Random assortment of things

[essentialsaltes]

All Costa Cruises did was kill a few passengers and pretty soon people looking for a luxurious vacation are giving them the cold shoulder. OTOH, you can get ridiculous deals on their cruises.

I dunno if you can see this deal I got through email, but it's much the same Western Med cruise we took with them (and on which they killed a few people a few years later). Was $1840, now just $399. That's a 78% savings, and you even get to wave at the wreck of the Concordia (which should be there until it's salvaged in January 2013).

[Of course, popepat can probably get you a pretty good deal with an outfit that hardly ever kills its customers.]

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Wasn't so long ago in this country that black people and Mormons got lynched by angry mobs. [Black people still aren't doing so hot, but authentic lynchings are mercifully rare these days.]
And now we have one of each at the heads of our major parties heading for an election showdown. What a country!

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At long last, my missionary work among the Christians has come to an end. I've been booted from the forum for some reason or other. It would appear to be Chick-Fil-A that did me in somehow, though I'm pretty sure I never mentioned gay marriage at all.

I quoted a great [i.e. not great] speech by the pastor of the largest congregation in the Southern Baptist Convention. Just because it's so astonishingly appropriate in the current climate, it's worth spreading the link:

Don’t force me by law, by statute, by Supreme Court decision . . . to cross over in those
intimate things where I don’t want to go. Let me build my life. Let me have my church.
Let me have my school. Let me have my friends. Let me have my home. Let me have my
family. And what you give to me, give to every man in America and keep it like our
glorious forefathers made it—a land of the free and the home of the brave.

Curiously [i.e. not curiously] this is actually not about gay marriage, but is from 1956 about integration. THe pastor also said that churches that were pushing integration "are just as blasphemous and unbiblical as they can be." [to be fair, this was not the only view within the SBC at that time.]

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The other thing I remember from shortly before the banhammer came down was another poster complaining that it was "wrong and disgusting" that Chick-Fil-A were catching flack for simply holding an opinion about homosexuality (or the opinion of its owners anyway).

I wondered if she thought it was "wrong and disgusting" that Campbell Soup, Disney, JC Penney, Ford, McDonalds, Hallmark Cards and the Girl Scouts were catching flack for their views on homosexuality.

It's just astonishing to me how little self-reflection goes on. Some people in there do nothing but bitch and moan about "the homosexual agenda," and then when the tables are turned, suddenly it's "wrong and disgusting".

I hope some day they come to know the reality. But for now, they are lost to the inner darkness. All the facts and supporting evidence I provided at every turn were just so many pearls before swine.

Comments

[ian-tiberius.livejournal.com]

It's just astonishing to me how little self-reflection goes on. Some people in there do nothing but bitch and moan about "the homosexual agenda," and then when the tables are turned, suddenly it's "wrong and disgusting".

Upton Sinclair said "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." It's probably even more true when it's not one's salary, but the acceptance of one's family and peers. I imagine a lot of these people live in a world where everyone they know is on the same page about homosexuality being wrong. All the more reason for those of us who are pro-equal-rights to be out about that.

[ladyeuthanasia.livejournal.com]

They're in a mental and emotional fugue I remember all too well. I sometimes recall the seeds that were planted for me in college that didn't flower until many years later when I realized in some visceral situation how religion and religious leaders had lied to me or manipulated me into submission. You've planted lots of seeds, brother. Let's hope a big ol' flower o' reason sprouts out the top of some heads in the future.