Posts made by raphjd

When blacks and women were allowed in the military, they screamed social engineering.  Now no one questions it.

According to Wikipedia;

The first public discussion of sexual abuse of minors by priests took place at a meeting sponsored by the National Association for Pastoral Renewal held on the campus of Notre Dame University in 1967, to which all U.S. Catholic bishops were invited.

That leads me to believe that the Pope knew since then and most likely before.

Are you saying Iran's government (religious) is on the same level as the US's government (secular)?  I would venture to say that the US government is far superior to Iran's.

A catholic school teacher defending the catholic church hoarding wealth rather than helping people is blatantly bias.  It's sad that you are buying into the "we can't help everyone, so why bother, we'll just hoard the wealth" as being a good thing.  As I've already said, this applies to all churches, not just the catholic church, though they are the most guilty.

While I wasn't saying that the Vatican Library was secret, but that it's contents are secret, they do not advertise it and only let in selective people that support their world view.  So they aren't for the greater good, but for the good of a select few.  The little bit we do know about it is mainly because of Dan Brown's books and the Vatican reacting to that.

The Vatican threatened to excommunicate politicians over a variety of issues, including abortion and gay rights. As a gay man you should know what your church has been doing on the topic. There is a huge difference between getting kicked out of a club and being sentenced by your religion to burn in hell for eternity.  It was nice of you to compare the catholic church to the KKK.

Us unwashed immoral losers shouldn't be held to the same standard as your godlike side, so stop saying "you guys do it so why shouldn't we".  You guys are doing everything in the name of your god, so you should be held to a very high standard.

So you are admitting that there is no such thing as a truly secular government, because religion will always weasel it's way in.  Secular governments are tainted by religion, so they should get some credit added to counter the negative created by the taint.  If it weren't for catholics in the UK government, gays would have more equality and the catholic church wouldn't get special rights to discriminate against gays for an extra 7 years, while using taxpayer money.  Now that the 7 years are up, they've closed shop rather than not discriminate against gays.

I'm fully aware of the supposed separation of church and state, but your side is against that.  This is why judges have the 10 commandments in the court rooms, churches get taxpayer money and the list goes on and on and on…........  Your side has done, and keeps doing, everything in it's power to destroy that separation.

Not everyone who qualifies for welfare is registered to get it.  Also, not all medical cover requires welfare.  In Texas you can get free health care even if you don't qualify for welfare. Cuba is a vile evil godless heathen society and they have a lot better medical system than many other counties in the west.  Now compare that to Iran, Saudi, etc, etc, etc who are religious governments.

If religion is so great, then why hasn't it stamped out greed and all the other societal ills?  After all, religion has pretty much controlled society since the beginning.

I also have a hard time understanding how you can so rabidly defend a church that hates you.  Yeah, I know you say you disagree with their stance on homosexuality, but then you are disagreeing with a core belief of the religion.

That's not the one I'm thinking of.

The Boys of St Vincent is about an orphanage.

The one I'm thinking of is about a small farm community.

**EDIT: ** According to Wikipedia, The Boys of St Vincent is based on real events at Mount Cashel Orphanage (part 1) and the trial (part 2).

Couldn't the same be said for another other minority rights?  People always feared that there would be a backlash.

The only compromise is to make all relationships "civil unions" under the law and make "marriage" mean nothing except as a church thing.

Society is moving forward, as young people are a lot more accepting of gays.  Sadly it takes 10,000 years before politics catches up.

BTW, do a bit of googling, gays have been getting married throughout history.  It's only in the last few centuries that people have gone mental over it.

There is a movie about the very first legal case over the child molestation thing.

The incident took place in the mid/late 1960s in Canada.

It was amazing how evil the church was to the victims.  Sadly, it seems like this is a pattern with the church.  The victims are victimized twice, once by the priest and then by the church itself.

The guilty priest got convicted, but released into the churches hands for rehab.  (Special rights for the church, as no other group would have a child molester turned over to them, the molester would be sent to prison)

Most child molesting priests would be secretly moved to another parish and the people there never told he was a child molester.

But you did say that in order for secular governments to be preferable over religious governments, they have to be A LOT BETTER.

Nice excuse for the church (all churches) to amass obscene wealth. Am I assuming correctly that your philosophy teacher was at a catholic school?

Just because there are other ills in the world, doesn't mean that religion gets a pass.

The Vatican library could be done just like the Library of Congress, which is open to most and you can see anything you want.  You may not get to see the exact original but you get to see an exact copy of the original.  That is not the case with the Vatican library.

I never said it was secret, but they are extremely selective on who can see it and what is allowed to be seen.

That is the problem though, secular governments are riddled with religious nutters.  So a lot of the problems in secular governments go back to religion.  The Vatican threatened to excommunicate politician if they voted certain ways on issues.  It happened in Canada, the UK, the US, Spain, France and I would guess every other country on the planet.

Churches are getting taxpayer money to run their charities and they are using that money to discriminate. It's another example of religious nutters in secular government pandering to their religion.  SO again, secular governments are never truly secular.

Tony Blair gave the catholic church special rights to continue discriminating against gays for 7 years after everyone else had to stop doing it. Tony Blair was a closet catholic and he loaded his cabinet with catholics, like the Opus Dei member Ruth Kelly.  So the catholic church gets special rights over the countries own state church, because the country was run by catholics.  Ruth Kelly was a well known homophobe when Tony Blair made her the Minister for Equality.

Millions of Americans don't have health insurance, but I'm willing to bet that many of them would qualify for medical benefits under the welfare system.

I could have gone to the emergency room, but read up on that, people can wait days in there before being seen.  On the next working day they would have just told me to go see my GP.

BTW, I'm a dual national (US/UK, American by birth) so I am well aware of what goes on in the US.  I am forced to live in exile so I can be with my British partner.

You are putting an extreme burden on secular governments by saying they have to be "a lot better" than religious governments if they are to be preferable. That shows your bias in favor of religion.

Why is the Vatican swimming in such extreme wealth?  All that money could be used to help people, but NO, they need some more artwork.  The same applies to other religions and churches around the world.  Sell off all that obscene wealth and fund aid for the people.

While priests may not be multi millionaires, the church is obscenely wealthy.

Here's just some of the wealthy that the catholic church has in the Philipines;  hXXp://moneygurado.blogspot.com/2011/06/catholic-church-in-philippines-has.html

Why is the Vatican stifling knowledge by keeping it's library so secret?

We could do a nice little tit for tat of what secular governments and religious governments did to their people. You also have to remember, that even though secular governments, such as the US, aren't supposed to be based on religion, they are quite often run by religious nutters; ie Michelle Bachmann, GWB, Rick Perry and countless others in the US.  Papa Bush famously said atheists aren't citizens or patriots.  So how can you be so absolute in claiming it's the supposed secularism of the government that did wrong and not the believers that run it?

On the other hand, anything done by a religious government is the blame of religion, as that is at it's core.

Can you name me a religious government today that supports total equality for gays and women?

Even though the CofE is the official church in the UK, it's the catholic church that is screaming for blood and demanding that they should be allowed to discriminate against gays and they have been getting their way.

In the supposedly secular US, churches are getting tax payer money to run their charities and discriminating against gays.

I think you've been reading some wonky websites, if you think that the UK has better health care or personal heath than the US.  The UK has shockingly horrible health compared to most of Europe and countless other places around the world.

According to the UK's Office of National Statistics, life expectancy at birth for a male is 63 and 65 for a female, for an average of 64.  In the US, the average life expectancy for both male and female is 78.14.  78.14 is a lot higher than 64, so the US wins this one.

Even though I had private insurance, I still had to wait 3 months before my doctor would refer me for an ear infection.  The whole one side of my head was swollen and extremely painful, I was taking toxic levels of OTC pain killers to dull, not remove the pain, because my doctor wouldn't give me anything for it.  Finally I got refered to a specialist.  If I had to wait for an NHS doctor I would be dead because the infection was eating away the bone between my ear and brain.  I was rushed into emergency surgery after the CT scan by my private insurance specialist.  It would have been another 17 weeks at the earliest before I would have been able to see an NHS specialist, meaning I would have been dead 17 weeks prior.

Religion should be banned.

If religion was such a good thing and helps people, other than those who are directly in it (priests, etc), then why are they amassing so much obscene wealth?  They should be using that money to help people rather than buying paintings and statues.  Their libraries should be public, not secretive.

I find it dishonest to say that if secular governments aren't 100% perfect at everything, then it's better to have a religious one.

Religious governments are hostile to gays and women, without exception.  The same statement can't be said for secular governments.

The UK has a failing National Health System and it's costing us a fortune through extremely high taxes.  It's a post code lottery on how good your medical care is.  It almost killed me a couple years ago because of the procedures that you have to go through before you can get referred to a specialist.  I'm also left with permanent nerve damage in both hands thanks to the NHS.  If you want even a slightly decent level of health care, you still need private health insurance.

Married gay service members will still be discriminated against because of DoMA.  They will not receive any of the benefits hetero married service members get; ie base housing, housing allowance, use of the commissary, etc, etc, etc, etc.

So you want a word that separates us from the heteros, than a word that includes us into the whole of society.

The whole "separate but equal" has always been a lie.

By not giving us "marriage" they are saying that we are not good enough to have the same things they have.

As I explained before, marriage is included in every international agreement.  If we start making up words just for fags, the we have to make new international agreements.

All the bisexuals I know are complete sluts.

They justify it by saying they can't be satisfied by just one person.

Of course a few also use the excuse of "I want to get married and have kids and I can't do that with a guy".

PS:  There's a "bi" guy in the current UK Big Brother, but he's never had sex with a woman.  It's like he's trying to pull the "I'm not a nasty faggot, I'm bi".

Military officials also say the disparity in benefits between gay married couples and heterosexual couples also must be addressed.

Gays and lesbians will share the same barracks and bathroom facilities as other troops. But those legally married will be treated differently from heterosexual married couples when it comes to assigned housing, relocation packages and some other benefits.

Yep, Jim Crow is alive and well in the US still.

Married gays won't get any of the benefits that married heteros get.

The movie in question is RocknRolla.

We (the staff) are slagged off because we have an Auto Approval system, which means things slip past us.  We (the staff) are slagged off if we suggest that Auto Approval be ended so things don't slip past us.

As I said earlier in this thread, AA users are posting a lot of stuff that has no business being here.  They are violating our trust in them, then bitching at us for correcting the situation they caused.

We have had a rash of movies uploaded here recently that have nothing to do with GLBT whatsoever and many that break one or more rules; ie the blockbuster rule.

Of course you don't say what movie it was that you uploaded, so I can't give an opinion on why it was deleted.

If the rules are followed, you won't have to worry about your uploads getting deleted.

Since you have been entrusted with AutoApproval, your uploads bypass staff scrutiny.  We usually only see then if we happen to come across it on accident or if someone complains about it and we check it out.

If the pope didn't know it was going on, then he must be extremely negligent in his duties of running his religion.

If he knew it was going on and did nothing to stop it, he's guilty.

NOTE:  Anyone reading this, don't ask to have your torrents "refreshed" as it won't happen.

So you can never get HIV from pussy?  That's apparently what they are telling us with the "new" restrictions.

It's still anti gay, but a tiny bit less so now.

Like most of Europe, the UK gives some extremely weak punishments for crimes.

I've long advocated banning RM file since they are ALWAYS crap quality.  Sadly, too many people complained so we still have that crap video format.

I don't care for WMV files because I don't think you get quality for the size of the file.  The quality seems to be half that of an AVI of the same size.

We're starting to get HD porn, so I don't see why we shouldn't have MKV files for them.  I only download MKV files for movies now, but only on titles I know are Blu-ray or HD.  MKV does seem a bit of a waste for DVDs.

My rule of thumb for AVI porn is 1gb for every hour of video.  1.5 hour video is 1.5gb (ish) of AVI.  That's for a DVD.  Blu-ray and HD should be 1.5gb per hour of video.