@leatherbear:

Think Progress' Zack Ford had this to say about the new campaign:

[T]hese improvements over blatant ostracization and condemnation could very well save the lives of many young people and help keep families together. However, with this approach, the Mormon Church has essentially only caught up to the “hate the sin, not the sinner” approaches of the Catholic Church and many evangelical Christians, which are still incredibly problematic.

Agreed with Zack bears  ^-^
The mormon church like other monocratic god book churches carries out strong proselytism activities and, in doing that, collides with competitors which has to compare to someway. From a general socio/philosophical point of view it has been noticed that a religion which is not  totalitarian doesn't/shouldn't create a church so it could seem easier to  think this partucular concession stems more from  a clash of powers than anything else.
Nothing to be worried about I'd say though. A bit of competition between opposed totalitarianisms can prove useful every now and then for some profitable side effects it might get or did you believe by chance the main reason for the Secession War was black people freedom and equality?  🙂

OK Jonathan  I could follow your line!   ^-^ But, every time  a new word is proposed as it has happened now, it seems to me  there should be an agreement based on a good/thorough explanation (age quod agis  😉 ) made by the proposer followed or less by a sufficient acceptance within a social group. Even if you/I/we all gave good explanations as we have done here, this doesn't seem to grant an acceptance in itself though cause words like farnhamality or agis could be rejected for some reasons: the already accepted existence of other words or circumlocutions up to come to the same point or an unavailablity of the group to share the goal/mind operation denoted by the new term for instance. Especially in the case when a word is proposed and accepted without an apparent quid to point to, in any case, a thorough explanation should make possible to understand to everyone what has been made/done and, in principle, to unmake/undo or remake/redo it. So the challenge of Tom - the apparent contradiction/ambiguity  of a straight sex in a gay forum - could be fixed specifying the original mind operations and the conditions/reasons of an undo-unmake/redo-remake. Couldn't it? 🙂

Changing topic I was reading  one of those very ancient agises writing about a mole named agis who was the XVI of a series. That blind animal was really dumb go  figure!   :blink:  He couldn't understand why in the  human languages both the terms pointing and not pointing to something are denoted with similar sounds and/or writings. Don't ask why they lost their time making such queer questions; I dunno.  :afr2:  And anyway since that agis was very ancient and incomplete the answer got lost too in the past fogs   :cry2:

Sure LBC we look for and find the values and maybe, if we happened to be a little pissed off, even the… "disvalues" 🙂 . So one could even emit the hypothesis that we put more than find these thingies somewhere.
Back in topic though, the lesson Bayazid felt to give us may be seen as interesting and useful but, at a given point, since  all the mystics coming from different religions (the sufism was and is an islamic form of mysticism) end with resembling each other, the most interesting lesson we could get from the all of them is about a vision of a "god" who speaks for my/your/oursingularselves common denominator. Mysticim was seen in fact as the purely individual art of penetrating the "secret", the mystery (mystikòs) hiding in the nature of the things through not conventional instruments: neither the words, nor the writings, nor even the thought. Its instrument was the breath: breathing first the air, then the environment, the beings populating it and, in the end, god. So, like the apophatic god, not an authoritative god but a god who cannot lend her/him/itself to a human, too human will to power. Including the power of bashing some other than ourselves ones: gays, jews, niggas, women… 🙂

Glad to know you agree LBC  🙂
BTW, following your argument, I had forgotten to say that the monks of Hadrumetum were not exactly a bunch of idiots run away from a mental hospital but a western ramification of a kind of theological thought which was named "apophatic".  Nothing to be worried about I'd say since those dudes simply thought that the thing/things you can say  about god is/are

I kind of got the idea from modern society about Jesus being a drag queen. All 12 MEN that he was always with always had the white robes and the long hair, and after all, didn't he sleep out with all 12 of them while camping if memory from grade school serves me correctly? I thought I was the only one to think such things.

As the "unwashed immoral loser" it's not my job to help the needy, even though I do.  I'd be willing to bet that IF your side were honest and opened their books, we'd see that I give a larger portion of my income to help the needy than churches do.

Religious people need to learn that we are all atheists, just that some of us believe in less gods than others.

Religious people need to understand that there are others on the planet as well, but they tend to forget that or worse.

++++

Ok, so you and your philosophy teacher think that instead of trying to help people, the Vatican should just hoard the wealth.

We'll never know exactly how much the RCC et al has, because it's broken up into mini sub corporations and they aren't exactly open and honest about such things. However, we do know just a tiny fraction of the money they have because we know at least some of the money the church's Philippines branch has from the line I posted earlier.

The difference between Bill Gates and Warren Buffet is that they aren't trying to claim the moral high ground.  However, both Warren Buffet and Bill Gates give away huge chunks of cash every year.

Warren Buffet and Bill Gates doesn't hate you, but your church does.

Churches should pay taxes as they use the nation's infrastructure. It's another example of them using and giving nothing back.

"Unwashed immoral losers" is in reference to non believers, not people that disagree with you.

Churches haven't lost control to government by taking taxpayer money.  In fact, the government, due to being full of believers, is pandering to churches and allowing them to use taxpayer money to fund their hate.

Your side (believers) are doing everything in their power to destroy the separation between church and state.  The first clue is GWB creating the so called "faith based initiatives" giving churches money to fund their hate.  I'm sure you can find countless examples of believers doing everything in their power to destroy the separation of church and state.

I'm aware of the Mt. Cashel orphanage, but " The boys of St. Vincent" still had to be heavily fictionalized/made composite or they would have just called it "The boys of Mt. Cashel".

I'm in agreement that the pope almost certainly knew about abuse, but I don't know if a meeting in 1967 proves anything.  Getting an invitation is not the same as attending.  Making accusations or broaching a subject for the first time is not the same as proof or "full awareness."  THE PRECEDING STATEMENTS ARE NOT EXCUSING WRONG DOING, but it would be just as if is someone said to me "State employees are crooked."  Yeah, there are 30,000 of us and I'm sure one or two are crooked. It would be very difficult for me to accept after working there 25 years that MOST state employees are stealing.  (even if most state employees actually did steal.).

okay.  i just think that abortion is only allowed under highly specific extenuating circumstances

but everyone's entitled to their opinion

Hahahahaha…
Well, what can we seriously expect from airheads?
On the other hand it also sadly reflects on the state of education and on a not so small part of the US population.
And it will get much worse if Obama gets voted out next year by exactly these people... back to the Dark Ages...
:afr:

Desmond Tutu was always very liberal.

The only difference in him, is that only now is he truly free to totally speak his mind.

true that

Thanks for sharing. I really liked most of citations

i still think itwould have been humane to allow the family their time to mourn.

@fancydude:

Further, to say the Catholic church has demonized human sexuality unmatched by any other institution - it might even be true - but the world is a big place and several millennia is long time - you must indeed be the font of all knowledge to make that claim!

I don't need to. You made that claim for me, just a few sentences prior:

@fancydude:

There are few institutions as large as the Catholic Church with as long a history to compare it to.

And then there is this gem:

@fancydude:

I don't understand it, can't explain it and don't excuse it.

Well you got 2 out of 3 right. But please do continue to post in other areas, as I truly appreciate the spirited debate!  😉

As far as going on tangents as one poster said, I think that's the beauty of forums – and that we're all adults here who can handle the road, wherever it takes us.