1989

Okay, I should check my sources better and rely on my memories less. Here's the story I was referencing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecution_of_Marte_Dalelv Oops. Still bad though, just not nearly as bad as I remembered it being. I probably just heard the initial report and didn't follow up. 🤐

This reminds me of a story I read about a decade ago or so. A Swedish woman was working at a hotel in Dubai when she was offered a drink by one of her male co-workers. The drink was drugged, and she was gang raped. After she went to the police, she was arrested for having drunk the alcohol. The men weren't prosecuted because in the UAE four or five men have to corroborate a sexual offense in court. So the rapists certainly wouldn't implicate themselves and no one else was there to speak in the woman's defense. To make it worse, the government had her passport, which I guess was customary for foreigners' work VISAs, so after she got out of jail she couldn't go home. Eventually that part was worked out, she got back to Sweden, and I'll never touch foot in the UAE. In essence, things haven't changed in the Middle East, and they probably never really will.

Nah, only sinners poop. It's a fallen (and frequently stinky) world.

Taken to its extremes, God watches you poop. Who needs to see that? An all knowing all loving deity, of course.

Relevant to my previous post: https://apnews.com/b686a469e4dd47588d543a45055bde07

I was raised by a single mother and had no male influence in my life. The only other constant role models in my life were women. There have been consequences for me having been raised that way, but that's the luck of the parental draw. If two men adopted a child would that child be more masculine? Besides, there are messed up children hailing from straight homes who would be golden if their biggest problem was being a little effeminate. You don't pick your parents or your early childhood role-models, but because you're family is one way or another isn't necessarily a death trap for the child.

He's kind of like a drama queen doped up on steroids. YouTube kind of obviously violated its own standards when some angry tweets made them reverse course. However, as a private entity it can do more or less what it wants. The question here is that should a private company be beholden to free speech once it becomes so integral to daily life as YouTube has proven to be. Twitter and Facebook have the same questions to answer. Can you just suspend or delete accounts because you don't like what they say and then reverse engineer some policy transgression? These are kind of murky waters here. As I've said before, I'm an absolutist when it comes to freedom of speech, but just because you have something to say doesn't mean people have an obligation to hear it. I don't have any answers here, but I'm interested in hearing other's opinions on this.

I've alluded to this in another thread: So I'm listening to The Crucified for some odd reason and the singer screams about having freedom through Christ. So where's that freedom? People are so wrapped up in rules and traditions that Christianity seems more like slavery, which is a term I've heard used before by various preachers. Still, they wave around the freedom word like they think they know what it is. Can someone tell me where's the freedom? I don't want to live forever; this is one ride I'd just as soon as missed, so I definitely don't want to drag it out to eternity. Live forever, suffer forever, but where's my freedom?

Christians gotta hold something or someone responsible to explain all the bad shit that keeps happening. If they didn't then they'd have a god that either didn't care or wasn't in control. Neither fits their paradigm, so they play the blame game.

If they can find a venue they should absolutely be allowed to speak and a government that espouses Free Speech should not impede them. As someone upthread mentioned that without letting unpopular speech be free, then it isn't free speech at all, but acceptable speech or even privileged speech. Not letting them speak is not much different that having blasphemy laws.

No, but we took the ball and ran with it straight into the crazy. Mormons, Jim Jones, Branch Davidians, Pentecostals, and many many more. Besides, God's a legal immigrant here. Paperwork and everything.

So a suicide bomber was stopped from blowing up a Coptic Church outside of Cairo. Here's the story: https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/11/middleeast/cairo-police-foil-coptic-church-suicide-attack/index.html Now the question. If you're gonna blow up some infidels and fuck it up do you still get to go to Heaven? Do you get second-hand virgins? An E for effort? I dunno, but it seemed like an interesting thought at the time. Carry on.

God's Catholic? I thought He was 'muican.

It's definitely something. As if the Nazis were offering bibles and psalms to disenfranchised Jews. Their paradigm simply doesn't allow them to see what they're saying, so they get confused and stuff when they're called on it.

I've wondered why God wanted a final sacrifice to save mankind. Supposedly He enjoyed the aromas of various things being burnt in his name, but in the New Testament He gives it all up forever and ever? He seems so pissed off most of the time that you'd think some aromatherapy once and a while would be good for Him. Just sayin'.