Rex is right Gekko, the Catholic Church is very different to other voluntary organisations, it is wealthy, influential and powerful. The riots mentioned earlier in Poland are an extreme example of just how damaging its influence can be.

REX.... e.g. greens and democracts with any issue they feel strongly about.. forcing it on US.

How do you feel when balance of power is used for an issue you LIKE ?

I always worry about the impact of small groups and pressure lobbies in a democracy for presicely that reason.

How do you feel about ethnic ghettos ? about Immigration from politically aware countries, where the new migrants translate that political skill into using our own system for THEIR benefit and for the exclusion or reduction of ours ?

When it comes to judgemental language and homosexual behavior, the problem is, how do you describe the willful premeditated killing of another human being as anything other than 'murder' ?

Sin, is sin, and there is no way to sugar coat the pill. I suggest that rather than call unrepentant homosexual people 'an evil cancer on society' as a Swedish pastor did and ended up in Jail for a while on 'hate crime' laws; we instead limit ourselves to the biblical language as follows:

They have:

1/ Exchanged the truth about God for a lie.
2/ Have sinful desires.
3/ Are degrading their bodies with one another.
4/ Have abandoned natural relations
5/ Are consumed with lust for their own kind.
6/ Are committing indecent degrading acts.
7/ Are perverted.
8/ Will receive the due penalty for all that.

As long as we don't exceed this, we are on safe ground. (Romans 1:20etc)

I cannot see how any body calling itself 'Church' can entertain active homosexual behavior.

On the Church's being Tax Free. For goodness sake man, most are struggling to pay their pastor even a semblance of a living wage. We give a lot to missions, and what is given is given from ALREADY TAXED money, i.e. our own pockets. Would you want to tax funds destined for a home being built for Ugandan aids orphans ? We are sending a self supporting team to Uganda next month.

Grey
"It is unhealthy and destructive to encourage people to live in such lifestyles"
And as we all know those living an unhealthy and destructive lifestyle should should be persecuted...shouldn't they Grey?

So I declare that the Fundamentalist christian lifestyle is unhealthy & destructive. After all I have as just as much evidence as grey has...NONE!

Or are you going to quote those anti-gay right wing sites as reliable sources again Mr. Grey

The FACT is that the homosexual lifestyle {please define what you mean by this Grey] is no more or less unhealthy than a heterosexual lifestyle. Both are caused by genetics. Both are involved with sex. Something that most fundamentalists seem hung up on.
Why is that by the way? The Gospels Jesus says that it ISN'T what goes into a man that makes him unclean but what comes out of him. You know, hatred, hypocracy, that sort of thing.

BD, Coach, Grey

I challenge you all. Read this site.

http://www.hatecrime.org/subpages/hitler/hitler.html

And notice the "coincidences" Then you make your usual speeches.

I have no objection to the charitable arms of religious organisations getting tax breaks. And it may surprise you, but I give modest financial support to two Christian charities, one of them Catholic. I do it because I admire what these two charitable organisations do, that's all.

But that doesn't give me the right to preach to anyone about what they should or should not do in order to achieve salvation and/or avoid damnation. And it certainly doesn't give me the right to denigrate gay people who are doing no harm to themselves, to me, or to anyone else. [Unless we consider people like you who may claim to be suffering psychologically, because they can't keep their minds off what they may imagine to be other peoples' sex lives.]

If you want to read old, unsubstantiated documents and regard them as God's word, then go for it. But don't expect everyone else to be as gullible as you are. "we are on safe ground. (Romans 1:20etc)"
Safe ground indeed!

As for a politician using a balance of power situation to achieve a result, then I have no objection if the intention is to give people a reasonable choice over matters which are no business of the government anyway and most certainly no business of religious organisations. Or to give people the choice of voluntary euthanasia, which about 80% of Australians have consistently been in favour of for many years, but which has been denied to them just to please a selfish minority bunch of people like you. Or to give people who are currently dying of incurable diseases a chance of living through stem cell research, something else which is blocked to suit your mob.

And if your pastors are struggling to make a living, then maybe their services are not wanted by a sufficient number of clients. Is that in itself justification for the taxpayers to chip in?

runner, "No one forces anyone to go to this church or any other church. Could you imagine if one of the churches tried to tell the organisers of the mardi gras how to run their affairs."

Plenty of christian parents force their kids to attend their church, go to schools where their religion is rammed down their throats, listen to christain music at home and in the church, sit in on a variety of gospel presentations and all the rest of the deliberate indoctrination of the young.

Being neither a Sydney resident nor gay I don't have first hand knowledge of this but over the years I have seen plenty to suggest that church representatives do try to tell organisers of the mardi gras how to run their affairs. In particular Fred Nile comes strongly to mind for his attempts to impose his views of morality on others. I've not seen any evidence of widespread censure from the church for his efforts, rather widespread support.

Likewise on these forums plenty of evidence of christains trying to tell gays (muslims, women, non christians etc) how to run their affairs speaking not as humans beings participating in debate but rather as the representatives of God handing down decrees from on high.

Have a read of some of the posts by christains and try and put yourself in the shoes of somebody who does not recognise the "authority" of the christain god and you'll get the picture.

What you are suggesting chrisians don't do are exactly the things they do.

R0bert