truthlover responds to me:
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1. What the heck does conservative leadership have to do with anything I said?
That things were better in the "old days" before all of these "liberal" attitudes came into vogue.
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We're talking moral decline over the last 40 years, not the benefits of left or right wing leadership.
But the leadership is part of that decline, is it not? A good leader would do what he could to prevent such decline, yes? Look at the reaction Dr. Koop got concerning his statements regarding HIV-prevention. People were calling for his head. How dare he not insist that abstinence outside of marriage is the only way to go! Never mind that he directly stated that abstinence is the most effective method of preventing HIV transmission...he used the dreaded C-word and for that, he must pay! And to this day, the Bush administration has decided to go with the abstinence-only method of sex education despite all the evidence showing that such education doesn't help and actually results in a higher teen sex rate than a comprehensive education that includes methods of birth control and disease prevention.
That is how the leadership of this country affects the country's morality.
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I used Judeo-Christian in a pretty normal sense that I'm sure everyone else understood. I made absolutely no arguments in defense of it.
You used it, period. I'm well aware that many people use the term and I even understand what you mean by it. I am simply pointing out that it is a loaded word that doesn't mean what is meant by it. There is no such thing as "Judeo-Christian." If you really think that the Jewish and Christian traditions are anything alike, then you really need to do some more thinking.
For example, most sects of Christianity think that being gay is a sin and many of them are organizing to repress the rights of gays. Only Orthodox Judaism agrees...Reformed and Conservative Judaism actually seek equal rights.
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Your links don't even address suicide rates over the last 40 years, at least the ones you mention first.
So why did you ignore the third link I mentioned? The third link stopped at 1994. The previous two deal with more recent developments. Did it not occur to you to put them all together and see how things are going?
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Suicide rates have more than doubled since forty years ago according to the links I gave.
Mine say they're about the same. The early 60s had a rate of about 10-11 per 100,000. The early 90s had a rate of about 12. It's gone down since then. According to the NIMH, the 2000 rate was 10.6. That appears to be back to 1960s rates.
So no, suicide rates have not doubled since forty years ago.
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I also don't know what my comments about broken families have to do with the gay issue you brought up.
Have you not been paying attention to the debate going on the US? The claim is that gay people break families. Look at the attempt to create a
Constitutional Amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage. Why? Because "traditional marraige" needs to be saved. To allow people of the same sex to get married will destroy marriage.
For crying out loud...you were the one that brought up the fall of the Roman Empire due to "loose morals." You do know what that means, right? "Homosexuality." That's right, gays are blamed for the fall of Rome.
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Divorce hurts kids, and it has increased "dramatically" since the 50's.
Indeed.
But the question is, what is causing it? And we find that the people who are pounding the "morality" drum are often railing against things that have absolutely nothing to do with what they claim they are fighting for. They rail against gay marriage as if it will have some effect on straight marriage.
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I would never support a gay couple adopting a kid, but that's a totally different topic.
Indeed, but why? Are you saying that a child is better off in the foster care system than in a loving home? Considering that there is absolutely no evidence that being raised by gay parents has any effect on outcome, why on earth would anybody stop a child from being adopted into a loving home? And considering that many of these children were born to gay women, what on earth is the rationale for preventing her female partner from adopting her children the same way a straight woman's male partner would?
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Anyway, this gay issue is obviously a big thing to you,
Only because it's a big issue at the moment. Haven't you been paying attention? Canada legalized gay marriage, the SCOTUS struck down sodomy laws, and Massachussetts is about to legalize gay marriage. Members of Congress are trying to get the Constitution amended to prohibit same-sex marriage.
And the justification for all of this? That it will "destroy traditional marriage."
But as I pointed out in a later post, the concept of the "traditional nuclear family" is a myth. The "nuclear family" has never been traditional. It was an artificial construct that became an outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution and the exodus to the suburbs after WWII. Before that, families tended to live together in large groups. You can only have Mom, Dad, and the kids living alone in a house when those people can afford their own home. That didn't happen until recently.
Add into that the revolution in treatment of women since the 50s and it becomes clear that it is inappropriate to look at divorce rates in the 50s as some sort of standard which we should try to live up to again. When a woman couldn't own property outside of her husband, when a woman could only rarely earn a decent wage, what do you think that would do to the divorce rate? In this day and age, divorce is usually brought on by the wife (which shows another lie about men not wanting to get married...men are the ones who propose while women are the ones who divorce.) That's because she doesn't need a husband in order to keep herself out of poverty. That wasn't the case back in the 50s.
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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!
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™ Version 4.2
