rastler000

Well given I have been called a murderer, evil, and a satanist, in the short time I have been posting here..... could be!

Okay, fair enough. Mine is an environment that has the kids respect the adults. Education. Fitness. Volunteerism. Stuff like that. It admittably doesn't include religion but does have a different sort of spirituality. For my part I don't care whether they outlaw gay marraige or not. I see marraige as a religious thing only anymore and do not plan on remarrying 'officially'. But I do think this "us versus them" mentality (played to the extreme by both sides) is not particularly helpful. This sense of an underlying 'hate' I get is the sort of thing which would have me want to protect my family from a group...... religious or not. It is part of what I consider raising a family in a safe environment. Have people vanadalying my stuff - with little ones around - doesn't seem all that safe. FWIW, I know a number of gay people because of family connections, and they truly think that people in your religion, and your religion in general, hate them.

So basically are saying that unless someone is LDS the rest of the world in raising their families in unhealthy environments? I am just trying to clarify here. Do most LDS believe this as well?

So if I see this issue different than you (not including the vandalizing as I do not condone that) does this mean I am not providing a healthy environment to raise my family in?

Who?

For awhile. We get what we get. I am looking forward to having the company of a lot of people who have no health care, and don't get to retire. They get to enter my world.

Think of the upside, it will take care of our outrageous deficit.

Well okay.... if this is a "I want to win the debate and you (meaning me) are bad and evil type of thing"... then I will concede. I mean I have been called a satanist, and a murderer, on this very board before, so why not. But you will have to excuse me if I pass on suggesting these values for my family. I will however mention that people consider as as horrible because we disagree with them if you do not mind. :)

Well since most of the gay folk I know are in their 30's to 50's here is what I have seen. They share a house with their significant other. They get up in the morning... shower, etc... then they go to work. After work it is shopping, work around the house, eat dinner, watch TV, maybe go to the gym and get a work out in. Stuff like that. Some of them have kids so a lot of the after work freetime revolves around the kids. On weekends it is yard work, maybe go somewhere for the weekend. A movie. A night out. A ball game. A day at the park, or beach, that sort of thing. Usually at some point during the year they will take a vacation together. It is a pretty scary lifestyle.

Basically a homosexuals choice is to it is either partner up with a significant other, and live as a married couple, finding happiness with who and what they are..... or live lonely lives without a significant other for whom they are attracted to in 'that way'. Now if you really really believe in a faith, that is against homosexuality, then I suppose you are stuck doing the celibate Priest like thing. Which means in this very 'family' oriented church, you feel (and are) truly out of place (I believe we have a thread going on just that). But most people who are SSA don't do that. When they are younger they are frustrated, depressed, often angry, and often hiding in a "closet". Why? Because there is a clear prejudice against them. They know darn well coming out as gay in the atmospheres of conservative religions is not a friendly atmosphere to say the least. As they mature they tend to find an equilibrium with being gay, move on in life, pretty much blowing off those religions of their birth, and/or religion all together. I don't blame them. I know at least a dozen SSA couples for whom this descirption fits.

Only if they had an issue with it. And the ones who seem to have the biggest issues with homosexuality are conservative religious folks, who tend to be pro-life.

Which is why I consider marraige a religious thing, and no longer plan on Marrying. Nor - given we are not particularly religious (an understatement! ;-)) - would it bother me if any of my family decided to forgo the marraige thing either.

Yet even your faith concedes there could be a component that may be genetic. We have a person on this board who is SSA and struggling partially as a result of that. Yet I have never had any sort of attraction to the same sex, and was raised in an atmosphere where is wasn't demonized or even considered bad, have a great many gay friends, a couple of gay family members. Given my luck with women if anybody should be influenced into being gay, it should be me. But it just doesn't work that way.

A lot of these same arguments were made about mixed race marraiges decades ago. Other than within specific families, and perhaps some religions, mixed marraiges are not an issue. Gay marraige is trending the same way. It is probably about a decade or so away, but it is getting there. I realize for religious purposes you consider it a problem. But some religious people consider women not in burkas a problem, so I am not swayed. FWIW, I am okay with the issue be resolved by virtue of civil unions with the same legal rights as marraige. I have mostly consigned marraige to being a 'religious thing', and have no intent on every marrying again.

The same thing could have been said about mixed race marraiges. They used to be illegal in many places as well. That changed and people mostly got over it.