Sin? I'm not in a position to comment. I'll leave that to a Higher Authority.

Disgusting and all kinds of wrong? You betcha!

It's infiltration. It's the church's problem at this point nobody else's. This infiltration thing is nothing new. This is a big gay year. From school textbooks to the Soprano's to gay cowboys and the church. Once again I am all for people doing whatever they want but at some point I get sick of it. We hit the saturation point long ago IMO. Hell the gays are beginning to have more rights than the average Joe like in hate crimes for example.

good point.

Really a steady decline, I’m sure you have all kinds of data to back up these statements.

All I can say is that both parishes that I have been involved in (one in St. Louis, the other here in KC), over the last twenty years have been growing leaps and bounds.

Our biggest influx is from ex-Catholics and Methodist, who prefer a formal service but don’t care for a priest telling them how they should view there own personal beliefs (a thinking persons Catholicism if you will).

It should be noted that in the Episcopal Church the Bishops do not deal with set doctrine, there purpose is to set the mechanics in place doctrine, for the most part is left up to the individual to develop and interpret on a personal level.

Quit frankly we (I’m speaking of the parish I attend), are more concerned with the state of poverty and hunger in the world than what consenting adults do in the confines of there personal relationships (and that includes all the sexual persuasions including heterosexual).

Well stated ma man, well stated! :clap:

good post

My pit bull is homosexual.

Just because you like doing it with your dog doesn't make him gay.

Don't be gay, Sparky. Don't be gay.

http://static.zoovy.com/img/givemeto...arky_plush.jpg

Precisely. It blows my mind by how some people pick and choose what they want from the New Testament to make it a religion of intolerance rather than compassion, which is what Jesus was all about. Jesus spent the majority of his time talking about poverty and the corruption that wealth causes, yet in America, we worship money and don't find that to be a problem. Pat Robertson owns diamond mines in Africa!
The Bible was written by a group of people who were trying to survive in a time when they were outnumbered. Thus, homosexuality wouldn't fly because then they couldn't reproduce enough. The first commandment of the Old Testament is to be fruitful and multiply. From the people who wrote the Old Testament came the Christians, who continued some of the Jewish teachings and disregarded others. Now that we have 6 billion people on this planet and a good many of them are Christian, I think we can disregard this homosexuality ban as well. Christians don't seem to mind disregarding bans on wearing wool and cotton at the same time, and other similar commandments. Why care so much about this one? Christianity ought to be a religion of compassion and caring for others, even if they are "sinners."

never trust a woman that needs the last name of two men.

;)

I'm sure that women also "choose" to make up 2/3 of the people in the world living below the poverty line....that flexibility is oh so important when you can't feed your family. Try doing some research into the glass ceiling before you run your mouth about shit you have no idea you are talking about.

Give me a fucking break.

To answer your question, it is because gender is considered by most respected intellectuals to be a social construction. In the introduction to the Second Sex, Simone Beauvoir said "One is not born, but is made a woman." If you honestly think that duties such as child-rearing, knitting, and cooking are innate, then you are sorely mistaken. It's a matter of cultural training.

You aren't for teaching children tolerance instead of the culturally ingrained intolerance of gay people :spock:

Artificial selection: a process that runs counter to natural selection, namely when humans interfere in normal genetic reproduction of animals in order to get desired traits out of them. It's a value neutral term, but it's a pretty damned far jump for someone to argue so stridently for a grouping of animals (Pit Bulls, which have an incredibly malleable definition) and yet be so lax when it comes to teaching people the merits of diversity and inclusion. Hypocrisy anyone??

That's not what I was talking about Uncle Joe.

By whom?

Ah yes by another self-appointed expert.

Please don't tell me what the female experience is. I am one. I am both a mother and a professional, even if these days that's more part-time.

I've read numerous studies backing up what I just said on choices. One most recent. I was also a feminist in college and abandoned much of it once out of college. It just doesn't work as claimed. I have had my own business once and made more money than some men for a period of time. I coulda' continued but didn't, at least not at that level, for the reasons the same studies say about women's choices. I am happy with those decisions even if I have suffered on the pay scales. ( I can make more again if I wanted to) But I could NEVER put a PRICE on seeing my child grow up. Time is more valuable to me as it is to many other women. The trend has been for women to return home if they have children. I've been on both sides as a dependent and independent. But your reasons for women being poorer are nonsense. They are just commonly and uncritically accepted by Marxists.

Yeah, I also never said that. The sarcasm was over your head. Read it again.

One thing is undeniable: a women's natural biology is totally set up for producing offspring. That's exactly what our bodies are made for. This includes the rush of hormones after birth that make a woman inclined to nuture. It was really modern technology that is responsible for the major portion of a woman's freeing as it gave her more time, even the ability to control her reproduction so that she could break out of traditional roles if she so chose.

Unfortunately, being a communist and all, you subscribe to Marx's version of female liberation: to free her from her social and biological because his belief was that the bourgeois family needed to go. Unfortunately, that family is society's smallest governing unit. When it goes, so does the society. But that's where the Marxists step in with state sponsored day-care and full-service schools.

I say in some ways we've paid a high price for the cultural Marxist version.

You shall not commit adultery. It basically covers any sexual relation outside of the marriage bond. Gee, I wonder why those Christians are so up in arms about teh ghey getting married. :shrug: