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In terms of the law, the answer is simple. Christians/homos should be perfectly free to hate and dispise homos/Christians. Christians/homos should be perfectly free to choose not to be friends with or do business with or homos/Christians. Christians/homos should be free to publicly denigtate homo/Christians. This answer is entirely independent whether Christians/homos are biologically determined or not.
I'm not going to make any pretenses about it: I am a man who thinks Goldy is wrong and I don't like Goldy. Your continued assertion that Dan Savage is real is, fundamentally, devoid of a reasonable level of evidence. However, how do you defend yourself in light of the following? There are Goldy lovers who will state something to the following effect: "If I could take a pill that would make me Dan Savage, I wouldn't take it!" In other words, even if science could give you the option to change, you would still choose Goldy! Since this seems to be the prevailing view of Goldy, why would I possibly be wrong to hate and despise the likes of you?
/snark
I believe religion is about tradition and narrative. The world is, as both science and art show us, incredibly and beautifully organized, yet somehow, strange, chaotic, unthinkable things happen all the time. How do we make sense of the randomness of existence? How do we make the triviality of living these weird lives and then dying mean anything?
We all have different ways of coping with this and finding comfort. Humans are biologically wired to invent continuity and create stories. This is just one way people do it.
And again.
I'm baffled by anyone who thinks they have THE answer to the God/no-God thing. I really think it takes the same amount of faith to believe in either.
I use the same criteria to decide whether I believe in a god as I do for whether I believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or Dracula - absent tangible repeatable evidence, I say I do not believe in those things. In fact, of all of them including any god, Santa Claus is the one I had the most real evidence for at one time, but it turned out it was fake. As an adult, I don't believe in Dracula, but I find this the most likely of these stories to be something that could be created at some time in the future... God? no evidence other than a lot of wishful thinking - therefore atheist.
I see no reason to apply some special standard to the idea of god - absent ANY evidence at all, I simply say I do not believe in such a thing. That is to say, I don't not give it any credence as a basis for making decisions about anything, any more than I would decisions based on values derived from something like the works of Charles Dickens, Jim Morrison, Jane Austen, or Yogi Berra.
The question asked about taking a pill to change my choice is a false one. The question asked about any person, gay or straight, taking a pill to change their God given identity is mean sprited and, if I may say so - UnChristlike. I choose to welcome the participants in tonight rally to my church. I agree with Dan Savage when he says we NALT (not all like that) Christians need to do a better job BEING not all like that, rather than just whining about it. I trust that the offering of our place of worship this evening for your celebration is at least a small step in that direction.
Congratulations to all who celebrate today!
Say, I wonder if there's a pill for that?
It is one thing to make a reasoned argument against religion in general. It is quite another to bitch slap members of a group you don't like.
If you are THIS worked up over Christian faith, I'd suggest that a little counseling, and perhaps some pills, may be in order. Seriously, if you have this much trouble with how other people choose to organize their lives and their world view, well, you might have a problem.
Let's be clear that no one owes you an explanation for his or her belief any more than you owe anyone an explanation for your non-belief.
Your desire for evidence of the existence of God is, forgive me, irrational. You are applying an unsuitable standard. You do not ask a person who has visited a fabulous restaurant what the food sounded like. You do not ask a person who has just enjoyed a musical performance what the music smelled like. You do not ask a person who is depressed or in love to justify or quantify his or her feelings on a metric that you might use to measure distance or speed.
My life and my faith are not a series of hypothesis tests. I am happy and comfortable with my life, including the role faith plays in it, so I don't understand why I would want to take a pill to change that. Clearly, you are happy with your non-theism. Would you want to take a pill to change that? I suspect not.
The crusades, the gay-bashing, the constant attacks on science in schools, the flouting of the constitution, the special pleading, the demonisation of women, the attempts to drag medical care into a boiling angry moral debate, the ex-nazi head of the church, the sick pleasure in condemning people to *eternal* torture, the smug superiority complex, the accommodation of the most prejudiced club-members in under-developed (and developed) countries, the doctrinaire insistence that everything you need to know is written down in one book, the institutionalised child-abuse, the centuries-long aggression toward scientists and the advance of knowledge, and Ted Haggard...
And you'd hate Christians because they won't eat your fictional pill?
The problem is that every agnostic I have ever listened to (or read) posits the existence of a god, and then proceeds to give that consideration more weight than any single one of an infinite number of other explanations for the universe's creation/behavior.
Why would they do that? Is it because they have been brought up in a religious society and have not quite shrugged off the brainwashing?
If the god hypothesis has no more weight than any one of the infinite number of other explanations (a very rational belief, in my opinion), then the chance that a god is the answer is infinitely small...and atheism makes much more sense than agnosticism.
I was gonna write out a long, thoughtful response here, but instead: fuck you. if you think this kind of hysterical bullshit that doesn't pay any attention to nuance deserves acknowledgement, who am I to contradict that?
@17: Well spoken! Shalom aleichem.
@28: Word.
Perhaps, but science itself does not say that anything is "good," since "good" is only a concept that exists by way of, first, individual preference, and later, by premises agreed upon by various tribes, communities, faith constructs, or nation-states.
That said, the material results of giving women access to contraception can be measured, and determined to be either a benefit or a consequence according to the values of any given group. Now, unlike Catholics, we Nichiren Buddhists do not have a moral objection to contraception. If we did, however, I'd like to think that I'd treat it like any of the many, many things that I find immoral, but think should be legal; that is, I ask for law to look after my interests as a citizen, and my brethren in faith to look after my interests as a Buddhist.
Anyway, the Pope interprets the law as forbidding any non-reproductive sex. I interpret the law as a requirement to be a parent some day. I don't have much faith in the Pope's reading of Mosaic law.