No exemption from gay rights law

[disruptivehair]

I think its kinda sad really, that people choose to change themselves like that, i kinda think they're not happy with their current appearance... its basically like trying to be someone else.

Anyway i'm getting off topic now...

Ps. I wonder why it blocked it out, but not any of the other words

I know what you mean. I personally think sex changes are weird and I don't agree with using crude surgery to solve what I feel is a psychological problem. That's just my opinion tho, and I'm no expert.

I also feel that a man can never become a woman. Ever. I think male-to-female transsexuals are frankly insulting because they are behaving the way they think women are supposed to behave, and they embrace some of the most ridiculous and negative stereotypes. It's very telling that they wear ultra-feminine clothes, tons of makeup, and grow long hair. It tells me that they don't know the first thing about being a woman if they think that's all it takes...that and a bit of surgery. Puh-leeze.

[FunkyDexter]

i kinda think they're not happy with their current appearance

I don't think it's really about appearence. It goes deeper than that. I agree with disruptive that it's a psychological problem rather than a phyisical one though. You're not a woman trapped in a mans body, you're a man who wants to be trapped in a womans body. Surgery isn't going to change what you are until we can do it at the genetic level because that's the level and which your gender is defined.

Quite worrying to me is that we're talking about offering the sex change operation on the NHS over here. If people want the operation that's fine with me, but why am I being asked to pay for it when our system's already so overburdened that my step-nan couldn't get a hip operation when she needed it?

I still see it as a church/state entanglement, but I'm coming from a place where church and state are supposed to be separate. In the UK I know this is not the case, so it's a bit more complex and confusing.

Do you really think religion has less importantance in the US than over here? I know the separation's codified in the US (mainly because you have a constitution and we don't) but I get the impression that christianity has had a far greater influence on the laws that have been passed in the US than it has in the UK.

[disruptivehair]

I don't think it's really about appearence. It goes deeper than that. I agree with disruptive that it's a psychological problem rather than a phyisical one though. You're not a woman trapped in a mans body, you're a man who wants to be trapped in a womans body. Surgery isn't going to change what you are until we can do it at the genetic level because that's the level and which your gender is defined.

Quite worrying to me is that we're talking about offering the sex change operation on the NHS over here. If people want the operation that's fine with me, but why am I being asked to pay for it when our system's already so overburdened that my step-nan couldn't get a hip operation when she needed it?

I've heard that it is already available on the NHS but you'll wait 5-7 years for it.

Do you really think religion has less importantance in the US than over here? I know the separation's codified in the US (mainly because you have a constitution and we don't) but I get the impression that christianity has had a far greater influence on the laws that have been passed in the US than it has in the UK.

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. It isn't supposed to. However, I think the US is ahead of the UK in that at least on paper, religion is not allowed to interfere with the state and vice versa. The state almost never interferes with religious matters, and organized religion does not interfere much in state business; it's usually individual politicians trying to please religious constituents who do the meddling.

Culturally speaking, religion is more important in the US than it is in the UK. Legally, church and state are entangled in the UK in a way that they simply aren't in the US.

[schoolbusdriver]

Hmmmm. Difficult one is this. I used to work (for over 20 years) in an office environment where there were NO gays, so was quite innocent until circumstances (my youngest son has crohns disease) forced me to work part-time (as a school bus driver) where I met the general public. My instincts tell me the church is correct, (read the rest before you have an apoplective fit) BUT the catholic church's record in child abuse is awful - so who are they are to judge? My instincts also tell me that my instincts may be wrong , as do the cases of such as Ian Brady and Myra Hindley .

Any religious decision is by definition, biased. It's all based on your belief in what someone else (Note:- a human being - probably a power-grabber) has said/written, not on what you can theorise or prove for yourself. I've even had junk mail that had "XXXXX said that before creation, the universe was filled with a milky fluid. Science has proved this to be true" . A total double-think paradox. And people actually believe this crap without question? I could write the equivalent of a bible myself if I could be bothered. (Even at 10 years old, I was asking myself about the origin of the universe, how could intelligence exist before the universe existed, what was the reason for life, etc) Note that the recent "religion" of scientology was created in a sci-fi novel. The author found that it made more money than his books, so he decided to take it up professionally . You might as well believe you can "Fall off the edge of the Earth". I think all religions are rubbish.

So, what do I think? Well, my instincts still prevail. If you don't like it, tough. I couldn't care less about being politically correct - and I have gay friends (great sense of humour ), BUT my mind is a democracy, so I can think whatever I want. My gay friends (both sexes) respect my instincts, as I do theirs. And if the various religions want to relinquish more responsibility and fade into history, let them. Future history will judge.

BTW. No apologies. (I think I've annoyed/included everyone)

[zaza]

To get back to penagate's first nibble, the question isn't really about whether gay couples should adopt or not, it's whether the Catholic Church should be given exemption from a law of the land on the grounds of religious practice.

According to many of my Muslim friends, it is specifically permitted under Islam to have "an eye for an eye", i.e. violence can be justified if perpetrated against you first. You are specifically not allowed to raise your hand first. This, incidentally, is the justification used by many of the extremists about the world today, who declare that countless atrocities in crusader times / creation of Israel (etc) therefore warrant bombing trains and buildings nowadays.
Should this sort of behaviour be allowed? Where does the distinction lie between what facets of religious belief, any religious belief, should be exempted from the law and those that shouldn't? How many people need to follow a religion in order to allow its firmly-held beliefs to exempt them from a particularly heinous piece of law-making? Should I be compelled to act against my beliefs because mine is a religion of 1? What if I manage to convince a few others?

Under Islam, there are "elders" who study the Koran and come to a conclusion as to the interpretation, and hence what is permissible and what is not. Some of these elders, you can imagine, are more extreme than others and there are several different views. Do we then need a similar set-up for every religion, mainstream and otherwise, to determine what parts of the law should apply to them and what shouldn't?

We rapidly reach a situation where we fail to actually have a "law of the land", and more a different set of laws for different people, depending on their beliefs. i.e. no law at all.


To get off the fence, my feeling is that regardless of whether I think it is acceptable for gay couples to adopt, I do not think it is acceptable for a religious group to be exempted from the law of the land on the grounds of belief, even if they think that God's word comes first.