Ringtail,

Atheism is a religion because you need an awful amount of faith to believe that there is no God. It is a totally irrational position. Why do you think the world's no. 1 atheist, Anthony Flew, gave up that position? He is now a deist. Still a long way from Christianity though but at least it is in the right direction.

And you do have a "good book" - 3 of them actually. Humanist Manifesto 1,2, and 2000. And these books (and many other atheists) acknowledge that atheism is indeed a religion.

AK

Ringtail,
If a lesbian couple get married then they might want to have children through IVF (paid for by the taz payer of course), which is why many feminists are so supportive of IVF. There are many moral, ethical, technical and health issues surrounding IVF technology, but I feel that feminists will try and silence debate on these issues like they have silenced debate on abortion.

There is another forum on IVF, and I have been trying to get women and feminists to give just one possible suggested solution to just one of the problems involving IVF. By giving a possible solution, they are getting “a voice”, and they would be doing something more constructive that having a whinge about men, or I think feminists and lesbians now refer to them as “penis persons”

So would you like to give just one possible suggested solution to just one of the problems involving IVF. These are some of the problems:-

- Donor parents (either men or women) can be quite unavailable to the child, because they live in a different country to where the child is born (and this is becoming more common.)
- Donor parents can have many children living in many countries, and they may not have much bonding with any of those children.
- Arranged meetings or contact between donor parents and the IVF child are not necessarily satisfactory for either party.
- Higher rates of birth defects for IVF children than with normal children, and they don't know why
- Lower rate of pregnancy as the mother gets older, requiring more intrusive and often traumatic IVF treatments.
- IVF industry is often driven by money, and can become very commercialised (not necessarily a moral industry)
- IVF is moving towards genetically modified children, or "made to order" children. Is this moral?

Could you please, please provide some possible solutions to these problems. If you don’t then I will start to fret, and get all upset, and believe that feminists are simply a bunch of people who like to vilify males, portray themselves as being victims, but can’t solve any problems.

ASLAN
thanx for the info about Anthony Flew I never even knew he existed till right now !
As pericles said.."I have to get out more" :)

The discussion and intro of him is fascinating. Guys.. u all ought to read it
http://theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/21PbAr/Apl/FlewTheist.htm

Take care

>Christians are not concerned with excluding gays from society.

Nonsense. Evangelical Christians have been the most vehement opponents of gays achieving equal rights before the law. They've opposed every step from basic decriminalisation to the limited parnership rights that exist at a state level now. Many even opposed gays and lesbians getting equal access to domestic violence laws. If this isn't excluding gays from society, what is?

>What Christians object to is the homosexual lifestyle and their militant social agenda.

What, prey tell, is 'THE homosexual lifestyle'? There is no single homosexual lifestyle. There are as many homosexual lifestyles as there are homosexuals. I'm celibate by choice and into gardening, classic movies and 60s music; many others live entirely ordinary lives in which their only point of 'difference' is the sex of those they love. The 'lifestyle' that conservative Christians insist we all 'really' live is the visible commercial gay scene centred around young people, nightclubs and sex. It's as ludicrous as taking the straight singles scene and associated sex venues and insisting it represents a singular 'straight' lifestyle.

>'militant social agenda'.

You really have read too many pamphlets. Gay people are too diverse to share a single 'agenda'. The 'militants' you speak of (in a cheap effort to associate us with terrorists and rogue unions) are usually irrelevant relics from the 70s and small bands of middle class arts students who'll get over Foucault as soon as they need to start earning a living. The only 'agenda' just about all of us agree on is the right to be treated equally under the law -- under all laws.

>If we are intolerant of anything it is the militant homosexual lobby groups trying to redefine our law ...

'Our' law? Isn't the law for everyone? It's not just YOUR law, it's ours too.

>in order to grant gays rights that they do not deserve (eg. access to IVF, foster care, adoption etc)

According to whom? Human rights are indivisible. They apply to everyone. As the great preacher Martin Luther King said: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." A minority of gays and lesbians have been parenting for a long time now, and it's not going to stop. The studies that have emerged from reputable acedemic sources have shown these kids to turn out fine; to have suffered no ill-effects from being raised by a same-sex couple. Not surprisingly, studies that claim to show the opposite always seem to come from evangelical think tanks and are unavailable for peer reveiew. The latter stidies set out to make reality conform to scripture (or rather, a particularly narrow interpretation of scripture).

However, kids of same sex couples do suffer disadvantage because they're losing out on legal rights and are subject to uneccesary prejudice because conservative Christians insist on using the law to punish their parents.

>and their attempts to indoctrinate our children through various >school curricula and paint the gay lifestyle as a normal healthy >option

Here comes the standard conservative Christian attempt to conflate gays with paedophiles. To believe this 'recruitment' theory, you must also believe that your sexuality was a choice and that if it weren't for the intervention of Evangelical Christians wagging their fingers and censoring information you would have turned out fruity. Nonsense. The vast majority of people -- straight gay and bi alike -- report never having made a choice about their sexuality. People don't choose who they fall in live with; they just do.

Quite simply, what gays want from the education system is to ensure future generations don't have to go through the same crap we did.

>when in fact it leads to a lonely painful death at an early age either by AIDS, drug and alcohol abuse or by domestic violence (ie. one of multiple gay partners beats you up and kills you).

Homosexuality in itself doesn't make too many gay people succumb to drugs and alcohol or violent relationships. Just like the straight people who succumb to the same problems, poor self-esteem is most often at the root of the problem. In most cases the victims' harbour a delusional belief that they don't deserve to be loved. Surely you can understand many young gays would carry this very burden because of the homophobic attitudes in which they're brought up. Certainly, schools have no place exacerbating this problem. No kid should go through any school, no matter what its official dogma, without *also* being told the truth -- that many gay people can and do live happy and rewarding lives.

It's sadly ironic that it's the gay kids who come from conservative Christian homes and schools who suffer the most.

Forgive them, Father. They know not what they do.

Homo au Go-Go
It is likely that at least some lesbian couples will seek IVF treatment so as to have children.

Do you have any possible suggestions on solutions for the many moral, ethical, technical or health problems involving IVF (as mentioned previously), as these are very real problems.

Homo
we evangelicals have a view which will never accomodate the social or legal acceptance of homosexual behaviour. Its a simple fact. Read Romans 1 if u have any doubts. That is our guide.
We will only ever accept a homosexual who wishes to be helped out of that lifestyle. Homosexual behaviour is Sin. Rape is sin, Stealing is sin, Fraud is sin. Not all of those are illegal, but we regard them all as sin. We would not accept a person who is practicing fraud or is sexually molesting people in a habitual way. We would expect such individuals to repent. The love of Christ is there for each straying sheep.. He, is searching for the sheep. But when he finds it and it says "Get lost I'm quite happy here in THIS paddock" then the consequences are on the straying sheep. Dont blame or villify the Shepherd or his representatives.
For those who have convinced themselves that they 'ARE' this way I feel sorry for them. We all have urges which we can identify as 'wrong'. The difference is, we dont all carry them out, we seek to re-orient and reinforce other values that our consciences tell us are right. The very FACT of 'brain washing' as a reality of life, where downed pilots can be re-programmed to speak FOR their captors and even get to a point of believing that they are now 'right' is evidence if u need it that brain chemistry CAN be re-shuffled. But we can do it ourselves, by discipline, and yes, it DOES mean repressing some urges. Stiff cheddar.. we all have to do that.