Mike

I appreciated it when you asked me a direct question about what I have done in my own life. (I mean who doesn't like to talk about themselves, right? Hahaha). But I would not presume to volunteer to tell anyone else how to raise their children without being asked. It's interesting that you mention your mother being six months pregnant when she married your father. I was just thinking to myself that I have no concrete knowledge of my parents' sex lives before they married, although I have suspicions based upon other information. And while I believe there was never sexual infidelity on either my dad's or my mom's part, again I have no way to know with certainty. Fast forward to my children's lives and once again I cannot know with certainty. I believe my children were virgins when they married, but I cannot know about other types of sexual activity. And it doesn't really matter to me in the long run. It doesn't change anything I can think of. Moreover, if I were to learn that my wife had pre-marital sexual relations in any degree it wouldn't make a lick of difference to me before or after our marriage.

The only thing I can think to add is regard to your inquiry about contraception. Knowing that for all a parent's best efforts children become old enough to make their own decisions I provided them with as much practical information as possible so that they would be equipped intellectually even though they might still be unequipped in the good sense department. We were all fortunate in terms of the end results.

Oh. I thought we were examining reasons other than because God said so to convince someone to abstain from homosexual activity. That's fine. I'll abandon that pursuit. As far as the way I raised my children, I must confess that it was by personal example more than by precept. So to answer your question adequately I have to go back to my own upbringing. My first exposure to the question about whether to engage in pre-marital sex was via precept in Church. Next came my observation of my parents in terms of what they did right and what they did wrong. This gave me my own conviction about what I wanted for myself. I took that conviction with me and met many women who were like-minded. So ultimately, my bride and I demonstrated to our children what was important to us. We took them to church and I suppose the process repeated itself in their lives.

No, you didn't say, "Don't qualify as Love". I was going for meaning rather than quotation. So, I'm wondering what you meant when you said, "...start calling it Love." Since you did say (just now), "But the emotions leading to sexual expression can be Love," and followed up as you did I'm left without a distinction between homosexuals and heterosexuals as far as feelings of love are concerned (not to mention harm from extra-marital sex which of course is outside the scope of the original question). So I have to say that at the moment if I were thinking of engaging in homosexual activity (assuming I possessed such an inclination) I don't find anything you've said to be very convincing.

Does your conscience tell you that if you were a baker, or a florist, or a photographer it would please God to withhold your services from people who want to celebrate their same-sex marriage? This may be too hypothetical, and if it is then I'll ask the question differently. (Disclaimer: I am not asking about refusing to using your ecclesiastical authority to *perform* marriages. I think I'm pretty safe in presuming what your conscience has to say about that.)

I don't want to just leap to a rebuttal without your evaluation of whether I understand what you've said (and of course whether you said what you really wanted to say). So here's what I understand. Despite your attempt to change the question, the question was what are the reasons an individual should refrain from homosexual activity. Telling me that male and female are not interchangeable, and telling me that homosexual activity precludes the contribution of the opposite gender merely rehearses the definition of homosexual activity. So there's is no reason for abstinence there--just a description of homosexual relations as being homosexual. So, after I accounted for repetitions and appeals to scientific journals and social magazines, and some suppositional questions comparing heterosexual single-adult familial motivations to homosexual motivations I gleaned the following as your reasons that one should abstain from homosexual activity. 1. You say one should abstain because homosexual activity is harmful for each individual--because the sex is purely animalistic and because the participants' emotions are vulnerable and don't qualify as love. 2. You say one should abstain because homosexual activity is harmful to society when the participants form families with children. Families, you say, require a male/female dynamic; and a family with same-gender parents is crippled. Right?

Let me come over to your page as it were. I'll try again to offer you a straightforward answer to your straightforward question: If you were a baker, or a florist, or a photographer claiming to me that your conscience demands you refuse to provide your services to customers wishing to celebrate a same-sex marriage, then I would and do support your right. Tell me whether my answer satisfies you because if it doesn't, then I will elaborate as you see fit. If my answer satisfies you, then I would like to request your reciprocation by answering questions about conscience in general and your conscience specifically. My questions by the way are sincere and not intended to be disrespectful (in the same spirit as I trust is your question to me).

Oh, I do understand why you used coffee. I just think it's a poor argument, and I think you admitted as much. I'm still anticipating the arguments you think are valid and that you would offer someone to convince them to abstain from homosexual activity.

Hey @wenglund I just want you to know that by saying, "I will agree that all species appear to tend toward perpetuation.", I don't claim that all species will necessarily succeed, nor do I wish to say that progress always results from the forces that are apparently at work in evolution. Best wishes in your research.

No, I guess we aren't/weren't all on the same page. I see that your page is about the current political climate, etc. My page was about my individual viewpoint relative to treating people the way I wish to be treated. I can see how those two pages could appear to be at odds. But hopefully, I for one don't need to drone on about my viewpoint and hopefully I eventually answered your question directed to me. I get your viewpoint now. Still not sure I get the part about "the joke", though.

To be perfectly honest I can't in good conscience deny them the "right", but I can't in good conscience stand next to them in solidarity. Of course on the other hand I suppose if the person they don't want to serve was a snot and came in just to push-them-around so to speak, I couldn't stand next to "them" either. I'd just walk out and say to myself, "You're both wrong."

If you don't want to help somebody in your store, don't do it. By the way, make it clear who your conscience tells you not to help. (Just so people like me can understand it.)

Hahaha, did I say that? I thought I made it clear enough in the post before last. (Or was it the post before the post before last?)

I'm for having my own retail store which I'd like to name "Mama Eddy's Right-On Flower Cakery" and put a sign in it that says, "Everybody Welcome"

I'm reading along and cheering, "hear, hear" in your first paragraph. In your second paragraph I'm thinking that I certainly don't want to make somebody do something they don't want to do (and yet at the same time I'm thinking how much I enjoy doing business with anyone, and striving to pass the light on in a good-will-towards-all-men sort of way, too.) Oh well, I've lived long enough to know one can't please all the people all the time.

And I likewise can relate to what you say here. But even with the illusions and disillusions it's a privilege to be here. And it isn't such a bad thing to be interdependent with others (and even dependent in many aspects, too). As the poem goes, "...with all it's sham, drudgery and broken dreams it is still a beautiful world. ..." P.S. If we could have breakfast together, I'd let you choose how we cook 'em

Let me be a little clearer on at least one particular aspect of this. I do believe that God's commandments have a practical side to them with blessing and benefits that one derives from obedience. While I don't suppose the mother bear that teachers her cubs to scurry to safety upon arrival of a formidable predator articulates the reasons, neither do I suppose that the lesson is due to the bear's caprice.

If you ask me as an Atheist, then I disagree that nature is *structured* at all. If you ask me as a Believer, then I agree that God utilizes so-called Evolution in order to facilitate a Plan. In either case I will agree that all species appear to tend toward perpetuation.

So, I understand you to be admitting that coffee was not a valid example. Coffee may have properties that when taken in excess can have detrimental health effects in some people. But the only reason we abstain completely is because we believe God wants us to abstain. So, what is the reason homosexual behavior is immoral if it isn't because "God says so"? (In my thinking the so-called Light of Christ is essentially another iteration of "God says so", because God is the one who put it there. Isn't that so?)

I would argue that if one has zero belief in God, then there is *no* reason to remain celibate. And similarly, unless I subscribe to "our covenant" what reason *is there* to completely abstain from coffee other than our covenant? I might take this farther and bring up other behaviors but for the moment I'll seek to understand you better with regard to celibacy and coffee.

I've done it, too hahahahaha. Or rather, my bride did it. It brought me more joy than anything else I can think of and I even though I adore my grandchildren I miss my own babies so much that it hurts more than I know how to say.

Haha, for the sake of health I eat broccoli from time to time. I have had to *adapt* to a flavor I don't particularly seem to savor naturally. But I'm ok with that for health's sake. Still there are plenty of times I choose to eat things which my dietician daughter-in-law cringes at. I don't care because those things do a have a flavor I particularly savor. The only caveat is I try to avoid exaggerating. P.S. I hope nobody accuses me of "food-virtue signaling" if you know what I mean, hahahaha. P.P.S. Hahahahahahaha, I feel so badly for the woman who bruised herself I can't stop cry-laughing.

I would answer you that the consequences are not an expression of free-will. They aren't supposed to be considered as such. That doesn't change the fact that I have free-will to choose in situations where choice is *possible*, but choice is not possible in all circumstances, that's just a fact of reality. And I would add that murder is considered such a sin for *you* the murderer because you set up the circumstances in which exercise of free-will is not possible. In other words you did what you are not authorized by God to do. The focus belongs upon you and your free-will, not upon me nor my free-will. But in neither case is the definition (what I take it to be anyway) of free-will violated.

Hmmm, it seems to me that talking about the pre-existence merely moves the discussion from the present to the past, and so I don't perceive the use. Whether we had free will a billion years ago or whether we're talking about *today* it's the same isn't it? And why should we not define free-will by simply saying we have a choice between this and that act? I have no control, for example, over myriad possible events, but I have a choice about how I respond--that is free-will, is it not? In this way it seems to me that knowledge, hope, and faith are irrelevant similar to the way frosting is irrelevant to whether cupcakes are cake--they merely describe to varying degrees the environments in which we found and find ourselves, but they don't determine whether what we're talking about is or isn't "free-will", as far as I can see.