Zixar

Aw, shoot, Ex! I was looking forward to meeting you! :(-->

You mean it could all just be a colossal misunderstanding for the past 2,000 years? "Hail monkey! Martyr of cod..."

I'll add my thumbs-up to Goey's idea too. "Drive-By prophets"--LOL! Reminds me of that scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian where Brian poses as a prophet in order to escape the Roman pursuit.

WordWolf's got a point, Mike. Even that "tattered remnant" you so casually dismiss tells you three times : Anybody who really wants to hear anything you've got to say will follow you to your final WOW Auditorium. Remaining here is a waste of time. If you were half the used-Bible salesman VPW knew to be, you'd stop casting your "pearls" before us "swine" and sow your seed amongst the PFAL-repentant and PFAL-meek.

Rocky: I would welcome any cogent arguments on the topic. However, attacking the poster when you cannot otherwise back up your position with reasoned argument is not debate, it's nothing but immature fallacy. Keep your ad hominem spew to yourself from now on. It has no place in civilized debate, not to mention being long past old, repetitive, and tiresome.

Spending all those Easters in Dayton growing up, I'd have to say it would be Esther Price chocolates. Best in all the world, to me.

Herbie: Ooh, you mean we've been falsely mastering Doctor's PENULTIMATE teaching instead of the True Lost Last Lost Ubiquitous Teaching™????? I think I'm going to be sick...

(sniff) How I love those little Amazing Sea Monkeys! Selflessly throwing themselves down a whale's gullet en masse... Not too many critters on this ol' rock of ours would volunteer to be whale s---. "Don't you monkey with the monkey!"

It does worry me that there are BILLIONS of our Amazing Sea Monkey friends being eaten every single day by whales. What do we do? Nuke the whales?

Catcup: Perhaps I misread you, but that sounded kind of hostile, to me. Who's "hiding" behind an argument? As for women and blacks not having equal access to education, that's true--they had MORE access to it when I was trying to get financial aid for college. The FA office might as well have hung up a sign that said "white boys need not apply". (It's not like I repressed any blacks when I was in grade school, although there was that one time when I didn't pick Vicky to be on my kickball team. I think we can all agree that cooties are a justifiable disqualifying trait, though, can't we? :D--> ) It's also bordering on a false dilemma to lump all of human rights as depending upon one that has some debatable elements to it. I don't think there's any harm in discussing various sides of the issue, is there? Or did I really misread what you were saying? Puzzled, Zix

Catcup: You do realize that you can't really measure, say, women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies as against a statistical breakdown of the population, right? The two sample sets don't correlate. Too many factors determine who gets to be a CEO, it obviously can't be compared to a random drawing.

Garth: Can you edit your above post to break up that long URL with a space or two? It's screwing up the formatting. Thanks.

Catcup: Right, right, and right. Good! Now for the $64,000 question: If the state did NOT regulate polygamy and incest, how would society as a whole suffer? The answer is closely tied to the BENEFIT to the society of caring for children, and indrectly, women as the sole source of them. 1) Incestuous relationships have a much higher risk of gross genetic abnormalities in the children. Society usually has to pick up the burden of the severe health needs of such children, which means everyone has to pay for it. Since it's preventable with a zero-cost law, the state is justified in prohibiting it. 2) Polygamous relationships go the opposite way, usually relegating women to little more than baby factories--but not always. It's conceivable that one open-minded man and several well-educated women could enter into such a relationship freely, without the standard male dominance factor. How, then, could that be bad, if all parties fully consented as communal equals? Simple. Due to the way the tax laws are set up, the number of tax deductions claimed goes up as number of wives increase, but the costs of maintaining the household don't increase as fast. In plain terms, polygamists don't pay their fair share of taxes. Which, again, means everyone else has to pay for it. And that's just the ideal case. In real polygamous cases, the women are encouraged (or forced) to have as many children as possible. Just like in overcrowded classrooms, children who don't receive adequate amounts of parental attention are at a distinct disadvantage, emotionally, socially, and even physically. With only one father, and only so many hours in a day, the children don't have much of a chance for a normal, healthy development. Which, again, is to society's detriment--the optimum for any society is to give its children every possible advantage so as to keep the society strong as time passes. Which brings us back to homosexual marriages. Civil union should be enacted to address the inheritance and power of attorney inequities for all single individuals regardless of sexual preference. But, since the ONLY reason the state should subsidize marriage in any way is to foster the care of children, any relationship where it is obvious that there is no chance of children is not in the interest of the state. The state (ideally) should never give public money away unless it gets something in return that benefits everybody. Current laws already allow for adoptive and/or single parents to gain the marriage subsidy (the tax break) without regard to sexual orientation. The children are covered. As for heterosexual marriages that are childless, that stems from the state respecting the privacy of the individuals. There is no fertility test administered for a marriage license--that would be unnecessarily intrusive. The state gives heterosexual couples the benefit of the doubt, with the subsidy paid to childless couples offsetting the invasion of privacy required to enforce a stricter standard. But when it's blatantly obvious that two people of the same sex cannot produce children without some third party being involved, extending the marriage subsidy to civil union is throwing money away in broad daylight. In short, "I want my money" is not sufficient cause for the state to pay you. Bottom line: Civil union? Yes. Tax break? No. (Edited to remove unwieldy spoiler-space box)

Doze: It isn't punishment to spank a monkey, they usually just enjoy it and ask for more. You can experiment with that until you go blind, but it won't change anything...

Is Peter Gabriel guilty of hate speech for his "Shock The Monkey" song? (To be fair, he never says "Shock Amazing Sea Monkeys" in the song, though...)

Trefor: I can state categorically that it is entirely false. (Read what you wrote again... :D--> )

Oh, don't sell yourself short, Mike. You've obviously taken PFAL to a degree never dreamed of by VPW. The only conclusion one can reach is that you're onto something even the Teacher couldn't see.

Well, that didn't take long.

I'm surprised no one mentioned the Lost Hidden Teaching™ of Amazing Sea Monkeys, from the classic "Buckaroo Banzai" movie. Monkey-Monsignor John Lithgow (as Dr. Emilio Lizardo) delivered the litany ensconced in this line: "Laugh-a while you can, monkey boy!" Of course, only true believers could notice the italics in the spoken dialogue...

Now, now, Raf. I'm surprised that you can't put it all together any better. Wierwille only made those mistakes you keep harping on because he was a flawed individual who only WISHED he were the man he knew to be. Sadly, not even he was able to truly spiritually MASTER the intricacies of PFAL. He was but a willing conduit, weaving the whole mystery of all time subtly into a little orange book without even seeing the forest he was planting the trees for. Imagine what he could have accomplished if not for human frailty! He was but our Moses, leading us to the sight of the Jordan of PFAL Mastery, but fated to die for his sins of the flesh before he reached the shore. Why do you resist Mike, our true Joshua, in his efforts to reclaim the Promised Land from the Philistines of the WayGB, the Amalekites of the OLGs, and the cruel yoke of the TVT? Oh, yeah. It's because it's all idolatrous pigswill. Right. Sorry, I forgot there for a moment.

No, it isn't. In order to exercise that right, those two straight individuals would be FORCED to marry. It doesn't matter if they CAN or not. If they don't want to, for whatever personal reason they might have, they do not get the benefit of automatic medical power of attorney. Hence, it comes down to universal choice to designate beneficiaries and decision making, probably via some extension of common-law marriage precedent.

catcup: That question is not a "gay" issue per se. Your example is exactly the same if the couple are unmarried heterosexuals.

Tom: It's worth a try.