rancitas,

So do some recent papers mention a possible cure for this congenital anomaly ?

I am sure that science could find a way to reverse this irregularity in the brain or in the genetic mesh itself. God and even the pope will agree to this.

Would that be acceptable to you or would society wipe away a whole cultural colour with their superior intellect, subhuman love, and impeccable ethics?

Alternatively we could inject the rest of the population with the gay gene(s) and achieve homogenisation and complete acceptance from the anti-gay movement.

Wildcat,
You said: "The pastors seemingly dripping money, while the poor dumb congregation offers up one tenth of their income each week to help pay for it all".

If you take a calculator and work out 1/10 of the congreations income is placed into Church funds and a calculation is appropiated of the average personal offering and multiplied by ten then the pastor receives a reflection of what the income of the average of the members of his church. Assume 100 members earning $1,000 p w place $100 each into the offering and that $100 is multiplied by 10 it would mean the Pastor also receives $1,000 p w. He receives the average income of the offerings given by the congreation. The operations, charities and ministeries of the Church use the other $9,000.

However I know of no congreation that gives 1/10 of their income to the Church. Most put in their small change.

The Church for decades has been plagued by homosexuals abusing boys, is it any wonder they want to clean up this immoral behaviour. I say excommunicate practising homosexuals.

We have in our congreation former homosexuals who have abandoned the behaviour for purity and now make excellent members of the Church.

We have discussed the violent attacks the Church has made against gay people in Poland and Russia, together with neo Nazis. This violence was a direct affect from the Vatican's violent language to gay people.

Coach: "To say that Christians discriminate against sinners is not sensible."

That is such a pathetic lie. What the Polish and Russian Churches did this year was not just discriminate against gay people, their pogrom physically brutalised large groups of gay people in a precinct of Warsaw, and later in Moscow. These pogroms were violent and bloody. Look back at my previous postings for references and video footage.

"wanting an ever larger slice of the cake....Last time it was a piece of the marriage institution (legal union)".

Civil Union is nothing to do with the Church, it legal issue. If the Church insists upon imposing over Government, then it should pay taxes.

"the church will never force people to endure its teachings."

Churches forced Governments against allowing civil unions and forced Governments to disallow the universal anti-discrimination act. The Christian Church always forces all Australians to its teachings. Forces funding expensive private schools from tax payers money. Yet it still does not pay taxes.

"would society wipe away a whole cultural colour with their superior intellect, subhuman love, and impeccable ethics?"

This line is identical to a line in Adolph Hitler's Mien Kemp regarding the "untermensch" (subhumans) needing to be "wiped away" as Coach puts it.

Philo also shows the same laguage used in Poland: "The Church for decades has been plagued by homosexuals abusing boys, is it any wonder they want to clean up this immoral behaviour. I say excommunicate practising homosexuals."

Try dealing with your paedophiles and you will find the dominant problem. Otherwise most of the paedophiles in the church that remain are heterosexual, and the girls are at danger.

Language from the Vatican provoked violence in Poland and Russia. The subsequent language used by neo Nazis in these countries are identical to the language used above. We have the hate listed above, when will the violence begin as it usually does?

Fletch, could you go easy on the nazi comparisons.

The forces of intolerance around here divide roughly into three camps:

First, there’s the people who genuinely don’t know how much their attitudes cause real misery for sexual minorities. They’ve been brought up to think a certain way, and are only now beginning to question their values. Treat them gently, tell them about real examples of misery caused by intolerance.

The next group are the zealots. They believe that their god has told them to despise certain groups. Suffering happens, and when it does, hey, that’s god’s will. The best you can hope for from these people is that they will come to accept that they can live and let live.

The saddest and smallest group are the repressed homosexuals. Everything the first two groups say around here reinforces their self-loathing, and their determination to cloak their real selves with surface piety and condemnation of difference. In a more tolerant world people will not have to suffer they way they do, but today, unfortunately, nothing you can say will help them.

What we don’t have around here is evil war-mongering mass murderers. Ultimately, just about everyone here is attempting to speak the truth as they see it. No-one here deserves to be associated with the most evil acts that human beings have ever visited upon each other. Making those comparisons only offends them, entrenches their positions even further, and makes your arguments less convincing.

Coach "it is not the churches that make the rules but God himself."

Never a truer word spoken, and sorta makes obsolete the rant that permeates most discussions on theology. How on earth do all these people know what God wants?

Alchemist "Coach, your (sic) a wonderful example of a true monotheist, non-caring, lacking understanding, ignorant, paranoid and hypocritical"

Gosh, Alchemist. Which polytheism do you subscribe to? And do they advocate tolerance? Ledingham offers an example - "My careful reading of Scripture leads me to be no longer so confident that I know everything that God thinks about sexuality. Is it not just possible that something fresh is breaking forth from God's Word and that an inclusive attitude to those whose sexuality is different from ours may be a Christlike response." Ledingham could've included 'faith' alongside sexuality but the sentiment is worthy.

Good comment, w. Unfortunately, if it was left to the zealots, homo pogroms and burnings at the stake would again become a regular feature of Western culture. Violent tyranny is never far from the center in religion or politics.

Regarding priests and boys, there's a true word spoken in jest here: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27834