Look folks, I'm not Emperor Palpatine trying to sway you to give into the Hate. I have an opinion you all seem to vehemently disagree with. So be it.

Your opinion is that all Muslims see homosexuals as evil. This is simply not true.

If your stipulation is that all strictly observant Muslims see homosexuals as evil, then your statement also includes strictly observant Jews and Christians. Therefore, those people are evil as well.

If you truly see all those people as evil, that is, people that do not deserve to live among us, or that you refuse to fraternize with, then you'll have to bolt your door, or live on an island.

In any case you are condemning many, many people, from many different backgrounds, with one bold stroke. This is called racism. It's called prejudice. If you truly think a full culture, a full race to be evil, then why would you call for anything other than war, and eventual extermination?

I have large problems with major tenets of Islam. I also have large problems with major tenets of Christianity and yes, Judaism. I believe that people, however, are people - varied, fallible, weak. Yes, there are those that are truly evil, using misinformation and fear to their advantage, creating rules that bind others to their will, hurting the human population at large. These people are rare. Most are caught in the tide, whatever religion or culture they ascribe to, and they are products of that tide.

People like you and I are caught in the tide. We may not have voted for W, but we didn't stop him from getting elected. We didn't stop his administration from allowing torture. Could you say it was your fault that our gov't did terrible things? That we've done terrible things, in other countries, for a long time?

Regarding overthrowing gov't, they are trying to do so in Iran, and it's not easy. Many of them are dead and dying. Many of them are being tortured in prison. Many of them are forced into lying about their motivations for statements to the Iranian gov't run press. For many, many years all the scare tactics have worked. Finally, enough is happening that maybe, just maybe, they might free their country from extremist rule. If you have followed what's gone on (and still going on, no thanks to the American press who is barely covering it) in Iran these last few months, you'd realize that the people of Iran are a lot like us - though these days, much more desperate for equality and actually willing to die for it.

In light of what I've been seeing in Iran, I'm rather horrified of your condemnation of them. They may not understand you. They may even not like gays. But they are still people, at the whim of their circumstances and their upbringing. They've had a taste of a free press and more rights for women and they are moving in those directions.

If we can not give in to hate against ALL Muslims, perhaps Muslims can not give in to hatred of ALL Americans.

"Everyone who is ___ is bad." Fill in the blank with the minority of your choice, and you have every war based in ignorance or intolerance, every act of terrorism, every hate crime. You're mistaking a subset of extremism for the whole set.

SM, you sound just like those extremists.

Consider also that in every Islamic country, there are surely untold millions of gay Muslims, forced into lives of repression, fear and denial that would probably make the Christian dark ages seem like a picnic.

It's discouraging to see that among the comment sections of a lot of secular humanist and atheist sites I frequent, there is a subset that subscribes to an irrational (in my estimation) fear of Muslims based on something like - their holy book commands the slaying of infidels, therefore, as long as Muslims exist, they are going to try to kill the rest of us. The slow growth of a moderate Muslim population has no quelling effect on their sometimes rabid-sounding rhetoric. (Some atheists are also prone to a similar response to moderate and liberal Christians - if you are in any way signing on to the faith, YOU ARE AS BAD AS THE WORST OF THEM.) On the whole, I think these sort are the minority among us nonbelievers, but I do sometimes find them hard to take.)

Okay, I'm getting rambly.

edited to add - based on Alex's earlier post, apparently, not "every Islamic nation" - and that's good to know.

I've posted, deleted, posted, deleted. These two posts say what I have been trying to in a much more concise way.

Lash, did you watch the show?

Actually, we watched a DVD :blush:

Mohammed Messenger of God?

no, I'm waiting for that one to go blu-ray.