BREAKING: NCAA says state of North Carolina will again be considered for championship hosting....

[Deleted member 2897]

My main goal at urinals is to stay out of the huge piss puddles that are somehow underneath every single one of them. I think we need to pass laws keeping blind people out of them.

 

[dressedcheeseside]

My main goal at urinals is to stay out of the huge piss puddles that are somehow underneath every single one of them. I think we need to pass laws keeping blind people out of them.

One of these may solve the problem:

 

[Whiskey_Clear]

Lmfao.....priceless.

 

[vamosjackets]

You're right; I didn't see the earlier post.

Here's the problem with the anatomy angle. Suppose you have a person who identifies as transgendered and has had an orchiectomy. The person involved still has a ***** but no testicles and (usually) is in full hormone replacement. She may or may not decide to go on to full reassignment. Or suppose we are looking at someone who is in a full hormone replacement regime to the point that male sex organs are not functional. Both are living full time as females. What does an ordinance that forbids these people to use the "body exposing" facilities accomplish? And how, in heaven's name, would such a stricture be enforced without a full-scale assault on the privacy of all parties - including natural born women?

Well, you could say that it would spare some of the women involved embarrassment and that's probably true. I can't answer that objection clearly since I don't really know how women's locker rooms work and I haven't tried very hard to find out. Given the privacy concerns that most women I know have, however, I doubt if the transgender folks would be too eager to expose themselves to the curiosity of others. I never asked the two transgender people I know about that, however.

I think the anxiety that comes from the situation that isn't driven by ideological or religious concerns stems from three sources. First, there is concern that some of the transgender people will be lesbian in orientation. I don't see this as a problem myself since women seem to be able to handle this (or not) when it involves non-trans people and the problem is ubiquitous. Second, I think people are concerned that cross-dressers could invade women's facilities and press their attentions on women. Again, I don't think this is a valid concern. These people fall into two categories: they are either homosexual or they are closeted. The first group aren't interested in or sexually aroused by women and the second are extremely unlikely to publicly expose themselves. The final category is men who will dress as women and try to pass their way into women's facilities. This kind of behavior is pretty rare and most women can identify someone like this in a New York minute. But this already exists and there are laws to take care of it if anything develops.

That leaves the ideological and religious concerns that I think are the obvious drivers of the angst involved here. On the religious concerns the answer is obvious: this is a secular country and it's laws should address real problems, not enshrine religious principles. On the second, it is regrettable that we have allowed discomfort with modernity to be so thoroughly politicized. But there it is. Perhaps this whole unseemly episode will bring people who are, in general, unlikely to darken the door of a public exercise facility any more to think twice and leave the whole thing alone. Fat chance, I suppose.

Now that really does finish me on this.

Thanks for responding. I think you make some good points. My main reaction to the main question (which you addressed in your first paragraph) is: If they're really female, then why are they keeping their male parts? I still think it should be based on anatomy. If you're a female, that's a commitment, and if you want others to be committed to your femaleness then you have to be committed to it. If you're not committed to it, then you can't expect society to respect that.

Second, if there is no law, then what is the deterrent, what is the logic, what is the law that would facilitate just plain males, dressed as males not going to female facilities whenever the feel like it? The choice, the law can't be based on feelings, can it? I think you want to say, "Well, this doesn't happen." It does. It happens more often than you think. In my time in teaching/coaching, I actually saw this as a pervasive problem. And, with the way the law is headed, it will now be legal.

And, finally, in response to your overall view of politics and religion in the last paragraph: I wonder if when you say say, "this is a secular country", if you have the same definition of secular as I do. I don't think we want a secular country. What we want is a pluralist country. One where all views are given freedom to be heard, weighed, measured, and voted upon. And, one where all views (even evil ones) are at least given respect to be heard and considered. The thing with the whole "this is a secular country" mantra is that secularism is no less a faith-position than religious belief. If you don't believe me, then try to answer this question. To what can a secular person appeal to demonstrate the existence of human rights? It can't be proven empirically. If you look at nature with the secularist lens, the most fundamental thing is that it's a competition where the strong eat the weak and and there is no such thing as fundamental rights to live and pursue happiness, no such thing as equal opportunity. I'm not saying the secularist can't believe in human rights. I'm saying that the secularist has to simply declare that human rights are true based on ... faith. Human rights in the secular world is nothing more than the remnants of Biblical Christianity over the last several thousand years. To take it further, to insist on a secularist society (rather than a pluralist one), then you're excluding a large percentage of the people from holding public office. Not only that, what you're doing is you're saying to religious people (and only religious people): "You have to leave behind the most fundamental thing about them when you enter the public square. You have to leave behind your identity." You're not saying this to the athiest, you're not even saying it to the transgender person. Secular society proponents are doing the very thing they would condemn in Christians.

So, again, it could just be a vocabulary issue. Maybe we can agree that we want a pluralist society (rather than a strictly secular one).

Here is a reeeally good video on this subject that I wish everyone in our country would watch (it's worth the hour):

 

[takethepoints]

"Thanks for responding. I think you make some good points. My main reaction to the main question (which you addressed in your first paragraph) is: If they're really female, then why are they keeping their male parts? I still think it should be based on anatomy. If you're a female, that's a commitment, and if you want others to be committed to your femaleness then you have to be committed to it. If you're not committed to it, then you can't expect society to respect that."

Jeez Louise, you are really fixated on this. I'm at a lose to to see how keeping your sex organs shows a "lack of commitment" in this case. What, taking female hormones until you are pretty much completely transformed both physically and mentally to the gender identity you were - usually - born with isn't commitment enough for you? I think you are grasping at straws here.

"Second, if there is no law, then what is the deterrent, what is the logic, what is the law that would facilitate just plain males, dressed as males not going to female facilities whenever the feel like it? The choice, the law can't be based on feelings, can it? I think you want to say, "Well, this doesn't happen." It does. It happens more often than you think. In my time in teaching/coaching, I actually saw this as a pervasive problem. And, with the way the law is headed, it will now be legal."

I think, from my experience at Grant Field, that the opposite is the big problem. But you're right: I don't see this as a major problem. There are plenty of ways that guys who do this can be pranged by existing laws without adding an unenforceable new one to them.

"Yadda, yadda,yadda … If you don't believe me, then try to answer this question. To what can a secular person appeal to demonstrate the existence of human rights? It can't be proven empirically. If you look at nature with the secularist lens, the most fundamental thing is that it's a competition where the strong eat the weak and and there is no such thing as fundamental rights to live and pursue happiness, no such thing as equal opportunity. I'm not saying the secularist can't believe in human rights. I'm saying that the secularist has to simply declare that human rights are true based on ... faith. Human rights in the secular world is nothing more than the remnants of Biblical Christianity over the last several thousand years."

Nope. Human rights are justified on the basis of human rationality. Everything you say about the "state of nature" is true. That's why, as the classic liberal thinkers pointed out, it makes sense for us to set up governments to place limits on our behavior that we call human rights. It doesn't have anything to do with faith at all. It's a simple matter of self-interest. And a classic liberal would say - I would, for instance - that the "remnants of Biblical Christianity" are a simpler age's attempt to justify what most of us think are bad things that governments should protect us from - robbery, murder, perjury, ect. No need to bring God into this at all to make it work. Besides, I doubt He's too impressed with our attempts to find religious justifications for breaking the Commandments right and left in His name.

Now, can we leave this alone and get back to football?

 

[AE 87]

"Thanks for responding. I think you make some good points. My main reaction to the main question (which you addressed in your first paragraph) is: If they're really female, then why are they keeping their male parts? I still think it should be based on anatomy. If you're a female, that's a commitment, and if you want others to be committed to your femaleness then you have to be committed to it. If you're not committed to it, then you can't expect society to respect that."

Jeez Louise, you are really fixated on this. I'm at a lose to to see how keeping your sex organs shows a "lack of commitment" in this case. What, taking female hormones until you are pretty much completely transformed both physically and mentally to the gender identity you were - usually - born with isn't commitment enough for you? I think you are grasping at straws here.

"Second, if there is no law, then what is the deterrent, what is the logic, what is the law that would facilitate just plain males, dressed as males not going to female facilities whenever the feel like it? The choice, the law can't be based on feelings, can it? I think you want to say, "Well, this doesn't happen." It does. It happens more often than you think. In my time in teaching/coaching, I actually saw this as a pervasive problem. And, with the way the law is headed, it will now be legal."

I think, from my experience at Grant Field, that the opposite is the big problem. But you're right: I don't see this as a major problem. There are plenty of ways that guys who do this can be pranged by existing laws without adding an unenforceable new one to them.

"Yadda, yadda,yadda … If you don't believe me, then try to answer this question. To what can a secular person appeal to demonstrate the existence of human rights? It can't be proven empirically. If you look at nature with the secularist lens, the most fundamental thing is that it's a competition where the strong eat the weak and and there is no such thing as fundamental rights to live and pursue happiness, no such thing as equal opportunity. I'm not saying the secularist can't believe in human rights. I'm saying that the secularist has to simply declare that human rights are true based on ... faith. Human rights in the secular world is nothing more than the remnants of Biblical Christianity over the last several thousand years."

Nope. Human rights are justified on the basis of human rationality. Everything you say about the "state of nature" is true. That's why, as the classic liberal thinkers pointed out, it makes sense for us to set up governments to place limits on our behavior that we call human rights. It doesn't have anything to do with faith at all. It's a simple matter of self-interest. And a classic liberal would say - I would, for instance - that the "remnants of Biblical Christianity" are a simpler age's attempt to justify what most of us think are bad things that governments should protect us from - robbery, murder, perjury, ect. No need to bring God into this at all to make it work. Besides, I doubt He's too impressed with our attempts to find religious justifications for breaking the Commandments right and left in His name.

Now, can we leave this alone and get back to football?

If I started a new thread on the topic, would you be willing to discuss and defend the content of your paragraph which began with "Nope"?

Or do you doubt your competence in "human rationality"?

If you're willing, I'll start the thread next week. If not, I'll assume, rightly or wrongly, that you're a Liberal Fundamentalist who believes what you said by faith in what you've been told and you hold others accountable to your faith.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

"Thanks for responding. I think you make some good points. My main reaction to the main question (which you addressed in your first paragraph) is: If they're really female, then why are they keeping their male parts? I still think it should be based on anatomy. If you're a female, that's a commitment, and if you want others to be committed to your femaleness then you have to be committed to it. If you're not committed to it, then you can't expect society to respect that."

Jeez Louise, you are really fixated on this. I'm at a lose to to see how keeping your sex organs shows a "lack of commitment" in this case. What, taking female hormones until you are pretty much completely transformed both physically and mentally to the gender identity you were - usually - born with isn't commitment enough for you? I think you are grasping at straws here.

"Second, if there is no law, then what is the deterrent, what is the logic, what is the law that would facilitate just plain males, dressed as males not going to female facilities whenever the feel like it? The choice, the law can't be based on feelings, can it? I think you want to say, "Well, this doesn't happen." It does. It happens more often than you think. In my time in teaching/coaching, I actually saw this as a pervasive problem. And, with the way the law is headed, it will now be legal."

I think, from my experience at Grant Field, that the opposite is the big problem. But you're right: I don't see this as a major problem. There are plenty of ways that guys who do this can be pranged by existing laws without adding an unenforceable new one to them.

"Yadda, yadda,yadda … If you don't believe me, then try to answer this question. To what can a secular person appeal to demonstrate the existence of human rights? It can't be proven empirically. If you look at nature with the secularist lens, the most fundamental thing is that it's a competition where the strong eat the weak and and there is no such thing as fundamental rights to live and pursue happiness, no such thing as equal opportunity. I'm not saying the secularist can't believe in human rights. I'm saying that the secularist has to simply declare that human rights are true based on ... faith. Human rights in the secular world is nothing more than the remnants of Biblical Christianity over the last several thousand years."

Nope. Human rights are justified on the basis of human rationality. Everything you say about the "state of nature" is true. That's why, as the classic liberal thinkers pointed out, it makes sense for us to set up governments to place limits on our behavior that we call human rights. It doesn't have anything to do with faith at all. It's a simple matter of self-interest. And a classic liberal would say - I would, for instance - that the "remnants of Biblical Christianity" are a simpler age's attempt to justify what most of us think are bad things that governments should protect us from - robbery, murder, perjury, ect. No need to bring God into this at all to make it work. Besides, I doubt He's too impressed with our attempts to find religious justifications for breaking the Commandments right and left in His name.

Now, can we leave this alone and get back to football?

This all literally makes no sense to me. If I said I was a howler monkey, based on this description above, everyone would have to go along with me that I am a howler monkey. A triangle can't just say its a circle and then voila its a circle. I also don't really get human rationality. I mean, the moral rationalization I get - we are able to justify killing our unborn children yet we can't touch, tamper, or damage unborn bald eagles. And, as we've seen, we end up veering so far off into the weeds that all kinds of random goods and services can become rights...to the extent that someone else has to buy them for you. Which contracts itself. My head hurts.

 

[Skeptic]

If I started a new thread on the topic, would you be willing to discuss and defend the content of your paragraph which began with "Nope"?

Or do you doubt your competence in "human rationality"?

If you're willing, I'll start the thread next week. If not, I'll assume, rightly or wrongly, that you're a Liberal Fundamentalist who believes what you said by faith in what you've been told and you hold others accountable to your faith.

You lost me at "liberal fundamentalist", AE. Never met one, never expect to. It's not my argument so I am out but that particular description gave me a start.

 

[takethepoints]

If I started a new thread on the topic, would you be willing to discuss and defend the content of your paragraph which began with "Nope"?

Or do you doubt your competence in "human rationality"?

If you're willing, I'll start the thread next week. If not, I'll assume, rightly or wrongly, that you're a Liberal Fundamentalist who believes what you said by faith in what you've been told and you hold others accountable to your faith.

No.

This has been another in a series of simple answers to simple questions.

 

[takethepoints]

This all literally makes no sense to me. If I said I was a howler monkey, based on this description above, everyone would have to go along with me that I am a howler monkey … My head hurts.

Well … if you were willing to take hormones until you became a howler monkey and give up you status as a human being, then. yes, I'd say you were a howler monkey if you identified as one. (Btw, I'd pay good money to see this.)

Mine too.

 

[AE 87]

You lost me at "liberal fundamentalist", AE. Never met one, never expect to. It's not my argument so I am out but that particular description gave me a start.

It's my coinage.

The Fundamentalism of the turn of the 20th Century sought to counter Liberalism or Modernism in Christianity by arguing that certain (originally 5) claims of traditional Christianity were fundamental to true Christian belief.

What is often goes undiscussed in this regard was that the Fundamentalist theologians believed that the first fundamental claim, the inspiration/inerrancy of the Bible could be demonstrated rationally: any reasonable person who considers the facts rationally will accept it. From that the other fundamentals followed. However, herein lies the rub. Many of the Biblical Fundamentalists which followed in this tradition didn't understand the rational arguments. As a result, there's an inclination to begin with the fundamental conclusions/claims and rebuke, dismiss, or reject those that hold different positions simply for disagreeing with their faith positions.

Today, there are Liberals, whom I label Liberal Fundamentalists, who make the same move. They accept certain positions by faith, but they also, like the Biblical Fundamentalists, accept the belief that any reasonable person who considers the facts would agree with them.

So, what you often find with Liberal Fundamentalists is that they will condescend toward those who don't agree with their Fundamentals like neoDarwinian evolution, climate change, normalcy of same-sex attraction and subjective gender identity, but they won't sustain a discussion of the reasons for these beliefs. Moreover, they often will not even concede that they have, like Biblical Fundamentalists, just accepted their beliefs by faith. They'll just stop talking/posting ... until the next time they condescend to someone who disagrees with their fundamentals.

 

[AE 87]

No.

This has been another in a series of simple answers to simple questions.

No worries. I have found that most people who hold liberal views on these controverted topics are simply fundamentalists unwilling to put their faith positions to serious discussion. Like the Biblical Fundamentalists of the 1980's Moral Majority, they simply want to impose their morality on the nation. Liberal Fundamentalists differ in primarily seeking to do this through judicial activism rather than the democratic processes.

 

[dressedcheeseside]

Are all the mods on vacation this week?

 

[AE 87]

Are all the mods on vacation this week?

What do you consider as evidence for absence of mods?

 

[Whiskey_Clear]

@dressedcheeseside

To get the thread "back on track"......the NCAA still sucks.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Well … if you were willing to take hormones until you became a howler monkey and give up you status as a human being, then. yes, I'd say you were a howler monkey if you identified as one. (Btw, I'd pay good money to see this.)

Mine too.

Well that's the problem - taking monkey hormones only makes me a human taking monkey hormones. It wouldn't make me a monkey.

 

[Skeptic]

It's my coinage.

The Fundamentalism of the turn of the 20th Century sought to counter Liberalism or Modernism in Christianity by arguing that certain (originally 5) claims of traditional Christianity were fundamental to true Christian belief.

What is often goes undiscussed in this regard was that the Fundamentalist theologians believed that the first fundamental claim, the inspiration/inerrancy of the Bible could be demonstrated rationally: any reasonable person who considers the facts rationally will accept it. From that the other fundamentals followed. However, herein lies the rub. Many of the Biblical Fundamentalists which followed in this tradition didn't understand the rational arguments. As a result, there's an inclination to begin with the fundamental conclusions/claims and rebuke, dismiss, or reject those that hold different positions simply for disagreeing with their faith positions.

Today, there are Liberals, whom I label Liberal Fundamentalists, who make the same move. They accept certain positions by faith, but they also, like the Biblical Fundamentalists, accept the belief that any reasonable person who considers the facts would agree with them.

So, what you often find with Liberal Fundamentalists is that they will condescend toward those who don't agree with their Fundamentals like neoDarwinian evolution, climate change, normalcy of same-sex attraction and subjective gender identity, but they won't sustain a discussion of the reasons for these beliefs. Moreover, they often will not even concede that they have, like Biblical Fundamentalists, just accepted their beliefs by faith. They'll just stop talking/posting ... until the next time they condescend to someone who disagrees with their fundamentals.

Okay. Your last paragraph pretty much explains your creationism. (Just picking at you.) And though ranging far afield from smash mouth, and not to prolong it, but would you extend "liberal fundamentalism" to rejection of earth advocates -- not that many left, more's the pity -- or the 6,000 year-old earth creationists? Some things are worthy of robust debate but others are just Army barracks pretense of intellectual heft, a malady best cured by aging.

 

[AE 87]

Okay. Your last paragraph pretty much explains your creationism. (Just picking at you.) And though ranging far afield from smash mouth, and not to prolong it, but would you extend "liberal fundamentalism" to rejection of earth advocates -- not that many left, more's the pity -- or the 6,000 year-old earth creationists? Some things are worthy of robust debate but others are just Army barracks pretense of intellectual heft, a malady best cured by aging.

I don't know what you mean by "earth advocates."

If you meant rejection of flat-earth advocacy, then the answer is no, and the same goes for rejection of young earth creationism.

Your suggestion that these issues fall into the same category as those I listed suggests that you don't understand the science--more's the pity--and are yourself a Liberal Fundamentalist.

 

[takethepoints]

Well that's the problem - taking monkey hormones only makes me a human taking monkey hormones. It wouldn't make me a monkey.

Dude, I wouldn't touch this post with a fork. Too easy.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Dude, I wouldn't touch this post with a fork. Too easy.

Maybe I should have used a different animal, like a mule. Because probably the board would agree that no matter what I did in that illustration I'd be some flavor of an a$$.