Re: Obama picks Rick Warren for inaugural invocation
 

We already do pay more taxes when you pull the ratio to benefits bit.

Re: Obama picks Rick Warren for inaugural invocation
 

One has to assume that the BBC is just doing this as a social experiment, conducted with a sort of detached cynicism at the outcome that is expected from ringing the chow bell so close to the woodwork.

I just can't believe this was generated out of a mindless objectivite news script, or some sincere quest for gaining insights.

And as an experiment, its confirmed what a lot of people already knew. That a lot of people in the UK are walking around with currogated iron bars shoved right up their ass, their appeal to a more tolerant, relaxed society (compared to the alan turing days) beginning and ending by splashing whoever is the tart of the week on the mags at sainsbury's local.

that's not to say america is any better. we're all the product of the wackos so militant you guys had the intelligence to kick out starting 400 years ago

The rant aside, I'm starting to wonder if there isn't an evolutionary explanation for the hostility towards the gay community and that this evolutionary factor is more strong than the religious factor. I'm not talking about homosexuality being abhorrent to evolution. Several new cases show things like the sisters of gay men being more fecund, which quickly sweep away arguments that evolution would never naturally carry down non reproductive behavior.

But is it a total paradox to suggest that evolution would simultaneously carry down hostile behaviors towards non reproductive behaviors?

If not, then maybe things will only become more egalitarian once people come to grips with their alleged gag reflex towards alternative sexual practices as an evolutionary trick, like they had to get over the evolutionary "us versus them" trick that mires racial issues.

And if that's true, than people who carry on about the gay agenda or beat a gay man to death and string them up on barbed wire could be classified as those among us who are knuckle dragging shallow breathers whose mind set is still locked in the homonid shit slingers from which we evolved.

Re: Obama picks Rick Warren for inaugural invocation
 

Y'know I check the Have Your Say boards on a pretty regular basis and I've never seen anything to point to HYS being used as a social experiment for a particular issue. That just doesn't seem to be its remit. Neither is it the norm (ie. I have never seen) a HYS debate headed with/based around a rhetorical question, or a question that wasn't meant to be judged seriously.

My problem with it - and I don't think I'm being oversensitive here - is that the asking of a yes/no question as the subject of a debate implicitly legitimises both possible answers. I mean, can you imagine any of the following:

"Should negroes face execution - did the KKK go too far? Tell us what you think..."
"Should Jews be gassed? Did Hitler go too far? We'd love to hear from you..."
"Should women be executed? Does the Taleban go too far? What do YOU think?"

All in the spirit of "just having an open debate" and "getting people's views out in the open rather than burying them"? It seems the normal codes of acceptability always break down when it comes to homosexuals.

I think there may well be something in what you say about evolutionary explanations for the visceral reaction against homosexuality, and it seems that certain mindsets (most often correlating with the political right) have a harder time overriding their baser fears than other people. Ditto racism, or, for that matter, anyone markedly different to ourselves.

Re: Obama picks Rick Warren for inaugural invocation
 

So you actually think that the prejudice is so bad that some group at the BBC actually was deliberately justifying both a yes and no answer by way of entertaining both a yes and no answer. Man. That's fucked.

(I mean that's fucked the bbc would do that, not that its fucked you would believe that)

Re: Obama picks Rick Warren for inaugural invocation
 

If it is true, then take heart, Decks. We love you.

And things are changing gender wise in our species. And I mean changes in human years. If you look at the kind of men considered socially desirable through the past 100 years they've gone from rugged to girly really quickly. I'm talking Humphrey Bogart versus that ass clown in the Twilight movies (what's his name?).

I'm not sure this is a change in fashion. I'm hoping that we're seeing a biological switch in the gender magnetic poles to a point where things will get so confusing that people will have no choice but to just drop the pretense and say ah fuck it, do what you want. Lady Gaga has a penis for fuck's sake.

Anyway, the whole theory about the bbc doing a social experiment, it kind of comes a bit from that small "experience" I had with them. The reporter just kept looking at me in a way I found uncomfortable. Its just one situation and one guy, it just left me with a taste in my mouth like "you guys like fucking with people, don't you?"

Re: Obama picks Rick Warren for inaugural invocation
 

Let's not even touch the American media.

Re: Obama picks Rick Warren for inaugural invocation
 

Well, I doubt the BBC's decision was rooted in prejudice, at least not in the same vein as some of the below-the-fold comments that appeared. I think it's just that final point where they had to decide whether the question was acceptable or not, that they couldn't help but tap (perhaps subconsciously) into the broader public mood in which condemnation of homosexuals is somehow more acceptable than that of other minority groups. I'm quite sure the question of discussing the execution of other such groups would never even be entertained, not even "in the interest of sparking debate". Essentially it was just a bad judgment call.

Re: Obama picks Rick Warren for inaugural invocation
 

Yes it's a curious transformation, the whole rugged man to prettyboy thing. Is it a return to the natural inclinations we see in the animal kingdom where competing males often have to be more attractive than the female? Is it corporations who spotted an emerging market and a quick buck to be made out of encouraging vanity in men? Is it simply the inevitable consequence of focusing more and more on youth - hairless, sculpted, etc?

No... it's the gay mafia and their lecherous conspiracy to effeminize and homosexualize men! :D

Re: Obama picks Rick Warren for inaugural invocation
 

Damn, that was good Deckard.

Re: Obama picks Rick Warren for inaugural invocation
 

apparently it was a poorly-titled debate that sprang from news that the subject is being debated seriously in uganda, rather than an insidious attempt to screw with people's minds...