the Greater Nomadic Council

Agreed that a man/dragon with a website like that must indeed be celibate, perhaps for life.

I'm sure it's entirely voluntary.

Not that there aren't literally thouS@nds of worthwhile quotes on the site, but here's my favorite so far:

"In fact, getting Born Again is a wonderful experience and worth the miniscule intellectual effort."

I wanted to give that one its own space, for obvious reasons, but the paragraph continues in fine form:

"It will fill that big empty hole that you feel inside of you and give meaning to your existence. I encourage you to do it anyways, just to know God, and not merely to get a shape-shift.

Also, being filled with the Holy Spirit helps too. If you want to be filled with the Holy Spirit, click on the Baptism link on the left."

Also, why is "us@" deemed questionable content by the filter? You really DO hate America, don't you , M?

A person, who wants, in name of anything, to interfere in the private life of individuals, telling them how to conduct their personal issues, is quite often not very normal. But the dragon is perhaps a good choice as a symbol of his confusion, since in the New Testmant the dragon is the anti-Christ.

Heh. Thanks for pointing that out. It's an automated system, so I guess a bad pattern got in there. It should be fixed now.

usa!

Let's just hope this site gives other closet man-dragons the courage to come forward.

Tony,

Doubtless, there are always morons and wack-jobs like the man-dragon that elicit a "guilty by association" effect in any group ... especially in the peculiarly American jumping Jesus junkie crowd ... but your assertion regarding "for any reason" ... such a comment lacks a rigorous understanding of all that it implies; it is simply practically and theoretically impossible to avoid dictating a standard of behavior for others. The question is not "whether" but "what" one advances as the standard and to what degree this standard admits the necessity of "interference."

One thing life has taught me:

Every man must be the master in his abode.

Now, just mind this: why in the name of whatever should I stop a gay person on a street and tell him to become straight? Just because I am heterosexual? Or why should I just speak out loud that my way is the right way? Isn't it a little bit presumptuous and arrogant? What gives me the right to hurt other people's feelings? What gives anyone the right to seek the destruction of others who have never done anything against him?

That is how I think.

You missed the point: "Or why should I just speak out loud that my way is the right way?"

-You have clearly spoken out loud a standard whereby certain actions can be judged as "transgressions", namely "bigotry" in this case; you would place this standard of "tolerance" as THE standard and, in doing so, would likely imply that all claims to "the right way" lead only to the wrong way, i.e. destroying others freedoms. So again, it is not "whether" but "what."

What all the quibbles comes down to is whether love might require "speaking out" ... but the next question (the one so often neither asked nor answered correctly) ... what manner of "speaking out" is consistent with love ...

But let us not use the example of one who accosts the homosexual "just because I am a heterosexual"**see post-script below** ... rather, take this view at its more rational level ...

doubtless even if thinks that "homosexuality" was detrimental to the human person's happiness due to an inherent reduction of the sexual act to an act of pleasure that then becomes the dominating passion in their life ... like any other attachment of the will which increasingly excludes the possibility of seeing anything else as worthwhile (e.g. the degree to which you like one girl is the degree to which all others fade as worthwhile possibilities ... so too with specific passions, each tends to seek to be exclusively sought) and thus ultimately a passion which attempts to make itself the principle of a person's very identity as "a gay person" by subjecting the person to its drive so completely that the person is nothing but drive and desire ... insatiable or forever unfulfilled ... it is not at all consistent with "love" for one with this accost a "gay person" by walking up to him/her on the street (or anywhere for that matter) and say: you there ... I want to feel goody goody about myself today and hand you this pamphlet telling you how you ought to revile yourself!! nevertheless, (and for the sake of argument) assume that homosexuality does indeed have a detrimental effect on the human person's happiness ... homosexuality is an incredibly difficult example, but choose a different one ... when you get down to it ... love seeks to help, but what if help means challenging (not forcing, either directly or by law) that person to change? The question is whether love ought to be equated with the indifference of "tolerance" ...

** to be rejected along with the "gut" heterosexual reaction are the condemnations of a "gay person" as evil, disgusting, or "unnatural" ... and anything that fails to distinguish between the identity of the human person and the acts he engages in ... and therefore becomes spiritedly hateful when "gay" people are around ...

Perhaps the way in which Love speaks (i.e. expresses itself) is utterly different than the average human thinks ... for the average person is only infrequently acquainted with Love.

Not willing to offend you in any way, I do not see any logic in the chaotic response above. Perhaps it is just the way you arranged the arguments.

Anyway, there is one point that is missing. There are several kinds of ethics from a philosophical perspective. From the anthropological point of view, or in other words, from the point of view according to which ethics is a groupal construct and not the work of a philosopher, ethical principles are the means human societies have to solve or prevent conflicts among their members.

Under this perspective, the most honest action is to mind one's own business and let others have their privacy respected and intact. When one invades the privacy of another, he cannot resort to any ethical principle whatever, because ethical principles take scope over what is public and not what is private.

Respect for one's privacy is precisely the necessary line to separate what falls within the scope of common principles and what is out of that scope. Without this clear line, there is no ethics that can be applied in a society.