AZMike

The Catholic Church is the original Big Tent. There is a wide range of beliefs, but if beliefs are very different, we don't kick people out of the faith to form their own schism, we keep them inside the tent and argue some more. There is no mechanism to remove someone from the religion, even excommunication is simply a discipline that deprives someone of the sacraments, always meant to be corrective and not meant to be permanent. I always feel there is a kinship or bond between me and every other Catholic, even if we disagree on most issues - we're still part of the same family (this applies to my feelings towards other Christian faiths as well). I don't even define myself as a liberal or a conservative anymore, I'm just a Catholic. That means I take some views that some define as very conservative (opposition to abortion, opposition to gay marriage) and some that others define as very liberal (opposition to capital punishment, defense of the rights of immigrants and the poor and homeless.) As the great Catholic writer R.A. Lafferty wrote in his 1971 novel The Flame is Green, "Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial, the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal..."

Just curious. The Catholic priesthood has a counterintuitive aspect in that older American priests and nuns/religious sisters (for a variety of reasons) tend to be have less adherence to orthodoxy and be more theologically liberal, and the younger priests coming out of the seminaries and the nuns overwhelmingly tend to be very orthodox, a phenomenon that has led many to speculate about the upcoming changes in the Church in the next 10 or 20 years.

Morals are instantiated in individuals, not societies.

How old was the pastor, incidentally?

I think that is "why Thou shalt not kill" in the Commandments is more properly rendered as "Thou shalt not murder" in many translations. Homicide is acceptable in some circumstances. Murder never is. Felonious murder (r-ṣ-ḥ, also transliterated retzach, ratzákh, ratsakh etc) is the word used in the original Hebrew, and is not used when describing acts of war, execution, etc.

No discipline need justify its first principles. In Euclidean geometry, we accept certain unprovable truths in order to do higher math. In morality, we accept the basic moral laws I outlined. To do otherwise is just mental masturbation. It's interesting that people who propose that all truths are relative (not singling you out here) object very strongly if you take their car keys without asking. People who propose that all moral systems are culturally based object very vociferously if you propose that anti-homosexual laws were perfectly moral until the laws began to change a decade or so ago, and that Thomas Jefferson's belief that male homosexuals should be castrated was perfectly moral, given the cultural standards of the time. I distrust any moral stance (or non-moral stance) that requires you to make a ridiculous assertion but to live your life as if you didn't really believe it.

I think the natural law that we are born with recognizes the verities of what the objective moral code is. There will be gray areas (I shouldn't take another human life, as life is precious, but may do so in defense of my own life), but most people and most healthy societies respect them as broad principles, even as they may disagree on the details. - Human life is precious and should be preserved. - One should honor and respect the Creator and holy things. - One should help and give to others who are in need. - One should honor one's parents and give them respect and obedience. - One should not take what is not their own. - One should not be needlessly cruel to another. - One should not take a life without good cause. - One should not force another into having sex. - Children are uniquely worthy of protection. and there are more. C.S. Lewis included a list of them, along with cites from the religious writing of different times and cultures, as an appendix to his book Men Without Chests, a very worthwhile examination of the idea that all moral values are relative. That this a rudimentary sense that we are born (and as a Christian, I say imbued) with, reflects that we are different than other animals, some of whom may share some aspects of that natural law (as fellow creations), but not to the extent that humans do.

This is an argument one hears often - that the condemnation by the early Church specifically related to pederasty, and not to the sort of loving, mutually supporting same-sex relationships between males or female adults. That is spurious, however. Roman males, including some quite powerful ones, entered into sexual relationships with other males of a similar status. Nero's homosexual dalliances were previously mentioned by Peregrinator. Julius Caesar's homosexual relationships with other powerful men (as well as women) was not only known, it was the subject of ribald gossip and poetry. He was "Every woman's husband and every man's wife" according to Curio, as described by Suetonius. Nicomedes, King of Bithynia ,was Caesar's most famous boyfriend, and the ditty about him ran "Whatever Bithynia and her lord possesed, Her lord who Caesar in his lust caressed!" Same-sex marriages did occur in classical Rome between adults, and both Martial and Juvenal reported them with disapproval. Roman law did not recognize same-sex marriages, but Juvenal worried that the increasing number of gay marriages could lead to official recognition - plus ca change, eh? Nero celebrated two marriages, once playing the feminine role (with a freed slave, Pythagoras [not the mathematician]) and once in the masculine role (with Sporus). There may have been another wedding where he played the role of bride. The Emperor Elagabalus also married his male partner. This prompted other members of his court to marry their partners, to honor and/or imitate him. Aside from marriage, there was a very active gay ("cinaedus") subculture in Rome that had its own districts, bathhouses, dinner parties, recognition signals, etc. Many of the emperors, including Caligula and Tiberius (the emperor at the time of Jesus' crucifixion), were involved in both adult and child sex with other males. The Jews, and one would presume Jesus, were aware of all these things happening, and would have considered them anathema, whether they involved teens or adults. So no, the argument that SSM would not have been familiar to Jesus or the apostles is nonsense. In addition, about 2/3 of all Christians in the world hold that the Bible is not the sum total of Jesus' teachings - there was a Church before there was a Bible, and there was an deposit of oral teachings from Jesus to the apostles (as even the Bible states) which can be found in the early documents of the Church (such as the Didache) and the writings of the early Church fathers. Those traditions which originated from Jesus, condemned homosexual behavior and specifically homosexual marriage (as Eusebius did), whether it involved adults or boys, so a sola scriptura argument or arguing from Jesus' apparent silence for homosexual behavior or marriage won't fly.

The HRC, which is the largest gay lobbying group, is a secular group that has consistently lobbied the the Catholic Church and the Knights of Columbus to stop using its funds to support traditional marriage initiatives (which have won in the majority of cases before being reversed by judges): http://www.hrc.org/nomexposed/section/the-catholic-hierarchys-devotion-to-fighting-marriage-equality http://www.hrc.org/press-releases/entry/catholic-church-and-nom-responsible-for-60-of-anti-equality-funding-in-four https://secure3.convio.net/hrc/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1507.They are free to say such things and to use their funds to attack the Church, but the Church and the KoC are equally free to express their opinions and use their funds to support their views - just as they did with nuclear disarmament, just as they did against capital punishment, just as they do for protection of the rights of undocumented immigrants, just as they do against abortion. Could you explain why you think the issue is only whether "churches aren't being asked to conduct gay marriages by outsiders," Moosetracker? I doubt that is a big priority for the LGBTs (yet, I suspect it will be as soon as other goals are secured). The reason I brought up the issue is the vulnerability to legal and extralegal harassment for any traditional CO that opposes gay leadership in the BSA, if BSA HQ allows the local option. You and Packsaddle have already agreed that such pressure will cause all COs to be subject to harassment that will make them change their beliefs, and that you feel this is acceptable and a good thing. So we seem to be in agreement on what the endgame of a local option is, we just disagree on whether that kind of social engineering / mob justice is an appropriate or a good thing to do to American citizens. In context, Pope Francis's remark was concerning a priest who was reported to have a same sex attraction but who said he was living a celibate life, in accordance with the teachings of the Church. Pope Francis is a very compassionate man, but he was referring to that man's position, not stating a policy that he chose not to judge whether homosexual behavior was sinful. He has done just that, and has referred to same sex marriage laws in Buenos Aires as a product of the devil, so I would't over-interpret his remark.

Certainly, one can start or join a boycott. Would you agree that the other tactics I mentioned are wrong, all of which have been employed against those who oppose SSM or simply don't want to participate in a SSM ceremony, or (now) agree to participate but inform those who made them do so that they have religious objections to SSM (as in the Wildflower Inn case) should lose their businesses and their reputations for a sincerely held belief that was the stated view of the President just a few years back? It is a brave new world, indeed. Should people who hold such views receive death threats, forged derogatory Yelp reviews, anonymous calls in the middle of the night, human rights board complaints, a barrage of defamatory tweets, demands to remove the CO's state tax exemption as a "discriminatory organization," hostile emails sent to one's business associates and clients - all of which have happened? That you and Moosetracker agree and seem to approve of using the local option to collapse all resistance to homosexual adult leadership within the BSA is part of your right to express your opinion - why would you deny it to others?

I appreciate your honesty. Yes, as you said, any businesses or charitable organizations associated with them will be subject to harassment / boycotts / threats if they fail to follow the new party line. Why is that so hard for people to admit? I did not name churches because you asked for examples of churches being pressured by outsiders, not by schisms within the churches. I did in fact name the largest LGBT pressure group in my reply, which is not affiliated with the Catholic Church, nor is it made up primarily of Catholics, which is pressuring bishops to accept same-sex marriage. Why did you skip over that, Moosetracker? Here's another example: The Bishop of San Francisco Diocese is currently the target of an attack by an outside because the church does not accept teachers who are in a same-sex marriage. An outside public relations firm (which, which refuses to disclose who is paying it, has paid demonstrators to picket and disrupt parish events The aforementioned Human Rights Campaign, a secular, non-Catholic LGBT pressure group, is among the groups paying for Sam Singer's company to pressure the bishop. (Singer's company also has represented a host of oil companies involved in environmental disasters, as well as the two largest SF newspapers.) http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/oil-company-hit-man-has-archbishop-cordileone-in-his-sights-96081/

I think it's apparent that you get in trouble when you simply voice your opinion, Moosetracker. That pizza joint family in Indiana never discriminated against a single gay person. They simply answered, honestly, what they would do in the hypothetical instance that they were ever asked to cater a gay wedding. You can be punished even for voicing your opinion in private, by (for instance) donating money to a political initiative to preserve traditional marriage definitions (a ballot initiative that passed handily, incidentally, so it's hard to argue that Brandon Eich was "enforcing his viewpoint" against the majority.) Certainly, the couple in Idaho that own the wedding chapel are being charged by the state for refusing to conduct a gay wedding ceremony. One could argue that they are running a commercial establishment rather than a church, but they are ordained ministers in their own denomination,and many church ministers in non-commercial religious churches accept payments and donations for conducting services. The Idaho ministers are looking at potential 6 month jail sentences and heavy fines. Certainly, the "Human Rights Campaign," a non-Catholic gay rights pressure and lobbying group, has prepared slick advertising materials to pressure Catholic bishops to accept gay marriage and end orthodox teaching on human sexuality. You can read their material here: http://www.hrc.org/files/assets/resources/The_Best_of_the_Worst.pdf Certainly, there are gay couples that are suing in England to force churches to marry homosexual couples: http://www.essexchronicle.co.uk/Gay-dads-set-sue-church-sex-marriage-opt/story-19597954-detail/story.html Certainly, Obama's Solicitor General knows that religious colleges, and ultimately churches, will be pressured not to teach against gay marriages or risk losing their tax-exempt status. he admitted that much during his exchange with Justice Alito last week while arguing on behalf of the administration for recognition of gay marriage as a constitutional right: JUSTICE ALITO: Well, in the Bob Jones case, the Court held that a college was not entitled to tax-exempt status if it opposed interracial marriage or interracial dating. So would the same apply to a university or a college if it opposed same-sex marriage? GENERAL VERRILLI: You know, I - I don’t think I can answer that question without knowing more specifics, but it’s certainly going to be an issue. I - don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito. It is - it is going to be an issue. Ah, but we are not just talking about churches being made to perform homosexual marriages. We are talking about the risks of publicly opposing LGBT pressure groups. We have businesses that have experienced all I described and more, not because they would not serve gay people, but simply because they would not participate in a particular kind of event: ■Masterpiece Cakeshop, Colorado: Owner Jack Phillips refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple in July. The Lakewood bakery has faced at least two protests, a Facebook-driven boycott, and a discrimination complaint from the state Attorney General that was scheduled for a hearing in September. Phillips has said he would rather close his bakeshop than compromise his Christian beliefs. (Sources: news reports including Washington Times and Huffington Post.) ■Victoria’s Cake Cottage, Iowa: Baker Victoria Childress denied service to a lesbian couple hoping to get married in 2011. The Des Moines baker was called a “bigot†and faced a protest and Facebook boycott but refused to budge, citing her Christian faith. (Sources: news reports including Washington Times and Huffington Post.) ■Fleur Cakes, Oregon: Pam Regentin, the owner of the Mount Hood-area cake shop, refused to make a cake for a lesbian couple earlier this year, sparking another Facebook boycott in May. (Sources: news reports including local television.) ■Liberty Ridge Farm, New York: The family-owned farm in mid-state New York is facing a human rights complaint after refusing to host a lesbian wedding in 2012. (Sources: local news sources here and here and the Huffington Post.) ■All Occasion Party Place, Texas: In February, the Fort Worth-based wedding venue declined to host a wedding reception for a gay couple. An online boycott has now been launched against the business. (Sources: local news and the Huffington Post.) ■Gortz Haus, Iowa: After refusing to host a gay wedding (reported in August), Betty Odgaard, the owner of the business, received threatening calls and e-mails and now must contend with a complaint the couple has filed with the state civil rights commission. (Sources: local news sources here and here and the Huffington Post.) ■Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, New Jersey: In 2012, a state judge ruled that a Methodist-owned events venue in Ocean Grove violated state law when it refused to host a gay wedding in 2007. Also, while the discrimination case was still pending, the facility lost its state tax exemption because it was deemed “no longer met the requirements as a place open to all members of the public,†the New York Timesreported. (Sources: The New York Times here and here, Philadelphia Inquirer, and LifeSiteNews.) ■Elane Photography, New Mexico: The state Supreme Court ruled in August that a New Mexico photography business owned by Elaine Huguenin and her husband Jon could not legally deny services to same-sex couples. The photographer had refused service for a lesbian commitment ceremony in 2006. One of the women had filed a complaint with the state Human Rights Commission, which ruled against the photographers in 2008, prompting an appeals process that led to the high court decision. It’s now unclear what will happen to the business. (Sources: press releases and news reports including the Catholic News Agency and the Santa Fe New Mexican. The case is discussed further below.) ■Arlene’s Flowers, Washington: A florist refused to provide flowers to a gay wedding last March and now owner Baronelle Stutzman is facing a lawsuit from the state Attorney General. (Sources: news reports including local television and the Associated Press.) ■Wildflower Inn, Vermont: A lesbian couple sued the Wildflower Inn under the state public accommodations law in 2011 after being told they could not have their wedding reception there. The owners were reportedly open to holding same-sex ceremonies as long as customers were notified that the events personally violated their Catholic faith. It wasn’t enough. The inn had to settle the case in 2012, paying a $10,000 fine and putting double that amount in a charitable trust. Also, the inn is no longer hosting weddings, although the decision reportedly was made before the settlement. (Sources: The New York Times and Huffington Post.) Oh brave new world.

Ah. They will be made to care. Once they have learned their lesson about the meaningless of religious convictions, all will be well. Unlikely they will get a payday out of it, BTW. GoFundMe, under pressure from gay activists, will no longer collect funds for any such people.

JoeBob makes a good point. The recent trend in gay culture has been to demonize anyone who fails to accept the idea that gay marriage, and homosexuality in general, must not simply be tolerated but accepted. Careers have been ruined, like Brendan Eich, former CEO of Mozilla, as well as local people who for religious or moral reasons don't want to be involved in gay marriages. Should a local option be granted, local COs would essentially be forced to accept gay leaders, or face the possibility of local anti-discrimination and civil rights complaints and lawsuits, commercial pressure, anonymous calls in the middle of the night, human rights board complaints, a barrage of defamatory tweets, blog posts, demands to remove the CO's state tax exemption as a "discriminatory organization," forged Yelp! reviews of their company, hostile emails sent to one's business associates and clients, picket lines, MoveOn.org petitions directed against their CO and them personally, boycott demands, death threats, etc., etc. It would be a fait accompli for the gay lobby, as they pick off each non-compliant CO until all cave, or drop out of scouting. It's likely that should such happen, the exodus from Scouting would not be because volunteers don't want to be involved in scouting with gay leaders, as much as their desire not to be character assassinated, and not to have their names pop up as a "homophobic bigot" whenever someone does a Google search for their name. The personal satisfaction one gets from volunteering in a youth organization is not sufficient to outweigh the sort of harassment that is commonplace now for anyone who gets on the wrong side of the LGBT community. Because of this I wouldn't stay in Scouting if the local option were to become policy. I would drop out within a minute. I wouldn't be alone, either.

Where are all these troops that have the exotic dancer troop leaders? Inquiring minds want to know!

Vatican City doesn't have Boy Scout troops, yet the Vatican has signed an agreement not to develop nuclear weapons. How is that fair?

I wanted to bleed energy off from the religion/evolution thread and let it die a natural death.

File under "You Will Be Made To Care." The New York State attorney general’s office has opened an inquiry into the Boy Scouts of America’s hiring practices to determine whether the group has discriminated as an employer against gays. The office will ask Wayne Brock, the chief scout executive of the Boy Scouts’ national organization, for detailed information on the group’s involvement in hiring decisions there and at its local councils. The request comes three weeks after the Boy Scouts’ New York City affiliate said it had hired a gay Eagle Scout to work in a scout camp this summer. The New York group, the Boy Scouts’ Greater New York Councils, said it had hired Pascal Tessier, an 18-year-old Eagle Scout who grew up in Kensington, Md., and is a student at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio. Over the last couple of years, he has become a prominent figure in the debate about gays in scouting. Ms. Clarke noted in the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times, that state law prohibits an employer from refusing to hire a person based on sexual orientation and also forbids discrimination on the job. “Entities that operate in or are registered to do business in the State of New York must comply with these anti-discrimination requirements,†she said in the letter. [...] She asked Mr. Brock for information about the national organization’s role in, and its ability to control, hiring decisions made by the local councils. The letter did not indicate how the attorney general’s office might seek to enforce the Human Rights Law against the Boy Scouts, but it did make note that the group derives “significant income from both merchandise sales at its Scout Shops, as well as through the operation of its 16 local councils in the state.†Read More Here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/21/nyregion/new-york-investigates-whether-boy-scouts-employment-practices-discriminated-against-gays.html?_r=0

Interesting forum bug I just noticed - apparently you can't put words in ALL CAPS in thread titles, so acronyms (LGBT & BSA) get converted into lower case with the first letter capitalized.

A pro-LGBT group has raised more than $50,000 to donate to the Boy Scouts of America if the organization ends its ban on gay adult leaders. Scouts for Equality launched its campaign on the crowdfunding site Challeng.org last week, calling on President Bob Gates and the Boy Scouts to lift the organization's ban on gay adults during its national meeting later this month. "If they meet this challenge and vote to end their ban on gay adults, the proceeds from this campaign will be donated straight to the Boy Scouts of America. But if they don't vote down the ban, your donation won't be processed," Scouts for Equality Executive Director Zach Wahls says in a video promoting the campaign. "When I was growing up in the Boy Scout, my moms taught me that being gay ha nothing to do with your ability to live by the promises of the Scout law," Wahls says. The campaign, which began with a $10,000 pledge from Scouts for Equality, had raised $53,285 by Friday morning. The BSA lifted its ban on gay youth in 2013 but continues to bar gay adult leaders. However, the Greater New York Councils of the Boy Scouts recently hired an openly gay man to serve as youth leader. Meanwhile, the New York attorney general's office has launched an investigation into whether the Boy Scouts' employment practices violate the state's ban on anti-gay discrimination SOURCE: http://www.towleroad.com/2015/05/lgbt-group-raises-over-50k-to-boy-scouts-for-ending-ban-on-gay-adults.html

Interesting article on the status of "youth clubs" in modern Russia, which seem to be more paramilitary in tone. We do some hatchet-throwing, but not as much knife-throwing as these boys do. https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/05/01/putins-boy-scout-army-russia-military-patriotic-clubs-ukraine/ Does anyone know if there are actual scouting groups in Russia that are affiliated with the world scouting movement? (This may be considered more appropriate under the International Scouting forum; if so, mods please feel free to move it.)