"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
God didn't marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son, did he?
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
You can find plenty of Christians on Grindr
So what, you can even find openly gay Church of England vicars now
She is for Brexit and cutting the state, and against asylum seekers and the woke…and that’s why she loves the United Kingdom.
"They want us to take a firm line on state spending"
Unless of course it is for the NHS for their hip replacements and heart ops or triple lock pension uplifts or social care caps to protect the kids inheritance.
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
There is no magic. There is no Satan. There is often, however, inadequate learning of understanding of things with a perfectly normal explanation. Of course, this does require the difficult technique of learning and understanding rather than the rather lazy memorising of dogma. It is always easier to destroy what you do not understand.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
Well, only heterosexual reproduction can generate offspring unless humanity becomes parthnogenic in which case we can dispense with men....
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
God didn't marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son, did he?
And Lot offered his daughters to a crowd to be raped. The bible calls Lot a "righteous man"
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
There is no magic. There is no Satan. There is often, however, inadequate learning of understanding of things with a perfectly normal explanation. Of course, this does require the difficult technique of learning and understanding rather than the rather lazy memorising of dogma. It is always easier to destroy what you do not understand.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
Well, only heterosexual reproduction can generate offspring unless humanity becomes parthnogenic in which case we can dispense with men....
In your opinion. In my opinion there very much is magic and Satan. Of course being an ideological secular left liberal you have little respect for those of us who are conservatives with faith like me. Do we care less? No.
She is for Brexit and cutting the state, and against asylum seekers and the woke…and that’s why she loves the United Kingdom.
If it ends up Braverman v Sunak that goes to the membership, Braverman could win it with that platform
As I have posted earlier.
FFS don't let the membership decide the next PM.
No, we are a democratic party and they will have their say.
If Braverman gets to the final 2 with Sunak it will go to the membership, she won't withdraw
You also said Wallace would run and win.
Had he run he may well have won, I was disappointed he didn't.
Yes but you said that he would run and that he would win.
When you refuse to talk in anything but absolutes prepare to be reminded.
He didn't, maybe for family reasons who knows.
Braverman however has already declared and is close to the numbers already needed to be nominated, so completely different.
If she got to the final 2 v Sunak the membership could well vote for her, not absolute certainty but very possible
May well be family reasons. It is always forgotten I think but if you run and then become PM you have to explain to your spouse or partner that they will have at least two armed protection officers within yards of them for the rest of their lives.
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
I'm afraid this as a summary is vulgar and simplistic tripe.
Many women who practised witchcraft may also have been skilled in medicine, with more beneficial outcomes than the male physicians who put them out of business, but there is still a big issue with the practise of witchcraft in that it attempts to use spitirual forces to manipulate people and events. That is why it is considered dark and harmful.
When you pray in a Church, you use God as the intermediary between you and your desires. You wouldn't pray for your boss to die in a fiery car crash, because you know that that is counter to God's teachings, and so your prayer would not work. In metaphysics, its fundamental to realising your desires to be free from resentment and have faith in only good outcomes for everyone. There is no similar safeguard in witchcraft. If you look into the actual history of witchcraft, it's not particularly nice - though of course the poor women involved did not deserve what befell many of them.
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
You can find plenty of Christians on Grindr
So what, you can even find openly gay Church of England vicars now
So what I'm saying is that your tiny postage-stamp window on reality leads you to issue idiotic proclamations like "Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity", when in reality Christians are considerably more diverse and relaxed about everything. It's just people like you who are the problem, clinging to dusty bronze-age books and trying to distil something coherent from the jumble, and (most of all) going around trying to push this messy nonsense onto other people.
If you would just stop messing with people's lives with your metaphysical static and half-remembered metaphors, that would be really splendid. Go to your church and kneel and pray, but fuck off from outside of abortion clinics and get your goons out of the House of Lords because the rest of us are really not interested.
Tough, we won't. I don't have a problem with gay Vicars, though I am Anglican and Roman Catholics or Baptists or Pentecostals would. I am no fan of abortion on demand however and if the SC decision in the US is some movement in the culture wars against the likes of you in a more conservative direction and at least reducing the time limit for abortions in time here too all to the good.
I also remain as committed to the Church of England being the established church as ever.
If you think we are “hollowed out” then there is sone structural inefficiency compared to what we have done in living memory.
I think there is a huge amount of spending that just happens because someone once thought it was a good idea and it is hard to challenge
You have to account for the demographic burden which is “worth” a percent or two per decade in pension spending, health pressures etc.
Like for like we are probably at a 50 year low, and the candidates are proposing to slice further.
Do you have any convincing maths on that?
Pensioners now contribute for an extra 3 years before getting any state pensions, compared to 15-20 years ago.
Whilst life expectancy is up by 5 years or so since 1990.
Which sounds quite balanced.
If you think the demographic burden is a fiction, you are living in a hole.
I found this at the ONS site.
…As a result, State Pension spending has continued to rise in recent decades. It amounted to almost £92 billion in 2017 (equivalent to 5.1% of GDP), up from £26 billion in 1992 (3.6% of GDP). Based on current population projections, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicts that state pension expenditure will rise to 6.1% of GDP by 2042.
That latter figure accounts for the rising pension age, too.
This figure does not include health burden arising from an elderly pop.
My own view is there is only one way to deal with this - funding wise - somehow the property wealth of the boomer generation has to be tapped.
No way will any of the 200 Tory leadership candidates own up to that though.
I have rather startled myself by thinking that public ownership of utilities may be needed. I cannot help thinking how much the costs of electricity, gas, water, rail, etc could come down if the profits paid to shareholders were simply reduced to zero.
The problem is, of course, that when this has been done in the past, the industries in question become highly inefficient.
But somebody has to pay for all the billions paid out to shareholders and for public utilities that somebody is you, me and everyone we know....
Have you divided the headline-grabbing profits through by the number of households, or expressed them as a percentage of revenue? And if so, do they still seem excessive?
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Wow. Takes it straight on, wins, and looks eminently reasonable:
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Wow. Takes it straight on, wins, and looks eminently reasonable:
She could do something here…
Certainly shows she knows what area is considered her biggest weakness.
This is pretty accurate so far as I can see. Kemi would be sitting alongside Braverman.
It does rather lack nuance though. I suspect they've almost totally given up trying to characterise economic positions and are basically ranking them by how woke they are. And what is economically right wing nowadays? Fiscal responsibility or lowering taxes?
On Kemi - interesting that her endorsements come largely from the red wall seats - Mansfield, Ashfield, Walsall North. Interesting to see if this trend continues.
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
There is no magic. There is no Satan. There is often, however, inadequate learning of understanding of things with a perfectly normal explanation. Of course, this does require the difficult technique of learning and understanding rather than the rather lazy memorising of dogma. It is always easier to destroy what you do not understand.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
Well, only heterosexual reproduction can generate offspring unless humanity becomes parthnogenic in which case we can dispense with men....
In your opinion. In my opinion there very much is magic and Satan. Of course being an ideological secular left liberal you have little respect for those of us who are conservatives with faith like me. Do we care less? No.
You seem to care about what people say about it a very great deal - you get noticably angry and lose your cool when faith is raised, which you very rarely do on other subjects even when getting many insulting comments thrown at you which might make an intemperate reaction understandable. Your unruffled reactions in the face of torrents of criticism is legendary. Yet on this you get very ruffled and emotional.
So you protestation of not caring about the secular left liberals not having respect for conservatives with faith is not very persuasive. No judgement on that, we all have triggers.
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Wow. Takes it straight on, wins, and looks eminently reasonable:
She could do something here…
Certainly shows she knows what area is considered her biggest weakness.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The British public are not evil on this, but nor are they willing to agree with demonstrable nonsense. Her line combined with “for God’s sake be polite, address people how they wish to be addressed, and let them act as the gender they wish to when it affects no one else’s rights” is where the public are.
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
There is no magic. There is no Satan. There is often, however, inadequate learning of understanding of things with a perfectly normal explanation. Of course, this does require the difficult technique of learning and understanding rather than the rather lazy memorising of dogma. It is always easier to destroy what you do not understand.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
Well, only heterosexual reproduction can generate offspring unless humanity becomes parthnogenic in which case we can dispense with men....
In your opinion. In my opinion there very much is magic and Satan. Of course being an ideological secular left liberal you have little respect for those of us who are conservatives with faith like me. Do we care less? No.
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
I'm afraid this as a summary is vulgar and simplistic tripe.
Many women who practised witchcraft may also have been skilled in medicine, with more beneficial outcomes than the male physicians who put them out of business, but there is still a big issue with the practise of witchcraft in that it attempts to use spitirual forces to manipulate people and events. That is why it is considered dark and harmful.
When you pray in a Church, you use God as the intermediary between you and your desires. You wouldn't pray for your boss to die in a fiery car crash, because you know that that is counter to God's teachings, and so your prayer would not work. In metaphysics, its fundamental to realising your desires to be free from resentment and have faith in only good outcomes for everyone. There is no similar safeguard in witchcraft. If you look into the actual history of witchcraft, it's not particularly nice - though of course the poor women involved did not deserve what befell many of them.
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
That’s good. I’m switching back to Penny!
She knew she had to clarify her opinions on this subject. A lot of Tories on Twitter were saying "We like everything about you but we're not sure about your views on what the definition of a woman is".
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
There is no magic. There is no Satan. There is often, however, inadequate learning of understanding of things with a perfectly normal explanation. Of course, this does require the difficult technique of learning and understanding rather than the rather lazy memorising of dogma. It is always easier to destroy what you do not understand.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
Well, only heterosexual reproduction can generate offspring unless humanity becomes parthnogenic in which case we can dispense with men....
In your opinion. In my opinion there very much is magic and Satan. Of course being an ideological secular left liberal you have little respect for those of us who are conservatives with faith like me. Do we care less? No.
You seem to care about what people say about it a very great deal - you get noticably angry and lose your cool when faith is raised, which you very rarely do on other subjects even when getting many insulting comments thrown at you which might make an intemperate reaction understandable. Your unruffled reactions in the face of torrents of criticism is legendary. Yet on this you get very ruffled and emotional.
So you protestation of not caring about the secular left liberals not having respect for conservatives with faith is not very persuasive. No judgement on that, we all have triggers.
OK, I do care but either way I am not going to agree with them
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Wow. Takes it straight on, wins, and looks eminently reasonable:
She could do something here…
It’s absolutely brilliant from Penny so far 👍🏻
And it’s exactly the same as I have been dismantling Casino and MISTY with the last couple of days of PB. You can’t daub Penny as woke for her onslaught on It Ain’t Half Hot Mum when she is stood next to Daley and Sharon on transgender in sport, you just can’t, it’s ridiculous if you try to, because truth is politicians, and all of us, are allowed to have a range of views across these issues - falling foul on just one test or measurement in your opinion means they are woke, thus daubing them as woke, is no different to making Jews wear ribbons - says much more about your own prejudices and idealogical immaturity than it does about Penny’s!
(Her opening statement begins about 15 minutes in. And, following that, under questioning she sticks to her estimate that 130,000 lives could have been saved during the Trump administration, with better policies, and better execution.)
Full disclosure: I watched just the first 22 or 23 minutes, and don't plan to watch the whole thing, since I can read faster than I can watch. I hope Dr. Foxy , and other medical pofessionals, will take a look at the book, and report back to us.
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
Some may well have been creating the magic of Satan, they were not all producing harmless remedies.
There is no magic. There is no Satan. There is often, however, inadequate learning of understanding of things with a perfectly normal explanation. Of course, this does require the difficult technique of learning and understanding rather than the rather lazy memorising of dogma. It is always easier to destroy what you do not understand.
Christianity believes at its heart heterosexual marriage leading to reproduction is the best course for humanity and factually that is pretty accurate. Even if you do no longer persecute those who act differently.
Religion is about following a righteous life to eternal salvation that is why I and billions of others around the world still follow it
Well, only heterosexual reproduction can generate offspring unless humanity becomes parthnogenic in which case we can dispense with men....
In your opinion. In my opinion there very much is magic and Satan. Of course being an ideological secular left liberal you have little respect for those of us who are conservatives with faith like me. Do we care less? No.
Sorry, you think there is magic? I’m genuinely curious. I rather thought where I as an atheist and the church agreed was what there was no such thing as magic? (In that I thought you categorised miracles etc. differently).
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Wow. Takes it straight on, wins, and looks eminently reasonable:
She could do something here…
She has certainly made a bold attempt to reclaim the limelight. But on this issue, I cannot support the assertion that a trans man is a man, or a trans woman is a woman.
You can create a legal framework that gives a legal equivalence but biology is not so easily overwritten.
Trans men and women should be treated as full equals in society. There should be no legal barriers that exist to full equality in terms of citizenship and the legal rights that flow from that.
But true diversity and inclusivity is about celebrating our differences and working to ensure the true equality of opportunity exists.
So let's celebrate trans men and women for being trans. It is not an easy path to tread. And we should all work to remove those remaining obstacles.
But let us also celebrate the near infinite complexity of human biology and the opportunities and challenges that that presents. Biology will, under certain limited circumstances, always have to trump gender identity.
Celebrate the individual. Don't try to force everyone to fit a new orthodoxy that seeks to deny biology and deny common sense.
We are all different and that should be celebrated
Mr Johnson has decided he cannot force a by-election in his marginal constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip.
But two well-placed sources said he is now deciding whether to follow in the footsteps of his immediate predecessor, Theresa May, and remain in the Commons, or to stand down at the next election.
Telegraph
He means ask the good burghers of Uxbridge to return him to the Commons........
This race to cut taxes might end up being an own goal for those candidates .
Sunaks I won’t tell you fairytales seems a good slogan and I’m sure he will ensure taxes can be cut just before the next election.
What happens with all these tax cuts , how are they going to be paid for , more borrowing or cuts to services.
Certainly for us political junkies the normal quiet summer period looks a bit more interesting . Just how this plays out and just how ugly and bitter this leadership campaign becomes should keep PB very busy over the coming weeks.
Tax cuts don’t need to be “paid for”.
Spending needs to be paid for and justified. It’s not some immutable thing that exists
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Wow. Takes it straight on, wins, and looks eminently reasonable:
She could do something here…
She has certainly made a bold attempt to reclaim the limelight. But on this issue, I cannot support the assertion that a trans man is a man, or a trans woman is a woman.
You can create a legal framework that gives a legal equivalence but biology is not so easily overwritten.
Trans men and women should be treated as full equals in society. There should be no legal barriers that exist to full equality in terms of citizenship and the legal rights that flow from that.
But true diversity and inclusivity is about celebrating our differences and working to ensure the true equality of opportunity exists.
So let's celebrate trans men and women for being trans. It is not an easy path to tread. And we should all work to remove those remaining obstacles.
But let us also celebrate the near infinite complexity of human biology and the opportunities and challenges that that presents. Biology will, under certain limited circumstances, always have to trump gender identity.
Celebrate the individual. Don't try to force everyone to fit a new orthodoxy that seeks to deny biology and deny common sense.
We are all different and that should be celebrated
I think there are two things to distinguish.
Your sex is biology. Your biology is your biology. You are male or female (except for the minuscule number of cases where you are both).
But your gender is different - you can identify as another gender. And throughout history and in other cultures there have been more than two genders.
These two are often confused (sometimes deliberately). Penny stayed on the sensible side of the argument. Bravo Penny.
Taking a wild stab, reducing our (already comparatively very low) carbon emissions at a speed that doesn't impoverish the citizenry and wreck the economy. Weren't you complaining about the cost of living the other day? Join the dots.
This is at least a proper thing to be discussing at this juncture, regarding policy direction for future leadership.
A lot of Conservative thinking, and the General Public are very much on the side of Net Zero 50 (pushed through by May in her Lame Duck Period?) and Labours position, in Millibands hands is Tory’s are not going quickly enough? (Nick Palmer May be the one to correct me if I have that wrong).
That's right. We note the pledges but are sceptical whether the Government is doing enough to achieve them. You might, if feeling uncharitable, call them hot air. Some Tories are perfectly sincere and trying hard; others see it as more of a slogan. Kemi is at least honest in opposing even pretending to be in favour.
We differ somewhat in nuance from the Greens in emphasizing the potential for Britain to lead a green industrial revolution - better wind turbines, better carbon capture, etc., creating new industries, job and exports; the Greens place the emphasis more on reduced consumption.
The Greens' policy regarding economic growth (or the reversal of it) is utterly insane. Sad, mad people. One hopes that at some point they recover.
The Greens are batshit-crazy.
They still haven't caught up with the idea that economic growth does not have to be heavy, polluting industry.
"Sajid Javid and Jeremy Hunt call for massive tax cuts Ex-chancellor wants to scrap National Insurance rise, while helping businesses is former foreign secretary's priority"
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
I'm afraid this as a summary is vulgar and simplistic tripe.
Many women who practised witchcraft may also have been skilled in medicine, with more beneficial outcomes than the male physicians who put them out of business, but there is still a big issue with the practise of witchcraft in that it attempts to use spitirual forces to manipulate people and events. That is why it is considered dark and harmful.
When you pray in a Church, you use God as the intermediary between you and your desires. You wouldn't pray for your boss to die in a fiery car crash, because you know that that is counter to God's teachings, and so your prayer would not work. In metaphysics, its fundamental to realising your desires to be free from resentment and have faith in only good outcomes for everyone. There is no similar safeguard in witchcraft. If you look into the actual history of witchcraft, it's not particularly nice - though of course the poor women involved did not deserve what befell many of them.
All of that is nonsense, not least because the idea that prayer is only directed to God is clearly a fiction. Multiple monotheistic traditions, including the majority of Christian sects, believe in saintly intercession. When you can't even offer an accurate description of the hocus pocus you are trying to defend, it really doesn't bode well for any defence of the overall metaphysics
Saints are interceding to God on the asker's behalf. That makes absolutely no difference to the substance of the argument. You would no more ask a saint to kill someone than asking God.
The practise of metaphysics I am talking about here is distinct from typical Christianity - I was using it as an example of another form of spirituality, one that through a different mechanism, permits no active harmful intentions to be wrought on others.
Even white witches have acknowledged that a relatively benign spell for more money could involve (for example) an accident befalling a wealthy relative who leaves a legacy. A prayer to God (or Mary, or St George) for more money is not going to put you in a situation of responsibility for harming someone, because your prayer is being handled by a loving and all-powerful God, according to his purpose and plan.
This race to cut taxes might end up being an own goal for those candidates .
Sunaks I won’t tell you fairytales seems a good slogan and I’m sure he will ensure taxes can be cut just before the next election.
What happens with all these tax cuts , how are they going to be paid for , more borrowing or cuts to services.
Certainly for us political junkies the normal quiet summer period looks a bit more interesting . Just how this plays out and just how ugly and bitter this leadership campaign becomes should keep PB very busy over the coming weeks.
Tax cuts don’t need to be “paid for”.
Spending needs to be paid for and justified. It’s not some immutable thing that exists
Starting from where we are, much of it kind of is. You don’t get to zero base it - we are where we are and if you stop doing something, there are losers. And often they vote.
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Wow. Takes it straight on, wins, and looks eminently reasonable:
She could do something here…
She has certainly made a bold attempt to reclaim the limelight. But on this issue, I cannot support the assertion that a trans man is a man, or a trans woman is a woman.
You can create a legal framework that gives a legal equivalence but biology is not so easily overwritten.
Trans men and women should be treated as full equals in society. There should be no legal barriers that exist to full equality in terms of citizenship and the legal rights that flow from that.
But true diversity and inclusivity is about celebrating our differences and working to ensure the true equality of opportunity exists.
So let's celebrate trans men and women for being trans. It is not an easy path to tread. And we should all work to remove those remaining obstacles.
But let us also celebrate the near infinite complexity of human biology and the opportunities and challenges that that presents. Biology will, under certain limited circumstances, always have to trump gender identity.
Celebrate the individual. Don't try to force everyone to fit a new orthodoxy that seeks to deny biology and deny common sense.
We are all different and that should be celebrated
"let's celebrate trans men and women for being trans"? Sorry, what is it that I'm expected to do here, because I barely even celebrate my own birthday. I'm not sure other people's gender identity is anything that's going to cause me to pull on a paper hat, so can we be clear what's required of me? Most of the time I want to finish work on time, chill out in in the sunshine in the back garden, maybe get a beer in on a Friday evening, and watch some TV with my wife. I'm not clear which activities I'm to drop to fit "celebrating" in, but if it gets me an hour off work fully paid I'm probably game.
I’m reminded of colleagues who have gone to work overseas, whose admiration of other cultures was much improved by their employer offering all our Bank Holidays AND the local ones in addition to unchanged leave.
Give me a Bank Holiday for PRiDE I can get drunk on and I’ll support anything.
Taking a wild stab, reducing our (already comparatively very low) carbon emissions at a speed that doesn't impoverish the citizenry and wreck the economy. Weren't you complaining about the cost of living the other day? Join the dots.
This is at least a proper thing to be discussing at this juncture, regarding policy direction for future leadership.
A lot of Conservative thinking, and the General Public are very much on the side of Net Zero 50 (pushed through by May in her Lame Duck Period?) and Labours position, in Millibands hands is Tory’s are not going quickly enough? (Nick Palmer May be the one to correct me if I have that wrong).
That's right. We note the pledges but are sceptical whether the Government is doing enough to achieve them. You might, if feeling uncharitable, call them hot air. Some Tories are perfectly sincere and trying hard; others see it as more of a slogan. Kemi is at least honest in opposing even pretending to be in favour.
We differ somewhat in nuance from the Greens in emphasizing the potential for Britain to lead a green industrial revolution - better wind turbines, better carbon capture, etc., creating new industries, job and exports; the Greens place the emphasis more on reduced consumption.
The Greens' policy regarding economic growth (or the reversal of it) is utterly insane. Sad, mad people. One hopes that at some point they recover.
The Greens are batshit-crazy.
They still haven't caught up with the idea that economic growth does not have to be heavy, polluting industry.
Sadly, I don't think that matters to many of them; they're so far down the rabbit hole that they actively dislike humanity, and wish to hinder it from thriving by any means possible.
I don't mind how other people live their lives. Live and let live. But I don't like being told what I'm supposed to celebrate and what I'm supposed to be negative about. Mind your own business.
She is for Brexit and cutting the state, and against asylum seekers and the woke…and that’s why she loves the United Kingdom.
Clearly couldn't afford a Cass or a Tristan of this world and their PR agency to do the video like Richi Rich.
That’s a good video, for the target audience.
Shot in Beeston - whose local MP Mr Darren Henry - came out for Truss an hour or two ago.
LOL
Really? Beeston is in my old patch, and the Labour stronghold in it - the Morning Star outsold the Daily Express in the local Sainsbury. I'd think the Braverman vote there is under 5%. The Conservative councillors that she's meeting have not been elected there.
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Wow. Takes it straight on, wins, and looks eminently reasonable:
She could do something here…
She has certainly made a bold attempt to reclaim the limelight. But on this issue, I cannot support the assertion that a trans man is a man, or a trans woman is a woman.
You can create a legal framework that gives a legal equivalence but biology is not so easily overwritten.
Trans men and women should be treated as full equals in society. There should be no legal barriers that exist to full equality in terms of citizenship and the legal rights that flow from that.
But true diversity and inclusivity is about celebrating our differences and working to ensure the true equality of opportunity exists.
So let's celebrate trans men and women for being trans. It is not an easy path to tread. And we should all work to remove those remaining obstacles.
But let us also celebrate the near infinite complexity of human biology and the opportunities and challenges that that presents. Biology will, under certain limited circumstances, always have to trump gender identity.
Celebrate the individual. Don't try to force everyone to fit a new orthodoxy that seeks to deny biology and deny common sense.
We are all different and that should be celebrated
I think there are two things to distinguish.
Your sex is biology. Your biology is your biology. You are male or female (except for the minuscule number of cases where you are both).
But your gender is different - you can identify as another gender. And throughout history and in other cultures there have been more than two genders.
These two are often confused (sometimes deliberately). Penny stayed on the sensible side of the argument. Bravo Penny.
The conflation of sex and gender is never going to be helpful
But also the modern gender theory that is driving the new orthodoxy is a very modern construct that is seeking to push a radical agenda and to silence debate.
A trans (wo)man is not a (wo)man. They can and should have equal legal standing and be entitled at all human dignities and rights.
Other than the tiny number of intersex cases, we are all born clearly identifiable as male or female. That is not something that is assigned. It is something that is observed and recorded.
Let's focus on the dignity and uniqueness of the individual and get rid of this attempt at enforcing a new orthodoxy and silencing debate.
Much of what Penny has said and done is very sensible and to be applauded. But she is wrong on the assertion that a trans woman is a woman. It needs more nuance than that.
She has shown through her other words and actions that she understands this. She just made a mistake in using that particular line.
She is for Brexit and cutting the state, and against asylum seekers and the woke…and that’s why she loves the United Kingdom.
Clearly couldn't afford a Cass or a Tristan of this world and their PR agency to do the video like Richi Rich.
That’s a good video, for the target audience.
Shot in Beeston - whose local MP Mr Darren Henry - came out for Truss an hour or two ago.
LOL
Really? Beeston is in my old patch, and the Labour stronghold in it - the Morning Star outsold the Daily Express in the local Sainsbury. I'd think the Braverman vote there is under 5%. The Conservative councillors that she's meeting have not been elected there.
That Morning Star comment does surprise me - worked there for many years.
But it has more recently become a major hub for students from China. Here's the near copy of the Nottm Uni main building at their campus in Ningbo.
I don't mind how other people live their lives. Live and let live. But I don't like being told what I'm supposed to celebrate and what I'm supposed to be negative about. Mind your own business.
If the society Penny creates around you says celebrate trans people, you have no choice - you are in that society and the society will celebrate 🙂
Flipped round, Put another way, pretending to yourself you are agnostic on stuff, like you don’t care, if the song lyrics are “I boogied on the ceiling, I boogied on the floor, I boogied on my hand and wiped it on the wall” and you found that disgusting, you couldn’t just shrug, would you not want the song banned before children hear it?
Flip Penny’s celebrate Trans round into “not celebrating” is now a cancelled policy. Just like her taking It Ain’t Half Hot Mum apart, she gets it. like Cameron got it on Gay marriage, as another good example of the same thing 👍🏻
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Wow. Takes it straight on, wins, and looks eminently reasonable:
She could do something here…
She has certainly made a bold attempt to reclaim the limelight. But on this issue, I cannot support the assertion that a trans man is a man, or a trans woman is a woman.
You can create a legal framework that gives a legal equivalence but biology is not so easily overwritten.
Trans men and women should be treated as full equals in society. There should be no legal barriers that exist to full equality in terms of citizenship and the legal rights that flow from that.
But true diversity and inclusivity is about celebrating our differences and working to ensure the true equality of opportunity exists.
So let's celebrate trans men and women for being trans. It is not an easy path to tread. And we should all work to remove those remaining obstacles.
But let us also celebrate the near infinite complexity of human biology and the opportunities and challenges that that presents. Biology will, under certain limited circumstances, always have to trump gender identity.
Celebrate the individual. Don't try to force everyone to fit a new orthodoxy that seeks to deny biology and deny common sense.
We are all different and that should be celebrated
"let's celebrate trans men and women for being trans"? Sorry, what is it that I'm expected to do here, because I barely even celebrate my own birthday. I'm not sure other people's gender identity is anything that's going to cause me to pull on a paper hat, so can we be clear what's required of me? Most of the time I want to finish work on time, chill out in in the sunshine in the back garden, maybe get a beer in on a Friday evening, and watch some TV with my wife. I'm not clear which activities I'm to drop to fit "celebrating" in, but if it gets me an hour off work fully paid I'm probably game.
I chose that language because, like sexuality, trans identity needs to be more than just acknowledged or tolerated.
It doesn't require you to put on hats or throw a party .
But it does need more than merely tolerating difference. It needs a positive shift in thinking that goes beyond that.
If, as mooted, 20 backers will be required to enter the race, I can easily see only 8 making it onto the first round ballot, which means some already declared and most of the yet to declare will not make the start line.
Of the 8, I rate the chances of getting on the ballot paper as follows:
Certain - Hunt, Sunak Quite likely with block backing - Braverman You'd think they ought, but could be tight - Javid, Zahawi Good chance of failing, but could attract a constituency - Tugendhat Likely to fail, but look out for a long shot chance of an audacious.out-Thatcherimg that puts jet lagged Truss's place in danger - Badenoch Not a cat in hell's chance - Shapps
Should be in, watch out for Badenoch - Truss Longer she waits, the more a shock non start could occur - Mordaumt Probably not - bar
Don't forget Priti who will announce on Wednesday with a platform of bringing back hanging, putting sharks in the Channel and slashing the tax take so much it could fit in her bathtub!
The scary thing is that I’m only 99% sure you are joking…
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Wow. Takes it straight on, wins, and looks eminently reasonable:
She could do something here…
She has certainly made a bold attempt to reclaim the limelight. But on this issue, I cannot support the assertion that a trans man is a man, or a trans woman is a woman.
You can create a legal framework that gives a legal equivalence but biology is not so easily overwritten.
Trans men and women should be treated as full equals in society. There should be no legal barriers that exist to full equality in terms of citizenship and the legal rights that flow from that.
But true diversity and inclusivity is about celebrating our differences and working to ensure the true equality of opportunity exists.
So let's celebrate trans men and women for being trans. It is not an easy path to tread. And we should all work to remove those remaining obstacles.
But let us also celebrate the near infinite complexity of human biology and the opportunities and challenges that that presents. Biology will, under certain limited circumstances, always have to trump gender identity.
Celebrate the individual. Don't try to force everyone to fit a new orthodoxy that seeks to deny biology and deny common sense.
We are all different and that should be celebrated
I think there are two things to distinguish.
Your sex is biology. Your biology is your biology. You are male or female (except for the minuscule number of cases where you are both).
But your gender is different - you can identify as another gender. And throughout history and in other cultures there have been more than two genders.
These two are often confused (sometimes deliberately). Penny stayed on the sensible side of the argument. Bravo Penny.
The conflation of sex and gender is never going to be helpful
But also the modern gender theory that is driving the new orthodoxy is a very modern construct that is seeking to push a radical agenda and to silence debate.
A trans (wo)man is not a (wo)man. They can and should have equal legal standing and be entitled at all human dignities and rights.
Other than the tiny number of intersex cases, we are all born clearly identifiable as male or female. That is not something that is assigned. It is something that is observed and recorded.
Let's focus on the dignity and uniqueness of the individual and get rid of this attempt at enforcing a new orthodoxy and silencing debate.
Much of what Penny has said and done is very sensible and to be applauded. But she is wrong on the assertion that a trans woman is a woman. It needs more nuance than that.
She has shown through her other words and actions that she understands this. She just made a mistake in using that particular line.
Yes. Basic manners. A trans woman wants to be referred to and treated as a woman. That’s only polite - entirely fair unless or until anything they want affects the rights of those born female. Not really an issue with men or trans men as we are generally less in need of privacy.
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Wow. Takes it straight on, wins, and looks eminently reasonable:
She could do something here…
She has certainly made a bold attempt to reclaim the limelight. But on this issue, I cannot support the assertion that a trans man is a man, or a trans woman is a woman.
You can create a legal framework that gives a legal equivalence but biology is not so easily overwritten.
Trans men and women should be treated as full equals in society. There should be no legal barriers that exist to full equality in terms of citizenship and the legal rights that flow from that.
But true diversity and inclusivity is about celebrating our differences and working to ensure the true equality of opportunity exists.
So let's celebrate trans men and women for being trans. It is not an easy path to tread. And we should all work to remove those remaining obstacles.
But let us also celebrate the near infinite complexity of human biology and the opportunities and challenges that that presents. Biology will, under certain limited circumstances, always have to trump gender identity.
Celebrate the individual. Don't try to force everyone to fit a new orthodoxy that seeks to deny biology and deny common sense.
We are all different and that should be celebrated
"let's celebrate trans men and women for being trans"? Sorry, what is it that I'm expected to do here, because I barely even celebrate my own birthday. I'm not sure other people's gender identity is anything that's going to cause me to pull on a paper hat, so can we be clear what's required of me? Most of the time I want to finish work on time, chill out in in the sunshine in the back garden, maybe get a beer in on a Friday evening, and watch some TV with my wife. I'm not clear which activities I'm to drop to fit "celebrating" in, but if it gets me an hour off work fully paid I'm probably game.
I chose that language because, like sexuality, trans identity needs to be more than just acknowledged or tolerated.
It doesn't require you to put on hats or throw a party .
But it does need more than merely tolerating difference. It needs a positive shift in thinking that goes beyond that.
If I am happy to call a pre-op/never-op trans woman by the new name they want, and use their new pronouns, and treat them kindly and equally, but don’t really believe in my head that they are a woman, am I transphobic? Or just closed-minded? Or is it fine? Can I just think of them as a transvestite? Must I buy into them being a woman wholly?
If, as mooted, 20 backers will be required to enter the race, I can easily see only 8 making it onto the first round ballot, which means some already declared and most of the yet to declare will not make the start line.
Of the 8, I rate the chances of getting on the ballot paper as follows:
Certain - Hunt, Sunak Quite likely with block backing - Braverman You'd think they ought, but could be tight - Javid, Zahawi Good chance of failing, but could attract a constituency - Tugendhat Likely to fail, but look out for a long shot chance of an audacious.out-Thatcherimg that puts jet lagged Truss's place in danger - Badenoch Not a cat in hell's chance - Shapps
Should be in, watch out for Badenoch - Truss Longer she waits, the more a shock non start could occur - Mordaumt Probably not - bar
Don't forget Priti who will announce on Wednesday with a platform of bringing back hanging, putting sharks in the Channel and slashing the tax take so much it could fit in her bathtub!
The scary thing is that I’m only 99% sure you are joking…
Priti Patel knows that her total failure to get a grip on illegal crossings means that she has no chance of getting anywhere with a leadership bid. It'll be interesting to see if she endorses anyone though.
Twitter Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked: https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes ). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman. Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record. Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Wow. Takes it straight on, wins, and looks eminently reasonable:
She could do something here…
She has certainly made a bold attempt to reclaim the limelight. But on this issue, I cannot support the assertion that a trans man is a man, or a trans woman is a woman.
You can create a legal framework that gives a legal equivalence but biology is not so easily overwritten.
Trans men and women should be treated as full equals in society. There should be no legal barriers that exist to full equality in terms of citizenship and the legal rights that flow from that.
But true diversity and inclusivity is about celebrating our differences and working to ensure the true equality of opportunity exists.
So let's celebrate trans men and women for being trans. It is not an easy path to tread. And we should all work to remove those remaining obstacles.
But let us also celebrate the near infinite complexity of human biology and the opportunities and challenges that that presents. Biology will, under certain limited circumstances, always have to trump gender identity.
Celebrate the individual. Don't try to force everyone to fit a new orthodoxy that seeks to deny biology and deny common sense.
We are all different and that should be celebrated
"let's celebrate trans men and women for being trans"? Sorry, what is it that I'm expected to do here, because I barely even celebrate my own birthday. I'm not sure other people's gender identity is anything that's going to cause me to pull on a paper hat, so can we be clear what's required of me? Most of the time I want to finish work on time, chill out in in the sunshine in the back garden, maybe get a beer in on a Friday evening, and watch some TV with my wife. I'm not clear which activities I'm to drop to fit "celebrating" in, but if it gets me an hour off work fully paid I'm probably game.
I chose that language because, like sexuality, trans identity needs to be more than just acknowledged or tolerated.
It doesn't require you to put on hats or throw a party .
But it does need more than merely tolerating difference. It needs a positive shift in thinking that goes beyond that.
If I am happy to call a pre-op/never-op trans woman by the new name they want, and use their new pronouns, and treat them kindly and equally, but don’t really believe in my head that they are a woman, am I transphobic? Or just closed-minded? Or is it fine? Can I just think of them as a transvestite? Must I buy into them being a woman wholly?
That’s why I’m my mind the key word is politeness. I don’t think a post op trans-woman is a woman; never mind one who’s pre-op. But I don’t have to rub that in their face and it doesn’t hurt me to address them how they wish to be addressed and allow their rights until they infringe on someone else’s.
If you think we are “hollowed out” then there is sone structural inefficiency compared to what we have done in living memory.
I think there is a huge amount of spending that just happens because someone once thought it was a good idea and it is hard to challenge
You have to account for the demographic burden which is “worth” a percent or two per decade in pension spending, health pressures etc.
Like for like we are probably at a 50 year low, and the candidates are proposing to slice further.
Do you have any convincing maths on that?
Pensioners now contribute for an extra 3 years before getting any state pensions, compared to 15-20 years ago.
Whilst life expectancy is up by 5 years or so since 1990.
Which sounds quite balanced.
If you think the demographic burden is a fiction, you are living in a hole.
I found this at the ONS site.
…As a result, State Pension spending has continued to rise in recent decades. It amounted to almost £92 billion in 2017 (equivalent to 5.1% of GDP), up from £26 billion in 1992 (3.6% of GDP). Based on current population projections, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicts that state pension expenditure will rise to 6.1% of GDP by 2042.
That latter figure accounts for the rising pension age, too.
This figure does not include health burden arising from an elderly pop.
My own view is there is only one way to deal with this - funding wise - somehow the property wealth of the boomer generation has to be tapped.
No way will any of the 200 Tory leadership candidates own up to that though.
I have rather startled myself by thinking that public ownership of utilities may be needed. I cannot help thinking how much the costs of electricity, gas, water, rail, etc could come down if the profits paid to shareholders were simply reduced to zero.
The problem is, of course, that when this has been done in the past, the industries in question become highly inefficient.
But somebody has to pay for all the billions paid out to shareholders and for public utilities that somebody is you, me and everyone we know....
This is pretty accurate so far as I can see. Kemi would be sitting alongside Braverman.
Is it?
Republican former LibDem, reluctant Leaver, what policies exactly put Ms Truss on the Right of the Conservative Party?
Are you being mischievous? Has Truss not journeyed away from republicanism of her youth, and fully cheerleads for Brexit?
Or should I take your question at face value, answer that what we know about her Platform to be launched Tuesday is fiscally very dry on tax and size of government?
On the other hand, she is responsible for a lot of post Brexit trade deals, is there anything there that can come to bite Liz on the bum?
If she is last two with Sunak the lefty papers will want Sunak to win? Could they rake up what we know about her trade deals to hinder her?
"Excess Mortality in Sweden and Denmark the Same During Pandemic Despite Sweden Refusing Lockdown By Thorsteinn Siglaugsson
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Denmark and Sweden took very different approaches. While Denmark imposed mask mandates, closed schools and repeatedly closed so-called ‘non-essential’ businesses, Sweden imposed hardly any all-encompassing restrictions. Lockdown proponents have accused the Swedish authorities of recklessness and claimed their approach has led to an unnecessary death toll.
But now the numbers are out, and according to two Danish professors, Christian Kanstrup Holm, a virologist and Professor at the University of Aarhus, and Morten Petersen, Professor of Biology at the University of Copenhagen, in an article in the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende on July 8th, excess mortality in 2020 and 2021 was in fact the same in both countries."
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
I'm afraid this as a summary is vulgar and simplistic tripe.
Many women who practised witchcraft may also have been skilled in medicine, with more beneficial outcomes than the male physicians who put them out of business, but there is still a big issue with the practise of witchcraft in that it attempts to use spitirual forces to manipulate people and events. That is why it is considered dark and harmful.
When you pray in a Church, you use God as the intermediary between you and your desires. You wouldn't pray for your boss to die in a fiery car crash, because you know that that is counter to God's teachings, and so your prayer would not work. In metaphysics, its fundamental to realising your desires to be free from resentment and have faith in only good outcomes for everyone. There is no similar safeguard in witchcraft. If you look into the actual history of witchcraft, it's not particularly nice - though of course the poor women involved did not deserve what befell many of them.
All of that is nonsense, not least because the idea that prayer is only directed to God is clearly a fiction. Multiple monotheistic traditions, including the majority of Christian sects, believe in saintly intercession. When you can't even offer an accurate description of the hocus pocus you are trying to defend, it really doesn't bode well for any defence of the overall metaphysics
Saints are interceding to God on the asker's behalf. That makes absolutely no difference to the substance of the argument. You would no more ask a saint to kill someone than asking God.
The practise of metaphysics I am talking about here is distinct from typical Christianity - I was using it as an example of another form of spirituality, one that through a different mechanism, permits no active harmful intentions to be wrought on others.
Even white witches have acknowledged that a relatively benign spell for more money could involve (for example) an accident befalling a wealthy relative who leaves a legacy. A prayer to God (or Mary, or St George) for more money is not going to put you in a situation of responsibility for harming someone, because your prayer is being handled by a loving and all-powerful God, according to his purpose and plan.
I dunno, I'm not sure where in the Bible is says you can pray to a saint but it'll have to be stamped by the big man.
It does say: "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." Seems a bit blank-cheque-y to me.
'God as a cosmic slot machine' is a very narrowminded / materialistic view of prayer - it's what you get from 6 year old children, point-scoring teenage militant atheists of any age, or people embracing the 'Word of Faith' or 'Health and Wealth' heresy (*).
Grabbing one sentence from a 1000 page book and pretending it defines everything is also a bit of a tell tale.
You get a more rounded appreciation from someone who has embraced a life of prayer more thoroughly. Try a conversation with someone from a religious community.
(*) - This is from eg some churches which seek to equate wealth with success in religion, and pretend that the degree to which 'God answers your preayer' somehow says how 'successful' you are. One interesting view is that it mainly occurs in places "rich enough to support it". But is also seen in places where it can be used to exploit poor people - so some occurrence in eg Nigeria.
"Excess Mortality in Sweden and Denmark the Same During Pandemic Despite Sweden Refusing Lockdown BY THORSTEINN SIGLAUGSSON
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Denmark and Sweden took very different approaches. While Denmark imposed mask mandates, closed schools and repeatedly closed so-called ‘non-essential’ businesses, Sweden imposed hardly any all-encompassing restrictions. Lockdown proponents have accused the Swedish authorities of recklessness and claimed their approach has led to an unnecessary death toll.
But now the numbers are out, and according to two Danish professors, Christian Kanstrup Holm, a virologist and Professor at the University of Aarhus, and Morten Petersen, Professor of Biology at the University of Copenhagen, in an article in the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende on July 8th, excess mortality in 2020 and 2021 was in fact the same in both countries."
1. Denmark had remarkably few restrictions by the standards of European countries. It had very targeted restrictions, and risk stratification. That's why it performed significantly better - economically - than say Sweden or the UK. This article starts with the incredibly lazy assumption that Denmark was a high restriction country, and that's utter bullshit. If you want to compare high- and low- restriction countries, then do so, but don't claim that Denmark was high restriction.
2. It also ignores the fact that urban Sweden (particularly Stockholm) imposed progressively tighter restrictions as the pandemic continued - only without any particular attempts at risk stratification. From early 2021, you were massively more free as an ordinary person in Copenhagen than in Stockholm.
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
I'm afraid this as a summary is vulgar and simplistic tripe.
Many women who practised witchcraft may also have been skilled in medicine, with more beneficial outcomes than the male physicians who put them out of business, but there is still a big issue with the practise of witchcraft in that it attempts to use spitirual forces to manipulate people and events. That is why it is considered dark and harmful.
When you pray in a Church, you use God as the intermediary between you and your desires. You wouldn't pray for your boss to die in a fiery car crash, because you know that that is counter to God's teachings, and so your prayer would not work. In metaphysics, its fundamental to realising your desires to be free from resentment and have faith in only good outcomes for everyone. There is no similar safeguard in witchcraft. If you look into the actual history of witchcraft, it's not particularly nice - though of course the poor women involved did not deserve what befell many of them.
All of that is nonsense, not least because the idea that prayer is only directed to God is clearly a fiction. Multiple monotheistic traditions, including the majority of Christian sects, believe in saintly intercession. When you can't even offer an accurate description of the hocus pocus you are trying to defend, it really doesn't bode well for any defence of the overall metaphysics
Saints are interceding to God on the asker's behalf. That makes absolutely no difference to the substance of the argument. You would no more ask a saint to kill someone than asking God.
The practise of metaphysics I am talking about here is distinct from typical Christianity - I was using it as an example of another form of spirituality, one that through a different mechanism, permits no active harmful intentions to be wrought on others.
Even white witches have acknowledged that a relatively benign spell for more money could involve (for example) an accident befalling a wealthy relative who leaves a legacy. A prayer to God (or Mary, or St George) for more money is not going to put you in a situation of responsibility for harming someone, because your prayer is being handled by a loving and all-powerful God, according to his purpose and plan.
I dunno, I'm not sure where in the Bible is says you can pray to a saint but it'll have to be stamped by the big man.
It does say: "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." Seems a bit blank-cheque-y to me.
'God as a cosmic slot machine' is a very narrowminded / materialistic view of prayer - it's what you get from 6 year old children, point-scoring teenage militant atheists of any age, or people embracing the 'Word of Faith' or 'Health and Wealth' heresy (*).
Grabbing one sentence from a 1000 page book and pretending it defines everything is also a bit of a tell tale.
You get a more rounded appreciation from someone who has embraced a life of prayer more thoroughly. Try a conversation with someone from a religious community.
(*) - This is from eg some churches which seek to equate wealth with success in religion, and pretend that the degree to which 'God answers your preayer' somehow says how 'successful' you are. One interesting view is that it mainly occurs in places "rich enough to support it". But is also seen in places where it can be used to exploit poor people - so some occurrence in eg Nigeria.
I don't know why there's all this focus on prayer: Mathew 25:31–46 tells you exactly what you need to do if you wish to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
This race to cut taxes might end up being an own goal for those candidates .
Sunaks I won’t tell you fairytales seems a good slogan and I’m sure he will ensure taxes can be cut just before the next election.
What happens with all these tax cuts , how are they going to be paid for , more borrowing or cuts to services.
Certainly for us political junkies the normal quiet summer period looks a bit more interesting . Just how this plays out and just how ugly and bitter this leadership campaign becomes should keep PB very busy over the coming weeks.
Tax cuts don’t need to be “paid for”.
Spending needs to be paid for and justified. It’s not some immutable thing that exists
Starting from where we are, much of it kind of is. You don’t get to zero base it - we are where we are and if you stop doing something, there are losers. And often they vote.
If you think we are “hollowed out” then there is sone structural inefficiency compared to what we have done in living memory.
I think there is a huge amount of spending that just happens because someone once thought it was a good idea and it is hard to challenge
You have to account for the demographic burden which is “worth” a percent or two per decade in pension spending, health pressures etc.
Like for like we are probably at a 50 year low, and the candidates are proposing to slice further.
TL;DR
“The numbers don’t support my argument so I am going to unskew them
Spending on healthcare and pensions has risen from a fifth of public spending at the beginning of the 1980s, to almost 40% today.
It is not unreasonable to note that this spending on other things - as a percent of the pie - is in decline.
Comparatively the UK has minimal spending on state pensions *. I'll post the numbers in my reply to @Gardenwalker .
eg 2017 numbers UK 5.1% of GDP, Germany 10.2% of GDP, France 13.6% of GDP on pensions and survivor benefits.
* We should remember that UK state pensions are very low internationally, and we have an untidy pile of expensive-to-administer benefits on top (eg winter heating subsidy, free TV licences) which could be simplified.
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
I'm afraid this as a summary is vulgar and simplistic tripe.
Many women who practised witchcraft may also have been skilled in medicine, with more beneficial outcomes than the male physicians who put them out of business, but there is still a big issue with the practise of witchcraft in that it attempts to use spitirual forces to manipulate people and events. That is why it is considered dark and harmful.
When you pray in a Church, you use God as the intermediary between you and your desires. You wouldn't pray for your boss to die in a fiery car crash, because you know that that is counter to God's teachings, and so your prayer would not work. In metaphysics, its fundamental to realising your desires to be free from resentment and have faith in only good outcomes for everyone. There is no similar safeguard in witchcraft. If you look into the actual history of witchcraft, it's not particularly nice - though of course the poor women involved did not deserve what befell many of them.
All of that is nonsense, not least because the idea that prayer is only directed to God is clearly a fiction. Multiple monotheistic traditions, including the majority of Christian sects, believe in saintly intercession. When you can't even offer an accurate description of the hocus pocus you are trying to defend, it really doesn't bode well for any defence of the overall metaphysics
Saints are interceding to God on the asker's behalf. That makes absolutely no difference to the substance of the argument. You would no more ask a saint to kill someone than asking God.
The practise of metaphysics I am talking about here is distinct from typical Christianity - I was using it as an example of another form of spirituality, one that through a different mechanism, permits no active harmful intentions to be wrought on others.
Even white witches have acknowledged that a relatively benign spell for more money could involve (for example) an accident befalling a wealthy relative who leaves a legacy. A prayer to God (or Mary, or St George) for more money is not going to put you in a situation of responsibility for harming someone, because your prayer is being handled by a loving and all-powerful God, according to his purpose and plan.
I dunno, I'm not sure where in the Bible is says you can pray to a saint but it'll have to be stamped by the big man.
It does say: "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." Seems a bit blank-cheque-y to me.
'God as a cosmic slot machine' is a very narrowminded / materialistic view of prayer - it's what you get from 6 year old children, point-scoring teenage militant atheists of any age, or people embracing the 'Word of Faith' or 'Health and Wealth' heresy (*).
Grabbing one sentence from a 1000 page book and pretending it defines everything is also a bit of a tell tale.
You get a more rounded appreciation from someone who has embraced a life of prayer more thoroughly. Try a conversation with someone from a religious community.
(*) - This is from eg some churches which seek to equate wealth with success in religion, and pretend that the degree to which 'God answers your preayer' somehow says how 'successful' you are. One interesting view is that it mainly occurs in places "rich enough to support it". But is also seen in places where it can be used to exploit poor people - so some occurrence in eg Nigeria.
I don't know why there's all this focus on prayer: Mathew 25:31–46 tells you exactly what you need to do if you wish to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Not really. It just describes how the righteous behave - it’s not a qualification (that was the Pharisee’s mistake).
I’ve always thought it more interesting that the righteous and the unrighteous both give the same answer
"What do you make of the argument that if, say, someone could never, ever be attracted to a person of a significantly different skin colour, we might affirm their personal choice and yet still suggest that they harboured a societal prejudice? And that a similar prejudice is on display for someone (whatever their sexual orientation) that would not ever consider having sex with a trans person?
Is (a) the idea this is prejudiced wrong? (b) correct, but not applicable to the case of trans people because of the physical difference in genitalia? (c) something else going on?"
My answer is that to confuse a sexual preference with societal prejudice is to make a fundamental category mistake.
A sexual preference is innate & strongly correlated with a person's body. If you're gay you want to have sex with people of the same sex. If you're straight you want sex with the opposite sex. It is the sex of the partner which is key. Body and sex are intimately connected.
So a gay man is not prejudiced against women because he does not want to have sex with them. There is no prejudice or bigotry. The basic sexual attraction simply does not exist. Ditto with a lesbian not wanting to have sex with a man. It is not societal preferences which determine this but your own sexuality.
Now TRAs have got themselves into a pickle because while they may well feel themselves to be a different sex, their actual body has not changed. (The overwhelming majority of transpeople do not have surgery so retain the body they were born with.) Whatever they may feel however genuinely, the factual reality is that a lesbian is not going to be sexually attracted to a male body. Similarly a gay man is not going to be attracted a trans man retaining their female body. That is not prejudice or bigotry. It is a consequence of their sexuality.
TRAs are not willing to accept this because it undermines their claim that, say, a TW is just like any other woman. She isn't & in a very fundamental way. Sex is the rock on which the belief TRAs have crashes and founders. Rather than accept this, they describe a normal sexual preference as bigotry & preference belittle & demean lesbians by claiming that men are lesbians. It is aggressive, upsetting & infused with a rape mentality - a coercive approach which assumes that they are entitled to sex with women & any woman refusing this has no business doing so.
If a white person is only attracted to other white people, is that prejudice?
I agree that what genitals you are attracted to is not a prejudice, but does that generalise to other features?
Sex is one of those things that proves we're all capitalists, and proves the ruthlessness of capitalism at the same time.
In sex, there's no redistribution. There's no "look at those poor people over there, they aren't getting any, we should take some partners off the people who are getting loads and give them to the poor deprived people." We lionise the billionares of the sex world. The most beautiful. The most active. The most - dare I say it - privileged.
I'm not saying I disagree with any of that, by the way. Just making the point that even the staunchest communist, who would be willing to redistribute income, food, housing, practically everything else to make people equal - would find the idea of sexual "equality" absurd.
No open atheists were also burnt at the stake as heretics.
Though of course unlike many nations of your religion of heritage atheism is not illegal in virtually any Christian countries today. However Christ's message holds true as much now as then
Without commenting on the substance of what you're saying, redistribution and capitalism go together quite nicely. Capitalism does not imply a lack of redistribution, and, I firmly believe, cannot possibly survive without redistribution.
Which is why our attitudes to sex are all the more remarkable. The sexual marketplace is hyper-capitalism, rapacious capitalism, ayn-rand-style-tyranny-of-the-market-capitalism.
The idea of redistribution in the sexual marketplace is repugnant to us. The notion of coercion, abhorrent. We are happy to have 40% of our incomes taken off us, but 40% of our sexual partners given to those unluckier in love than we are would be ridiculous.
The sexual marketplace accepts absolutely zero compulsion, whether that's being forced to sleep with an ugly person, or a person whose bits you aren't attracted to.
As I say, it says something fascinating about human nature.
At the end of the day there are about equal numbers of good looking, average looking and ugly looking men and women. If more followed traditional religious principles and stuck to one partner who matched them in looks and personality for life there would be less of an issue.
Only a small minority of us are very good looking or will be very rich so better to settle for what you have
Did God ever marry the mother of His Only Begotten Son?
He produced Jesus via the Holy Spirit through Mary and Joseph committed to Mary for life to bring him up
Christianity - One adulterers lie that got out of hand.
You of course would never be so insulting about Muhammad or the Koran or you would have a Fatwa on you!
Given the amount of paedo Prophet stuff that gets boaked up on the internet (including on occasions on here) I sense your fatwa fears are somewhat over egged.
Anyone who can be publicly identified as having insulted the Prophet is likely to have a Fatwa on them and a mob round by their house.
Just we Christians no longer burn at the stake those who disrespect our religion as we did 500 years ago
No you didn't, it was more those who subscribed wholeheartedly to the religion but had virtually invisible sectarian disagreements over details. And Christianity is as contemptibly vile now as it was then, just, thankfully, relatively toothless.
No open atheists were
Wrong! I am openly atheist. I make no secret of the fact that God does not exist and all those people in churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, etc are mumbling their prayers to an empty sky.
There is no heaven. There are no angels. There is no devil. No one tempts you to sin. No eternal life awaits the virtuous.
So what, you are able to say that now in the UK.
500 years ago we would be burning you at the stake!
Which merely shows the insane savagery of religion and why it deserves to be heavily constrained.
In your view, not mine.
For me the Christian message remains as strong as ever, Jesus himself never threatened stake burnings for non believers
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. ... 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one ... 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus is quite clear. He wants his followers to murder the infidel. The Bible is terrorist propaganda and you're being groomed.
Where does Jesus say any of that? Though there is of course nothing wrong with sending Satan and his followers into the blazing furnace
And that's where we get witch burnings from
Only if witches use their powers for Satanic works
Witches don't have powers. Often they were just awkward women. The hag as a concept is rooted in ageism and misogyny, and the expression of revulsion at these essentially harmless women, combined with superstitious explanations for random events like crop failures or other natural phenomena, combined with a religious framing that tells you about casting demons into the flames, lead to murder. Thou shalt not kill didn't always get a look in when thou shalt not suffer a witch to live was in play. Still. Religion of peace yadda yadda.
How do you know? Can you prove there are no witches of evil?
Though of course the Koran just advocated the pouring of boiling water over non believers
I see you suffer the usual delusion that your work of religious fiction is somehow superior to the other fictitious religious works.
The problem of witches was, of course, that they might know remedies and things that made them considerably more useful than some bloke who contributed nothing beyond being able to quote some dusty book in Latin. In short, they could have destabilised the power base of the church.
Gay men where in the firing line for much the same reason - a gay relationship between (say) a bishop and a parishioner gave undue influence to that parishioner.
Then there is controlling your flock through being able to decide to gets to marry and reproduce and thus the need to control women and their reproductive capacity. So women get subjugated.
Religion is about control. Pure and simple. And that is why it so often allies with Kings and politicians. The whole thing is a tremendous scam and humanity would be a lot better off without the baleful influence of zealous, evangelical religion.
I'm afraid this as a summary is vulgar and simplistic tripe.
Many women who practised witchcraft may also have been skilled in medicine, with more beneficial outcomes than the male physicians who put them out of business, but there is still a big issue with the practise of witchcraft in that it attempts to use spitirual forces to manipulate people and events. That is why it is considered dark and harmful.
When you pray in a Church, you use God as the intermediary between you and your desires. You wouldn't pray for your boss to die in a fiery car crash, because you know that that is counter to God's teachings, and so your prayer would not work. In metaphysics, its fundamental to realising your desires to be free from resentment and have faith in only good outcomes for everyone. There is no similar safeguard in witchcraft. If you look into the actual history of witchcraft, it's not particularly nice - though of course the poor women involved did not deserve what befell many of them.
All of that is nonsense, not least because the idea that prayer is only directed to God is clearly a fiction. Multiple monotheistic traditions, including the majority of Christian sects, believe in saintly intercession. When you can't even offer an accurate description of the hocus pocus you are trying to defend, it really doesn't bode well for any defence of the overall metaphysics
Saints are interceding to God on the asker's behalf. That makes absolutely no difference to the substance of the argument. You would no more ask a saint to kill someone than asking God.
The practise of metaphysics I am talking about here is distinct from typical Christianity - I was using it as an example of another form of spirituality, one that through a different mechanism, permits no active harmful intentions to be wrought on others.
Even white witches have acknowledged that a relatively benign spell for more money could involve (for example) an accident befalling a wealthy relative who leaves a legacy. A prayer to God (or Mary, or St George) for more money is not going to put you in a situation of responsibility for harming someone, because your prayer is being handled by a loving and all-powerful God, according to his purpose and plan.
I dunno, I'm not sure where in the Bible is says you can pray to a saint but it'll have to be stamped by the big man.
It does say: "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." Seems a bit blank-cheque-y to me.
'God as a cosmic slot machine' is a very narrowminded / materialistic view of prayer - it's what you get from 6 year old children, point-scoring teenage militant atheists of any age, or people embracing the 'Word of Faith' or 'Health and Wealth' heresy (*).
Grabbing one sentence from a 1000 page book and pretending it defines everything is also a bit of a tell tale.
You get a more rounded appreciation from someone who has embraced a life of prayer more thoroughly. Try a conversation with someone from a religious community.
(*) - This is from eg some churches which seek to equate wealth with success in religion, and pretend that the degree to which 'God answers your preayer' somehow says how 'successful' you are. One interesting view is that it mainly occurs in places "rich enough to support it". But is also seen in places where it can be used to exploit poor people - so some occurrence in eg Nigeria.
I don't know why there's all this focus on prayer: Mathew 25:31–46 tells you exactly what you need to do if you wish to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
I'd say that's much closer than @Farook's single sentence :-) .
Still very light on relationship, rather than behaviour, however.
If you think we are “hollowed out” then there is sone structural inefficiency compared to what we have done in living memory.
I think there is a huge amount of spending that just happens because someone once thought it was a good idea and it is hard to challenge
You have to account for the demographic burden which is “worth” a percent or two per decade in pension spending, health pressures etc.
Like for like we are probably at a 50 year low, and the candidates are proposing to slice further.
TL;DR
“The numbers don’t support my argument so I am going to unskew them
Spending on healthcare and pensions has risen from a fifth of public spending at the beginning of the 1980s, to almost 40% today.
It is not unreasonable to note that this spending on other things - as a percent of the pie - is in decline.
Comparatively the UK has minimal spending on state pensions *. I'll post the numbers in my reply to @Gardenwalker .
eg 2017 numbers UK 5.1% of GDP, Germany 10.2% of GDP, France 13.6% of GDP on pensions and survivor benefits.
* We should remember that UK state pensions are very low internationally, and we have an untidy pile of expensive-to-administer benefits on top (eg winter heating subsidy, free TV licences) which could be simplified.
In some countries public sector pensions replace (rather than augment) state pensions for their recipients, so such comparisons are not always reliable.
For example, the 13.6% figure in France might include teachers’ pensions as a whole, whereas the 5.1% figure in the UK might include only the basic state pension part of a retired teacher’s income.
StillWaters - I sympathize with the difficulty of finding an honest graph. It is one of the reasons I have started thinking about re-learning the R language. As I recall, it is fairly easy to construct decent graphs in that language -- but there may be even better tools available, now, than when I was last doing this kind of work, years ago.
But that *is* the logic of what I said. We might be spending around the post war average, but since so much of it now goes on an older population, the rest of public services are basically squeezed to shit.
And it seems most of the Tory leadership candidates wish to squeeze further.
(Her opening statement begins about 15 minutes in. And, following that, under questioning she sticks to her estimate that 130,000 lives could have been saved during the Trump administration, with better policies, and better execution.)
Full disclosure: I watched just the first 22 or 23 minutes, and don't plan to watch the whole thing, since I can read faster than I can watch. I hope Dr. Foxy , and other medical pofessionals, will take a look at the book, and report back to us.
If you think we are “hollowed out” then there is sone structural inefficiency compared to what we have done in living memory.
I think there is a huge amount of spending that just happens because someone once thought it was a good idea and it is hard to challenge
You have to account for the demographic burden which is “worth” a percent or two per decade in pension spending, health pressures etc.
Like for like we are probably at a 50 year low, and the candidates are proposing to slice further.
TL;DR
“The numbers don’t support my argument so I am going to unskew them
Spending on healthcare and pensions has risen from a fifth of public spending at the beginning of the 1980s, to almost 40% today.
It is not unreasonable to note that this spending on other things - as a percent of the pie - is in decline.
Comparatively the UK has minimal spending on state pensions *. I'll post the numbers in my reply to @Gardenwalker .
eg 2017 numbers UK 5.1% of GDP, Germany 10.2% of GDP, France 13.6% of GDP on pensions and survivor benefits.
* We should remember that UK state pensions are very low internationally, and we have an untidy pile of expensive-to-administer benefits on top (eg winter heating subsidy, free TV licences) which could be simplified.
In some countries public sector pensions replace (rather than augment) state pensions for their recipients, so such comparisons are not always reliable.
For example, the 13.6% figure in France might include teachers’ pensions as a whole, whereas the 5.1% figure in the UK might include only the basic state pension part of a retired teacher’s income.
And in the UK, some public sector workers have funded pension schemes, while others are paid from current spending.
If you think we are “hollowed out” then there is sone structural inefficiency compared to what we have done in living memory.
I think there is a huge amount of spending that just happens because someone once thought it was a good idea and it is hard to challenge
You have to account for the demographic burden which is “worth” a percent or two per decade in pension spending, health pressures etc.
Like for like we are probably at a 50 year low, and the candidates are proposing to slice further.
TL;DR
“The numbers don’t support my argument so I am going to unskew them
Spending on healthcare and pensions has risen from a fifth of public spending at the beginning of the 1980s, to almost 40% today.
It is not unreasonable to note that this spending on other things - as a percent of the pie - is in decline.
Comparatively the UK has minimal spending on state pensions *. I'll post the numbers in my reply to @Gardenwalker .
eg 2017 numbers UK 5.1% of GDP, Germany 10.2% of GDP, France 13.6% of GDP on pensions and survivor benefits.
* We should remember that UK state pensions are very low internationally, and we have an untidy pile of expensive-to-administer benefits on top (eg winter heating subsidy, free TV licences) which could be simplified.
In some countries public sector pensions replace (rather than augment) state pensions for their recipients, so such comparisons are not always reliable.
For example, the 13.6% figure in France might include teachers’ pensions as a whole, whereas the 5.1% figure in the UK might include only the basic state pension part of a retired teacher’s income.
And in the UK, some public sector workers have funded pension schemes, while others are paid from current spending.
Indeed, as I acknowledged.
But the level of rhetoric - verging on hate sometimes - on PB is absurd.
If you think we are “hollowed out” then there is sone structural inefficiency compared to what we have done in living memory.
I think there is a huge amount of spending that just happens because someone once thought it was a good idea and it is hard to challenge
You have to account for the demographic burden which is “worth” a percent or two per decade in pension spending, health pressures etc.
Like for like we are probably at a 50 year low, and the candidates are proposing to slice further.
TL;DR
“The numbers don’t support my argument so I am going to unskew them
Spending on healthcare and pensions has risen from a fifth of public spending at the beginning of the 1980s, to almost 40% today.
It is not unreasonable to note that this spending on other things - as a percent of the pie - is in decline.
Comparatively the UK has minimal spending on state pensions *. I'll post the numbers in my reply to @Gardenwalker .
eg 2017 numbers UK 5.1% of GDP, Germany 10.2% of GDP, France 13.6% of GDP on pensions and survivor benefits.
* We should remember that UK state pensions are very low internationally, and we have an untidy pile of expensive-to-administer benefits on top (eg winter heating subsidy, free TV licences) which could be simplified.
In some countries public sector pensions replace (rather than augment) state pensions for their recipients, so such comparisons are not always reliable.
For example, the 13.6% figure in France might include teachers’ pensions as a whole, whereas the 5.1% figure in the UK might include only the basic state pension part of a retired teacher’s income.
And in the UK, some public sector workers have funded pension schemes, while others are paid from current spending.
The Govt funded part of pension schemes - eg superannuation - were funded in the past and therefore do not impact on current revenue.
DecrepitJohnL - Thanks for the tip. (I should have mentioned that Birx, for years, managed the PEPFAR program, which is credited with saving about 20 million lives from AIDS, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.)
Comments
FFS don't let the membership decide the next PM.
If Braverman gets to the final 2 with Sunak it will go to the membership, she won't withdraw
Kemi would be sitting alongside Braverman.
Unless of course it is for the NHS for their hip replacements and heart ops or triple lock pension uplifts or social care caps to protect the kids inheritance.
Suella Braverman
Jeremy Hunt
Grant Shapps
https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/08/next-tory-leader-whos-backing-whom-our-working-list/
Well, only heterosexual reproduction can generate offspring unless humanity becomes parthnogenic in which case we can dispense with men....
When you refuse to talk in anything but absolutes prepare to be reminded.
She will be fecking titanic disaster for the party.
Anyone with one nanogram of sentience can see she is not PM material.
God help us all.
Braverman however has already declared and is close to the numbers already needed to be nominated, so completely different.
If she got to the final 2 v Sunak the membership could well vote for her, not absolute certainty but very possible
Which is why the MPs need to make sure there is not a members vote.
Twitter
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt
I hope in, in the next few days we’ll able to discuss how we get our economy growing again and enable our citizens to live well. Right now, I’d like to address another question that I’ve been asked:
https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908402475438080
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·19mReplying to @PennyMordaunt
Yes I do. I am a woman. (here’s a recent pic on me in from @thetimes
). I always dress in a swimsuit for the newspapers. Like many of you, I’m used to being patronised & misrepresented. Thank you @ashleyljames
@PregnantScrewed
@CdreMelRobinson
@PN_TomCotterill
for calling it out
https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908409714835456 - That picture was a disgrace that should have been called out more loudly.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·21mReplying to @PennyMordaunt
I am biologically a woman. If I have a hysterectomy or mastectomy, I am still a woman. And I am legally a woman.
Some people born male and who have been through the gender recognition process are also legally female. That DOES NOT mean they are biological women, like me.
Penny Mordaunt@PennyMordaunt·23m
All my life, I’ve fought for gender equality. I’ve stood up for women. I’ve listened to them. I’ve been right alongside them in every major battle. I make sure policy is focussed on them. Just look at my track record.
Link to continue the thread. https://twitter.com/PennyMordaunt/status/1545908445748117505
Many women who practised witchcraft may also have been skilled in medicine, with more beneficial outcomes than the male physicians who put them out of business, but there is still a big issue with the practise of witchcraft in that it attempts to use spitirual forces to manipulate people and events. That is why it is considered dark and harmful.
When you pray in a Church, you use God as the intermediary between you and your desires. You wouldn't pray for your boss to die in a fiery car crash, because you know that that is counter to God's teachings, and so your prayer would not work. In metaphysics, its fundamental to realising your desires to be free from resentment and have faith in only good outcomes for everyone. There is no similar safeguard in witchcraft. If you look into the actual history of witchcraft, it's not particularly nice - though of course the poor women involved did not deserve what befell many of them.
I also remain as committed to the Church of England being the established church as ever.
She could do something here…
Penny seems a decent human being - therefore she won't win.
On Kemi - interesting that her endorsements come largely from the red wall seats - Mansfield, Ashfield, Walsall North. Interesting to see if this trend continues.
So you protestation of not caring about the secular left liberals not having respect for conservatives with faith is not very persuasive. No judgement on that, we all have triggers.
And it’s exactly the same as I have been dismantling Casino and MISTY with the last couple of days of PB. You can’t daub Penny as woke for her onslaught on It Ain’t Half Hot Mum when she is stood next to Daley and Sharon on transgender in sport, you just can’t, it’s ridiculous if you try to, because truth is politicians, and all of us, are allowed to have a range of views across these issues - falling foul on just one test or measurement in your opinion means they are woke, thus daubing them as woke, is no different to making Jews wear ribbons - says much more about your own prejudices and idealogical immaturity than it does about Penny’s!
We could actually have agreement across the spectrum and finally put these issues to bed - and get onto the economy and CoL.
Can I hope?
(Her opening statement begins about 15 minutes in. And, following that, under questioning she sticks to her estimate that 130,000 lives could have been saved during the Trump administration, with better policies, and better execution.)
Or, you can buy her book, as I plan to do: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/silent-invasion-deborah-birx/1141004865
Full disclosure: I watched just the first 22 or 23 minutes, and don't plan to watch the whole thing, since I can read faster than I can watch. I hope Dr. Foxy , and other medical pofessionals, will take a look at the book, and report back to us.
End of culture wars with Penny.
End of woke fascism with Penny.
Now what has she got to say on Net Zero 50.
And Rwanda sceme.
You can create a legal framework that gives a legal equivalence but biology is not so easily overwritten.
Trans men and women should be treated as full equals in society. There should be no legal barriers that exist to full equality in terms of citizenship and the legal rights that flow from that.
But true diversity and inclusivity is about celebrating our differences and working to ensure the true equality of opportunity exists.
So let's celebrate trans men and women for being trans. It is not an easy path to tread. And we should all work to remove those remaining obstacles.
But let us also celebrate the near infinite complexity of human biology and the opportunities and challenges that that presents. Biology will, under certain limited circumstances, always have to trump gender identity.
Celebrate the individual. Don't try to force everyone to fit a new orthodoxy that seeks to deny biology and deny common sense.
We are all different and that should be celebrated
Spending needs to be paid for and justified. It’s not some immutable thing that exists
Your sex is biology. Your biology is your biology. You are male or female (except for the minuscule number of cases where you are both).
But your gender is different - you can identify as another gender. And throughout history and in other cultures there have been more than two genders.
These two are often confused (sometimes deliberately). Penny stayed on the sensible side of the argument. Bravo Penny.
They still haven't caught up with the idea that economic growth does not have to be heavy, polluting industry.
Ex-chancellor wants to scrap National Insurance rise, while helping businesses is former foreign secretary's priority"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/07/09/sajid-javid-jeremy-hunt-call-massive-tax-cuts/
The practise of metaphysics I am talking about here is distinct from typical Christianity - I was using it as an example of another form of spirituality, one that through a different mechanism, permits no active harmful intentions to be wrought on others.
Even white witches have acknowledged that a relatively benign spell for more money could involve (for example) an accident befalling a wealthy relative who leaves a legacy. A prayer to God (or Mary, or St George) for more money is not going to put you in a situation of responsibility for harming someone, because your prayer is being handled by a loving and all-powerful God, according to his purpose and plan.
Give me a Bank Holiday for PRiDE I can get drunk on and I’ll support anything.
Andrew Langley 😇🇬🇧
We’ve found our man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
But also the modern gender theory that is driving the new orthodoxy is a very modern construct that is seeking to push a radical agenda and to silence debate.
A trans (wo)man is not a (wo)man. They can and should have equal legal standing and be entitled at all human dignities and rights.
Other than the tiny number of intersex cases, we are all born clearly identifiable as male or female. That is not something that is assigned. It is something that is observed and recorded.
Let's focus on the dignity and uniqueness of the individual and get rid of this attempt at enforcing a new orthodoxy and silencing debate.
Much of what Penny has said and done is very sensible and to be applauded. But she is wrong on the assertion that a trans woman is a woman. It needs more nuance than that.
She has shown through her other words and actions that she understands this. She just made a mistake in using that particular line.
But it has more recently become a major hub for students from China. Here's the near copy of the Nottm Uni main building at their campus in Ningbo.
“The numbers don’t support my argument so I am going to unskew them
Flipped round, Put another way, pretending to yourself you are agnostic on stuff, like you don’t care, if the song lyrics are “I boogied on the ceiling, I boogied on the floor, I boogied on my hand and wiped it on the wall” and you found that disgusting, you couldn’t just shrug, would you not want the song banned before children hear it?
Flip Penny’s celebrate Trans round into “not celebrating” is now a cancelled policy. Just like her taking It Ain’t Half Hot Mum apart, she gets it. like Cameron got it on Gay marriage, as another good example of the same thing 👍🏻
Penny is the new David Cameron.
It doesn't require you to put on hats or throw a party .
But it does need more than merely tolerating difference. It needs a positive shift in thinking that goes beyond that.
It is not unreasonable to note that this spending on other things - as a percent of the pie - is in decline.
Republican former LibDem, reluctant Leaver, what policies exactly put Ms Truss on the Right of the Conservative Party?
Or should I take your question at face value, answer that what we know about her Platform to be launched Tuesday is fiscally very dry on tax and size of government?
On the other hand, she is responsible for a lot of post Brexit trade deals, is there anything there that can come to bite Liz on the bum?
If she is last two with Sunak the lefty papers will want Sunak to win? Could they rake up what we know about her trade deals to hinder her?
By Thorsteinn Siglaugsson
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Denmark and Sweden took very different approaches. While Denmark imposed mask mandates, closed schools and repeatedly closed so-called ‘non-essential’ businesses, Sweden imposed hardly any all-encompassing restrictions. Lockdown proponents have accused the Swedish authorities of recklessness and claimed their approach has led to an unnecessary death toll.
But now the numbers are out, and according to two Danish professors, Christian Kanstrup Holm, a virologist and Professor at the University of Aarhus, and Morten Petersen, Professor of Biology at the University of Copenhagen, in an article in the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende on July 8th, excess mortality in 2020 and 2021 was in fact the same in both countries."
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/07/09/excess-mortality-in-sweden-and-denmark-the-same-during-pandemic-despite-sweden-refusing-lockdown/
Grabbing one sentence from a 1000 page book and pretending it defines everything is also a bit of a tell tale.
You get a more rounded appreciation from someone who has embraced a life of prayer more thoroughly. Try a conversation with someone from a religious community.
(*) - This is from eg some churches which seek to equate wealth with success in religion, and pretend that the degree to which 'God answers your preayer' somehow says how 'successful' you are. One interesting view is that it mainly occurs in places "rich enough to support it". But is also seen in places where it can be used to exploit poor people - so some occurrence in eg Nigeria.
2. It also ignores the fact that urban Sweden (particularly Stockholm) imposed progressively tighter restrictions as the pandemic continued - only without any particular attempts at risk stratification. From early 2021, you were massively more free as an ordinary person in Copenhagen than in Stockholm.
But I was just picking up on the mindset
eg 2017 numbers UK 5.1% of GDP, Germany 10.2% of GDP, France 13.6% of GDP on pensions and survivor benefits.
* We should remember that UK state pensions are very low internationally, and we have an untidy pile of expensive-to-administer benefits on top (eg winter heating subsidy, free TV licences) which could be simplified.
I’ve always thought it more interesting that the righteous and the unrighteous both give the same answer
Still very light on relationship, rather than behaviour, however.
That way lies a rabbit hole.
For example, the 13.6% figure in France might include teachers’ pensions as a whole, whereas the 5.1% figure in the UK might include only the basic state pension part of a retired teacher’s income.
We might be spending around the post war average, but since so much of it now goes on an older population, the rest of public services are basically squeezed to shit.
And it seems most of the Tory leadership candidates wish to squeeze further.
You could cut it separately Brexit v remain, or socially liberal vs socially conservative.
Truss would be pretty socially liberal, which is perhaps @rcs1000’s confusion,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7ubPjYHHYQ
2.8 Rishi Sunak
6.8 Penny Mordaunt
7 Liz Truss
8.6 Jeremy Hunt
13 Tom Tugendhat
21 Sajid Javid
24 Kemi Badenoch
24 Nadhim Zahawi
38 Dominic Raab
38 Suella Braverman
But the level of rhetoric - verging on hate sometimes - on PB is absurd.
The data is here:
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/0cb13e61-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/0cb13e61-en#:~:text=Trends,7.7% between 2000 and 2017.