Sarcasm here
Posted On Friday, April 3, 2009 at at 11:24 AM by Pastor Mike
Let me put forth the following (sarcastic but prophetic) argument. Why does the law prohibit me from marrying two or three other women? I am biologically predisposed and culturally drawn to multiple partners. In fact, I am right now in love with 6 women and they are in love with me. Why can I sleep with these women, live with these women, have kids with these women, but not marry these women? Don’t my kids deserve that their father be married to their mother? If one of the women that I love gets sick, or secular utopia forbid, they die, why are you refusing me the rights that a husband would get? Am I not allowed the same benefits that you who choose only one spouse get? That's pretty 
hypocritical, because, as you know, many of you are cheating on your spouses anyway...or looking lustfully at others because you too are genetically predisposed.
Is it because Jesus says that marriage is between two people? The bible says a lot of things. We no longer force circumcision do we? (Again, for those of you that are a little naïve, this is all sarcasm). And to be quite honest, polygamy is more defensible, biblical speaking, then homosexuality. My religious beliefs demand that I have multiple wives (I’ve just converted to Mormonism {do I have to keep telling you this is sarcasm}). Picture added to appeal to your emotions ===============>
Is it because it’s not moral? What the hell does that mean? Who are you to tell me what is right? What is right for me is right for me…and quite frankly, my natural desires to mate with multiple women is more common then homosexuality and we’re starting to allow that. Furthermore, my natural propensity is a direct cause from my maker: Evolution (again, sarcasm).
Those of you who are refusing me my rights to the women that I love are just hateful religious bigots (ad hominem added for effect).
hypocritical, because, as you know, many of you are cheating on your spouses anyway...or looking lustfully at others because you too are genetically predisposed.Is it because Jesus says that marriage is between two people? The bible says a lot of things. We no longer force circumcision do we? (Again, for those of you that are a little naïve, this is all sarcasm). And to be quite honest, polygamy is more defensible, biblical speaking, then homosexuality. My religious beliefs demand that I have multiple wives (I’ve just converted to Mormonism {do I have to keep telling you this is sarcasm}). Picture added to appeal to your emotions ===============>
Is it because it’s not moral? What the hell does that mean? Who are you to tell me what is right? What is right for me is right for me…and quite frankly, my natural desires to mate with multiple women is more common then homosexuality and we’re starting to allow that. Furthermore, my natural propensity is a direct cause from my maker: Evolution (again, sarcasm).
Those of you who are refusing me my rights to the women that I love are just hateful religious bigots (ad hominem added for effect).
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I'm not sure why swingers would want to get married to 'the same old 6 women day in and day out'. That might get kind of tiring for them. The divorce process would be an ecconomic exponential decay, indeed, with an half-life of about 3-4 weeks with the superposition of lawyer fees.
you brought mathematics into my argument! It works with polygamy :)
Give it up, Mike. You are grasping at straws to keep people in oppression.
Loved this quote from the Iowa decision: "School-yard bullies have psychologically ground children with apparently gay or lesbian sexual orientation in the cruel mortar and pestle of school-yard prejudice."
Take a cookie and bite it in half 6 times, that should demonstrate my point about polygamy.
stop judging me.
I am giving up on the hs marriage debate. When its lost, its lost. I'm gearing up for the pologamy debate.
I've just looked over my blog and I think I'm being unfairly represented. With the exception of the letter that was written by someone else, I havent addressed the hs issue. Even in the one that was attacking PG, I didnt talk about it. I actually addressed the writer on his accusation that Jesus changed.
Did I hear you say correctly that you are giving up on the gay rights debate?
I applaud you.
Nevertheless, if you want to read the Iowa Supreme Court Decision, here is the link:
http://lawdork.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/07-1499.pdf
And here are some quotes from the decision provided by a friend of mine:
###
The legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of
persons from a supremely
important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient
justification. There is no material fact, genuinely in dispute, that
can affect this determination.
This record, our independent research, and the appropriate equal
protection analysis do not suggest the existence of a justification
for such a legislative classification that substantially furthers any
governmental objective. Consequently, the language in Iowa Code
section 595.2 limiting civil
marriage to a man and a woman must be stricken from the statute, and
the remaining statutory language must be interpreted and applied in a
manner allowing gay and lesbian people full access to the institution
of civil marriage.
VI. Conclusion.
The district court properly granted summary judgment to plaintiffs.
Iowa Code section 595.2 violates the equal protection provision of the Iowa
Constitution. Our decision becomes effective upon issuance of
procedendo.
AFFIRMED.
All justices concur.
Yep, you heard right. I’m outspoken, but the hs debate was never to be my “platform.” I’ve got too many irons in the fire and I believe my primary call is to be a pastor and to be light & salt in Farmer City. They’ve got some issues here and I want to kill myself helping them.
Now, with that, I haven’t changed my stand or my beliefs. I will always stand for traditional marriage and I will continue to send letters (it’s kinda like a hobby now). HS debate will not be my focus.
Why is polygamy denied? It's a legal mess, that's why. Imagine divorces! Holy crap, how do you sort that out?
Then you have the issue of spouses don't have to testify against one another. Well hell, if I'm a mob kingpin, I'm marrying my whole mob. Now they can't be made to testify. Ha!
What about immigration? Think of how that could get exploited.
Then there's health benefits. What insurance company is going to extend coverage to an untold number of spouses? Maybe you'd get passed over for a job because the employer wouldn't want to have to deal with the benefits headaches.
What if there's a medical decision that has to be made? Can a doctor follow one spouse's directions or will he have to wait for all to arrive on the scene?
Try as you might, your attempts to equate gay marriage to polygamy doesn't work, and neither does the slippery slope argument that gay marriage will lead to polygamy. Apples and oranges, pal. Get over it. You just have to stick with your bible as the sole source to justify your slighting of others, or just come clean and admit you don't like the idea of gays being treated as equals, because that's really all you've got.
Btw, polygamy was probably originally banned because no man deserves that much grief. ;)
We're in trouble if are best arguments against are lawyers and insurance companies.
You forgot grief. Could you imagine the grief one would have to contend with from multiple wives? On is bad enough. Imagine them ganging up on you, too.
I disagree with the assessment that "we're in trouble" if the arguments against polygamy grow out of legal or insurance concerns. Those concerns have very real consequences, not the least of which could be exploited by criminals, and that's truly how decisions need to be made, based on their real world consequences and not on some faith based beliefs with imagined consequences, for such beliefs are fine for individuals to choose to subscribe to, but cannot be imposed on others, nor is there any justification to do so since, as I said, the consequences of ignoring faith based beliefs cannot be demonstrated.
That last bit is what really sinks all of your battleships, the inability to demonstrate the consequences you claim of granting equality to gays. You can't demonstrate how it will hurt any straight couple's marriage, you can't demonstrate how it could hurt those families in any way, you can't demonstrate how being raised in a gay household could negatively effect the development of a child, and you can't demonstrate that those children are in any more danger of abuse than in straight marriage families. All you have is prejudice and an old book to justify that prejudice, and that's simply not enough anymore.
I say it’s a problem because the burden on lawyers or insurance companies is very rarely a concern of those arguing for constitutionality of an institution.
Again, I’m not going to give fodder to any polygamists out there, so I will say that I hope the reasons that you give are ones that would stand. I would have to worry, though, if 40% of our children now are being born out of wedlock and the number one indicator of poverty is a one parent home, would those who argue for polygamy argue that this type of family set up would be beneficial to many other families (by combining them, giving them legal protection, ect.)?
Oh, and it could be multiple husbands.
You don't think special interests reach as far as the courts? Under what rock have you been living?
Polygamy opens the door to countless exploitations of the law, and would provide cover for criminal operations. That alone is enough to kill it, and also should contain enough moral motivation to make you happy.
I don't see what relevance your single parent stat has on the argument. Again, what evidence would you have that polygamy would affect that stat? If single parents can't or won't enter into monogamous marriages, what's to suggest they'll enter into polygamous ones?
Polygamy, bestiality, or any other bizarre slippery slope argument offered as a reason to deny gay equality simply has nothing behind them to warrant believing they'd in fact be consequences of that action.
Well, I should think that any kind of marriage should be better for the Church than no marriage at all. If the "institution of marriage" were to entirely divorce itself from the Church, I'd be for that (I don't need to hear about 'God making a man and a woman to cleave to each other of the invisible pink unicorn spirit'...show me a blueprint of any of those Genesis claims, you can't, science has a perfectly workable theory on planet formation and on evolution because that's how it happened), but unfortunately that would mean a lot of lost repeat customers for basically the Churche's lifesource (good, no monopolies on morality anyhow).
Also, if the "funeral services" were to be divorced from religion, I'd like that too. Maybe I want people to talk about something I invented that will make the world a better place at my funeral, or about what a good person I was. What I don't need at my funeral is a Pastor talking the Dark Age rhetoric about how "all have sinned and fallen short".
The world doesn't need either of those two False Christian Dogmas, and the world would be better off without them. That, or the Church could divorce itself from the Dark Ages and come join the 21st century where throwing rocks at people is unacceptable.
Let me clarify: I don’t think Judges care about what their ruling on marriage is going to do to divorce suits or insurance policies. They sure didn’t take it into consideration when they adopted the no fault divorce act.
I’m still not following you on what doors it could open. And, traditional family proponents have argued that allowing a behavior will lead down a slippery slope. Now you’re arguing it. It is a fallacy to say that one behavior should be illegal because it might lead others to break the law! Alcohol should be made illegal then. It might make people beat their wives.
Quantum,
once your dead, what does it matter what they talk about? Might as well talk about invisible pink u-corns.
Take for example leaving a lighter and some joints lying around for kids to find. It's reasonable to assume that some may get high since that's a possible consequence of the action of giving them the means to get high. What's unreasonable, and a slippery slope argument, is to suggest that a consequence will be they will then try to get heroin or thereafter engage in any kind of future actions inspired by the experience.
Likewise, legalizing polygamy opens the door for criminal activity, and you can very clearly see how it could be exploited for criminal gain, whereas you can't demonstrate how granting gay marriage opens the door for polygamy, thus the polygamy consequence is a slippery slope argument.
Whether alcohol use makes one more likely to beat their wives or not is irrelevant, for the crime is punishable and alcohol does not shield one from the reach of the law. Polygamy would serve as a shield, therefore your analogy fails. It also fails in that polygamy would not be a motivator for crime, but rather the means to carry out crime, whereas alcohol in your analogy is motivator and not means. That's a double fail.
Alcohol also increases the probability that men will have sex with their wives, one of the main reasons prohibition was repealed aside from the advantages of taxation. Of course, birth control has also increased the pleasure involved in marriage too, as well as in dating.
PM: once your dead, what does it matter what they talk about? Might as well talk about invisible pink u-corns.
QF: Well, let's put it this way...if I was a king of Egypt, I'd definantly force the Isrealites to build my pyramidal monument into the heavens, factorially, exponentially dwarfing King Tut's. Mwahahahaha! Well, except that I would leave my legacy in terms of scientific/technological discoveries instead of religiou-political dogmatism (unlike King Solomon with his stupid Yahweh Temple, I'd invest half that much money into R&D and the other half in production assuming Solomon's greatness wasn't such a big fish story to begin with).
For what benefit? To help out those who come after you? You’re nothing after the fact. You’re what rocks dream of. If you spent every day of your life inventing things that keep these little dots happy and content on their blue dot, once the little yellow dot finally burns out it meant nothing. You might as well spend your life lying to the little dots and promote your invisible pink unicorn (I’d recommend making the flying spaghetti monster like Satan). That’ll give something to hope for while you invent things to make their purposeless life more palatable.
Life only has the purpose we give it. You, Mike, choose to give it purpose by way of following some old belief. Some find purpose in helping others. Some feel grand creations which will exist long after their deaths give their lives purpose. Purpose in life is as varied as there are lives.
aye.
But what I'm saying, and i think its clear, (if you're right) it doesn’t ultimately matter what one does.
Yes it does, to oneself and to others.
I think at this point I will invoke philosophical privilege and quote from my favorite book of the OT, Ecclesiastes, the first chapter, verses 2, 3, 8 and 9, which some think is despairing, but which I perceive as liberating and ultimately thrilling, to wit:
"Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless! What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."
PG: "Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless! What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."
QF: The idiot that wrote that verse never saw a big screen TV before.
Well, there is an afterlife in the hearts and minds of those whom come after. Ideas and memes, information really, is alive since it exists in the form of brain cells and computer chips. Being remembered for making an impact, for having left a legacy, is one of the greatest achievements possible in this life. If you don't agree with this, then you'd be advised to forget the story of Jesus and Solomon, any historical character for that matter. After all, Jesus and Solomon are dead to you other than residing in the brain and in your imagination, the only real thing is that those characters are being remembered by all the future 'dots'.
I might add one more thing for you PG. The reason that idiot thought there was nothing new under the sun is because that idiot invested in religious dogmatism, which by it's very nature doesn't change. Things do change, though, and extremely rapidly too. Look at all the new technological achievements that have come to fruition in the last 2 centuries....of course there are "new things under the sun". You've just got to study the right things, and you've got to stop reiterating the wrong things, like the Dark Ages and Religion.
Obviously, you don't watch Lost.
Consider your mind as a piece of matter in the universe. Consider how small that bit of matter is. Consider how astonishing it is that this mind can can have self-awareness at all. Consider how improbable it is that this little mind -- which notoriously deceives itself at every turn -- could claim to comprehend anything outside itself, let alone the totality of the universe. The arrogance, the pride, the self-inflation of that little mind is staggering.
Perhaps if you took a break from the drugs and/or booze for a bit, PG, you wouldn't have your mind deceiving itself at every turn. ;)
I don't do either drugs or drink.
Who needs them?
Jeremiah 17:9 (King James Version)
9The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Good grief, I'm quoting the Old Testament again, twice in 24 hours.
I need a drink.
As for those who put their faith in technology, I just have one word:
Betamax.
You do realize that both your claim of arrogance to know things beyond oneself and that delightful OT quote mean that you also can't put any stock in feelings, senses, or what have you which are claimed by the faithful as evidence for their gods.
How can one "know in their heart" there's a god if "the heart is deceitful above all things"?
I'll have to bookmark that passage. Thanks.
As for those who put their faith in technology, I just have one word: Betamax.
Fabulous point for many reasons. First "faith in technology". There's no such thing. The scientific method has proven successful at knowing and understanding reality. Faith has not. Any doubts, then I suggest you rely on faith the next time you need to cross the street.
Second, Betamax is a great example of the scientific process, for it was a stage in development, a refinement of knowledge. One must remain ever open to new information, and this is true in science. The scientific method is self correcting, and that's a good thing, and not the negative Craig tries to say it is.
The Betamax story is also a great example of ignorance in action, for it was far superior to vhs and if anyone bothered to judge the two on merit, Betamax would have won. However, vhs had a wonderfully successful marketing plan to block people from intelligently comparing the two (I could go into numerous religious analogies at this point, but I'll refrain). Still, Beta became the professional standard because professionals in the field do judge on merit, and aren't ignorant fools, and the taste for better then lead to Digi-Beta and eventually HD which even the ignorant today can't ignore (although most are duped into 720p tvs and not 1080p and so forth).
Not trusting in the scientific method, not being open to new ideas, and throwing your hands up and declaring this is as far as we can go makes you an idiot like the head of the US patent office at the end of the 19th century who thought the office should be closed since "everything's already been invented". It also means you don't embrace Betamax and settle with crappy vhs and perhaps never see the day of dvds, bluray and hdtv. Ignorance, and the contentment derived from remaining in it has powerfully negative repercussions, ones felt even in the seemingly mundane as vhs and Beta.
So yeah, excellent point about Betamax. Thanks for bringing that up, too.
I still have my Betamax recorder.
Philly guy, what are you and Quantum guy trying to prove? That there is no God? Why bother?
This whole conversation is sheer human vanity as far as I'm concerned. Sometimes amusing, but largely inconsequential.
I should be feeding poor people. You can debate polygamy if you want.
Philly Chief,
You wrote:
You do realize that both your claim of arrogance to know things beyond oneself and that delightful OT quote mean that you also can't put any stock in feelings, senses, or what have you which are claimed by the faithful as evidence for their gods.
Of course. Any god that provides evidence of existence isn't a deity at all.
And you wrote:
How can one "know in their heart" there's a god if "the heart is deceitful above all things"?
That's as much prooftexting literalism as those who point to verses and say, "See! Polygamy is wrong! It says so right there."
You know that. In your heart.
So is that where it all started? You're jaded because of investing in Betamax, so to hell with science and technology? LOL!
I never know what Quantum is up to. He's generally out there, if you know what I mean. ;)
Of course. Any god that provides evidence of existence isn't a deity at all.
I feel the same way about Nessie, so that picture must be a hoax or some bloated log. She'd ne'er le' 'm snap a picture o' 'er.
Ha ha.
I invest in all those gizmos. I go out of my way to buy old Betamax machines. They're still cool. I have a TRS Model 100 laptop computer, too, the first of its kind.
The only reason I'm writing here at all is because I'm waiting for one of my Facebook Scrabble players to take their turn so I can play! Nobody has made a move all day.
We're leaving for church potluck in 20 minutes, so I guess I've said all I have to say. I belong to my church because I believe in the mission, to engage together in the politics of Jesus.
I attend infrequently as a matter of deliberate choice. I didn't attend today, but I'm going to the potluck.
Apparently you two skipped church this morning.
The season doesn't start until Sunday, September 13th.