i used to believe homeschooling was a good idea too until i got involved in it at our local church school. if you allow home schooling how do you protect the children from the ignorance of parents who insist on teaching things like: the earth is only 6000 years old, some unseen deity picked up a handful of clay and breathed on it and created man, a global flood once killed every living thing on earth except for 8 who built a big boat and rode out the flood for a year with 2 of every species of animal on earth on that boat, someday everybody in graves will come alive again, someday one man will take control of the whole earth(the antichrist) ,all scientists who believe in evolution are in a conspiracy to deny god. dont say these things will not happen because they happen now in my town. i agree that sex ed should be age appropriate but to allow a few religious nutcases dictate what will be taught takes us down to the level of the muslim religious nutcases.
So basically, all these religions should be declared terrorist organisations. It s necessary to point out, hate filled stupidity is the objective of these groups, and given half a chance they would most certainly turn into murderous rampaging mobs. Its entirely predictable. Your approach regarding what should or shouldnt be "free speech" is back to front, surely, where on the one hand any manner of incitement is justified, which is GUARANTEED to cause voilence/crime etc-yet as anyone knows, when the inevitable results are seen its always to late. So how does that protect peoples rights?
Is there any doubt, that these same Christians, in an earlier time in this country would have burned, hung or stoned to death homosexuals all in the name of a loving and forgiving God?
yes there is a doubt. Now how about proving your conjecture. We are not talking about the salem witch trials, I would like to see some scholarship here.
"i used to believe homeschooling was a good idea too until i got involved in it at our local church school. if you allow home schooling how do you protect the children from the ignorance of parents who insist on teaching things like: the earth is only 6000 years old, some unseen deity picked up a handful of clay and breathed on it and created man, a global flood once killed every living thing on earth except for 8 who built a big boat and rode out the flood for a year with 2 of every species of animal on earth on that boat, someday everybody in graves will come alive again, someday one man will take control of the whole earth(the antichrist) ,all scientists who believe in evolution are in a conspiracy to deny god." all those things can and do happen. that's sad, but it's sad that many parents just plain suck. they still have parental rights. and i'm all about rights. you don't strip peoples rights as parents just because they have (what i think ) are wacky beliefs. not to get on a tangent here... but... i am way more concerned about parents who abandon their kids, kids growing up in meth labhouses, kids that are the subject of sexual abuse, etc. etc. etc. than kids that might have their parents teach them beliefs that i happen to think are wacky. it IS true that if kids have a common schooling experience, which they do have to some extent in public school, that a least a baseline is set. parents can still teach the wacky in the home (i am reminded of a scene from the movie "carrie" but i digress... regardless, parental rights - the right to raise one's child within one's own belief system are (or should be) sacrosanct in our society. the fact that some kids might get homeschooled to believe some rather silly things is a price we (and they) may pay. hey, are john travolta's kids suffering being brought up with all those beliefs about scientology and evil aliens in our brains? mebbe also, homeschooling does have criteria as to curriculum elemetns, etc. that must be met and that is darn good. i think the empirical evidence for the strength of homeschooling is pretty darn good. those kids constantly whoop-*ss in spelling bees, and science bees and the like can some parents use homeschooling to indoctrinate their kids in wacky belief structure? yes that sux. most of the opposition ot homeschooling (california comes to mind) came from very statist ideas by teacher's unions (mostly $$$ bottom line ideas as well) and the whole System Man (tm) trying to usurp parental rights. they are the teachers darnit, and only THEY can have the right to teach kids. i found that immensely offensive and repressive of liberty.
No, all religions are not terrorists organizations. Individuals can congregate to form terrorists organizations and a few actually put their money where their mouth is. Hate filled stupidity is not the point of religious organizations and if given any chance only a small percentage would turn to terrorism. All religions have a track record (past and current) of dubious acts in the name of said religion which is usually perpetrated by a small radical minority trying to force their morals and beliefs on other "non belivers". So how do peoples rights get protected? Follow the guidelines set forth by the US constitution. One of the biggest problems is that people have been granted too many "rights" The biggest one is the implied right to not be offended at any point by a person or group of another mindset. That idealogy is total garbage. You cannot accept the right of freedom of speech and expresion without also accepting the you have no "right" to not be offended by words. The Constitution does grant the right of freedom of religion but not the freedom from religion. Unfortunately, the results of inceitment are seen too late in the form of physical actions which are often retaliatory. In which case it is the responsibility of law enforcement to protect you and for you to protect yourself within the bounds of the law. This is one of the reasons I am against many forms of gun control since it does not allow you to protect yourself or those you know in the event law enforcement does not. As a corollary, you do have the right to self defense (from physical actions) and any law the restricts this right is a downright shame to our system. It truly does suck that some people are intollerant and feel the need to impose their beliefs on others through speech. However this is the price we must pay to live in a free society.
teaching sex in public schools-- What an innocuous way of describing what the agenda really is? If it were only the sex ed that taught children about how children are made and how they can avoid diseases and preganancies including birth control and abstinence, the subject would be less controversial. Perhaps still controvesial because there is the argument that parents should be the ones educating but ... The courses that have made the press have started to teach alternative lifestyles, tolerance and value judgments about those life styles. I see no place for that type of moral indoctrination in public schools. Why would radical agendas be o.k. and not conservative teachings. Is it not better to just leave morals to the parents?
"When you say...you [gay Americans] are not a group of people who need special protection. You do well economically. You are an elite. That is precisely the argument that has been made in behalf of the worst kind of discrimination against Jewish people." - United States Senator Paul Wellstone, July 29, 1994 - Responding to a religious right spokesman's anti-gay testimony To see the parallels between the Nazi hatred of Jews and current hatred of gays by the religious right, go to this website: http://www.hatecrime.org/subpages/hitler/hitler.html
Burtakus; "Hate filled stupidity is not the point of religious organizations and if given any chance only a small percentage would turn to terrorism. All religions have a track record (past and current) of dubious acts in the name of said religion which is usually perpetrated by a small radical minority trying to force their morals and beliefs on other "non belivers". Ok, so what happens when you provide a small minority, much less a big, stupid one, the opportunity to influence the rest in such a manner as to acheive precisely the same results. Murder , torture, genocide, much less warfare, mass murder, are very far from "dubious". They didnt force anything, the mob mentality religion breeds has always been the stumbling block to human development. To jem, salem witch trials be damned, that was a sideshow in the collective worldwide hysteria of psychopathic fundamentalist religion: I dont know how you can expect scholarship, given theology has no place in what should be simple historical and scientific arguments. Before anyone trolls out the marxism of pol pot, and its results, ITS THE SAME THING, its still a CULT that sanctifies hatred, murder, in the name of some junk NOBODY has any say in, due to the IMPERVIOUS ignorance of anyone, Except, those holier than thou You got lousy cabbage.
zzz, I fail to see how whether one is in the majority or minority is relevant to the exercise of a basic First Amendment right. In fact, I'm relatively sure these oppressed Christians are not in the majority on their campus. It's precisely because their opinions are rejected by the majority that they require constitutional protection. You don't need the First Amendment to voice an opinion everyone agrees with. There is not a constitutional right to avoid being offended or having one's feelings hurt. It is only a PC law, enacted by the PC facists who control universities to prevent rational discussion of issues. In Orwellian fashion, they define dissenting opinion as hate speech or discrimination, even though it is in fact constitutionally protected religious expression. This is a variation of the left's typical tactic to avoid debate of issues on which the public disagrees with them. Opposition to race quotas becomes racism, opposition to illegal immigration becomes xenophobia, moral reservations about the radical homosexual agenda beome homophobia. Christians do not hate homosexuals, any more than they hate other people who engage in other sinful conduct. It's the conduct that is objectionable, not the person. The person always has Salvation open to them.