Comments

1
Do you really want this guy as your nemesis, Dan? (superheros are judged by their super-villians; and if you choose bad-mayo-man here...)
2
This dude just keeps making all of my arguments for me.
3
Mmmmmm.... Shrimp cocktail!
4
Actually I'm pretty sure the Bible says you can just go right ahead and pick and choose which parts to take literally, which parts to take out of context, and which parts to ignore or reinterpret. Scripture is pretty firm in asserting that we have no need of logic, rational consistency or conformity to observable facts about reality. From calling a whale a fish to assigning a value of 3 to pi, it's all whim and fancy.

More simply, John Corvino says that what bothers him most is the inconsistency, the double standards. Well, if you choose to follow the Bible, even follow it loosely, you have already accepted inconsistency and you have no standards at all.
5
People can believe or not believe the bible as inconsistently as they choose.
This is america.
No one needs Johns or Dannys or anyone elses stamp of approval on how they believe or do not believe the bible.
6
Inconsistency bothers John.

How about the inconsistency of someone who lives as a heterosexual for decades, is heteromarried, has kids the old fashioned hetero way; then after 30-40 years declares that they "are" homosexual?

When the rest of us call BullShit does John join the chorus?

Does THAT inconsistency bother him?
7
futile and pointless. they're not listening. they won't listen. only if you repent and agree with them will they listen.
10
@6 Ooooh! Some clueless dude was married to a repressed lesbian and never forgave her after she figured herself out!

Dude, first you need to accept that you fucked up her life for 30-40 years, even while she was doing her best to make you happy. Then, forgive both of you, and try to move on.

See? If same sex marriage had been legal all along, and we didn't stigmatize homosexuality, you would have never married the wrong person. She would have figured herself out long before you were dating.
11
10

Actually we were thinking of Meredith Baxter.
Married three times and has five children.
Baxter said she first realized she was a lesbian when she began her first same-sex relationship in 2002.
can you see our eyes rolling?
12
9

Wow.

Now we're really afraid.......
13
Why are we wasting our time trying to base arguments about reality on a book of fiction?

I find him more irritating with every video.
15
@11 Can you not see the pitfalls of forcing children to conform to your dreams instead of learning to love who they are?

Two generations after same-sex marriage is fully accepted, practically no conflicted/repressed gay people will feel forced to marry a person of the opposite sex, messing up both their lives.
16
I don't like to argue from the bible for two reasons. One, christians spend all their time thinking about their interpretation, and they're never going to be swayed by by someone else's view of their "truth." Two, as soon as you quote from the bible, you've accepted the premis that a collection of fables written by iron age nomads is the ultimate authority of everything. That drags us far from the land where truth matters into christian fantasy land. I like to stay out of there.
18
@13, 16, et al: Corvino isn't trying to reach you; his targets are those who are believers in the primacy of the bible. He addresses religious Christian people on their own terms, which is far more likely to be effective than arguments that just nullify their entire belief system. Dan makes the identical points, but in a much more abrasive way, and from the perspective of an obvious non-believer, which makes it easier for religious folks to dismiss him as a godless, foul-mouthed, blasphemous culture warrior for satan.

You don't need that perspective, but John Corvino isn't trying to preach to the choir, even if they might be the only ones listening. He would have even more credibility with the people he's trying to reach if he were straight, and more still if he were a minister, but he's doing what he can.
19
Really, #18? What good did he do by working with hateful mega-bigots like Maggie Gallagher, aside from to her bottom line?
20
15

We all must to some extent harness our impulses if we are to function in society.

And conform, to some extent, to acceptable societal standards.

We probably all, for example, would agree that someone who desires sexual contact with children must control and not act on those impulses.

Enlightened societies recognize that there are innate differences between males and females and provide appropriate gender role models. We might quibble about exactly where to draw the lines but the broad outlines of acceptable and desirable gender behavior used to be widely accepted.

Children "Learning who they are"; in the absence of appropriate societal standards and guidance, results in a sexual anarchy and confusion, instability and deep dissatisfaction.
We see this in the Looney Tunes letters Danny features daily.

And, actually the opposite of what you project is true; in the societal subsets that embrace Danny's philosophy the only constant is the ever present "messing up of...lives".
The flavors and varieties of deviancy and selfishness and irresponsibility bewilder but all lead top the same destructive end.

In summary: Enlightened societies provide adult supervision and guidance to children.
In Gommorah, by contrast, everything goes; and everything goes to hell eventually.

21
When I have bible quotes thrown at me I fire back with quotes from Horton Hears A Who and The Cat In The Hat and Green Eggs And Ham. At some point they get my meaning and they shut up.
23
@8: i think we're down to the people who will never listen. as in, anyone who takes leviticus literally.

i think we're at the point where they are irrelevant, too.
25
#22: doubt it. I've seen videos of his debates with them, and frankly he's just not that great at it. Plus, co-authoring a book with that bitch only lends credence to her ridiculous brand of nonsense and hate.
26
@20 There is a major fault in your reasoning which completely sabotages your conclusion. Matters of the heart, and one's sense of affiliation are not "impulses." They are essential parts of being. If you do not understand that point, then you are obviously at war with your own.

As for children, those are the people who grow up to be adults. Usually. An upbringing that browbeats and denies the essence of their capacity for love is going to result in a confused and unhappy adult. Possibly two, or even more, depending who else's life they affect.

Are you happy? Your bitter and contentious messages seem to imply you aren't.
27
22

Not likely.

People on the other side think she is a porcine cunt.

Her only purpose in life is to give Danny a hardon.
28
24

Ken, don't pull your cute shit on us. We aren't amused.

Out of wedlock birth and child abuse and child neglect are the fruits of "a loosening of the rules and mores regarding sexuality ". And ever less competent generations following.

Danny's "Every Child Deserves a Married Mother and Father" points that up repeatedly.
30
29

Raising their children without the bothersome presence of those children's fathers truly is a huge boon to today's woman.
31
@18, nocutename: you say, "godless, foul-mouthed, blasphemous culture warrior for satan" like it's a bad thing!

I agree that Corvino is more likely to establish a mental toehold with the target audience. But his bigger influence may be if people like us adopt some of his non-abrasive style and thoughtful arguments in discussions with bigoted co-workers and troglodyte neighbors. I know I have fun playing "Gotcha! with Mormon and Witness proselytizers on my doorstep, but really, a softer approach would be a more effective, more insidious way to plant seeds of doubt into their worldview.
32
26

"Matters of the Heart" *sigh!*

You are so precious.

flitting flighty lurches from one orientation(s) and/or sexual partner(s) to another to another?

When your "heart" gets bored move on? Right?

Matters of the heart bear the most productive fruit when their energy is harnessed by enlightened codes of conduct.

Us?

We are very happy.

It saddens us to see so many buy into a destructive lifestyle; saddened especially for the children who are the innocent victims of those shortsighted selfish lifestyle choices made by the "adults" in their lives.

Some small consolation comes from the fact that those destructive lifestyles are self-limiting eventually; like a virulent quick acting viruses they kill their host in fairly short order.

Happy indeed.

We never realized until we read Slog how high atop the gene pool we sit...

And we never imagined something as delightful as sex could be rendered so toxic and frustrating as Gommorians make it.

33
31

what seeds are those, you clever devil?
34
The idea we have a "softer" approach rankles me. If you look at history, nobody ever won their deserved rights by being nice. Hell, if that were true, the civil war would have been unnecessary. Some people put you on a leash. You can gently tug, but you're still leashed. No, you need to bite through the leash and free yourself.
35
@31: David, some of my best friends are godless, foul-mouthed, blasphemous culture warriors for satan. Good point that some of us could take a leaf from his book of considered civility and sober tone. It's not as much fun as ranting and frothing, but it often is far more effective.

I stopped playing Gotcha! a long time ago, and agree that a thoughtful, considered, and respectful tone is the best way to engage in discourse. I like Dan's turn of phrase (except when he says "fuck the shit out of," which he says frequently. I don't want the words "fuck" and "shit" to be that syntactically close to each other--it has a gross-out effect on me. I would much prefer the construction "fuck his/her brains out." But I digress . . .) as a general thing: it's irreverent and funny. But I suspect that it comes off as strident and offensive and too profanity-laced to be listened to by many of the very people he needs to reach.

36
@35: It's only the medium that's "softer." There's not a point that Corvino makes in this that Dan hasn't made also. It's simply that he doesn't do it by calling the bible "bullshit." Which means that some religious people might actually listen to him as he makes those exact same points.

You can call this "soft," or you can call it pragmatic.
37
Just like present day Christians ignore Biblical rules about women remaining silent in church, rules forbidding hair braiding, or wearing gold, or that women must never hold authority over men, Christians are more and more putting behind them the silly passages about homosexuality.
38
Oh, so THAT'S what shrimping is...
39
Modern-day Christians have done an obviously piss-poor job of steering the faithful away from intolerant extremism. The NALT set is who I believe Corvino is addressing here. Despite the forward progression of the nation, religion is not going to die. So Corvino is offering a way to have faith- even explicitly Bible-based Christian faith- without succumbing to the biblical literalism that gives rise to so much hatred and exclusion. I think it's thankless but important work- and I don't have a religious bone in my body.
40
@31 I bring my young daughter to the door and gently explain to her that these are bad people who are trying to hurt her family. It tends to shake them up a bit.
41
Now this is actually something I can watch with my mother that she has a chance of getting and not being able to counter, though there will be some sputtering "but-but-but!" Still, I can see a crack opening in her understanding here.
Most arguments from non-Christians about the Bible don't really get how Christians see and read the Bible. (And why should they, but it won't do any convincing.)
42
That is to say: evangelical Christians
43
@10, I'm not sure that falling in love with/marrying a closeted person makes you evil, nor does it mean that you should accept that you "fucked up her life for 30-40 years". Being gay isn't a bad thing, but neither is being straight.

Please wait...

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