no_fun said:
coming from a former buddhist, most buddhist don't care about the riddles in the religeon, most are part of it because of cultural, family reasons or the fact its seems to be more peaceful than most religeons (i.e. christianty or islam)

Aww shucks. It was just a playful jab. You buddhists are my brothers and sisters, I tell you what. You seek self-improvement without deity worship? I seek self-improvement without deity worship! Okay so we take different routes, but our hearts are still in the same place. Mi casa su casa. Tu es mi familia!

IJustBurst said:
The level of ignorance surrounding the modern Christian is astounding.

Someone is in denial.

Oh sure there are great Christians out there, but they are by far a minority.

People who are all like "Oh I don't hate homosexuals. I love the person, hate the sin" are no better than the people who run around saying "I hate fags." Heck, they are probably even worse. At least those Westboro dudes are honest; unlike the Westboro dudes, most Christians are ashamed of their hatred, but rather than learn to love, they'd instead prefer to delude themselves and lie to everyone that "No no, what I'm doing isn't hate! Really! I just don't think homosexuals should marry because I want to protect the sanctity of marriage! And homosexuals shouldn't adopt children, because ya know, you gotta think about the children! It's much better for a child to spend years in foster care, possibly never getting adopted, rather than be adopted by a loving couple that happens to be homosexual!"

Yes I'm strawmanning. No I don't care. Fun fact: There's a nice little politician running for office near where I live. What is his campaign? Well it's a lot of fancy words, but it boils down to "My opponent loves fags. Now, I hate fags, and I know you hate fags too, so you should vote for me!" I swear, I've never heard anything out of his mouth yet, which wasn't about his disapproval of homosexuals. Probably the pentacle of his entire campaign, was when he was criticizing his opponent for her support of a program which was designed to help reduce the suicide rate of homosexual teens, and stated that one of the first things he would do in office is ban that program.

...

Now, that being said, are there really awesome Christians out there? Of course. I used to go to one of them myself for the last year before I quit being a Christian. Strangely enough a United Methodist Church (Which falls comfortably into the anti-gay-but-in-denial category), though admittedly the church itself was no longer "accredited" by the United Methodist Council, in no small part due to the fact that the church's two pastors are an openly gay couple. Very sweet guys. I still can't believe that one of them was beaten to death a few months ago by a bunch of homophobic kids.

ANYWAY. Even the straights there were awesome people. Even the straights were like, walking paragons of Jesus Christ. Human embodiments of the love that Jesus taught. And yet, such a thing is so incredibly rare and uncommon. The sad reality is, even though I can point out these examples of good Christians, they are outnumbered 20 to 1 by wicked, cruel, hateful Christians.

There's a point where I have to step back, and honestly look at the religion and say "If you are a good person, why... WHY? Would you willingly be a part of a religion which is so utterly overwhelmingly consumed by hatred?" And that was where I stepped back, and decided that it wasn't worth it to be Christian. In a religion of hate, you can fight against the stream and try to love, but why? Why fight to prove that "You are one of the different ones?" instead of simply not being one of them?

Jazz said:
P.S. Also, Marbles, you're probably mixing a religion and, dunno, church, when people use religion as an excuse (since the any kind of religion was born?)

I'm not sure I understand the distinction.

Are you saying I should include non-practicing Christians? If a person does not go to a church, or read a bible, or pray, or do anything which might be associated with the religion other than "I'm a Christian. I believe there may be God and Jesus... probably.... well at least possibly... please don't quote me on that." I don't know if you can really count them as Christians. Rather they are people who grew up with Christian parents, and call themselves Christians just because that's what their parents called them, and that's what they've always been, and they are too apathetic to the whole subject to even bother saying they don't give a damn.

Jazz said:
Marbles, Christian religion in general doesn't tell anyone "gather alltogether and hate fags". It's like catholics burning protestants in the name of the Lord in the dark ages, and has almost nothing to do with the world view.

Of course, that's my very point. The number of Christians who are actually Christlike is quite a small number. The complete and utterly overwhelming majority simply use Christianity as an excuse to filter their hatred through.

The religion seems doomed when it's core members and organizational structure is one of hatred, that is in complete conflict with their founder's desires.

So much so that it's hard to understand why there are still those few good Christians still in the religion; it seems like that they would have jumped ship rather than continue to be associated with evil people. Instead, they have split off, created their own churches, usually one out of every few dozen churches, where they actually preach and practice love and tolerance, and sit there quietly while the hateful majority sullies their good name. And frankly I don't understand why; at that point, you might as well just leave the religion. But oh well, people make their choices.

EDIT: If you are trying to say that your Christians in Britain, or Australia, or Canada, are better than American's Christians. Well, you may very well be right. But then again, between the four major english speaking nations, we hardly make up the majority of Christians in the world. Going into third world countries, Christians become increasingly violent and even militaristic. If you want to take a world-wide view, it's only going to hurt your position, and I would discourage you from trying to make that argument.

niko_bellic said:
just to prove your point, i pondered on why there wouldn't be that many people on teh straight parade, then the conclusion hit me. why would people go to a straight parade? they don't the support or the need to feel belonging, they just about their business because nothing is different. i'm not sure im getting teh point along right

Yeah. I don't go to any pride parades anyway. While my partner is a very queer butch woman, I'm more mundane.

I'm not really paranoid, but I don't like sticking my neck out either, and generally go around trying to make sure as few people as possible know I'm a lesbian. I've seen too many of my friends over the years get hurt because they are homosexual, and I'd rather not become one of their numbers. There is something very chilling about finding out that your pastors were attacked by a group of no less than 16 teenage punk kids, who beat them up in a public park for no reason other than because the two were gay, and the kids felt like it. They were lucky; they were down on their knees with guns to their heads, about ready to be killed execution style, when the police arrived and saved them.

I figure, for now, it's simply wise to not go around waving my "I'm a lesbian" flag. Yes I'm probably most accurately defined as a coward. Yes, members of the LGBT civil rights movement would pretty much spit on me for it. But oh well, I have an allegiance to myself and my partner before I have an allegiance to the gay community. So sue me.