[magkelly]

Whoa, this thread is getting a bit heated. Let's step back a sec and chill, okay? Let's put the heat back on Mr. Norris where it belongs. One of the reasons I don't claim a religion per se is because I really dislike it when people go head to head over it. There are great people and stupid bigoted people in every religion on the planet and the same can be said for those who disdain religion entirely. Let's not pretend differently. I've sat in churches, synagogues, temples, and I've danced in a grove. It really doesn't matter to me where people find "God" at all. I can find light in every religion or even without the help of one at all. All that matters is you walk your walk and you try to love and respect other people as much as you are able in this life. If you're not doing that it really doesn't matter if you're Christian or you practice Voudun.

Chuck Norris is a big old hypocrite. He's not practicing what Jeshua actually taught. He's spewing a lot of nonsense that he's probably learned by route in church over the years and that probably has a lot more to do with Jewish cultural norms 2000 years ago than with what Jeshua of Nazareth actually taught back in his day. Picking on little kids because they are gay isn't acceptable to me. Not wanting to let parents or teachers help out with the Scouts because they happen to be gay is highly discriminatory and I'm saying so. Gay does not automatically equal pedophile. Gay parents are usually pretty good parents and good role models, and Mr Norris needs to get with the 21st century and realize that.

This is a man who has spent a considerable amount of his life and a good part of his career teaching kids martial arts trying to instill in them a sense of self worth and teaching them how to defend themselves. But now we learn that all that he's a hypocrite, a bogus teacher, that in reality his idea of being "right" with his God is to actively exclude and discriminate against kids who happen to be gay. That's just plain wrong and I'd say that if he was a Buddhist. The man called Christ today loved children ALL children. He didn't say "Let the little Christian children only come unto me." He said "Let the little children come unto me." As far as I am concerned Mr. Chuck Norris needs to remember that and shut the F-up!

MHO, he's a total jerk a "Pharisee" as Christ would have put it back then and I'm calling his sorry arse on it. But don't make the mistake of thinking that just because he is a jerk I think all Christians are jerks because I don't. Christians who follow Christ are actually okay by me. Pseudo Christians who don't use their head, who try to twist every little thing in the Christian Bible to suit their personal bigotries are not. The Bible is filled with bigotry, with vice, and cultural norms that were stupid and wrong even thousands of years ago. The Bible says slavery and incest are okay. The Bible says that killing off a whole resident population down to the last woman, child or slave so that His "chosen" people can take a piece of land is okay.

Obviously it wasn't "okay" and it still isn't and anyone with half a brain realizes that and doesn't take all that stuff literally. All those laws against gay sex? They were all about keeping the Jews procreating so they would survive as a race. That's the priests of Yaweh talking, spewing cultural norms, trying to keep people on the straight and narrow so the Jews could grow their population and escape extinction. They had lost many people during their enslavement in Egypt and probably even more crossing a desert. Bluntly, they probably couldn't afford to have little Jewish boys and girls not making babies. So they outlawed gay sex. Whatever. This is several thousand years later and despite the Holocaust the Jews are in no real danger now of extinction. There's simply no need for said laws anymore.

In any case the whole world is not Jewish. Those OT laws just don't apply to everyone. Jeshua supposedly came for the Gentiles as well as the Jews. He wasn't against the law, mostly he upheld it. He was after all a Jewish boy and a rabbi, but he also with his words and acts transformed it, humanized it, showed compassion, embraced all people, and totally called out the hypocrites while he was at it. His greatest law was the law of LOVE and in his mind clearly that law took precedence over all others no matter what the priests of his religion said. He didn't take on the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees, and the money changers in the temple so that they could reign free over us all, but that's what's happening with many of the followers of the religion his teachings spawned today. They're more concerned with making money, with upholding old culturally based laws, with propriety, with keeping themselves "pure" than they are with what Jeshua actually taught. It's exactly the kind of thing he taught against 2000 years ago. It's what he fought against and ultimately what got him crucified.

Yeah, I'm calling out Norris and so called Christians like him. They deserve it. They're not even following their own guru. Kind of lame that. But I don't hesitate to call out people in other faiths for being bigots either. I've known people in other religions, and yes, that includes Wicca and the like who are also total hypocrites. That also talk about the Law of Love and yet who spew hatred for all Christians and anyone else they see as someone who could potentially persecute them. Well, I'm sorry but that's total BS too. That's just turning the hate around and it's not going to help. It's not going to make for less hate in this world. Someone persecutes you, you persecute back. It's a never ending circle of hate.

Forgive me for saying so but that's really not what Jeshua was all about. That's not what the Old Ones are about. We're all One in the end and it's 2012 not 5000 BC or 33AD so let's leave all that blame and rhetoric behind already. Everyone should be welcome in the temple or out in the Grove. We're ALL chosen "Children of God" we're all equal before Him/Her/It. Holy books are only holy because we make them so. Words, written down, teachings made into guides to follow because for some reason humans have always felt an innate need for writing them down and to feel special. No book should supersede the Law of Love, particularly one that supposedly enshrines it. If it does, if hate comes from it then maybe what's written in it needs to be reconsidered in the context of the time it was written in and some things in it not taken quite so literally.

I used to know a pretty prominent Jewish rabbi. To him the law was a living thing. It was still capable of evolving. The whole point of the synagogue and the schools was to learn and discuss, continually argue all that. The law didn't just stand still because Moses and the others wrote it all down once. Even in the religion that spawned Christianity they're not afraid to rip the law apart, discuss it, argue about it, rail against some of what's "written." That's what Jeshua did his whole ministry too. He upheld the law but he also challenged it at every turn, and did not allow it's bigotry, it's cultural norms to define him. When the traditional law was bigoted he went against it. Look at how he treated women and then look at how most men in his time treated them. What he did with them, having major contact with them, teaching them, that was blatantly against the custom of the time, against the moral code of his religion. But he still did it. He still took on the law and challenged it and tried to make his religion better. People often forget that, that he was a Jewish rabbi, but I don't think that's something we should forget. A whole new religion came out of his teachings but is it HIS religion? Did he intend that? I'm really not so sure about that.

All I do know is ultimately he tried to love everybody, forgive everybody, even the people nailed him to a cross and killed him. That was his bottom line. His ultimate law. The rest is just words. Jeshua was a Jewish boy, a rabbi. He saw the world from the viewpoint of his faith and his culture. To him God was The Father. But I don't think he would mind "God" being seen as The Mother too. Ultimately I think all that really mattered to him was that people open their hearts and minds to God, that Love should rule us. IMHO anyone who claims to follow him and who promotes discrimination just isn't following him very well. But that's something that some people unfortunately will have to discover for themselves. Doesn't mean we shouldn't step up and say "What are you doing here?" when someone does it. If you don't ever say something people won't think about what they're doing. But it should be done with love not hate.

Angry words, blame, they only promote the very thing you're trying to change. It's human nature to get ticked off, to blame, particularly when you've been taking BS forever it seems. But if you don't let it go. You don't stop feeding the hate you're just as bad as the people who would mess with you. It's one thing to say "I don't like what you're saying here." and make it about one person and it's another to blanket blame everyone in a particular religion or of a particular gender or whatever for some people acting like stupid jerks. Christianity as a rule had had it's fair share of bigots and then some. But so has every other major religion on the planet and even being an atheist (or a Witch) isn't proof against being a total bigot.

Holier than thou attitudes come in all sizes, in all people, and in all places. Human beings, we can be awfully stupid and immature at times. We think we know everything. That we know how "God" thinks well enough to write it all down and speak for Him/Her/It. Yeah, uhuh. Right. Like we have any right at all to speak for something that is about as like us as we are an amoeba. :P

[Ratmagiclady]

"But I don't hesitate to call out people in other faiths for being bigots either. I've known people in other religions, and yes, that includes Wicca and the like who are also total hypocrites. That also talk about the Law of Love and yet who spew hatred for all Christians and anyone else they see as someone who could potentially persecute them."


Before you call me or anyone else a 'hypocrite,' explain what standard by which you think what's actually being said here is to be taken as a 'crisy,' never mind a 'hypocrisy?' I'm not technically a 'Wiccan,' but it really is close enough. Distancing yourself by 'false equivalency' doesn't make you 'objective' either.

What standards do you think are being violated here by, guess who's the only Pagan in the room?

There *is* nothing called the 'Law Of Love.' The words are certainly connected in other ways, very often, like Lady saying 'My Law is love unto all beings,' ... that doesn't mean it's 'spewing hatred' to deconstruct an abusive system. In fact, Lady would expect no less of *us* if we ever went bad that way. As a matter of fact, if anything ever does* go bad among us, I'm *just* the kind of person they call in.

Christians right here can't admit to *comprehend* other people's standards. Demonstrate loudly they don't believe anyone could *live* by them for half a minute, and then claim this "proves" something about their defamation and institutionalized abouse being both 'ultimately righteous' and 'anti-Christian' to even *point out.'

The way they talk about people, they couldn't *live* by my standards half a minute. And actually, I wouldn't be a *hypocrite* if I *did* hate them.

I'd be being honest.

So happens I don't hate them.

If I have resentment about this system, this treatment, this *screwed-up situation,* I think *I'm allowed.*

But I *am* recurringly-angry about what they insist upon doing. In reality. Even saying and defending and sanctifying *right here.* Big man says 'Jesus wants you to oppress boy scouts,' they act 'persecuted' if anyone points out who *really* gets hurt, and how. In reality. Meanwhile, they try to claim the *Girl scouts* are some evil conspiracy of their divil and llibruls' over what they imagine about *my* people for other people entirely *not* persecuting LGBT kids.

Through the law. Overtly and publicly, all over the place, and upon the persons and communities of not just me, but *everyone* they don't like. And always *have* while claiming to be the only 'light and font of goodness' being 'oppressed' if anyone so much as says, 'Ow, you're hurting us!'

Or. 'We're here, too. Neighbor.'

By the Gods, *my* biggest worry for *my* people is for *us* to develop too much of a (hardly-unjustifiable) siege mentality from our *real* experiences by the time the *Christians* wake up. We don't *want* their F'n job *precisely* because we've done this dance before. As have *so* many peoples of the world.


And, yeah, political Christians lust for that kind of power and bended knees, while projecting that on all humanity but themselves.

If you knew what 'Love is the Law' *really* meant, even the thought of that would.. weary you.

And you're trying to judge *me*, Mags, by someone else's judgmental-denying-they're -judging-cause-they're too terrified-to-admit-what-they're despreately afraid-of-yet-worship *standards,* you might want to actually register my *standards* before you call me or anyone else a 'hypocrite.'

I'm sure no 'saint,' by my own faith's standards. Missionaries come to the door and say, 'Do you know where you'll be after this life?' and if they catch me with low morning cortisol I might just say, 'Probably the Avalon Isle VA, occupational rehab.' What they think concerns Gods, never mind 'forever,' has zero to do with excuses or arguments. They're screaming about some 'God of the Gaps' while I'm trying to sort out past life memories I *can't forget,*

No one taught me any 'Pagan Dogma,' ...actually, I thought I was about the last one in the*world* by the time I got to college. Frankly, I look at other *Pagans* argung about sources most deny even exist, and I'm like, 'Who cares, I'm just *damn glad to see y'all!')

If anything makes me a hypocrite, Mags, it's actually that I just don't personally want to *be* here. Ironical enough, while Christians scream what a 'lustful Pagan sodomite' I must be, (because their Bible says this is 'truth,') ...fact is, I'm lucky if my body can muster enough hormones for half an *appetite,* never mind there being some 'sin' about my loyalty to my sweetie that once again I can't do anything about if any given Christian says 'boo' about it. Rather, I'm trying to help *them.* Through once again standing by someone and we can't even be *together.*

If I'm a 'hypocrite,' its cause though I may sincerely love this world, think it's important, ... fact is, it's hard to want to be here. For starters, this is way after the second time I re-upped and it hurt like you wouldn't believe all along. It's *sure* not cause my religion failed to meet some self-serving *Christian* billing they argue up and down how they should be credited for while doing the opposite.

Holier than thou attitudes come in all sizes, in all people, and in all places. Human beings, we can be awfully stupid and immature at times. We think we know everything. That we know how "God" thinks well enough to write it all down and speak for Him/Her/It. Yeah, uhuh. Right. Like we have any right at all to speak for something that is about as like us as we are an amoeba.

Nice thing about not being monotheist is, you can both be like an amoeba and not think that makes you something awful and inferior.

Speaking of 'Her love poured upon the Earth,' if you like quotes. That means something more than you may be used to. While everyone's arguing about blame and 'who's wrong,' and like that's a thing.

I'll paraphrase, cause it's personal, but though Lady really had been with me from the beginning, I think the first prayer I ever said and meant to the core was, 'Lady, this may be stupid, but if so, let me do this stupid thing *right.* ' This was not about an argument, never mind someone coming along and saying, 'you hate them just as much as they hate you, if you criticize them!' (Who are they?)

That ain't faith.

Faith is *literally* a kind of trust. Sometimes trust means you don't know.


(Also, notice who didn't make headlines demanding some be treated as a 'dirty subject?)

[magkelly]

Uh, Rat, this is exactly what I meant. What in heck even makes you think I was talking about YOU? FYI, you're not the only Pagan or Gay person on the forum. You're just the only one talking most of the time. FYI, I'm a lot closer to being Pagan than Christian, always have been. Did you miss that in the Grove part? Obviously you did because you have NO idea of where I am coming from. Read the darned post for once before you rant and don't just assume you know what I am or where I am coming from or what I believe in.

What is it with you lately, lady? You're constantly in major attack mode and taking EVERYTHING ultra personally even when it's not necessarily about you. You know you have a real habit of going after people when they so much as "might" seem to disagree with you or indicate any hint of disapproval of anything Gays or Pagans might do. News flash, Pagan and Gays can be bigoted jerks sometimes too. I've met plenty of very hypocritical Pagans and Gays saying stuff that made me go "WHAT?" They can be just as bad as the Pseudo Christians sometimes, seriously.

You know I honestly like you from what I've seen of you but sometimes I just have to sit back and think "wow" and let what you say go because it's so over the top and defensive it's hard to take. In case you haven't noticed I'm mostly on the same side of the political equation as you are. I'm out there marching for your rights, for respect for you and yours, for you being able to marry or not and legally love or f- whomever you you please. People mess with the Gays and Pagans in my area I mess right back at them. I don't let them pull that shiz and I believe I've mentioned doing that and being close friends with several Gays and Pagans before here. FYI, again, my best friends and my current roommates are a mix of gay and bi, and straight. One of them is actually Pagan, as in Wiccan for over 30 years. Another is a Buddhist. I also am friends with atheists, and yes, with Christians albeit I don't get along well with evangelical types.

If you think for one moment I don't get the Pagans, the Gays, then you haven't been reading me right and you don't even want to know me obviously. No, I won't take bigoted crap from anyone. That means religious people of ALL kinds and non-religious people. I don't make exceptions for people's bad behavior just because they might be Gay or Pagan, in fact I tend to get on them more because of ALL People who you'd think wouldn't tend towards being that way you'd think they wouldn't. But it's a fact that Pagan Circles can be just as bad about that as any Bible group. Some of the local Pagans here, the Gays? They're such catty, judgmental arses it's not even funny. Darn right I call them out on it too.

There was a Woman's bookstore here. For a year I was made very welcome in the store and in their book groups. They apparently all thought I was a lesbian. When they finally realized I wasn't one day they pretty much went from being ultra nice to sneering at me and made it so unpleasant for me to be there I finally had to quit. Yeah, totally bigoted lesbians, what an oxymoron that is when you really think about it. Some of the gay guys I've met, same thing. Spewing Birther crap. I mean come on. That's totally discriminatory rhetoric too. Dislike is dislike, hate it hate, no matter who is spewing it. The local Wiccan group? Same shiz. One of my best male buddies was a long term member. I used to go once in a while to the festivals and to the occult book group meetings after their solstice celebrations, hang out with him and them and talk occult books and metaphysics.

I was seriously contemplating seriously going Wiccan clergy at that point. I was really into it, felt more comfortable there than I ever had in any religious group. I finally got a car and when I mentioned actually wanting to put some Pagan art on it, stuff that has personal significance for me, he had a COW at the very idea. Said it perpetuated Pagans as fluff heads and that it would make them all look bad. I was like "Okay, when did being Wiccan come to mean having to act like an old time Baptist?" He didn't get my point and I left. Later I went to bigger cities, joined other Circles, checked out other religions, same shiz. People of all kinds of religions all talking shiz about other people all the time. Heck even the so "enlightened" Yoga practicing Buddhists made me want to heave at times. I just could not believe what I was hearing sometimes.

After a while I came to believe that these people were just using the excuse of prior persecution to persecute themselves. Fact is, I used to really dig Paganism, Wicca in particular, but after seeing how much of that was going on I decided it had it's uncool side just like Christianity. Didn't want the label even though a lot of my own personal beliefs rather fit it more than they do any other religion on the planet. But for the record "God" is just as much a HER to me as a HIM. Maybe more so. I'm not much of a Yaweh fan. I actually kind of think Herne is a lot more cool actually, prefer Osiris myths to Jesus ones actually, so in that regard I'm probably just as Pagan as you are. They're all one to me and they're all on the home altar actually. Jesus and Mary. Herne and Diana. Buddha, Kali, Tara, and several other mythic representations of the Divine as well. My cats even have their own little altar to Bastet complete with scratchy and catnip plants.

In other words, HELLO, pot meet the kettle...

So there you go. NOT about you, okay? I object to this kind of thing popping up in ANY religion. No, I'm not claiming to be perfect either. Far from it. I grew up in an area and in a family that can be bigoted enough to make me scream at times. I still have to watch my own head sometimes to keep it from going there. It's knee jerk, learned it at my parent's knees kind of thing and it's not easy being as liberal as I am actually here. My parents like the friends, like the roommates but they still would much rather I was rooming and associating with straight little nominal Christians and strictly Caucasian ones at that. Living with a Witch that daunts them. Buddhists chants on the CD player, they are like "Okay...." and the eyebrows go up. It's totally stupid and yeah I call them out on that crap too. I'm just as flawed as anyone but to my credit I generally know when I'm acting like an arse.

Don't assume it's okay to decide for me what I think. Don't assume that just because I am objecting to something regarding people's behavior that I think all people in that same group are like that. I don't. That my point. That bigotry exists in us all and that no group of people is immune. Just because you belong to a particular group that I'm talking about doesn't mean that it's all about you. Because usually it's not. Believe me, if I am going to object to something about you I am not going to make a blanket statement out of it. I'm going to tell you as nicely as I can, but you will know I am saying it directly and why.

I am objecting to your taking every other word out of my mouth so personally and I am saying so. To you. You're not seeing ME. You're seeing my words through your own lens and it's distorting what I am saying. You're not seeing me correctly, or really reading what I am saying and understanding me. I'm sorry. But you're just not. If you think for one moment that I am that person the one you're assuming I am you couldn't be more wrong. I would be the first person to hold out my hand to you, Rat. I am so not your enemy.

[seacapt]

So ehhh who's the toughest guy in the movies, Chuck Norris , Steven Segal , JC VanDamme or Jet Lei?

[magkelly]

None of the above. Liam Neeson. All he has to do is glare and they'd all go down like bowling pins.

[séamuis]

Jet Li, or possibly Donnie Yen

[les3547]

So ehhh who's the toughest guy in the movies, Chuck Norris , Steven Segal , JC VanDamme or Jet Lei?

Let's not forget Clint.

[magkelly]

On second thought THIS guy is capable of being scarier than anyone else working on the big screen, EVER....

http://bloody-disgusting.com/photosizer/upload/thesilenceofthelambs3100711.j...r:12,s:0,i:179

There isn't an action star alive or dead who wouldn't scream and run if they saw him coming. Am I not right? Anthony Hopkins, one of the nicest guys in the world, supposedly, but he can totally haunt your dreams and scare you half to death...

[Ratmagiclady]

Well, I'll read that later, Mags, I do just get *sick* of the false equivalencies, when you've got the CHristian RIght hatemongers saying stuff like *this,* (just another day in the news, really, but Anderson Cooper comes out and the RIght's hatemongers are harping on their latest tack: saying being LGBT and 'Neo-pagan' are both the same as pedophilia and calling on the persecution complex by (misleadingly) invoking the Roman empire. To flip the narrative:

Janet Mefferd Warns Listeners They Might Vomit from Story about Anderson Cooper Coming Out | rightwingwatch.org

Sure, you might say this is a 'fringe figure,' but they're in support of, (and trying to intensify) things that are actually happening... Somehow people think it's 'moderation' to call people "just as bad of haters" for having some criticisms about how these abusive expressions of religious power that we're *supposed to put up with more and more of every day, while the 'moderates' don't confront *them,* but instead attack others for pointing out what's really going on out there in the very right-wing politics that want to *legalize* religious bullying, by flipping the narrrative as always about who's really subject to oppression in this society.

I'll tell you one thing, Clint Eastwood's been earning a lot more respect from me lately.