What I don't like

pokermind wrote:In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century (1600s-1700s) the enlightenment came to Europe with the radical idea that the State should be separate from religion. And we are shocked that some 2,500 years after it has became a non issue with mankind in the main. So you can believe certain sexual activities are a sin but, you cannot force your beliefs on those who don't believe it.

However there are places that have chosen to have theocratic states and, surprise, surprise, surprise they are considered barbarous and backward.

Poker

Only point I'd make is that the separation of state and church has yet to become a "nonissue with mankind in the main." I believe you were alluding to that point in your reference to "theocratic states," but I think perhaps you over estimate the number of people to whom it is a nonissue, both pro and con. There is, for example, the case of the Republic of China, with about 20% of the world's total population, where the state's opposition to all religion is very much an issue. And while 32% of the world's population is Christian, 23% of the world is Muslim. I mention this latter point not out of Islamophobia, but because there are an awful lot of Muslims in the world, and I would argue that most Muslim countries are far from accepting the separation of religious and secular law. For that matter, given the tenets or Islam, they shouldn't be accepting that separation. And there are quite a few countries outside the US and Western Europe where religion continues to wield enormous influence in government and the state. In other words, this remains far from a "done deal" for humanity in general.

For myself (and not wishing to throw any hand grenades), I would observe the following.

I thoroughly support the separation of church and state in the sense (as I think the Founders originally intended) the prohibition of a state church and/or provisions similar to the Test Acts of Great Britain, which made membership in the Anglican Church a requirement to hold office and imposed disabilities on Catholics. (I'm not picking on the Brits here; there were similar statutes in a lot of European states --- and they could go either way --- during and after the Reformation. I'm just using the example with which I'm most familiar and the one which specifically led to the First Amendment of the US Constitution.) I also believe, however, that religious belief is as valid a reason as any for voting, supporting a candidate, or supporting a political platform. The opposition to slavery, the emancipation of women, and the current move to extend the civil and legal rights of women, minorities, and gay citizens have all been driven for, not simply against, by people acting in accordance with their religious consciences.

While I am not imputing this sort of behavior to anyone on the forums, I find it personally offensive when someone takes the position that people of faith (in which group I obviously include myself) are always in favor of repression and intolerance and always act somehow as a drag on the progress and improvement of human societies.

Another point to consider when thinking about names: How many names where changed by various Immigration Services throughout the world because the interviewer didn't have a clue how to spell it? In my families case, when my grandfather came to America in 1905, he had trouble with the English language. Since he could not understand what he was being asked, the interviewer simply gave him a new name. He later added to it to more closely reflect the family heritage, but my father and my oldest uncle both had to go to court with him and get their names changed at the same time. Both of their birth certificates still carry the original name, not the one it was changed to.


On the sexual preference issue. There are clues as far back as On Basilisk Station that as far as the Hverse is concerned, it is a non-issue. While I can not point to a specific passage, the overall tone of how the matter was handled from the first left me with that impression.

WinterFlames,
Would you also say that Monks don't reproduce, so
Monasteries (sic) are unlikely to have lengthy futures
as cohesive communities?
And then there were the Shakers.
It is the Immigrants that keep them going.

HTM

SaganamiFan wrote:

WinterFlames wrote:the LBGT (or whatever) community doesn't reproduce. they are unlikely to have a lengthy future as a cohesive community like we see it now.

Yeah... as godfather of the natural child of a transgender person and uncle of the natural child of a bisexual person, I'm gonna have to call bovine manure on that. If anything, modern reproductive medicine makes the reproduction of such traits, if they are genetic, even more likely.

[snip - htm]

[quote=]
Only point I'd make is that the separation of state and church has yet to become a "nonissue with mankind in the main."[/quote]

There certainly seem to be a lot of people (in the US and elsewhere) who seem determined to put The State back under the direct direction of THEIR Church no matter what other rhetoric they may be spouting. That includes their own interpretations of what the Religion (or variant there of) they insist they belong to.

God save us from Theocracy’s

Brigade XO wrote:[quote=]
Only point I'd make is that the separation of state and church has yet to become a "nonissue with mankind in the main."

There certainly seem to be a lot of people (in the US and elsewhere) who seem determined to put The State back under the direct direction of THEIR Church no matter what other rhetoric they may be spouting. That includes their own interpretations of what the Religion (or variant there of) they insist they belong to.

God save us from Theocracies

It is frustrating that such folk do not comprehend there would be a little problem with whose version of the rules would apply. Could make the Reformation look like a kiddie picnic. Allowing no one's personal rules to apply generally protects everyone, including the folks who have this need to make their rules apply to everyone else. The 1st Amendment tries to protect us all and that was the intention.

Flip side: what folks want to believe and what rules they want to make for their own, within their own private lives, --- within reason. No human sacrifice etc, I mean get real - , needs to also be respected as well.

Freedom to be yourself needs to go hand in hand with allowing others the same freedom, with courtesy and respect that those walls protect us all. I hope this will have settled into the behavior of most human societies in future millennia, ala Manticores's generally live and let live modus operandi, but I expect there will still be persons who are afraid of difference and crave super conformity, rather like Grayson in HotQ. Or Refuge in Sword. But just as Masada does not have the right to use force to inflict its version of religion on others, persons now need to understand they likewise should do their own thing and let others do theirs in peace and mutual respect.

To the Christians.. Jesus said something about as you've done onto others you have done unto Him. There is a quite serious warning in that which ... should be heeded more. My opinion. YMMV.

To Northstar's post, I would just like to add that the Bible also has a line "Love thy neighbor as thyself". No mention of race, religion, gender or anything else to get in the way.

WinterFlames wrote:the LBGT (or whatever) community doesn't reproduce. they are unlikely to have a lengthy future as a cohesive community like we see it now.

Really? I don't reproduce? Even though I very much plan on having children someday? Does that mean I can stop spending four days out of every month hating the entire world? Because that would be nice.

Howard T. Map-addict wrote:WinterFlames,
Would you also say that Monks don't reproduce, so
Monasteries (sic) are unlikely to have lengthy futures
as cohesive communities?
And then there were the Shakers.
It is the Immigrants that keep them going.

Where are the Shakers?

And what do you call "immigrants" with respect to homosexuality? (Be very careful how you answer, because the R-word is politically incorrect.)


Monastic enclaves can only exist within the larger community that sends sons and daughters off to abbeys, monasteries and convents. They can only be a small minority of that larger community under historic levels of fertility and maternal, infant, and child mortality before demographic collapse occurs.

Many societal norms with regard to sexuality are implicitly based on the hard facts of those fertility/mortality statistics. One of the reasons why most cultures reserve the most dangerous jobs for men is because we're dispensable in the reproductive equation, while fertile females most definitely are not.

DW has written much about how well a 3:1 sex ratio can function, but do notice that he didn't flip it the other way like Heinlein did in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (which grew its population at first by various deportations from Earth, and had 21st-century medical care available in any event, unlike Grayson through its early history).

So long as there are enough men to do those dangerous jobs like hunting large animals so that the tribe can eat, and the incidence of outright male homosexuality (as opposed to bisexuality) doesn't get awfully high, the men who are willing to keep all those fertile women serially pregnant are sufficient to maintain positive population growth despite the high rates of maternal, infant, and child mortality. (Women who don't find men sexually attractive, but are willing to occasionally put up with one as a necessary evil to get pregnant, are in this respect roughly equivalent to fully-heterosexual women, but those who flat refuse to make any babies are definitely a negative in this equation. Modern techniques of artificial insemination allow the man to be somewhat detached from this process.)

The limiting factor on population in such cases is "How many girls can the average woman bear that survive to become mothers themselves?" If that number is greater than one, there can be population growth, (provided that in addition to the girls, a few boys also live long enough to reproduce) but if it is less than one, there can't.

So it's 100% understandable that Grayson society was resistant to letting women go out and work in places like Blackbird, and Oyster Bay is likely to cause a lot of people who were previously willing to go along with the new ways to have second thoughts about it.

By contrast, Manticore has Prolong and good enough medical care that fertile women aren't nearly such a precious resource, which is why there are so many women in the RMN compared to the GSN.

Brigade XO wrote:

Only point I'd make is that the separation of state and church has yet to become a "nonissue with mankind in the main."

There certainly seem to be a lot of people (in the US and elsewhere) who seem determined to put The State back under the direct direction of THEIR Church no matter what other rhetoric they may be spouting. That includes their own interpretations of what the Religion (or variant there of) they insist they belong to.

God save us from Theocracy’s

Yep. Most fundies interpret "religious freedom" as their freedom to take away everybody else's freedom. In most places that have official "religious freedom", the reality is a Mexican standoff in which no group is strong enough to oppress all the rest.

I like how Eric Flint put it in 1632 (through Rebecca Abrabanel) when King Gustavus expresses doubt that religious freedom can work:

"Which lasts longer, the mountain or the sea?"

Conformity is one of the worst forms of tyranny.
---------------------
It takes two to make peace. It only takes one to make war.

Another point is here;

Hans wrote:…Also is the biggest population of our world right now - and this will be much more obvious in the future - the Asians…

You don’t know this. We don’t know what happened in the “final war”. One of my favorite lines in the original Red Dawn was:
Jed Eckert: ...Well, who *is* on our side?
Col. Andy Tanner: Six hundred million screaming Chinamen.
Darryl Bates: Last I heard, there were a billion screaming Chinamen.
Col. Andy Tanner: There *were*.
Is there any info on “the final war”? Perhaps it started with India & China who nuked each other as well as Taiwan, Korea, Japan and Indochina for good measure. The only Asians to survive the final war were those in other countries.
Also regarding immigration renaming, not all renaming’s were because if inability to understand. A lot were on purpose so they could fit in. Chef Boyardee for instance (yes he’s real), when he came to America from Italy he changed the spelling of his name so it wouldn’t be mispronounced (it was spelled different in Italian but pronounced “boy-ar-dee”). If other people did that (both ways) it would resolve a lot of mispronunciations, spell it in the language you’re going to use or accept the change in pronunciation.