Fuck off, Christians.
I can’t deal with this anymore. The complete delusion and utter stupidity of the religious needs to be dealt a heavy hand. If you are a Christian, you must at least accept a few things as true from this list:
- Immaculate conception
- Virgin birthing
- Talking snakes & donkeys
- A bush on fire that doesn’t burn and god comes out of it
- Angels and Demons
- Resurrection
- Dragons, Cherubs, Golems, Leviathan & Satyrs
- Miracles performed by Jesus
The problem that you are faced with here, is that in accepting any of these things you are admitting that you believe crazy shit because all of that is absolutely bat shit crazy. There is no argument that you can make for you to seem sane in believing any of these things.
Now, the reason for all this is because of the current debate around gay marriage. It seems that Christians believe they have some right over marriage. They think Christianity invented the idea of marriage and this gives them the right to be bigoted fuck-wits. It is horrible to deny someone a right because of their NATURAL sexuality. There is no choice when it comes to sexuality, you are born that way.
If Christians want to use their ancient book written by Middle Eastern goat herders as a means to discriminate against people because of their nature, then they better follow all of its rules. In Leviticus where it says “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.” Is the same chapter that says it is an abomination to eat pigs and shellfish. So you better stop eating those things because according to your God; eating pig or shellfish is equivalent to homosexuality.
Now fuck off, Christians, and let humanity grow beyond the deluded restraints of religion.
Chemicals are dangerous.
This seems to be a fairly common belief. Beware chemicals, they are dangerous no matter the quantity. I’m not entirely sure if the people that think this actually mean harsh chemicals. My usual response to people making claims about the dangers of chemicals is: “Beware the chemical known as H2O.”
This all comes about after I trolled an anti-fluoride page on Facebook. I criticised some of the links they were posting and received an onslaught of arguments. Some of their arguments may have been worthwhile if they weren’t posting links to anti-fluoride propaganda websites. I requested information from sites not affiliated with their beliefs and they were unable to produce any. They kept saying that the information they posted was written by doctors, so it must be true. That only made me think of Dr. Oz.
This lead me to research into the moderation of fluoride in municipal water supplies more than I wanted to. I used a good research tool by the name of Google Scholar rather than reading through those wonderful articles supplied to me. No matter how hard I looked I could not find any scientific papers that supported any of their claims.
The papers I found almost always have the same results, especially when the subjects they were using were school children. The common finding was that in areas with higher concentration (within the recommended levels) of fluoride, they found that the children had less caries (cavities). They also found that more of the children in these areas also had higher rates of dental fluorosis, although it was still at a rate of very low concern. Yes, it does increase dental fluorosis but it is of absolutely no concern as it is mostly superficial.
We know for a fact that too much fluoride is bad, especially for young children. If you have too much fluoride you can end up with severe skeletal fluorosis, if you want to see how bad this can be just do an image search online. These things are something that we don’t have to worry about when looking at fluoridation of municipal water supplies, since it is a moderation (add or remove fluoride as necessary) of fluoride and not always addition.
In trolling this anti-fluoride page I have helped build my knowledge of the subject. I have found that there is very little to be concerned about and that there are possibly ethical as opposed to medical implications to worry about. Is it ethical for governments to add something like fluoride to water supplies? This also begs the question of whether it is ethical for them to remove fluoride from the water when it’s content is above recommended levels.
Now enough of the fluoride argument as I was planning on looking at why people have an irrational fear/concern about chemicals (harsh ones). This is when I use the argumentum ad ignorantiam, some people may think this is a bad thing to do but I think it works quite well here. In regards to many of the products that people are concerned about there is usually no evidence to show an increase in any of the illnesses/problems they claim since these products have been introduced. This includes things like aspartame (sweetener), fluoride, genetically modified foods, pesticides and vaccinations.
There is very little evidence that these things are harmful in the quantities consumed by most people in first world countries. There is absolutely no evidence to show that they have caused harm since being introduced; considering in the case of fluoride and aspartame, the quantity that is consumed is exceptionally high.
It always comes down to being sceptical and not allowing someone to persuade you simply by telling you something. Too many people don’t do this and we end up with this anti-science problem we have, especially when it come to anthropogenic climate change.
Fear of a homosexual planet.
My argument in favour of homosexual marriage and parenting
I often notice that there is a fear of homosexuality ingrained in many people in Australia. These people will usually claim they have no fear of homosexuality but I don’t see how there is any other way to describe their feelings and behaviours. The title of this is in regards to Public Enemy’s album in the sense that there are similarities in what dark skinned Americans had to deal with. It is not a direct mirror of the problems they dealt with but it is in that there was a fear ingrained into light skinned persons in America against people with a dark complexion.
There is no other possible reason for the feelings many people express towards homosexuals. What is the possible other reason to be against the promotion of equality? Why shouldn’t homosexuals be able to marry? Why shouldn’t they be allowed to have children of their own? Why shouldn’t they be allowed to adopt children?
Marriage
An argument I have heard recently, with respect to homosexual marriage, is that it goes against the definition of the word ‘marriage.’ This argument was not about disallowing them to “marry” but under the idea that they should create a new word for a homosexual union under law. The biggest problem with this is that the definition of words change all the time. The other problem is the word marriage is used to describe “any close or intimate association or union: the marriage of words and music in a hit song.” This is taken from a definition on http://www.dictionary.com. There is no reason that this word can’t be used to describe a legal or religious ceremony for a union of two people of the same gender.
One of the most common arguments is that there is no need for them to marry. Backers of this argument will often be state that “they have the same rights thanks to the changes to the Family Law Act, so why do they need to marry.” It might not be put precisely like that but that is the gist of it. Anyway, this is a terrible point of view. Although the rights of De facto couples have been increased by a large amount it is still not the same as the rights of a married couple. Although, ignoring that, the best way to respond to this argument is to respond with the same. Considering the rights implemented towards De facto relationships, why do heterosexual couples need to marry?
That is enough of the silly arguments against homosexual marriage, now I will explain my reasons to embrace it. It really is a very simple argument. It is just a question to pose to the people who are in opposition of it. Why the hell not?
Why shouldn’t they be allowed to make the decision any heterosexual couple in love can make? Why can’t they have the same rights as a heterosexual married couple? Why are they only allowed the same rights as heterosexual couples regarding De facto relationships?
This is a matter of equality and nothing else. No adult person with an adult mental capability should have more or less rights than any other person of the same¹. If two consenting adults choose to marry they should definitely have the right to do so.
Parenting
There are many reasonable arguments for being against the right of a homosexual couple to raise children. Even though they may be reasonable arguments I find that they are all flawed and I see no evidence backing them. The reason I am after evidence for this is because it is not just a matter of equality and rationality. There are others involved once it comes to parenting and there are ways to observe whether it is suitable or not. There is a problem with the research into whether it is suitable for homosexuals to be parents. This problem is that there are a lot of terrible heterosexual parents out there and why they need to be looking into this matter is ludicrous.
The best part of these studies is that they find that there is, from my understanding and research, no difference between a child having heterosexual or homosexual parents. Although there is a definite increase in the amount a child will be bullied regarding their parents if they have homosexual parents. Bullying can also be increased if the child has a step parent, lives with their grand parents, has divorced parents, etc. Even if homosexual parents are much more thoroughly accepted by society I believe this bullying of children of same sex parents will take place.
It is also found that it is important to have a community to raise a healthy child. One example of a great homosexual community raising a child is when a surrogate or sperm donor is in the picture. For example the surrogate or sperm donor could also be a homosexual and this can bring in an extra caregiver to the child. This is all for the better as it increases the regular faces that a child will be associating with. This may just be an example but i think it is a great way to show that homosexual parenting can not only be a good thing it can be an amazing way for a child to be raised.
There is evidence that children of homosexual parents will be inclined to experiment with homosexual “behaviour”. Whether this occurs because their parents are homosexual or because they will not be taught that homosexuality is wrong, we will never know. I believe that one day when we no longer have this massive stigma toward sex that people will see no problem with homosexual sex. Will it be a bad thing if it does become common place and normal for a person to have sexual intercourse with either sex?
¹ The reason I state my feelings like this is that I have also heard the argument that a mentally disabled couple should be allowed to marry also. I feel this has many more implications with it and is a much more involved question as there are different levels of mental disability.
