As You Like It - Men Becoming Women

American was founded on freedom of religion; that's why we have different states and state laws vary. We won our freedom from the tyranny of Kings and Queens dictating or infringing upon religious freedom. In centuries past, if a Catholic Queen became Queen, it was kill all the protestants if they refuse to now become Catholic. Or if a Protestant Queen became Queen and the Catholics refused to change to protestant it was off with their heads. America is not founded on tyranny nor governing bodies taking away one's freedom of religion.

But way not fight for calling it same sex unions so yourself and your families are protected until, if and when this is resolved. I'd venture a guess, you could have had full, equal protection long ago and some families wouldn't be hanging in the balance if calamity should strike.

oh noes, I spelt some Welsh wrong, burn the herreteic she's not nationalistic enough!

My English spelling isn't great either btw...

Google apartheid
That's why

Legal and social frameworks do not currently support gay marriage. The same day that homosexual couples where reduced to domestic partnerships another US State passed into law the constitutional ammendment that only married couples could adopt.

Marriage is not a Christian concept. Marriage is a legal and social concept.

Segregation is discrimination. Passing Proposition 8 was a hate crime.

Then again my own country screwed up this same debate too, hell, even the Netherlands got it wrong.

The Western World isnt ready to give out equality, it's far too involved with hatred to give people dignity and respect as human beings.

Uh huh. Ironic isn't it.

--
Aes

It would be nice if it actually practiced that. At the time of the Constitution, I believe only Rhode Island recognized the legitimacy of any religion other than Christianity. Things have not really changed that much.

Now... I happen to be a minister (yes, really), and I see no reason why the definition of marriage should have anything to do with the gender of the partners.

First, I'd like to thank SL forums for allowing us to go off topic and allow this discussion to continue.

But to address you, yes America was founded on Christian principles, though those with other Christian beliefs could form different colonies which then turned into states law's, etc. Next, I don't know of any particular religious book that speaks of same sex marriage? Haven't studied them all. Though I am a seasoned debater on this issue and have studied theology, plus have read some of the Torah and some of the Koran (out of curiosity). And thus yes, I do believe you are and can be a minister and I have debated this issue with just about every established religion other than perhaps some of the Asian religions, aka Hindi, etc.

But that is not America today, one is free to believe any religion here and not get their head chopped off. But how does being gay fall into freedom of religion? (Not being smug, asking, but only if SL allows the continuation of this discussion, or we could take the debate elsewhere, though I am on vacation and back to RL. My rl bf comes first over SL or any debate. So back to him. You'd have to catch me on Monday or by Im if you'd like to take the debate elsewhere after this week. It's rl time with my family.

"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible...Some books on Deism fell into my hands...It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared much stronger than the refutations; in short I soon became a thorough deist."
-Benjamin Franklin

"As the government of the United States of America is not on any sense founded on the Christian Religion, - as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of of Musselmen (Muslims), - and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
-Treaty of Tripoli, signed into law by John Adams

"I was glad to find in your book a formal contradiction, at length,...that Christianity is part of the common law. The proof of the contrary, which you have adduced, is inconrovertible; to wit, that the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced, or knew that such a character had ever existed...What a conspiracy this, between Church and State. Sing Tantarara, rogues all, rogues all. Sing Tantarara, rogues all!"
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Major John Cartwright, 6/5/1824

It's the individual state governments, to some degree excepting Rhode Island, that have in the past, and continue in the present, to bind Christianity into the laws of the land. The United States is not a Christian country, nor is it founded on the Christian religion, except in so far as it is composed of a scattering of little Christian banana republics that continue to confound the Constitution at every turn.

Dear Avawyn,

When you and your boyfriend have sex outside of the sanctity of marriage, which Christian dogma are you following?

Curious,
Pie

PS: Avawyn... "Hindi" is a language, not a religion. Not all speakers of Hindi are Hindus (many are Christians, in fact), and not all Hindus speak Hindi. Your scholarship is somewhat lacking.

Argent,

When you have the 1953 Avawyn Edition of Encarta, then you can question her intelligence. Until then, Hindi is a religion. The Good Encarta will tell her so. It tells her anything she wants to hear.

-Klu-

Okies, now I call trolls as in plural. rolls eyes.

Hinduism is a religion that originated in the Indian subcontinent. Hinduism is often referred to as Sanātana Dharma by its practitioners, a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal law." Hindu beliefs vary widely, with concepts of God and/or gods ranging from pantheism, monotheism and polytheism, with Vishnu and Shiva being the most popular deities. Other notable characteristics include a belief in reincarnation and karma, as well as personal duty, or dharma.

Troll

My personal belief is my personal belief and has nothing to do with me changing someone elses religion to fit me in.

I've had enough of the trolls on here, not to mention just plain IDIOTS!

dogma? What does beastiality(misspelled to get even more mileage out of my post) have to do with anything in the thread?

So then you're saying your own personal beliefs are more important to you then your Christianity?

Then why should your Christianity be more important then my personal beliefs?

I don't recall calling you any names, nor do I understand your seeming anger with me, as I am only asking to try to better understand your viewpoint.

Sincerely,
Pie
(bow wow, woof woof)

Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?

Please, Avawyn, you're not doing yourself any favors by attacking me for noticing that you display such a common misconception. Common, that is, among people whose religious scholarship is sharply focussed and shallow beyond that focus. I don't think there's any question but what the focus of your own scholarship is.

Hitler!

Brenda's not awake for a few hours yet . . .

Pep (So you'll have to wait a while to see her pants)

As well you should, but as a person. You all start on neutral ground for me, then what you say or do forms my judgement. I wouldn't know if you were male or female on the other side of your monitor, but what you do with yourself is how you want people to perceive you and how you may or may not impact my experience.

On another board for another site, someone who was a good friend ingame had revealed they were a man. I hadn't dated or engaged in any emotional relationship with them so that didn't phase me. However they started acting like a pompous ass after that. It was a shame really. I guess being female to them meant not being a sociopath and working hard at being civil to people - we're not even talking about gender defining traits. And I wouldn't say by a longshot that the female sociopaths I've come across online aren't all guys. I'm confident they aren't LOL.

Well, male or female offline, what you are online to me is how I will regard you. If you're a female av I will refer to you as a "she" because that's what you are for everyone at that moment.

The thing which bothers me is how people treat others based on the gender of their av with relation to mindgame shit. Maybe they dont realize the other is more than savvy to it. IT DOESNT WORK HERE WITH EVERYONE. This goes for male and female av and RL people. I've seen it all. I dont get the male bashing here constantly because females arent much different and concealing their gender as well. Both sides of the fence have done it all.

I have a personal policy: Unless I've met you in person, you appear as your persona inworld and your av is your primary form of self expression. It doesn't matter what you are in RL, and I will not discriminate based on gender (lol I guess that means I wont be IMming you for your RL photo).

I might however mute you if you lag me down with bling

I say here here to the men who pretend to be women.

Whilst I dont try to date in Second Life - for me one partner is more than I can cope with, and I do regard having a seperate SL relationship as cheating on an RL partner - I do hang around gay and lesbian places in SL, and they can be something of a meat-shop.

The thing that strikes me about the lesbian community in SL, where there is undoubtedly at least half the population of the less seedy clubs being RL male, is that even though a few do stand out very overtly as men, is a lot of them do not.

I have been wrong before over the RL genders of lesbians in SL, I thought I was quite clever at spotting the lesbians played by men but it turned out they're a bit more cunning than I thought.

What makes it even harder is that amongst the RL lesbian community, well lets just say in the real gay bars i've been too i've seen more physical-fights break out amongst the women than the men... Gay people are not generally afraid of breaking gender stereotypes and this means that quite a lot of lesbians are - as I am - not too bothered about doing something that could be perceived as masculine, or acting in a way that normally one would expect a man to act.

I do whatever I want to do, and if that means that when a guy comes up to me in a bar and starts touching my face and making condascending comments and harassing me - as happened to me earlier this year at a gay club - I put him back in his place (in that instance I actually stopped short of smaking him one, but it wasnt because he was bigger than me, it was because I had a party of friends with me who dragged him away peaceably before I did).

Now in SL when I watch the various relationships make and break in the gay community, I of course - without being prejudicial about it - form an opinion of who I think is genuinely a lesbian and who isnt. Over time i've found those i've later had confirmation of (whether by meeting, voice, confession whatever) has been way less than 100% accurate.

It strikes me, that in a relationship that is to exist solely in SL, there is no harm in such liasons where the facts and the fiction are so wildly gender-different. Whilst I do regard SL only relationships as something of a fools errand and a road to hurt (You always end up in a love you cant have), I dont see the harm in one party of a relationship not being who they say they are whilst RL is not a factor.

Where I have difficulty is where one parties fantasy allows them to lie and create the illusion of wanting an RL when really they just want to exercise a fantasy. There are enough like minded people in SL to have that fantasy without hurting and preying on people, this is sociopathia, and it's wrong.

In the meentime, many RL male SL lesbians are providing a valuable service to the SL lesbian community - they're actually making us a lot more femme on average! And i'm all for hanging out with femme's.

So heer heer to the male-lesbians, I love you all.

eww.. sweaty balls..

One time on another chat system someone was being a real annoyance. Well, I found a somewhat unique way of getting revenge:

Step 1: Cyber with them on that chat system. Log it.

Step 2: Set up a completely different persona. Different network (bitnet vs internet), different chat system (relay vs IRC), different gender, different name, different username, different machine, different personality.

Step 3: A few days later talk to them there, let them brag about the encounter from Step 1.

Step 4: Log that conversation. Send the logs to people.



A good policy.



Being around Deaf people a lot the first time I heard ASL I thought they started talking about American Sign Language.


Votes? Who here wishes there was a per-avatar and per-plot (weighted by size) maximum amount of a sim's resources you could take up? All laggy clubs to their own islands.

Hey i've a thousand looks and all of them awesome. If you need to upgrade your computer to display me properly, then it's worth it

Indeed. For example, I would suspect the best way to get accepted as a RL woman in SL is to have a male avatar and "admit" that you have a small penis.

Indeed. For example, I would suspect the best way to get accepted as a RL woman in SL is to have a male avatar and "admit" that you have a small penis.

And...
You are my new hero.