Zoot Suit Mahoney posted:

Hey! That's my campus! Yeah, I've always wanted to interact with them but I'd probably just get shouted down.

Kugyou no Tenshi posted:

and the guy literally shouted back "DID GOD HARDEN PHARAOH'S HEART, YES OR NO?"

MisterBadIdea posted:

Homosexuality: A perversion of something God created; Good!

VitalSigns posted:

Also because they don't actually give a drat about aborted babies. It's all about punishing women for having sex and they have a naive view that banning abortions and contraception and telling people abstinence is the only way to avoid pregnancy is going to eradicate premarital sex.

For men, they can get around their guilt at having premarital sex by making sure the consequences fall squarely on the woman for being a 'slut' by having sex with them.

That's it.

Rocko Bonaparte posted:

In the context of your question, what does that even mean? It's like the guy fails the Turing Test and is just spewing random stuff.

Mornacale posted:

As someone who spent at least half a decade praying daily to "end abortion", this is (I think) a really inaccurate and ungenerous characterization of the majority of pro-life people. Especially now that we have a whole generation of people who grew up in a society where abortion was a major issue (remember that most Protestants, as recently as the early 1980s, objected to the Papist idea that life begins at conception).

For most people, I claim, being pro-life is a pure emotional reaction. Abortion, especially if you've never had one, seems pretty gross, or at least unsettling. If you're told by religious authorities that life begins at conception, then abortion is at best a great tragedy. And of course the movement plays this up tremendously, relentlessly pushing images of the fetus as just a miniature child or of abortions as the most disgusting of procedures. Meanwhile, the pregnant woman is almost entirely forgotten: the images show fetuses floating in black voids, the rhetoric focuses on "babies" being "killed", etc. It's very rare that a pro-life person will discuss the woman without being forced to by an interlocutor, and then in only the most superficial of ways.

Essentially, almost all pro-life messaging is meant to be thought-terminating: BABIES are being MURDERED so stop thinking and sign this petition. And whatever you do, for the love of god never think about it from the perspective of a pregnant woman. Just write a letter to the legislature to ask them to overturn Roe v Wade and you're working to stop baby murder; doesn't that feel good?

And so, when you ask people "what should happen to a woman who gets an abortion?" it short-circuits all of this. Because they've seriously never thought about that question. In many cases--certainly in my case--they've never even thought about what it would be like for a woman to consider an abortion. They really don't want to be anti-woman, they just want to save babies, so having to confront the reality of thousands of women doing time in jail is jarring. You can practically see what they want to say, written on their faces: "but maybe if we make it illegal, people will just stop doing it."

Anyway, none of this is meant to minimize that pro-life is a misogynist and harmful ideology. It absolutely relies on the ability of its supporters to avoid empathizing with women and ignore their lived experiences. And of course, in effect, it is a reaction against feminism that seeks to entrench male control over women's lives. But it's important to recognize that many people really do think that they're involved to save babies, and that's why it's so easy to give them cognitive dissonance like this.

Kugyou no Tenshi posted:

Yeah, I got nothing. About the only thing I skipped was the step where he responded to my question with the passage about the whole "hardened pharaoh's heart" thing, and then started shouting at me when I said "uh, that's not really answering my question". So...yeah, it was still a total non-sequitur.

Zoot Suit Mahoney posted:

Hey! That's my campus! Yeah, I've always wanted to interact with them but I'd probably just get shouted down.

BatteredFeltFedora posted:

It almost sounds like the dude was using it as a shibboleth, where if you don't give the right answer you get screamed at as a nonbeliever.

Mornacale posted:

As someone who spent at least half a decade praying daily to "end abortion", this is (I think) a really inaccurate and ungenerous characterization of the majority of pro-life people. Especially now that we have a whole generation of people who grew up in a society where abortion was a major issue (remember that most Protestants, as recently as the early 1980s, objected to the Papist idea that life begins at conception).

For most people, I claim, being pro-life is a pure emotional reaction. Abortion, especially if you've never had one, seems pretty gross, or at least unsettling. If you're told by religious authorities that life begins at conception, then abortion is at best a great tragedy. And of course the movement plays this up tremendously, relentlessly pushing images of the fetus as just a miniature child or of abortions as the most disgusting of procedures. Meanwhile, the pregnant woman is almost entirely forgotten: the images show fetuses floating in black voids, the rhetoric focuses on "babies" being "killed", etc. It's very rare that a pro-life person will discuss the woman without being forced to by an interlocutor, and then in only the most superficial of ways.

Essentially, almost all pro-life messaging is meant to be thought-terminating: BABIES are being MURDERED so stop thinking and sign this petition. And whatever you do, for the love of god never think about it from the perspective of a pregnant woman. Just write a letter to the legislature to ask them to overturn Roe v Wade and you're working to stop baby murder; doesn't that feel good?

And so, when you ask people "what should happen to a woman who gets an abortion?" it short-circuits all of this. Because they've seriously never thought about that question. In many cases--certainly in my case--they've never even thought about what it would be like for a woman to consider an abortion. They really don't want to be anti-woman, they just want to save babies, so having to confront the reality of thousands of women doing time in jail is jarring. You can practically see what they want to say, written on their faces: "but maybe if we make it illegal, people will just stop doing it."

Anyway, none of this is meant to minimize that pro-life is a misogynist and harmful ideology. It absolutely relies on the ability of its supporters to avoid empathizing with women and ignore their lived experiences. And of course, in effect, it is a reaction against feminism that seeks to entrench male control over women's lives. But it's important to recognize that many people really do think that they're involved to save babies, and that's why it's so easy to give them cognitive dissonance like this.

MariusLecter posted:

Long story short, they're morons.

Thanks.

VitalSigns posted:

I'm sorry but you can't ignore the huge overlap of pro-life groups with the anti-contraception and anti-HPV-vaccine groups. There is no argument against the HPV vaccine that is not rooted in ensuring sluts get their divine come-uppance with a bout of cervical cancer. You also can't ignore that their response to the question of a return to back-alley abortions is that a woman who would abort her baby deserves any injury or death that may befall her as a consequence of her illegal abortion.

I understand your experience because I shared those same views at one time, and what I can say is at best sincere pro-lifers are duped by Puritans who really do want to punish 'immoral' women (coincidentally mostly poor and darker skinned), but more likely they just don't give a poo poo about those women or bear them active malice.

Perhaps those questions can sway some people who really have not examined what their pro-life policies would mean, but unfortunately for the pro-lifers among my family and acquaintances from back home, the suffering of 'bad' women is a feature, not an unfortunate side-effect

seiferguy posted:

At my college, I saw a couple years of the pro-lifers that would come into the main square of our campus pushing those aborted baby photos. My school was quite liberal which caused massive amounts of counterprotestors to come out which caused a huge shitstorm. At the time, I was actually involved in the school's Catholic group, and the leader of the Pro-life movement was also a part of it as well. The next day he proudly proclaimed that while he may have not changed anyone's mind on the topic, he at least got people talking about the issue, which was a victory in his eyes. I stopped going to that group and more or less became a deist after that.

They did that approach each quarter, then got warned by campus police to stop causing disturbances. They finally were told they could no longer hold demonstrations due to disturbing the peace too much. The following day, The LaRouchePAC got banned for campus as well

Seriously though, people just wanted to walk from one class to the next. I'm sure seeing gloried bloody babies was just what they wanted to see on the way to their lecture

ChlamydiaJones posted:

The gun nuts had two successful recalls in Colorado a short while ago so now they're trying for another one. Of course one of their advocates want the argument ad Hitlerum and received this in response;

nyquil hangover posted:

Those pro-life protests with late-term abortion photos have to be traumatic for women who have had miscarriages

Emanuel Collective posted:

The issue is that "pro-lifers" and the "pro-life movement" are two very different things. Like I posted above, a majority of Americans are pro-lifers. But only a relatively tiny minority adhere to the views espoused by the pro-life movement, and an even smaller minority go above and beyond that movement and push for what amounts to a "no sex for women" worldview.

Emanuel Collective posted:

Emanuel Collective posted:

Seven in ten americans describe themselves as somewhat or strongly pro-choice. Six in ten self-identify as somewhat or strongly pro-life. 52% of Americans say Abortion is morally wrong, and 56% of Americans say it should be legal in all or most cases. Huge swaths of Americans view abortion as morally complex and have themselves debated the very issues Mornacale described. Just reducing "pro-lifers" to "morons" is pretty drat smarmy when Mornacle outlined exactly how a good chunk of Americans have come to their opinions on abortion and why the issue is more complex for some people.

Job Truniht posted:

There was a video awhile back where someone with a camera and a microphone actively confronted people in Colorado Springs with a simple question "If abortion is illegal, should a mother who has an illegal abortion be tried for murder?". These people literally fell apart on the spot when trying to answer that question.

The Rokstar posted:

The thing that I don't think a lot of people grasp is that nobody really likes abortion. I would assume that even most pro-choicers believe that if we could get to a point where the need for abortion is greatly decreased through proper sex education, birth control, etc., that would be the ideal. Of course, unplanned pregnancies will always happen regardless of circumstances and prevention, but there are simple things that could be done to keep that number as low as possible.

quote:

Something liberals will never ever learn, or ever understand for that matter.

De Nomolos posted:

It's worth mentioning that Mark Driscoll is a troll and/or stupid. He takes stuff he's into as a dudebro and attempts to rationalize it on Biblical grounds (ex: his insistence that Jesus would be a UFC fighter if he were here today because men need to be tuff, but tuff the way Mark Driscoll, UFC fan, is tuff).

DarkHorse posted:

I've found this article one of the more cathartic when you start to think there's no reasoning with pro-life ideologues: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/10/how-i-lost-faith-in-the-pro-life-movement.html

In other news, one of my [terrible] friends posted that Driscoll-linked list, about marrying a pro-choice person with "9. You're wrong" as one of the "arguments." I didn't want to wade into that particular quagmire, but some other Christian friend jumped in and basically told him off for the unreasonableness of it and its disingenuous arguments, and he slightly conceded the point.

Back to our regularly scheduled bullcrap, another friend posted something from a black Tea Party member decrying Alan Grayson's comparison of the Tea Party to the KKK wherein he said it was the Democrats who were the KKK; after all, they founded it, and they've kept blacks on the plantation for the last 160 years! When I took exception and mentioned the Southern Strategy, he either criticized my wording or insulted me for thinking I knew what is was like being black (I had said no such thing). I was just giving him a factual correction.

Doctor Butts posted:

Posted this link after the picture as well:
http://goo.gl/dzsrD

Shows a bunch of destruction after natural disasters, and then starts out with "WHAT DO YOU DO IF URBAN WARFARE GANGSTERS COME KNOCKING ON YOUR DOOR?" and then tries to sell you emergency preparedness kits.

Doctor Butts posted:

URBAN WARFARE GANGSTERS

Snowman Crossing posted:

jesus christ that video is annoying. I intended to get through the whole thing, but after 10 minutes I came to the realization that he was just picking up steam, so I had to blow the bolts. I guess I will never learn the one weird trick discovered by a mom that ensures the government won't send me off to a FEMA death camp.

Doctor Butts posted:

Posted this link after the picture as well:
http://goo.gl/dzsrD

Shows a bunch of destruction after natural disasters, and then starts out with "WHAT DO YOU DO IF URBAN WARFARE GANGSTERS COME KNOCKING ON YOUR DOOR?" and then tries to sell you emergency preparedness kits.

De Nomolos posted:

It's worth mentioning that Mark Driscoll is a troll and/or stupid. He takes stuff he's into as a dudebro and attempts to rationalize it on Biblical grounds (ex: his insistence that Jesus would be a UFC fighter if he were here today because men need to be tuff, but tuff the way Mark Driscoll, UFC fan, is tuff).

Spite posted:

This reminds me of something I read about the spread of early Christianity into Germanic areas. They didn't want to hear about some peace-loving calm jewish dude, so you suddenly had super macho Jesus that jumped up and nailed himself to the cross.

Ratmtattat posted:

$38 for a family survival course.

Cowslips Warren posted:

I always felt sorry for the Pharaoh in the Moses story. I mean, that's his missing little brother who disappeared for loving years, comes back clearly on some kind of drug, and starts screaming that their religion is loving crazy and this One God will gently caress poo poo up. And every time the Pharaoh tries to say okay, cool, bro, take the slaves and leave, God fucks poo poo up.

Gods before bros before hos. Word.

Emanuel Collective posted:

Well he's a troll in the sense that he's become popular due to saying outlandish statements, but that doesn't mean he doesn't believe the poo poo he's saying. He's genuine in his belief that women should be totally subservient to their husbands, that women bring domestic violence upon themselves, that its understandable that men would sleep around if they don't act as sex slaves, etc. The only thing that separates him from the teachings of right wing evangelical churches is the language Driscoll uses. In fact, there's a controversy in right-wing evangelical circles regarding Driscoll: not because his message is reprehensible, but because he embarrasses the church by acting like a manchild.

Spite posted:

This reminds me of something I read about the spread of early Christianity into Germanic areas. They didn't want to hear about some peace-loving calm jewish dude, so you suddenly had super macho Jesus that jumped up and nailed himself to the cross.

quote:

"It was long past - I still remember it -
That I was cut down at the copse's end,
Moved from my root. Strong enemies there took me,
Told me to hold aloft their criminals,
Made me a spectacle. Men carried me
Upon their shoulders, set me on a hill,
A host of enemies there fastened me.
And then I saw the Lord of all mankind
Hasten with eager zeal that He might mount
Upon me.