It seems that I prefer tall women. I'm average height for a guy but several of my girlfriends have been my height and a few taller than me.

I'm at a loss for words.

[[[hugs]]]

Yeah. I like it that people try to be respectful in how they present things, but its not cool when people are so PC they can't handle the truth.

Your memory is grey and leathery?

Your posts, taken at face value, are delightfully bizarre. To think that a person would actually think the things you say you think!

But I think they are contrived. I think you are much smarter than you represent yourself to be, and you are having fun saying silly things and seeing how people respond.

"Its the constitution"! hahaha

Don't hold your breath waiting for them to identify an individual gene.


The genetic influence on sexuality is likely to be due to many genes, and those genes could easily influence other things besides orientation.

So the idea of a 'gay gene' may be flawed, but this doesn't prevent there being a genetic influence in sexual orientation.

You were not born liking ice cream, but you were born with a strong biological predisposition to like sweet things, and to like creamy things.

Most humans are genetically predisposed to liking ice cream. Many of our more popular foods are so popular because they match our genetic predispositions.

I know, seriously!

When I first heard people arguing about whether being gay is a choice, I tried to imagine choosing not to be attracted to women.

I can't do it. I have an intrinsic, undeniable attraction to women.

Women are awesome!

I can't relate to the idea of gay guys not finding women attractive. It's like not finding sunsets or landscapes attractive.

But I can relate to the idea of 'feeling you were born with your attraction'.

This is some of what I had in mind. I'm still not happy with the maturity of overall christian culture, but they have come a long way the last few hundred years. Islam has the same potential. I have known Islamic students who were very devout, very serious about their religion, and have some of the highest personal values of anyone I know, as well as practicing a great deal of kindness, love, and tolerance.

Looking at the maturation of overall christian culture, and the maturation of certain islamic subcultures, its clear that Islamic culture on the whole also has the potential to mature - though I think it will take many generations at least.

It makes more sense to me to criticize violence, or to criticize religious influence in general, than to pretend that it is Islam specifically (and not Christianity) which is intrinsically violent.






Edit: I realized after posting that I missed the point of your post. Where is the vocal outcry within certain communities, communities that are clearly interwoven with the extremists. My post below doesn't speak to that, but to the muslims living peacefully in other parts of the world. I agree with the follow up poster - fear may play a role. Possibly also a sense of unification in fear and mistrust of foreign influences and threats.

------
Regarding the lack of outcry by the peaceful muslims in other parts of the world...

There are some seriously stupid ****ing atheists out there, saying and doing some really stupid things, while beating their chest and proudly proclaiming their atheism.

They have nothing to do with me. I'm not responsible for them. Only an idiot would think that all atheists are like them. I rarely feel the least bit move to criticize them, or pro-actively disown them. They are idiots first, and atheist by accident.

When I was vegan, I felt the same way about some vegans.

I also don't feel at all responsible for white racists, despite being white myself.

The sensible Muslims I know just do not identify, at all, with the extremists. They have nothing to do with them. The way they see the division within islam, they don't even see them as being from the same religion.

Imagine there were a hundred million christians who believed exactly what those wing nut westboro baptists believe. I think there would still be millions of regular christians who would just say "But...they're crazy. I don't need to apologize or explain or make sure you know that I criticize them.... They have nothing to do with us. "

Yes, and there was a time when many Christians didn't realize that burning witches wasn't christian, and having slaves wasn't christian, or that bombing abortion clinics wasn't christian.

While I would love for a billion Islamic youth to reject their religion wholesale, it can be sufficient for people to simply reject the fundamentalist form of their religion.

But... but... its just easier to hate a whole culture.

When she said "modern KKK" I took it to mean "think of the historical KKK, at the high point of their horrifying, righteous, violent hate mongering - and think of it happening in modern times".


I do not think she meant "think of the KKK as it exists in modern times".

Either interpretation is consistent with how people use the phrase "think of modern [insert historically significant group that technically still exists]"

A righteous lock-down!

With far too many passionate bigots helping to carry the banner!

The anti-gay beliefs that some people strikes me as a social disease.

Only in the same sense that people who didn't want women to vote "had to conform" to allowing women to vote.

People who want same sex marriage are seeking to end a form of social injustice.

If you don't want same sex marriage, don't get one.

The fact that the anti-marriage (of gays) people see this as 'having to conform' just gives evidence to the fact that they think its okay for their prejudice to rule over other peoples personal lives.

It seems to me that the religious community has built up an thorough, logical-seeming (but ultimately illogical) justifications for being against gay marriage, which hang on such vital concerns as 'the survival of the human race'.

I was thinking 'within a few decades'. It isn't just a matter of doing a word substitution in a document. For the secretary it is, but not for the legislative body. This is a much larger undertaking than you seem to allow for.



Can you be more specific?





I'm not sure what your point is. I thought the purpose of changing the law to treat civil unions as the law currently treats marriage is to protect the rights of gays in lifelong partnership while defining marriage based on gender. In which case, we need to do this all over the country for this to make sense. I'd wager that most towns over 500-1,000 people have at least one gay couple who would like to get married.



I thought all of the legally relevant details were supposed to be the same?



Oh, no no no, its super easy to DRAFT - its just super hard to actually get all of the legislative bodies to actually DO IT the way we are describing.

True.



True. Also, there is a great deal of unrelenting criticism of the Israeli state which has no such roots.



False.



True for some people. There is propaganda and distortion on all sides.

None of the above changes the fact that there are pro-Israeli people who will not hesitate to play the racism card.

You talk about 'lies' and 'big picture' and the 'whole truth' - can you see that reasonable people can have different positions based on their different values and different sets of info they have? And that this is sometimes related to racism (including pro-Israel racism), and sometimes it has nothing to do with racism? And that its therefore morally wrong to assume that racism plays a role, without specific evidence for it?




Do you actually think that you get labelled a racist only by being a racist? Have you not seen people label others anti-semite simply for disagreeing with them?