short takes from the news

[cellio]

What's wrong with this statement? "The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for potentially lifetime detentions, including for hundreds of people now in military and CIA custody whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts." (story)
A story

Comments

[cellio]

*laugh* Thank you. :-)

[sekhmets_song]

Technically, the Catholic Church doesn't teach that homosexuality is any worse than any sex outside of marriage (since gay couples can't marry within the church, it is, therefore, never acceptable behavior in the church's eyes; splitting hairs, I know, but there is a difference).
That said, many people use the (sort of) ambiguity of the church's position to bulster their own homophobia.
The sexual orientation of the students parents should really have noting to do with the education of the children.
Sick that anyone can be so wrong headed as to punish the children for a behaviour in the parents that they disagree with. Sad.
Makes about as much sense as baptists getting upset that the children of parents who have sex in a position other than missionary are going to school with their children.

[cellio]

Technically, the Catholic Church doesn't teach that homosexuality is any worse than any sex outside of marriage

Really? Thanks; I didn't know that. (I know some church members for whom that would be news.)

[sue_n_julia]

True -- in fact ask any Christian (Catholic or Protestant) to show you where the Bible condemns homosexuality and they are likely to point to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. [My pastor (when I was a teen) blatantly said that Sodom was destroyed because of the large homosexual practice there.) However, these people are missing that the use of the root sodom- for homosexual activity only came into use in the 13th Century. And refers to, according to the OED, "An unnatural form of sexual intercourse, esp. that of one male with another." So, the Bible doesn't, imho, seem to condemn homosexuality any more than heterosexuality. Then again, I could be biased.

S

[cellio]

The Sodom story is about rape, IMO (and more broadly, abuse of other people, particularly visitors). Heck, the sex that's actually offered is heterosexual.

The passage that's usually cited against homosexuality is Lev 18:22. (Gah. I've seen it enough that I didn't need to look that up.) You might be interested to know that there are Orthodox Jewish woman who argue strongly that it says men and lesbianism is just fine according to Torah. I'm not making a judgement; I'm just repeating an argument.

[cafemusique]

Besides, I think many parents see Catholic schools as a way to insulate their ever-so-innocent son or daughter from the heathens in the public school system.

Exactly

[dmnsqrl]

Just like one of my friends who goes to a 'christian' college says that about a third of the students there seem to want to live in this 'bubble' for the rest of their lives that will not force them to interact with people who do not have the same values they do.

*sigh* and the Catholic church really does have a large teaching problem currently. I'd say about half of those in America who identify themselves as 'Catholic' these days have the equivalent in education about their own religion as any person who left public school around grade 4-5 has in general education. Gah, that came out clumsy but I think you can get the general idea of what I mean.

[caryabend]

The funny thing is that the guy in charge of the school (the catholic-ese escapes me) said that if he were to keep them from attending the school, he'd also have to prevent children of divorce, unmarried parents, and the like away too, and that he wasn't going to do that. It seems that he, at least, understands his faith in ways that the objecting parents do not.

[cellio]

I agree. The person at the school gets it; the parents don't care about consistently-applied principle but are reacting to one hot issue.