h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ross I was not saying that you can lie to the hospital so that's ok tehn. I am actually disgustted about the lack of rights accorded to gay couples as couples, which was more or less what I was trying to say.

Mina - I take your point about not getting married, but that is at least an option. What rights would you like to have as one of a partnership, and how would that differ from being married?

Ben
Female, single, not planning on marrying again, not planning on sharing accomodation in a romantic or sexual relationship again. Wishing someone would do her ironing.

re. parades etc: aside from protest marches, these are common-culture events also; like carnivals (UK meaning) and similar civic pride goings-on, mediaeval fayres, even WI meetings. (Yes, I know these are all fairly daft.) It's not necessarily emphasing difference in an exclusive way, but signifying unity. Etc.
Local carnivals are the worst things going.

Marriage: so I'm young and naive, but nowt would make me marry. Partly on principle, since the law should be changed, but mostly for non-religious reasons. I reckon any ceremony that would sit well with my faith would not really be legally binding (i.e handfasting). I dislike needless formality.
In agreement with just about everyone, it's not their business.
(add another to the BDSM side.)

Ben, you've asked the question I can never answer. Any time I try I wind up sounding like a hypocrite. I hated being married from the moment I did it. That's why I would never do that again.

The best I can come up with is that any couple should be allowed to be treated as such. Not in the way of inheritance etc - it's too easy to make a will leaving your wordly goods to the person of your choice, but simple courtesy. I don't even live with my partner, but if he was on his deathbed I'd be devastated if they refused me entry simply because we are not married. I'd also hate to think that if I died, my son would never see my partner again. It's not a very good answer I'm afraid.

Its a tricky one, isn't it Mina? Thanks for being so honest in your reply.

Ben

Mina - would your ex-husband allow your partner to take on guardianship/adopt your son? My situation is very weird - my mother invites her ex (my dad) round to dinner and he goes to the gym with her current husband, who is the father of my brother and sister (okay, pedants, my *half* siblings ). But if anything happened to my mum and my other dad (as in my siblings' natural father), I know that my dad would take them in, and hell, I'm sure my parents would rather that happened than them ending up with strangers.

As for marriage - a friend of mine (who is Hindu) and I were talking about this the other day. For us, the concept of marriage (or the ritualistic elements) are a cultural thing that we very much want to keep alive. Living in Britain, most people go to Church or the registry office, but if I get married I would want to do it the Chinese way, with much kneeling and tea drinking, because it's a matter of cultural identity.

Did any of that make sense? No? Okay then...

My son would want to go and live with his father, and that's what I would want to. Under current law I can appoint a guardian for my son - and I have done, 2, but he would want to be with his dad. The guardians are there so that I know that someone would be looking out for J, making sure that he doesn't lose contact with my side of his family. If I live with my partner for 3 years, he is entitled to ask for access, but we don't live together. When I made my will my lawyer told me that if I had children by another partner I could ask that the siblings wouldn't be separated, but I'm not sure what the exact law is on that.That sounds like what would happen in your family.
As it's not likely to happen, I haven't looked into it. My son loves my partner, when he doesn't come round to stay overnight he complains. He would miss him if he never saw him again.

I like the idea of tea drinking, that sounds very sensible. I'd probably be happy about marriage if it had an expiry date, renewable every year or so.

Do you know that your ex-husband would be against the idea of your son's having contact with your partner? Have you discussed it?

I'm not trying to be nosy, just interested...

A legal arrangement, providing specific legal rights and benefits, renewable annually. Mina, you are brilliant.

The problem is that there is a continuum from one night stands to golden wedding anniversaries, and we seem to want more than one legal boundary on the continuum.

Ben

From my very limited point of view, I've always been amazed at the fact that men are more homophobic than women - I used to work in a hotel, and you should have heard the remarks of the male personnel when there was a gay congress in town!

For some reason, men (in my country) seem to see homosexual men as a threat - but I can't recall ever noticing women reacting with that same amount of fear and prejudice against lesbians?

I watched a very interesting documentary on TV, where they stated that all foetuses are female at first, but those ones that are destined to be male are moulded into that through the influence of the male hormone testosterone(sp?) and sometimes the foetus does not receive a big enough dosis of the hormone to make a complete male, thus resulting in biological hermaphrodites, among other things.

This seems to suggest that sometimes the body seems to have developed into a male, but not the mind. Even before watching this documentary my firm belief is that homosexuality is a biological thing, not a mental thing, thus making it impossible to 'convert' homosexuals into heterosexuals.

"...male personnel when there was a gay congress in town!"

Surely you mean *some* gay congress.

No, actually not - this was some major gay happening, taking place in different European capitals each year...

Sorry, I was punnign on the fact that 'congress' can mean either an organised meeting of like-minded individuals or shagging - but if I have to explain it it's obviously not funny.

Sorry, didn't get it - English is a 'foreign' language to me!

its not truely redemption if you don't mean what you say. if you ask god to forgive you for killing a six year old boy after you raped him then you will be forgiven, but you have to truely mean it and not just be saying that you do so you can slip by the law of God. beleive me there are no loop holes in heven,everything is clean cut

Caleb, it is good to see you back in this thread. I hope you do not feel too attacked by it - it seems you pressed a few buttons here.

Your point about redemption is one of the few points you have made that I agree with. It IS a sacrament, 'an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace'. Unfortunately I disagree with the god bit, though I agree with the human bit. But that is just my opinion, and no more valid or invalid than yours.

Ben

Am I the only one who *hates* the idea of divine redemption. In effect, you could dedicate your life to good works - bring food and comfort to the destitute, clean the wounds of lepers and protect the innocent from oppression - or even just try to get through life without causing harm, but if you don't accept Jesus as your personal saviour (or even if you do but find love in the arms of the 'wrong' person), you're off to spend eternity in hell.
Conversly, you could advocate the killing of a million people or devise ways to break the 'stranglehold' Jews have on the media (Billy Graham style - please see http://www.counterpunch.org/alexgraham.html before pressing the panic button) and still be guaranteed your place at God's right hand. It's f**ked!

there is no hell. i can say this with utter, utter certainty. even if there is a God, there is no hell.

caleb, again, well done on returning. I know it must be hard for you at the moment to have what you believe in challenged by so many people. Hopefully it will help you get to the heart of your own beliefs and be able to express them with more clarity than in the past.

that sounded like a bizaare thing to say, i know, but this is why i said it.....

a girl i knew at sixth form (age 16/17/18) was very very vocal and focused in her beliefs (christian). unfortunaltey part of our course of study was philosophy and this included a massive section on knowledge and belief and what the difference is between the two. because the people in our class were from something like 20 different countries there were a lot of issues raised at the time that we argued to death. This girl went from very defensive and quoting a bible passage in answer to everything she was asked.....to someone who left sixth form with a very clear sense of what she personally believed, how this fitted in with the bible, and was able to explain this clearly, non offensively, and at great length to people. this all came to head when a guest speaker at an assembly hadnt been investigated thoroughly before allowing to speak. in front of a room full of international students he explained how he had been mistreated at the hands of the 'japs' during the second world war and how they were all going to hell for it etc. at the same time explaining to use (this was the point of the assembly actually) how finding god helped him survive his horrific experiences and live a useful life on returning home. general chaos insued as people tried to explain that the people who had hurt him were long dead and that we understood it had been an horrific and inhuman experience but that hating innocent children alive now was not justified or going to help him. this went on with the teachers going whiter and whiter and this guy getting crosser until the girl in question stood up and said "you claim that as a christian a big part of you life is forgiveness. you are not making sense." or something like that. now, the point of this rather long winded story is not this guy who was probably still suffereing from PTSD and had clearly been through some unimaginably terrible things.( we werent saying that he had to forgive people who had hurt him and killed his friends.) it is that the girl had realised the importance of understanding what and why you believe something.

sorry for extreme longness of that post. i'm not going to go into what i believe because it would take forever and it's all over h2g2 already anyway.

i just wanted to express a hope that caleb, and everybody else, is able to understand each other a little better after all the shouting, even if they still dont agree.......

This is a follow on from FABT's post and has no point and no moral.

My father was a prisoner of war of the Japanese: Singapore, Changai, the railway, the lot. However he had no discernable dislike of the Japanese, and happily bought Sony televisions, for example. He had been in the Indian Army for 5 years or so before the outbreak of war, and he had a high degree of respect for eastern cultures. His view, so far as I could tell, was that the Japanese were professional soldiers with a different culture from the Europeans and Australians. I think he respected them, among all of the other emotions he felt about them.

He died when I was 33, and I received a letter from a fellow prisoner of war, who spoke very briefly about their time together in the letter. I realised then that by the time my father was my age (ie 33) he had been through that whole experience, and been out the other side of it for 3 years or so. This shook me.

He had not been particularly spiritual as a young man, or during that time, but during his late 40s and early 50s he grew spiritually. I have been told by a couple of people that he would have been a Buddhist. However for whatever reason he decided to become a clergyman in the Church of England, and was a very good one. Kind, non-judgemental, honest and with a fabulous sense of humour and a tendency to offer gin and tonic or whisky and soda to anyone and everyone who came his way.

I don't want to analyse this particularly; I have in the past but don't feel the need to do it here. As I said, this is a post without a point or a moral to it. There is one rider, which is as he was dying he had flashbacks, (probably induced by the morphine). Let's just say that things he had had to do then were still on his mind 50 years later.



Ben