Bismarck.Magnuss said: »
Well, if people weren't so vehement about their religion and were willing to talk about it, I'd imagine we could actually have a decent amount of discourse. Also, this is technically the Politics and Religion thread, after all.
It's funny how some people are insinuating that whatever misery X country in the Middle East is afflicted with, it's because: religion (Islam in this case).
Because Egypt, Tunisia, Syria etc has all been theocracies, with excellent human rights record.
Or because it's the Muslim military generals who instigate coups and murder elected presidents whenever they dislike him in Turkey.
Maybe it's because no Muslim country has flourished in 14 centuries.
This is a very reductionist approach and therefore lacks accuracy.
It's also amusing that it always comes down to "oh but if you let religion influence legislation, gay rights will be violated!", or "think about the atheists, man".
If people of X belief don't accept homosexual acts or fornication because they consider normalizing them detrimental to their society, immoral, or any other set of reasons they argue for (like this article, or this), they have the right to live according to their rules.
Also, Magnuss kinda assumed that governments hunt gays or atheists, that's not true, not even in Saudi Arabia. There's a difference between outlawing practices and that.
If someone objects: "but they can't be open about it!" well, and about many other things that do not conform to Islam. Just like any country in the world that (reasonably, and I assure you, no religion has been reasoned for as well as Islam) outlaws stuff that doesn't suit it. Refer to the previous paragraph. You don't see Muslims from muslim-majority countries trying to convince Muslims living in the west to campaign for their rights to..polygamy, or marrying your cousins in states where that is considered incest, for instance (it's always about the sex isn't it?). They gotta deal with the consequence of choosing to live in a country where their beliefs are in the minority. Not because the majority opinion is objectively right, not because they can't reason for their minority opinion, but because that's just the way it is - when PoV's are at odds, the majority enforce their opinion.
What I see in the discussions between observant/conservative/whatever Christians and liberals is simply an opposition of wills. Liberals try to pretend that their position is in the middle, but there's no middle in this really. Every party is taking a position, and you're siding with yours. There's no way around this.
This reminds me of a lecture by the Jewish professor Norman Finkelstein that my brother attended during college. It was around 2010, and he spoke about the Palestinian crisis (as usual).
During the Q&A session (Ghazza was extensively bombed less than a year ago):
Student: "So there have been concerns about the status of gay rights in the Ghazza Strip. What are your thoughts on this?"
Finkelstein: "....you have a weird set of priorities".
P.S. it's important to differentiate between theocracy (a nation ruled by someone thought to be appointed by God) and deriving legislation from religious texts. The former has nothing to do with Islam; Muslims can choose to go with democracy or any other model of governance as long as it suits them and achieves the ultimate goal humans have been coming up with these systems for: justice and prosperity for all.
