Upon what basis should prayer be outlawed from public gatherings? The Supreme Court has pronounced on the subject, and this is often quoted as the authority. Only one problem with this: the Supreme Court does not make law according to the Constitution. It is the Legislature that makes law. Please cite the Congressional law that forbids prayer in public gatherings. The few do not have the right to suppress the majority unless the majority have violated some law of the land. Otherwise, the few can just tolerate the will of the majority. That's what the minority wants all the time.

Clay Bennett's cartoon says more about his own intelligence than anyone else's. If Fox News is, in his thinking, the antithesis of intelligent, what, pray tell, is the status of MSNBC in his thinking? That cable network fails to have a single intelligent spokesman, except perhaps Joe Scarborough, and his intelligence is suspect, owing to his association with it.

ikeithlu. Gay sex hurts the person involved in it just like adultery hurts the person involved in it. Anytime a person violates God's moral code, he does so to his own hurt. There is nothing natural about homosexuality. It is a strike against the family and the continuance of the human race. That is not to say that we should demean the individual for whom Christ died. No one of us can condemn another for "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." We contribute to each other's welfare when we urge one another to adhere to God's standards, which are right and good.

ikeithlu...

Many credible researchers report that gay hookups (casual sex) run from the tens to the hundreds during a lifetime. Divorce has no comparison.

Yes, HIV is highest among gays.

Casual sex is certainly destructive to a normal marriage if and when it happens, and the damage that it does to homosexuals cannot be denied.

Studies prove that children need interaction with both a mom and a dad for the best development. Gays who adopt children cannot provide that normal interaction, and they cannot model the roles that males and females are to play in life, creating confusion in the minds of children.

Sex is supposed to be related to permanent, loving relationships. Gay relationships with frequent partners rob the individual of the environment of stable love, causing many to become suicidal. Society in all ages has rejected homosexuality as normal.

It's always easy to blame God for one's own problems. The fact is, it is the God of love who helps people avoid destructive behavior. That is why Christ came -- to bring freedom to each of us who are bound in one sin or another.

Yes, "God is not afraid of gays, but God is not afraid of sin either, yet that doesn't mean He loves it.

Despite your "quasi-Christian" viewpoint, you reject traditional thinking on the subject of homosexuality as recorded in the book of Christianity, the Bible. In it we are not called to love practices which God has revealed are especially abhorrent to Him. We are not to accept or to love what God calls an "abomination."

Loving people whatever their lifestyle is Christian, but approving of their sins is not incumbent on Christians. Jesus loved the woman taken in adultery, but He told her to separate from her sinful practice ("Go, and sin no more.")

The family is a God-ordained institution as old as the human race. Many aberrations of the family are condemned in Scripture -- polygamy, divorce, bestiality, infanticide, homosexuality of both types, abuse etc. It is not just to gloss over these practices which God has forbidden in the interest of a false equality. Gays have freedom to practice their lifestyle as long as that freedom doesn't encroach on others.

The public school is not the place to force the gay agenda on students, especially when those who promote its expression are advocates for it. Homosexuality and heterosexuality are not of equal value to society.

It is true that Christ in the Gospels is surrounded by misfits and outcasts, yet He did not condone their sins. His whole mission was "saving" people from their sins and their hurtful consequences. Christ would not wish for people whose lifestyles produce harm to continue on the same path. Every statistic on homosexuality reports that this lifestyle creates more discord than heterosexual relationships, more sexual diseases with destructive consequences, a greater number of partners, much greater instability in the family, more harm to children, and more incidents of depression and suicide. Maybe the God of love wants to protect people from the adverse consequences of being gay.

It is exactly the screen media that is at the forefront of promoting the alternative lifestyle while ridiculing traditional marriage.

Joblessness may wreck families, but you will be hard pressed to show that joblessness, which has been a problem in all generations, has produced the damages to our Judeo-Christian culture that the modern promotion of homosexuality has brought.

Your statement -- "God can do nothing but love" -- is inherently false if you judge by the standard of Scripture. God is love, but God is also just. God is merciful, but God is also a God of wrath. The same Bible that speaks lovingly of heaven speaks with warning of hell. Romans Chapter 1 catalogues the downward path of a society that, having spiritual light and understanding, sinks by stages into the grossest forms of paganism, including homosexuality as an expression of a culture that "God has given up."

Truth is not always sentimental. Sometimes it is hard to swallow.

What does scientific research reveal about this question? One of the web sites, among many that I researched, seemed to have the most unbiased opinion based upon research. Here are some of its views. “There have been many articles published in various publications regarding homosexuality that do not reflect the scientific literature. In fact, their social advocacy suggests a greater reliance on politics than on science…Are men and women born with a genetic propensity for same-sex attraction? Scientific attempts to demonstrate that homosexual attraction is biologically determined have failed. The major researchers have arrived at such conclusions.” 1. Dr. Dean Hamer, an American geneticist, director of the Gene Structure and Regulation Unit at the U.S. National Institute of Cancer, attempted to link male homosexuality to a stretch of DNA located at the tip of the X chromosome, the chromosome that some men inherit from their mothers. Regarding genetics and homosexuality Hamer concluded: “There is not a single master gene that makes people gay. I don't think we will ever be able to predict who will be gay." 2. Dr. George Rice of the University of Western Ontario duplicated the research and found “the genetic markers to be non-significant….Our data does not support the presence of a gene of large effect influencing sexual orientation.” 3. Dr. Simon LeVay, an American neuroscientist known for his studies about brain structures and sexual orientation, professor at University of Cambridge, at Harvard University and at Univ. of California, in his study of the hypothalamic differences between the brains of homosexual and heterosexual men, offered the following criticisms of his own research, "It's important to stress what I didn't find. I did not prove that homosexuality is genetic, or find a genetic cause for being gay. I didn't show that gay men are born that way…. Nor did I locate a gay center in the brain." LeVay observed, “…people who think that gays and lesbians are born that way are also more likely to support gay rights.” 4. Researchers J.M. Bailey and Richard C. Pillard, did a study which focused on twins. This study provides support for environmental factors, but not for genetic factors. If homosexuality were in the genetic code, however, all of the identical twins would have been homosexual. 5. Prominent research team William Byne and Bruce Parsons, as well as psychiatrists R. Friedman and J. Downey, reviewed the studies linking biology and homosexual attraction. They concluded that there was no evidence to support a biologic theory but rather that homosexuality could be best explained by an alternative model where "temperamental and personality traits interact with the familial and social milieu as the individual's sexuality emerges.” In other words it is a social and environmental issue, not a genetic issue.

What does scientific research reveal about this question? One of the web sites, among many that I researched, seemed to have the most unbiased opinion based upon research. Here are some of its views. “There have been many articles published in various publications regarding homosexuality that do not reflect the scientific literature. In fact, their social advocacy suggests a greater reliance on politics than on science…Are men and women born with a genetic propensity for same-sex attraction? Scientific attempts to demonstrate that homosexual attraction is biologically determined have failed. The major researchers have arrived at such conclusions.” 1. Dr. Dean Hamer, an American geneticist, director of the Gene Structure and Regulation Unit at the U.S. National Institute of Cancer, attempted to link male homosexuality to a stretch of DNA located at the tip of the X chromosome, the chromosome that some men inherit from their mothers. Regarding genetics and homosexuality Hamer concluded: “There is not a single master gene that makes people gay. I don't think we will ever be able to predict who will be gay." 2. Dr. George Rice of the University of Western Ontario duplicated the research and found “the genetic markers to be non-significant….Our data does not support the presence of a gene of large effect influencing sexual orientation.” 3. Dr. Simon LeVay, an American neuroscientist known for his studies about brain structures and sexual orientation, professor at University of Cambridge, at Harvard University and at Univ. of California, in his study of the hypothalamic differences between the brains of homosexual and heterosexual men, offered the following criticisms of his own research, "It's important to stress what I didn't find. I did not prove that homosexuality is genetic, or find a genetic cause for being gay. I didn't show that gay men are born that way…. Nor did I locate a gay center in the brain." LeVay observed, “…people who think that gays and lesbians are born that way are also more likely to support gay rights.” 4. Researchers J.M. Bailey and Richard C. Pillard, did a study which focused on twins. This study provides support for environmental factors, but not for genetic factors. If homosexuality were in the genetic code, however, all of the identical twins would have been homosexual. 5. Prominent research team William Byne and Bruce Parsons, as well as psychiatrists R. Friedman and J. Downey, reviewed the studies linking biology and homosexual attraction. They concluded that there was no evidence to support a biologic theory but rather that homosexuality could be best explained by an alternative model where "temperamental and personality traits interact with the familial and social milieu as the individual's sexuality emerges.” In other words it is a social and environmental issue, not a genetic issue.

This article is about bullying, and that is certainly wrong. But it is also about asking people to accept homosexuality as normal. Let's not confuse the two issues. The disabled person is to be pitied because he has a condition that cannot change. The same cannot be said about a gay person; he chooses his "condition," which is abhorrent in every civilization throughout all time. We pity a gay person like we might pity an addicted person -- as one who could change and who ought to change, but as one who refuses to change. It is his self-chosen habit of life that condemns him and makes him an object of scorn. Some have accepted the challenge of change and through a relationship with Jesus Christ have embraced the normalcy that a God-changed life brings. No one is excluded from this blessedness.

The writer who condemns the Bible because of the statement: "The outsider who comes near shall be put to death," certainly proves ignorance of the context of the passage. The statement has to do with any violation by Jew or Gentile who attempted to presume to do the priestly work of the Levites with regard to the Tabernacle. The warning was well known to all, and anyone who violated the law demonstrated his arrogance regarding God's commandment and was worthy of death because he was taking to himself a role that was not assigned him which would sow religious confusion among the Israelites. Suppose an ordinary person might arm himself with a weapon and approach the President with the notion that he could be a Secret Service agent without the authorization to do so, might not he be shot dead for such a presumptuous act?

Are some so desperate to discredit the Bible that they latch on to such silly examples? Of course, the Bible is full of violent acts and scenes; it is a history book. It even contains the words of Satan and the demons.

SavartiTN

No, everyone is born a sinner, by nature a rebel. That's why there are atheists. A child does not have to be taught to do wrong; it's his nature. He has to be taught to recognize His Maker, to love others, to do right.