[Grovenet] Lies, damned lies, and evangelicals . . .

Wed May 13 17:22:06 PDT 2009

Marriage is a religion thing.
You want a social contract, write one up.
Government should be out of the whole business.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com]On
> Behalf Of Jim Katen
> Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 12:28 PM
> To: 'Forest Grove local interests list'
> Subject: Re: [Grovenet] Lies, damned lies, and evangelicals . . .
>
>
> I guess infertile atheists don't count for much in your world view.
>
>
>
> What a condescending attitude.
>
>
>
> - Jim Katen
>
>
>
>   _____
>
> From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com] On
> Behalf Of Carol Morgan
> Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 12:14 PM
> To: Forest Grove local interests list
> Subject: Re: [Grovenet] Lies, damned lies, and evangelicals . . .
>
>
>
> Marriage has traditionally been to covenant before god and legitimize
> offspring.
>
> If it is just who you want to have a nice little committment ceremony
> with,
> it could be anything.
>
>
> ------ Original Message ------
> Received: 12:08 PM PDT, 05/13/2009
> From: "Geri" <g-g-steele at comcast.net>
> To: "Forest Grove local interests list" <grovenet at rdrop.com>
> Subject: Re: [Grovenet] Lies, damned lies, and evangelicals . . .
>
>
>
> Sorry, Carol, not understanding your comment ... ?
>
> Geri
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Carol Morgan
> To: Forest Grove local interests list
> Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 11:45 AM
> Subject: Re: [Grovenet] Lies, damned lies, and evangelicals . . .
>
>
> The relationship is that if men just happen to like men boys or multiple
> women, what's the difference?
>
>
> ------ Original Message ------
> Received: 11:41 AM PDT, 05/13/2009
> From: "Geri" <g-g-steele at comcast.net>
> To: "Forest Grove local interests list" <grovenet at rdrop.com>
> Subject: Re: [Grovenet] Lies, damned lies, and evangelicals . . .
>
>
>
> Ha! Darn, Steve, if I'd known someone might think of that, I wouldn'a said
> it!
>
> No, didn't think of that, actually, so no pun intended ...
>
> Geri
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Steve Jerrett" <stevedj at teleport.com>
> To: "Forest Grove local interests list" <grovenet at rdrop.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 11:38 AM
> Subject: Re: [Grovenet] Lies, damned lies, and evangelicals . . .
>
>
> >> The politically-religious should butt out of this one.
> >
> > Geri,
> >
> > Pun intended?
> >
> > Steve
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Geri" <g-g-steele at comcast.net>
> > To: "Forest Grove local interests list" <grovenet at rdrop.com>
> > Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 11:00 AM
> > Subject: Re: [Grovenet] Lies, damned lies, and evangelicals . . .
> >
> >
> >> Nicely written by Brown ...
> >>
> >> I don't understand how some (often it is folks who consider themselves
> >> fervently religious) equate homosexuality with pedophilia & polygamy
> >> either! (Psst! Most pedophiles are heterosexual males.) Heterosexuals
> are
>
> >> allowed the civil right of marriage without being frightened someone
> will
>
> >> say they are preying on children or having more than one spouse.
> Allowing
>
> >> the civil right of marriage does not force any church to perform or
> >> recognize it -- The legality of marriage comes from government, not
> >> church!
> >>
> >> Oh, the "certain groups" you refer to Bob just don't make any sense, do
> >> they?! Example: the Catholic Church didn't recognize divorce, either.
> >> However, you can get legally divorced, even if you are a Catholic and
> your
> >> church then doesn't allow you to fully participate after that.
> >>
> >> The politically-religious should butt out of this one.
> >>
> >> My 2-cents. ; )
> >> Geri
> >>
> >>
> >> ----- Original Message -----
> >> From: Bob Browning
> >> To: Grovenet
> >> Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 9:54 AM
> >> Subject: [Grovenet] Lies, damned lies, and evangelicals . . .
> >>
> >>
> >> Here' another sign of how certain groups in America promote their
> agenda
> >> by not only ignoring the truth, but by bending it to their own needed
> >> outcome!!
> >>
> >> bob "lies, damned lies, and made up statistics" browning
> >> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> >>
> >> Adventures in Math & Marriage or,
> >>
> >> Why Gay Marriage Does Not Decrease Straight Marriage
> >>
> >> by Barrett Brown
> >>
> >> Does the legalization of gay marriage contribute to the decline of
> >> heterosexual marriage? A good portion of our fair republic's cultural
> >> conservatives seem to believe that it does. Evangelical kingpin James
> >> Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, told a typically credulous Larry
> King
> >> in November of 2006:
> >>
> >> "In the Netherlands and places where they have tried to define marriage
> >> [to include gay couples], what happens is that people just don't get
> >> married. It's not that the homosexuals are marrying in greater numbers,
> >> it's that when you confuse what marriage is, young people just don't
> get
> >> married."
> >>
> >> If what Dobson says is true, New Jersey is going to be in huge trouble,
> >> and Massachusetts, which legalized gay marriage in 2004, must already
> be.
>
> >> Of course, Dobson is wrong. Here's why.
> >>
> >> First, let's think about this problem mathematically and prepare our
> >> variables. X is any country "where they have tried to define marriage
> [to
>
> >> include gay couples]," in Dobson's description. Y is the marriage rate
> >> among heterosexuals before country X has "tried to define marriage [to
> >> include gay couples]," and Z is the allegedly decreasing heterosexual
> >> marriage rate that exists after ten years of gay civil unions. The
> Dobson
>
> >> Theorem, as we shall call it, states that "if X, then Y must be greater
> >> than Z." Or, translating math into English, "if a nation allows for
> civil
>
> >> unions, the marriage rate among heterosexuals at the time that this
> occurs
> >> will be higher than it is ten years later."
> >>
> >> Let us now test the Dobson Theorem. Like most things with variables,
> the
> >> Dobson Theorem requires that X be substituted for various things that
> meet
> >> the parameters of X-in this case, northern European countries. Luckily,
> >> Dr. Dobson himself has provided us with some data. During the Larry
> King
> >> interview, Dobson mentioned Norway and "other Scandinavian countries"
> as
> >> fitting the description. We'll also need values to punch in for Y and
> Z.
> >> These may be obtained from all of the countries in question, which have
> >> famously nosy governments. Conveniently enough, these numbers may also
> be
>
> >> obtained from the October 26, 2008 edition of the Wall Street Journal
> >> op-ed page, where William N. Eskridge, Jr., the John A. Garver
> professor
> >> of jurisprudence at Yale University, and Darren Spedale, a New York
> >> investment banker, penned an editorial based on their new book entitled
> >> Gay Marriage: For Better or For Worse? What We've Learned From the
> >> Evidence.
> >>
> >> According to Eskridge and Garver, Denmark began allowing gay civil
> unions
>
> >> in 1989. Ten years later, the heterosexual marriage rate had increased
> by
>
> >> 10.7 percent. Norway did the same in 1993, and a decade later the
> >> heterosexual marriage rate had increased by 12.7 percent. Sweden
> followed
>
> >> suite in 1995, and ten years later the heterosexual marriage rate had
> >> increased by 28.7 percent. And these marriages were actually lasting.
> >> During the same time frame, the divorce rate dropped 13.9 percent in
> >> Denmark, 6 percent in Norway, and 13.7 percent in Sweden. So, we may
> >> probably dispense with the Dobson Theorem. But how did Dobson get this
> >> relationship so wrong in the first place?
> >>
> >> The culprit may be the Weekly Standard and National Review gadfly
> Stanley
>
> >> Kurtz, who took issue with Garver and Eskridge's preliminary findings
> back
> >> in 2004, before they were published. Confronted with statistics
> indicating
> >> that marriage in Scandinavia is in fine shape, Kurtz instead proclaimed
> >> that "Scandinavian marriage is now so weak that statistics on marriage
> and
> >> divorce no longer mean what they used to." Brushing aside numbers
> showing
>
> >> that Danish marriage was up ten percent from 1990 to 1996, Kurtz
> countered
> >> that "just-released marriage rates for 2001 show declines in Sweden and
> >> Denmark." He failed to note that they were down in 2001 for quite a few
> >> places, including the United States, which of course had no civil
> unions
> >> anywhere in 2001. And having not yet had access to the figures, he
> >> couldn't have known that both American and Scandinavian rates went back
> up
> >> in 2002. As for Norway, he says, the higher marriage rate "has more to
> do
>
> >> with the institution's decline than w
> >> ith any renaissance. Much of the increase in Norway's marriage rate is
> >> driven by older couples 'catching up.'" It's unclear exactly how old
> these
> >> "older couples" may be, but at any rate, Kurtz thinks their marriages
> >> simply don't count. But even if we arbitrarily strike such nuptials
> from
> >> the record, we're still left with an increase in Norway's marriage
> rate,
> >> as Kurtz himself acknowledges that these oldster nuptials only
> constitute
>
> >> "much" of the increase, not all of it or even most of it. So Kurtz's
> >> position is that Norwegian marriage is in decline because not only are
> >> younger couples getting married at a higher rate, but older couples are
> as
> >> well.
> >>
> >> Kurtz applies a similar level of statistical acumen to divorce rates.
> >> "It's true that in Denmark, as elsewhere in Scandinavia, divorce
> numbers
> >> looked better in the nineties," he wrote. "But that's because the pool
> of
>
> >> married people has been shrinking for some time. You can't divorce
> without
> >> first getting married." This is true. It's also true that Denmark has a
> >> much lower divorce rate than the United States as a percentage of
> married
>
> >> couples, a method of calculation that makes the size of the married
> people
> >> pool irrelevant. Denmark's percentage is 44.5, while the United States
> is
>
> >> at 54.8 percent. Incidentally, those numbers come from the Heritage
> >> Foundation, which also sponsors reports on the danger that gay marriage
> >> poses to the heterosexual marriage rate.
> >> Still, Kurtz is upset that many Scandinavian children are born out of
> >> wedlock. "About 60 percent of first-born children in Denmark now have
> >> unmarried parents," he says. He doesn't give us the percentage of
> >> second-born children who have unmarried parents, because that
> percentage
> >> is lower and would thus indicate that Scandinavian parents often marry
> >> after having their first child, as Kurtz himself later notes in the
> course
> >> of predicting that this will no longer be the case as gay civil unions
> >> continue to take their non-existent toll on Scandinavian marriage.
> >>
> >> Since the rate by which Scandinavian couples have children before
> getting
>
> >> married has been rising for decades, it's hard to see what this has to
> do
>
> >> with the more recent advent of gay marriage-unless, of course, you
> happen
>
> >> to be Stanley Kurtz. "Scandinavia's out-of-wedlock birthrates may have
> >> risen more rapidly in the seventies, when marriage began its slide. But
> >> the push of that rate past the 50 percent mark during the nineties was
> in
>
> >> many ways more disturbing." Of course it was more disturbing to Kurtz.
> By
>
> >> the mid-1990s, the Scandinavians had all instituted civil unions, and
> thus
> >> even the clear, long-established trajectory of such a trend as
> premature
> >> baby-bearing can be laid at the feet of the gays simply by establishing
> >> some arbitrary numerical benchmark that was probably going to be
> reached
> >> anyway, calling this milestone "in many ways more disturbing," and
> hinting
> >> that all of this is somehow the fault of the gays.
> >>
> >> By the same token, I can prove that the establishment of the Weekly
> >> Standard in 1995 has contributed to rampant world population growth.
> Sure,
> >> that population growth has been increasing steadily for decades, but
> the
> >> push of that number past the 6 billion mark in 2000 was "in many ways
> more
> >> disturbing" to me for some weird reason that I can't quite pin down. Of
> >> course, this is faulty reasoning. One could just as reasonably argue
> that
>
> >> by virtue of its unparalleled support for the invasion of Iraq, the
> Weekly
> >> Standard has actually done its part to keep world population down.
> >>
> >> Why is Kurtz so disturbed about out-of-wedlock rates? Personally, I
> think
>
> >> it would be preferable for a couple to have a child and then get
> married,
>
> >> as is more often the case in Scandinavia, rather than for a couple to
> have
> >> a child and then get divorced, as is more often the case in the United
> >> States. Kurtz doesn't seem to feel this way, though, as it isn't
> >> convenient to feel this way at this particular time. Here are all of
> these
> >> couples, he tells us, having babies without first filling out the
> proper
> >> baby-making paperwork with the proper federal agencies. What will
> become
> >> of the babies? As long as we're looking at trend lines, we may conclude
> >> that they'll continue to outperform their American counterparts in math
> >> and science, as they've been doing for quite a while.
> >>
> >> From:
> >>
> >> eSkeptic: the email newsletter of the Skeptics Society
> >> Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 | ISSN 1556-5696
> >> View at: www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/09-05-13
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> GroveNet mailing list
> >> GroveNet at rdrop.com
> >> http://www.rdrop.com/mailman/listinfo/grovenet
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> GroveNet mailing list
> >> GroveNet at rdrop.com
> >> http://www.rdrop.com/mailman/listinfo/grovenet
> >>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > GroveNet mailing list
> > GroveNet at rdrop.com
> > http://www.rdrop.com/mailman/listinfo/grovenet
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> GroveNet mailing list
> GroveNet at rdrop.com
> http://www.rdrop.com/mailman/listinfo/grovenet
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> --
> ----
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> --
> ----
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> GroveNet mailing list
> GroveNet at rdrop.com
> http://www.rdrop.com/mailman/listinfo/grovenet
> _______________________________________________
> GroveNet mailing list
> GroveNet at rdrop.com
> http://www.rdrop.com/mailman/listinfo/grovenet
>
>
>
>
>
>
>   _____
>
> _______________________________________________
> GroveNet mailing list
> GroveNet at rdrop.com
> http://www.rdrop.com/mailman/listinfo/grovenet
>