moment because they see Obama and gay marriage as symptoms of the same disease, not because he has failed to do anything in particular.
That disease, of course, would be called ‘the weakening of our imagined stranglehold over the American psyche and public discourse-itis’.
Well, I think it’s largely because of Obama that they are going mental. Partially the right throwing their toys out of the pram because they can’t do whatever they want anymore, and patially because they are terrified he is going to free the gays.
The whole Amazon thing is ridiculous, if I can’t buy a book on ‘how to be gay’ how can I learn how to mass murder innocent children?
They didn’t think that through properly
Well, they do make an excellent point. Slavery is new. It just started happening in 1968.
Also he may be confusing ‘rape’ and ‘child abuse’ with ‘talking about rape’ and ‘talking about child abuse’. Now the first two aren’t nice granted but the second two tear families apart. And no one wants that.
Some of the drivel spouted by the comedy-fundamentailsts on MIM – can we call them Mimsies? – in the name of Christianity actually makes Scientology appear a sober and rational lifestyle choice.
Thank god they still think girl on girl action his hot! It’s quite nice to be ignored on two counts: woman and queer
Tart, funny you should mention it but in study of internet porn usage can you guess which regions of the United States were burning through their bandwidth like a teenager who’s just his Mums bottle of lotion? That’s right kids the South, and Mid-West.
This stat is of course misleading. Vermont is a known hotbed of violent crime, and child molestation where as sexual assault was eliminated from Alabama over fifty years ago.
the right throwing their toys out of the pram because they can’t do whatever they want anymore
I fucking love it. The more hysterical these fucktards get the more pronounced their fucktardness is screamed across the world. Keep giving them to rope (& wood & nails) to hang (crucify) themselves with. Fucktards.
Tart – Men’s prejudices may often say one thing, but our penises are often the least bigoted part of us.
just ‘found’ his Mums lotion.
Did you Ben?
Quiet night in tonight, then?
The other favourite part of the religious right’s terror of homosexuality is their fanatical fascination with bottom sex. And penises. And bottom sex. You’d almost think they had something they needed to get off their chests, so to speak.
I find it odd that they need to tie this argument to God. If you believe that homosexuality is immoral, and only the most fundamentalist and hate filled parts of the bible do, then why do you need Jesus to back you up? It reeks of a smokescreen. If you hate the gays, then why not just tell us why? Write down what exactly is wrong with it? Don’t run cowering behind the bible. Tell us how you came to the conclusion that homosexual love and sex are in some way immoral.
Is anyone aware of any passage in the bible that says hot sweaty girl on girl action is in any way wrong? There is a ‘men should lie down with other men’. Further evidence in my mind that the bible was written, not by a supreme being, but by men.
Well it’s the fundamental difference in various political views of morality, isn’t it.
The Conservative says that anything of which they disapprove is wrong, hence all that anti-gay, anti-intellectual, anti-rational shit. If it disturbs them, then it’s bad.
The Libertarian says that anything which does not harm anyone else is just fine, and this can be applied very obviously to the homosexual issue. Does being gay hurt anyone else? Of course it fucking doesn’t, therefore whatever you think of it, you have not the slightest sliver of a right to complain.
The only real comeback to that is the assertion that merely acknowledging the existence and normality of homosexuality damages children because they might then start to think that there’s nothing wrong with being gay. Of course, no straight person you challenge on this will ever acknowledge making a conscious decision to be straight – it’s something you either feel or you don’t. So people will either feel homosexual feelings or they won’t.
In the case that they do, we come back to the first question: so fucking what? If you aren’t hurting anyone else then what possible business is it of anyone’s where you choose to put your penis (or beef curtains)?
And here we are at the original question once more: given it harms no-one, what business is it of yours, and the Conservative will answer that if it hurts their feelings then it must be wrong. A great many liberals will answer this as well, to other questions, but I can’t for the life of me think of a better definition for morality than the awareness of whether or not your actions hurt other people.
As doctors might say, above all else, do no harm.
Does poking Daily Mail readers in the eye with sharp sticks really hurt anyone?
No one anyone gives a seeping pustulent fuck about, anyway.
we should allow gays the right to marry so they can be as miserable as the rest of us.
Yeah exactly. The sooner they stop calling it gay and start calling it average, middle of the road tedium, I will start being less jealous. Gay just sounds far too merry.
when a couple gets their first dual income, no kids tax bill they will be looking for the exits
“The United States is the most religious of all the first world nations” – Out of curiosity, what do you base this on?
‘Does poking Daily Mail readers in the eye with sharp sticks really hurt anyone?’
Quite frankly, the Daily Mail is Exhibit A of what happens when people become so obssessed with the right to do things that they forget about being responsible. Homophobia has to be crushed. I think society has made great strides worldwide in the last forty or fifty years, but there is still so far to go. As a teacher, I tear strips off kids for making homophobic or racist comments. If I had my way, this would result in an automatic exclusion, with parents/guardians ordered to explain exactly why their charges are spouting crap. There are still sections of society that will sneer ‘political correctness’ at any attempt to help those marginalised. I’d like to shove my copy of Guardian up their backsides.
The only link I have to hand, Chris, is this article from Dispatches From the Culture Wars. I know that’s nothing like a primary source, but Ed is usually pretty good about that kind of thing. I’ll keep digging though and see what I can find in terms of actual statistics.
Whoops, wrong one. Try this.
This is a summary of an ICM poll conducted for the BBC, which basically confirms what I said:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/wtwtgod/3518375.stm
This study in the Journal of Religion and Society also confirms it, and has more direct comparisons between the US and other developed nations.
The University whence the study issued appears to be quite legit, although I don’t know about that specific department.
numpties thats all you need to know…..
Certainly the US has a much higher Church attendance on a weekly basis than the UK does. I do agree, however, that attending church and actually being caring and compassionate to all mankind is not one and the same thing. Mind you, as I have said before on this site, I do know quite a few gay and lesbian Christians in Edinburgh, and am aware of at least one lesbian minister and one gay minister. Not everyone who is Christian is a homophobic bigot. Unfortunately they do exist and they are deeply unpleasant. There are only so many people that Peter Tatchell can perform citizens’ arrests on in one lifetime.
What I found interesting, particularly about that last study, is that high levels of religious believe seem to be strongly inversely correlated order and stability in a society. Obviously I’m not suggesting causation here, but it seems to indicate that the less religious a society, the less dangerous a place it is to live.
Big thanks to RC for shortening the argument and saving me following the links. back to work. and RC the final Hanoi gigs were fantastic although they did wear a lot of make up and didn’t once mention God. bad people, no doubt about it.
I’m probably going to sound all weak and soft here, but that last paragraph was so wonderful Matthew that I actually teared up a little because it is so spot on.
RE “The United States is the most religious of all the first world nations” – Out of curiosity, what do you base this on?
After reading your initial comment my first reaction was – those snotty europeans are coming down on america again. followed by, well we do have quite a bit of religion in our country, especially the annoying fundamentalist types who believe if I don’t accept christ as my savior i’m going to hell – i’ve run into many of these types and find the attitude very nasty. but then i thought about it for a bit and wondered why many in and out of america believe we are a very religious country (of the first worlds). then i thought about mexico (kind of borders on first and third), south korea (many christians), spain, russia, saudi arabia (im throwing them into the first world category because of the oil wealth), and wondered if we are really that religious. most stores atay open on sunday and it seems to me only a minority (albeit a large minority) actually attend church on sunday. so why the attitude? well, i think it has a lot to do with the strength of a specialized group of religious folks who are very tied to politics and are very loud when it comes to their views. i think most americans are on the fence (if not leaning to the left a bit) about gay marriage/gay rights (kind of like dont ask dont tell). and you might assume all anti-gay marriage folks are white and religious. did you know there is a strong undercurrent of anti-gay marriage in the african american community – especially the religious-african american community? also, i think many americans would say they are religious when in fact they arent. after all dont many people hedge their bets when it comes to god.
ps – i just re-read my post. im not sure i am making an argument up there and it kind of wonders at the end…just a few comments nonetheless.
No, it all makes sense. I am kind of busy at the moment, but I will respond properly in the morning, when I have a five hour-long train journey to write something more sensible.
Well, I see your point on some of those social indicators but not really. Stores open on Sundays in the US is largely due to lack of labor unions and lack of general respect for workers families. Politics, well that one is quite a thorny one isn’t it? In what other industrialized nation is it appropriate for the ruling party to claim it’s power was won on the basis of god’s will, that it’s leader is guided by the Lord, and that other countries should not receive funds for medical aid unless they adhere to family planning programs that teach abstience only ( the only program of sexual education that is proven to be utterly ineffective)? Now, as to individual religious belief, the raw percentages of people in the US who claim to be atheist or even agnostic are miniscule compared to those in Europe. And one cannot even conceive of electing a non-Christian leader here. Yes, you’ve hit on one of my topics of study, apologies. But there’s plenty of comparative research from both sides of the pond on this and very little disagreemment on the matter. xoxox
points taken tart – especially about the unions and sunday. but i dont trust statistical data and really on;y have anecdotal evidence. and though in a university setting i can rave about atheism and even be praised for my thinking, if i where in almost any other setting i might be more inclined to keep mum (im really too sceptical to go either way). but i still believe the “wacky” religious types are a minority (those that might have the desire to impose their beliefs on me – but i have the same fear about communists as well). i think more often than not americans are pretty cool about accepting others beliefs if only a little ignorant about them.
(when people say religion is bad because of all the wars it has caused ii cant help but think of the many wars fought over territory, resources and ideology).
im not really disputing any thing you are saying (accept maybe that i dont necessarily trust using people who claim to be religious as a likely indicator – nor peoples fear of a non-religious politician…that i think has more to do with a stubborn sense of tradition than religion; europeans have been at it all a little longer than americans)…i guess id say religion, ideology…whatever it may be, i cant help but wonder what it is about humans that cause us to take these positions. in ancient greece the otherness of a person increased in direct preportion to the distance of the city state. but this is getting away from the cental issue i suppose and im losing coherency again.
I know this is pretty petty for my (at a stretch) third post ever or something but…
??
What type evidence do you trust then??
Well in this case “statistical data” probably means polls, and unless one knows the methodology and assumptions underlying the poll I can understand why Chris might not trust them. The manipulation of polling data is a fine art, at least in the US. Also, Chris makes a very valid point that the “religious” community–and even the evangelical community–in the US is far from monolithic. So two people, both of whom claim to be religious in a poll, may well have utterly different views about gay marriage, capital punishment, social justice, etc.
Example. My parents are very religious. My father is actually a Roman Catholic deacon and my mother has for decades been active in social justice ministry. When they leave the house in the morning for work they bless each other and make the sign of the cross on each other’s forehead. No shit. But they are both also lifelong liberal Democrats and my father has repeatedly preached social justice from the pulpit, sometimes to pretty unwilling congregations. I also suspect my Dad could give Matthew a run for his money in the matter of gin consumption. Neither of them seem very troubled at all by the idea of gay marriage.
It’s just important to bear in mind that the issue is more complex than just religious versus non-religious. There’s a difference between “religion” and “religiosity.” Religion is a matter of conscience, religiosity is just false piety, used for political ends.
I think there is a fear or mistrust of atheism within the States which is barely conceivable in the rest of the civillised world, Chris. I’ll let Tart carry this one, because her knowledge clearly exceeds my own, but just looking around you and saying ‘huh, where’s this shit happening’ doesn’t entirel cut the mustard. Large parts of the States are generous, relaxed and friendly places. But it’s a big country, and I think it’s easy to find yourself assuming that your little oasis of friendliness extends further than you think.
You’re certainly right that saying ‘look at all the wars caused by religion’ is an annoyingly simplistic statement, and often just plain wrong, but no-one here is making that particular assertion.
I am not, in fact, making an assertion that religion makes people bad or immoral or causes this that or the other, more that religions’ own claims of moral authority or leadership appear to correlate very, very badly with the facts.
Having a high presence of religion in public appears to go hand in hand with having a less moral society, although I would have said that they are both symptoms of the same root cause, rather than blaming religion for rape, murder and assault, which would be just silly.
And what C&B said, of course.
oh for fuck’s sake, let’s name the fucking elephant in the living room here! It’s not “religion” or “religiosity” that’s to blame for a lack of moral compass regarding gay issues. It’s the fact that Christianity has at it’s base an exclusionary force which says that “I’m right in the eyes of God and you are an infidel”. Islam is another such religion, as is Judiasm. Now all three have been reinterpreted and splinter sects have formed that are less black and white in their world view but they all exist in the shadow of their mothers. As a way of interpreting the world, religion seeks to divide things into concrete categories in order to gain mastery or hold power. Aside from Eastern meditative belief systems, which have their own social problems (Hindu castes for
example) there isn’t a religion that has not sought to colonize.
There, my reasons for being an atheist, which have little or nothing to do with my love of hot girl on girl action.
As far as stats are concerned, go to the large research unis, and the Pew organization for data, the standards are quite amazing once you see them. They literallly speak to hundreds of thousands of people representing a cross section of the population. Apologies for typos I’m throwing all this off in a rage from my phone, haha xoxox
“but they all exist in the shadow of their mothers”
Don’t we all, Tarticles, don’t we all.
I don’t know about power, Tart. I’d agree with you 99% of the way, but mystical ‘ways of knowing’ are also an important part of it, and that is something which we are in the process of growing out of as a species. However it was necessary back in the day, or sort of necessary, in order to make sense of the world. It’s redundant and pointless now, of course, which makes the kicking and screaming even worse. Now they have to face not just losing a monopoly on political power, but any control over knowledge of the world as well, which is a very, very good thing.
I don’t see much evidence that homo sapiens is growing out of its “mystical ways of knowing,” nor is it clear to me that materialist ways of knowing are necessarily superior. One of the real problems that “popular atheists” like Richard Dawkins have had, at least for me, is that they tend to ridicule religious belief without providing any satisfactory alternative explanation for peoples’ subjective experience of “grace.” People are unlikely to embrace a worldview that requires them to accept that their most personal experiences of “spiritual” transcendence, consolation, or sublimity are really just self-delusion. The Eastern meditative belief systems alluded to by Tart, Falun Dafa, for example, are mystical without being exclusionary or superstitious.
ALEX – though i have a mistrust of statistical data i still think it can be used as an indicator. but one should be mistrustful. statistics (especially the questionairs that can be renedered very dubious indeed by the statistician creating the questions, choosing who they want to evaluate and the interpretation of the data). i dont trust human interpretations of the world because i am a human and i know how often i get things wrong – that doesnt mean im going to walk over a cliff because i may or may not be interpreting the evidence i have at hand…but i might.
points taken mathew. i have been in both friendly and unfriendly circles…having to argue why it seems a bit strange that the person thinks the world began 5,000 years ago; that we didnt ascend/descend from animals; that i have to be an ignorant fool because i dont belive the word of scripture is literal truth…we had plenty of them in the small upstate new york town i grew up in. but i also remember the priest of our chuch railing against the growing fundamentalist movement.
maybe im hedging but i cant really disagree with you about many in the us and dont necessarily want to defend them but i still believe that when pushed to the wall (and maybe thats what it takes sometimes) most americans are pretty tolerent – i think underlying it is a stubborn indepence; an attitude that doesnt like being told what to think and what to do. i think most americans dont mind gay marriage (i cant understand marriage to begin with), they just dont want to be forced into accepting it.
“There are lies, damn lies and statistics”
– Winston Churchill
Here’s a fun statistic. Did you know that most Americans are actually pro choice on the topic of abortion. Nationwide that is. You’ll never find it used because the press wouldn’t want to face the shit storm. When asked if they think abortion is wrong, the majority of Americans say ‘yes’. When asked if they believe a woman has the right to chose for herself, most American’s say ‘yes’. Americans natural distrust of regulation makes these two opposing views totally compatible.
Amazingly the actual complexities of people views are never discussed. For instance, I work with a very large number of rampant homophobes. However, every single one of them is pro-gay marriage, which is how it became legalized here. Yet polled you will only ever hear ‘American’s are anti-abortion’, and ‘American’s are against gay marriage’.
This may seem off the point but basically what pisses me off most about these fellas quoted above, and their opposite numbers, is that they try to narrow the debate down to as simplistic a term as they can and then apply the lessons of that debate to a wide a stroke as possible. Hence in the eyes of MIM the question of whether should two men or two women be allowed to marry is argued in the same breath as ‘should three women and one man be allowed to marry?’, ‘should three men and one woman be allowed to marry?’, ‘should one man and one sheep be allowed to marry?’, ‘should one man and one little girl be allowed to marry?’. Each question throws up a very different moral question, and yet each is argued in the same way.*
People who aren’t smart don’t seem to be able to handle complexity, and yet they are very very influential.
*the answers to these questions are of course:
yes, yes (but why would you?), no and, only if she looks 18 and is really fit.
…and yes if the sheep is a consenting adult.
oh fuck you all, I’m running off with an elephant to have a fucking medatitative spiritual experience! :-p
I remember having a bizarre conversation with a hugely religious fellow once who couldn’t understand the fact that I thought my love for Mrs. Toad was utterly meaningless and trivial in any sort of universal sense whilst at the same time saying that this made no fucking difference whatsoever to how important it was to me.
Poor chap didn’t understand that being globally meaningless wasn’t something which I considered to be a problem, nor did it stop me caring about it an awful lot myself.
C&B – maybe not growing out of it at any pace, but we’ll get there. I often think that the rise in any number of looney alternative medicinal fads or alternatively the crazy anti-vaccine/other middle class angst phobias are simply replacing religious belief with something else nonsensical, because most of us seem to need something fantastical to believe in.
Ben, I don’t think you speak just for Americans there. Remember our Grandma? She would call anyone brown skinned a dirty Arab, whilst simultaneously being charm personified to any dirty Arabs she herself knew and defending any of them to the hilt against racist abuse. But whilst it’s nice to know that a lot of racists/homophobes don’t actually mean it that seriously, it still isn’t much of an excuse.
I really do think that out in the open gay people is the only way this will go away though. Hating gays really does evaporate quickly when you know a few and realise just how normal and boring they are – like most people in general. A bit like Grandma and her dirty Arabs – she’d say terrible things, but when faced with actual discriminatory behaviour, there’d be no chance.
Does that really excuse calling someone a dirty Arab though? I don’t know. She’s not really the enemy of course, for someone fighting racism, but that doesn’t mean that she didn’t need to be challenged. Same for people who are only casually or superficially against gay marriage or homosexuality in general. No, they aren’t the enemy, but yes they still have to be poked with pointed sticks.