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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (182310)	2/22/2006 1:50:27 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

You can assert that you were "born Baptist", but if you no longer hold all of the foundational beliefs that Baptists swear by (such as biblical admonitions against homosexuality), then it seems to me that maybe your something OTHER than a Baptist. No, you are dead wrong here. The point is that homosexuality is a statistical fraction of the population, quite independent of the religious beliefs of ones parents. There is absolutely no reasons to think that the rate of incidence is lower among Baptists than the rest of the US population. What is different is the honesty factor. If you are Baptist and homosexual, you must work hard to hide the fact. This is quite independent of the issue of living a gay lifestyle BTW. The issue is that people grow up in these religions, eventually deal with the fact that they are different, struggle with the fact that it is unaccepted in their culture and do one of two things: 1) hide it and stay, or 2) admit it and leave the culture. Second class citizen or no citizen is the basic choice. So I didn't join.. As I hope you can understand from the above, it has nothing to do with joining. Its a matter of leaving... This is precisely what we are attacking in Iraq. Trying to make group X accept group Y and treat them better, when group X has very strong religious and moral values saying this should not happen. So the choice for many Iraqis in the future is whether they can tolerate being 2'nd class citizens, or whether it is best to leave (as in 3 state solution). Right now the struggle is to see if they can't all be the top dog. But that gets decided at some point. Then the losers make the choice they should have made before all the blood flows. What is very discouraging is that most of those in America, including you, seeking to implement this change, are oblivious to the fundamental problem. Thats why I see failure ahead more than anything else. It's one group of Iraqis attempting to assert their parochial tribal/religious/ethnic interests over their shared common interests as Iraqi citizens. Just as its the male parochial interests in the Baptist church being anti-feminist and anti-gay. Same thing. And their reasons are deep seated religious reasons which neither you nor I nor anyone with a gun are going to change. So here is the thought experiment which you and all other supporters of this war should do. I'll leave gays out of it. If you cannot figure out a way for the Southern Baptists to treat women as full equals (ordination of them as pastors, top leadership slots open, etc), then why the hell do you think you have a prayer in Iraq?