So, ah, would reading up on what Jefferson had to say about liberty include reading the bill he authored for the Virginia legislature in which homosexuals would be punished with emasculation?
That's the problem with you folks who want to whine about "people who want to impose their values on others." You often simply don't know what you're talking about. Trying to appeal to Jefferson, at least on THIS issue, is going to get you nowhere fast.
Also, nobody is trying to "impose" anything on anybody. Rather, we're trying to prevent the radical homosexual lobby (of which GOProud is a part, to be sure) from imposing itself onto the public life of our society as a whole. As such, the whole "I don't care what they do in private" argument has ZERO bearing on this. There's nothing "private" about trying to force the 98% of the country that is not homosexual to accept gays in the military, the redefinition of marriage, and the destruction of the traditional nuclear family.
Riiight...to all that rationaliztion.
On a moral level I agree with you. There is an absolute measure of morality, and homosexuality is on the wrong side of that measure. As is adultery, lusting after women, and divorce except in explicitly defined exceptions.
And so long as speakers are discussing the harm of homosexuality, we need to encourage that, just as we need to continue to discuss the harm divorce causes to our children, adultery and sexual immorality, pornography, and the sexualization of women cause in our society.
We need to speak out about all sorts of moral issues.
But from a societal perspective, morality isn’t what it used to be, and Jefferson’s feelings about punishing homosexuals might not carry the weight of superiority given his support for things like slavery.
Poltiically, we aren’t going to be a majority party if our platform is about emasculating homosexuals. It may appeal to some of our supporters, but today’s conservatives are not going to win if our message is to use government to enforce morality to that degree.
Not that government doesn’t enforce morality, or that it would be WRONG to enforce morality in the area of homosexuality, just that at this time it’s not an issue that we can win on, and we need to work to win the battle about harm to society before we could ever argue about laws to prevent that harm.
The battle now is against the acceptance of homosexuality, and the forced indoctrination of our kids to accept homosexuality. Although that battle is largely lost unfortunately.
Jefferson... authored for the Virginia legislature in which homosexuals would be punished with emasculation.
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So the slaveowner had big problems with homosexuality. If that don’t beat all.