Conservatives insist the rest of us live by their rules

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I agree with you that conservative states and nations are morally wrong to have discriminatory marriage laws. I do think there's a strong case for saying it is, legally, an issue to be deferred to individual states in the US.


The Fourteenth Amendment says all government privileges and protections must be extended to all citizens equally. Marriage provides privileges and protections (particularly in the US where it is codified in the tax system, for example). Therefore, the Supreme Court ruled it is illegal to not offer marriage for homosexuals.

I don't know what this will mean in practice in each state. It is possible, for example, that states will give religious leaders the right to choose who they marry, with states offering secular weddings to same-sex couples to ensure they can access the benefits of marriage. Perhaps some states will even go as far as the United Kingdom and ban religious groups from conducting legal marriages between same-sex couples to prevent them from facing federal lawsuits (I don't like this policy although I do think religious groups should have the right to opt out, their views are sincere even if they are ridiculous and ultimately I doubt many homosexual people want to be married by homophobic bigots).

The U.S. Supreme Court opinion re-affirmed the right of churches under the First Amendment to the Constitution for the United States of America to accommodate (or not) those same-sex couples who wish to be married by a church.


This wouldn't work in the United States and would actually violate the First Amendment.

Or even better, do what Sweden does and prosecute pastors for hate speech if they recite Leviticus 18 in their sermons.

evolution is just a theory not a fact. or they wouldn't call it a theory. they wouldn't be spending millions trying to prove it. also its only science to you not to others. so you have no right to force it on others as they have right force their beliefs on you. only difference is you believe yours so right and your being right is so beyond others right to choice.

if your so concerned, why don't you or Obamacare pay for condoms. they cost less then a dollar each and could prevent pregnancies far cheaper then abortion. so why is't that paid for. why is one type of prevention(female) paid but the other male isn't? is a woman's right to chose more important then a mans? what about those males and yes females who can't afford condoms?

As for Texas, here is the truth about Greg Abbott (like Rick Perry before him):

1. He blamed the recession on the Jews.
2. He wants to keep the death penalty so he can legally kill as many black people as possible.
3. He supported the War on Terror because he "wanted to see brown people die"
4. When the decision was made to keep Guantanamo open, he whined because it didn't go far enough (i.e. he wanted to see Auschwitz reopened)
5. He wants to oppress people (think about it: we can't buy alcohol on Sundays, some places here still ban dancing, we have to wear clothes, he won't make fornication and oral sex mandatory, I've never heard him say the F-word on live TV, we can't smoke weed, we can't do anything even remotely amusing...the list goes on).

But that said, I am not liberal by any means either. Every time asinine laws are passed, whether they be the colossal freedom grabs by the right, or the colossal salary grabs by the left, my own political views get closer and closer to anarchy.

Evolution is a scientific theory, which in layman's means it's a fact(a theory in science is something that can be tested over and over and still come out the same). it's not a matter of belief, it just is.
As I just mentioned, birth control is used for more than just abortions.

here's some other benefits that birth control pills provide:

Actually, the use of the word "theory" in this case is the same sort of science speak as the "theory of electricity." It doesn't mean evolution isn't proven, just as one can hardly say that electricity hasn't been proven to exist.

You are conflating "theory" with "hypothesis".

Scientists don't use the word "theory" the way that non-scientific people do. You could argue that this is splitting hairs, but what i mean is that when you say "evolution is just a theory" you are implying that someone else thinks that "theory" means what you think it means, and you are factually incorrect on that point.

Hypothesis is an idea that hasn't been proven yet. Which is to say, like in mathematics, there isn't a set of known facts that make the hypothesis true.

Once there is a body of data supporting the hypothesis - that is to say, that we have collected and observed facts that substantially support the hypothesis as true, it can become theory.

This is not to say that any or all scientific theories are expected to be true for all applications. The nature of theory is that it becomes a framework for observations and facts.

As observations and facts are collected and organized around a theory, this can cause the theory to change -- either to become smaller or broader in scope.

You could say for example that gravity causes solid objects to fall to the earth. But then we see that Lexus has demonstrated a functional hoverboard (true!) -- is the lexus hoverboard an anti-gravity device? No, it turns out that it only works if you keep the liquid nitrogen topped up and even then it only works when positioned over permanent magnets.

This would naturally cause you to have to have a better explanation of the theory of gravity than "stuff falls to the earth".

It doesn't mean that stuff doesn't, generally, fall to the earth.

Every time we learn something about the application of a scientific theory, that gets added to the big bag we call theory. Over time that bag gets bigger and changes shape, and there can be findings that cause other items to be removed from that bag.

The theory of evolution is the basis of all biological sciences. It has an enormous bag of findings backing it up. It allows us to do a lot of good science and apply what we learn to improve our situation on this earth, and you benefit from it.

In science, we change our minds when the evidence demands it. It's possible -- I mean, on the galactic time scale of trillions of years there is a non-zero chance (which is still pretty close to zero) -- that some evidence may crop up that overturns the theory of evolution.

But it would have to be pretty extraordinary. it would have to refute an awful lot of observations and facts. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

For example there was a time when scientists believed that heat is a fluid or gas that passes from hot objects to cold objects. This was due to confusion between heat and combustion. You can read about it here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caloric_theory

People could and did work some reasonable science with that theory. For the time. Ultimately, Sir Benjamin Thompson, the Count von Rumford - a man of american birth but german lineage who sided with the redcoats in the revolutionary war - proved with math that if heat was a physical thing, solid metal wouldn't exist.

He also invented drip coffee makers, what we recognize as a fireplace, and the first real concept of a cooking range which ultimately gave birth to ala-carte restaurants. There are restaurants that predate the count von rumford, but before someone figured out how to manage cooking heat, you pretty much had whatever they were making.

Smart guy. He was also dead wrong about frigorific radiation. Yeah, he thought cold was radiated energy too.

he's an interesting read and also credited with creating thermal underwear.

That's thoughtcrime-tier legislation.

All i ask is that adherents of leviticus adhere to all of it.

down with polycotton blends!

If i remember right, the prohibitions in the bible against blended fibers (or maybe just using more than one kind of fabric to make an article of clothing) were intended to outlaw some competing faith that wore that like a uniform.

But it's in the bible, so God said so, and good Christians shouldn't wear mixed fibers. Each article of clothing needs to be 100% of something.

Also cross-breeding of animals is prohibited, so pretty much all domesticated pets are right out. your labradoodle is an abomination before God. Actually, both the lab and the poodle are too.

I admit that some of my favorite bible verses are in Leviticus:





I am pretty sure that the "I am the Lord your God" bit at the ends of those means that He means it.

It's their club. They can do what they like.

I'm not a fan or Churches, Mosques, those Jewish things and gay bars. But, they can do what they like in them as long as they aren't harming anyone.

Reciting passages from the Bible/Koran or singing lyrics on karaoke are pretty much the same thing, and neither should ever be a crime (both can contain "hate").

I get vibes like this: