Funny to see all these people judging other people and preaching fire and brimstone on these blogs. They range from the very old to the very young. What’s rather interesting about these same people is how many will deny science and what many others state just because 1 book written over 4000 years ago states its wrong.
Now lets compare that mindset of religious belief to the mindset of the education of our children. If your child went to school and brought home a text book published in 1960, would you not say that the book is outdated and we have learned much since then? I would hope you would, but many here just don’t see it that way. Nope that book is law and I will deny anything that proves it wrong and outdated.
What’s even more baffling about these people and their beliefs is how they choose to ignore almost every other law in that book but focus on one thing – homosexuality.
There I said it – HOMOSEXUALITY – HOW TABOO OF ME?!?!?!
OOOH – THE BOOGEYMAN OF REALITY!!!!!
Ok fine, you want to keep that mindset; lets focus on the other laws and answer these questions.
If the laws of this book are all written in stone for your mindset, how come you do not crucify men that go to church who have had testicular cancer? You probably didn’t know it but did you know that same book prohibits anyone with broken testicles to come close to God.
You got it – that same God you think that hates homosexuals so much, hates people with broken testicles too. Since I know you don’t know this I am listing it here for you:
For whatever man he is that has a blemish, he shall not draw near: a blind man, or a lame, or he who has a flat nose, or any deformity, or a man who has an injured foot, or an injured hand, or hunchbacked, or a dwarf, or one who has a defect in his eye, or an itching disease, or scabs, or who has damaged testicles; no man of the seed of Aaron the priest who has a blemish, shall come near to offer the offerings of Yahweh made by fire. Since he has a blemish, he shall not come near to offer the bread of his God.
First off, your all hypocrites to ignore this passage right here because not only do I see handicapped parking at churches, people wearing glasses that go to church, hell, I have seen people walk into churches with crutches, or go in the church in a wheelchair. How dare you single out one group of people to make yourselves look better? If this loving God is so worried about my testicles, what kind of God is he, REALLY???? Why do you not stone people who cheat on their spouses? Why do you not stone unruly children and rid our selves of all the juvenile detention centers, and why do you not come here to Dearborn and kill all the Muslims because they are non-believers???? You got it, the book of Deuteronomy states to kill the people of neighboring villages if they don’t believe in what you believe in.
If any of you actually read Leviticus or any other book in the bible for that matter, and actually comprehended it, you would understand that these books make everyone a sinner and everyone unworthy to enter the temple of God. The books were written to show the people they needed a messiah, not millions of little god wannabe’s going around and making other peoples lives miserable, especially those that were born different than you. You would also think that if this were the most unholy of abominations, it would have been written in stone with the other 10 commandments, but no, these laws were written by man, for man.
One last note: If you really believe God put you here 6000 years ago and skipped the whole evolution process, you would think he gave you a brain to learn and advance your mindset; not close it off indefinitely!
When you stand in front of your God, will you tell him you were a loving human being because you wanted to be, or because you had to be?
The Bible contains 6 admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love heterosexuals. It’s just that they need more supervision.
With Maine being the 31st state to make gay marriage illegal it makes you wonder if Americans truly love freedom and if they even believe in the words “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. You would think that after 233 years of existence, the people of this country would have moved on from age old hate, but nope, you got it, the people are just as ignorant today as they were 4000 years ago holding on to discrimination to oppress a minority because they are just different.
Now that Americans are showing their true colors, whose rights should we go after next? Should we start voting on who can and cannot have children? Should your fellow American trample on your private relationship because they do not approve of it? There are many things I alone can come up with to take away the liberties of another, but when do we say enough is enough and start living by the standards this country is supposed to stand for – Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
We are not the United States of America, but the United States of Bigots. How dare anyone vote to write discrimination into our constitution? Are you going to stand idle behind these unjust acts and pretend that this hate will never be directed towards you? In the past few weeks, I have heard many complain that the Muslim religion will take over this country and that America will one day be under Sharia law, but obviously you want this if you have voted against gay marriage, you alone are opening the doors for religious rule that will destroy all the freedoms in this country, you abuse every single day!
The phrase “pursuit of happiness” appeared in the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), which focused on an anti-miscegenation statute. Chief Justice Warren wrote: “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”
The phrase was also used in Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923), which is seen as the seminal case interpreting the “liberty” interest of the Due Process clause of the fourteenth amendment as guaranteeing, among other things, a right to the pursuit of happiness, and, consequently, a right to privacy.
Definitions
Life: the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body
Liberty: the power to do as one pleases; freedom from arbitrary or despotic control
Happiness: a pleasurable or satisfying experience
The Declaration of Independence was written to explain why the colonists had the right to revolt against England and seek its independence. The colonists had no representation and their voices were not heard in their government.
Many believe that health care should not be a right, but a privilege or a luxury, I think much differently. If you look at the standard definition above, it states that life is a vital and functional being. Without proper health care for many, they would in turn be dead! Simple isn’t it? Well maybe for some, but for others they need a little more clarification. Here are 2 more definitions on why health care is not a privilege.
Vital: critical; urgently needed; absolutely necessary
Functional: fit or ready for use or service
Now many state that if health insurance was a right it would have been written into the constitution. I beg to differ. Health insurance was first created in the 1920’s at a hospital in Dallas and they called it “The Blues” to help poor people. This company later became Blue Cross Blue Shield. So if democracy is more of an idea than a static law, how come the constitution has been amended on several occasions to fit the needs of the people at the time? Here are a few examples. We now have The Federal Reserve, slavery has been abolished, women have the right to vote, blacks have equal rights, and many other things we now know as amendments.
Many people scream and yell, usually without much merit, that it is government control, yet many believe it is government protection. Without proper and affordable health care, or the denial of services by the health care cartels, tell me how will you have life if you are left to die, better yet, where is your pursuit of happiness when you are left handicapped and immobile? Where is the pursuit of happiness when these corporate behemoths are nickel and diming you to death? Well, there isn’t any.
We can also go a step further with gay marriage. Where is the pursuit of happiness when many are fighting to write them out of the constitution with blatant discrimination while they enjoy their federal government rights of tax breaks and legal protections? Many feel it is a religious right, yet in reality, it is first a federal right because they must first be licensed by the government to get married. They must also go to the government to either annul or divorce completely in the eyes of the law. If marriage was a religious right, wouldn’t they be getting divorced in a church instead of the court of law?
What if the homosexuals fought to take away your right to worship, would you not be screaming foul and state that it is your constitutional right to worship in the way you see fit? Or do you sit with a blind eye and say why should I care, it isn’t happening to me?
Many people believe in survival of the fittest, I call them the biggest fools. These fools that want to live that way fail to realize that without the medical advances some enjoy today, they probably would not be here because I bet you any money their parents or grandparents probably had some life saving surgery or medication. Yet the dumb choose to stay dumb.
So why do you hate freedom? Why are you not fighting to keep freedom intact for all and not just some?
Some people have commented about the recent incident in Florida where five boys set fire to another. They expressed their “outrage” about why isn’t it called a hate crime when the victim is white. Details revealed that this was not a “hate crime” and that race had nothing to do with the incident.
“Crimes of hatred and prejudice-from lynchings to cross burnings to vandalism of synagogues… the term “hate crime” did not enter the nation’s vocabulary until the 1980s, when emerging hate groups like the Skinheads launched a wave of bias-related crime. The FBI began investigating what we now call hate crimes as far back as the early 1920s, when we opened our first Ku Klux Klan case. Today, we remain dedicated to working with state and local authorities to prevent these crimes and to bring to justice those who commit them.”
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 requires the United States Sentencing Commission to increase the penalties for hate crimes committed on the basis of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or sex of any person. In 1995, the Sentencing Commission implemented these guidelines, which only apply to federal crimes. Following the passage of the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990 and at the request of the Attorney General, the FBI has gathered and published hate crime statistics every year since 1992.
The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, passed as the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, expands existing federal hate crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability, and drops the prerequisite that the victim be engaged in a federally-protected activity. The language passed refers to “Crimes of Violence.” It specifically includes transgendered individuals and makes it explicit that the law does not restrict people’s freedom of speech or association.
Basis of the hate crimes reported in 2007 (FBI data) :
| Basis of Crime | % of Crimes Reported | Sub-Category | % of Category |
| Race | 52% | Anti-black | 69% |
| Ethnicity | 14% | Anti-Hispanic | 62% |
| Religion | 17% | Anti-Jewish | 69% |
| Sexual Orientation | 16% | Anti-LGBT | 98% |
| Disability | < 1% |
Note: The FBI has noticed a 30% increase of crimes against the homeless since 1999, 75% of which were perpetrated by persons under the age of 25.
Per Capita rate of hate crimes, 2005 (FBI data)
| Sexual Orientation | Incidents | Adult Population | Incidents per million |
| Gays | 621 | ||
| Lesbians | 155 | ||
| Homosexual | 195 | ||
| Total | 971 | 10.9 mil | 89.1 |
| Bisexual | 25 | 6.5 | 3.95 |
| Heterosexual | 21 | 200.4 | .10 |
- Data based on 2005 FBI hate crime report assumes adult population of 217.8 million.
- Assumes 92% of all adults are heterosexual, 5% are homosexual and 3% bisexual.
Note: Some religious and social conservatives with their own anti-LGBT agendas, believe this figure is much lower. Some LGBT groups and their supporters believe the percentage is much higher. - Assumes all victims were adults, 18 or older.
- Based on FBI data, a homosexual is about 850 times more likely to be the victim of a hate crime motivated by his/her sexual orientation than is a heterosexual.
Note: The number of reported hate crimes in 2007 is 8% higher than the 2005 figures.
How accurate are these figures?
One study of gay, lesbian and bisexual adults showed that 41% reported being a victim of a hate crime at sometime during their life after the age of 16. Assuming that 8% of all adults are LGBT, at the time of the study, this means that about 7,000,000 had been victimized during their lifetime out of a total of about 17,000,000,000 individuals. This annualizes to at least 100,000 hate crimes against LGBTs per year (7,000,000 divided by 60 years).
Even this number may be a low estimate. I have been the subject of anti-gay hate crimes on three separate occasions and physical and verbal assaults twice, but they were either not reported or not treated by law enforcement as hate crimes. Many times, even if the crime is reported, the police may refuse to recognize it as such, hence the provisions in the new law, or had no law on the books in their jurisdiction to do so.
Because only about 1,500 hate crimes based on sexual orientation are actually recorded by police per year on average, one must conclude that a miniscule percentage of hate crimes are actually reported to the police by gays and lesbians.
Regarding enhanced penalties for hate crimes, according to former Chief Justice Rehnquist: “this conduct is thought to inflict greater individual and societal harm…. bias-motivated crimes are more likely to provoke retaliatory crimes, inflict distinct emotional harms on their victims, and incite community unrest.”
Some people object to penalty-enhancement and federal prosecution laws because they believe they offer preferred protection to certain individuals over others, saying that “all crimes are hate crimes.” This is categorically not true. Mugging someone at random to steal a wallet or purse for monetary gain is not a hate crime. Beating someone senseless because of who they are is.
