Disney airs first ever gay kiss/scene in cartoon

[PP1]

 

Sensible, practical, harmoniously navigating trough life being as truthful to one's self in the most realistic way possible void of unprovable concepts dictating one's existence.

 

Not at all meant to be interpreted as air-headed and carefree to the point of irresponsible stupidity. Not the same thing at all.

 

As in 'living now" because realistically that's at the very least what we can possibly know for certain.

 

I just don't know what you can possibly know for certain. I see all your ideas and worldviews depending on at least some level of faith.

 

But you know more about what you believe then I do.

[mcpapa]

Are you aware of the literacy rates of today's youth?

 

Yep. Buncha gay non-cursive writing text acronym-abbreviating illiterates.

 

 

 

Just kidding.

[B-Ball-fan]

I just don't know what you can possibly know for certain. I see all your ideas and worldviews depending on at least some level of faith.

 

But you know more about what you believe then I do.

 

I'm not claiming to know anything for certain.

 

I have a hunch that there's more to our existence than meets the eye, yet because I have a hunch doesn't automatically translate to it being so.

 

There likely are many answerable and unanswerable things that could be answered if we only had the answers.

 

If the answers are not apparent, I'm at the mercy of not being able to know.

 

I believe that I exist.

 

I believe that our existence is an amazing and fascinating wonder.

 

It's frustrating especially if I think too deep about it to have to except that I'm limited in knowing the "how" and the "why".

 

I think that humans have undoubtedly forever been puzzled and perplexed by this.

 

I think that many have turned to man-made concepts and religion because it's just easier to surrender to some established belief system rather than suffer with a lifetime of uncertainty.

 

Many are indoctrinated from any early age into a belief system to the point they're incapable of pondering outside of those beliefs especially since often those beliefs will have attached to them a threat of self guilt for questioning them making the believer fearful to ponder.

 

My uncertainty does not exclude the possibility of realties beyond my comprehension.

 

Realties beyond my comprehension may never be answered.

 

Perhaps with death they will be.

 

Perhaps not.

 

If death happens to be the end of my existence, there's still tons of unanswered questions about how I even existed in the first place.

 

Chicken and the egg.

 

So for me it's not really about a "faith" or a "belief" but more so a realization that I am limited in knowing.

 

Because I am limited doesn't mean that I don't have an eager desire to know.

 

My desire to know is a passionate one.

 

I've even felt that I've experienced glimpses of things beyond my understanding that felt like "signals" or "messages".

 

I don't know exactly how those "signals" have happened, or if that's actually what they were. I won't discount them in my personal quest for whatever knowledge I can realistically gain while I live, but I won't go as far as taking my experiences and claiming that it has offered me a complete look at the entire picture.

 

These "signals" have given me a sense of hope and delight that there really could be something beyond our human existence in store for us.

 

What that is, if it is, I do not know.

 

If I die and there's nothing then obviously it won't matter to me in my absence of life for I'll not have a conscience to care.

 

In a scientific sense I do believe that there is a common core within all organic life on this planet, and as an extension throughout the known universe, if by chance all matter is consistent and that what we know about life forms and how they survive are similar in needing water, air, and food to survive.

 

There are numerous life forms, but from a bug, to a tree, to a human there are similarities in how we thrive. Are humans the only life that gets to experience an afterlife? Why wouldn't that afterlife be available to a horse if there indeed is one? Is it because a horse never created this concept of an afterlife and humans did?

 

There's no doubt that the idea of an afterlife helps to provide us with hope. We grow close to loved ones and it's hard to lose them to death. The idea of an afterlife helps us go on with life with hope to one day be reunited with those we love. No doubt that we all experience the sadness of this loss. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there is truth to this afterlife and being reunited. Certainly nothing wrong with hoping for such a thing, and completely understandable.

 

There's little doubt that within our existence there are certain accepted understandings between "good" and "bad"... hatred, violence, murder, and all various forms of harm that humans can bring to one another, and a certain accepted understanding of peace, love, and kindness.

 

It's understandable that humans in an attempt to keep society civilized would make distinctions between accepted "bad" and "good" to try to discourage people from acting "badly". As an extension to that, religion will do the very same, but then the lines can get blurred with so much human involvement with categorizing every bit of our existence into the "good" and "bad" categories with a warning of the afterlife being effected by one's behavior in the now.

 

Good behavior = Heaven, Bad behavior = Hell.

 

It certainly works as a controlling concept because religions have used it from the beginning of time, and humans have throughout the generations continued to teach it. It's no doubt effective because of all of the indoctrinated people worldwide into religions and with it it has probably subdued the masses to our advantage just as much as religion has had a grave negative effect on humanity throughout generations.

 

This is all just me pondering. Whereas certain philosophies or religions aim to explain with beliefs, all I'm doing is saying that I do not know for certain anything, and that I must except this limitation until by chance my existence may or may not offer to me knowledge that I have yet to gain.

[mcpapa]

^ In the immortal words of The Moody Blues:

 

I think.

I think I am.

Therefore I am.

 

I think.

[PP1]

I'm not claiming to know anything for certain.

 

Hold on now, in this very thread you said "I know for certain that the Bible is man-made" and "we know god is a concept created by humans."

 

But you used a lower case g so you may have been talking about all kinds of deities and not just the Judeo-Christian God.

[doomer]

The solution is to realise that we are all one with God. This conception of God as the unity of substance of which we are all a part removes the need for churches with their 'high priests who talk to god'.

 

In fact the manipulation of our natural religious nature by the church has caused immense harm to humanity. The truth is that God creates heaven on earth through this most remarkable evolution and ecology of life and Nature that sustains us.

 

However, the churches elevated man to a special position of privilege that gave man dominion over all of life to do with as he pleased. And by doing this they have unleashed a force of destruction upon life and nature that is now, with tragic irony, creating hell on earth. Thus though the churches claim to deliver you to heaven they are in fact consigning your children to hell, a man made hell on earth.

John Fowles - The Aristos

 

and some others:

 

.. as a philosopher, I have a right to ask for a rational explanation of religious faith. (Cicero)

 

True religion is that relationship, in accordance with reason and knowledge, which man establishes with the infinite world around him, and which binds his life to that infinity and guides his actions .. and leads to the practical rules of the law: do to others as you would have them do unto you. ...

Reason is the power man possesses to define his relationship to the universe. Since the relationship is the same for everyone, thus religion unites men. Union among men gives them the highest attainable well-being, on both the physical and the spiritual level. (Leo Tolstoy, Confessions, 1882)

 

At the end of the day, we have the free will to choose our own path and hopefully the good sense to allow others to choose theirs.

 

BTW....The Aristos by John Fowles is a very interesting read.

[B-Ball-fan]

^ In the immortal words of The Moody Blues:

 

I think.

I think I am.

Therefore I am.

 

I think.

 

I almost went there. :lol2:

[B-Ball-fan]

Hold on now, in this very thread you said "I know for certain that the Bible is man-made" and "we know god is a concept created by humans."

 

But you used a lower case g so you may have been talking about all kinds of deities and not just the Judeo-Christian God.

 

We do know that the Bible was written by men... (the inspired by God part is the part one must take on faith)...

 

Could it have been?

 

Yes, but we can't say for sure.

 

We don't know if there is a god, yet some humans believe that there is.

 

Since we can't prove this the best that we can know is that the idea of a god is a human concept.

 

Could there be a god?

 

Yes, but we can't say for sure.

 

The only thing that I'm claiming to know for certain are things that we can indeed know for certain. When I say that I'm not claiming to know anything for certain, I'm referring to the things that I have no way of knowing for certain, so therefore I must recognize my own limitations in knowing such things.

 

I realize that you're hoping to find a "gotcha" within my comments. That's fine. If you do by all means bring it to my attention. I'm always open to learn and be logically consistent the best that I can.

 

In the meantime I'm assuming that you have read and pondered the points that I have discussed. This is just where I'm coming from. I in no way am suggesting that anyone needs to think like I do.

 

For some steeped deeply within their faith it's too painful, tiresome, and frightening to consider alternatives to what they've grown content in believing for it might turn their lives upside down, and for most that would be a dramatic shift from their comfort zone.

 

I'm not suggesting that I think everyone even needs to think like I do. I'm not offering any certainty of anything. I've just begged myself to grow comfortable with realism when faith is often what others are comfortable with, and faith is certainly fine and one's right.

 

What I do object to is when folks take unprovable concepts of a deity that must be taken on faith, suggest that this deity has given them physical proof in writing a guideline to live by when all that we are sure of is that those writings were written by men, and then try to hold others to those guidelines when they themselves can offer no proof that what they're preaching is anything other than man written concepts.

 

Those of us who have always known of our same sex attraction, and especially from early childhood unanimously can say that it was not a choice and that it's just as a natural part of our makeup as is the color of our hair, or what hand we write with.

 

Sure, probably each and everyone of us can attest to being extremely confused by are own selves simply because of growing up in a culture that very much straightforwardly would object to such a difference, but even still we couldn't deny that this is exactly what was happening within ourselves.

 

Obviously with the magnitude of how many people over the generations have experienced this same thing it would suggest that while me might not understand why, it is very much a valid realistic facet of the human condition.

 

The objection to it perhaps stems from humans' unconscious eagerness to further the species, and since same sex relationships can't do this the knee-jerk reaction to it is that it's wrong and abnormal.

 

I can certainly understand how if someone isn't experiencing such feelings that they can't begin to understand how a human could behave it such a stark opposite way that seems to defy nature if humanity's goal is to procreate.

 

I can't say why some humans are gay. I can't say why I'm gay. I do know that in every way shape and form I'm a human being with a body and mind that functions about as normal as one might hope, yet I have never in my life had a physical drive whatsoever to be physically active with a woman, yet an overwhelming attraction and desire for men.

 

In my adolescence and 20's and 30's this desire was strong in an almost hypnotic sense that I'll assume straight guys can identify with in their desire for women. Since I've aged I've calmed down, but there again probably not uncommon gay or straight for a man to notice a lesser drive as he ages than how he felt in his younger years.

 

One difference with this waning drive that I'm aware of is for example closeted gay men who didn't act on their same sex attraction in their youth because of societal and religious implications, and when they finally act on them in their 50's and 60's they perhaps for reasons of anxiously making up for loss time turn into firecrackers and behave like they're a college student who can't get enough.

 

Finally experiencing their true nature can be overwhelmingly stimulating to them where while their bodies might be older, their minds are still approaching intimacy with the ferocity of a teen on his first date.

 

Sometimes when aging men who no longer are concerned much by their male ego entertain their buried desires they will express this transformation in them as "bells going off" and they practically overnight become who they truly are disposing quickly of the social and religious pressures that kept them confused about themselves their entire lives.

 

You'd be amazed of how many men that I've spoken to who will express this very thing about themselves. Many have been married men who have raised families only to discover within themselves as they age zero desire to be with a woman yet powerfully unrelinquished desires to be with a man.

 

I don't completely understand this and especially if they once were able to function quite normally with women in their youth. They often will say that they're certain that they never had any desire to be with a man until the bells went off.

 

Perhaps it's repressed desires that even they are unsure of because of having followed society and religion's lead. At this time in these mens' lives they tend not to be intent that everyone knows about them, and they're not out waving flags for their freedoms. They're quite content with leading their own private lives with no interest in being out to the world about it.

 

I wouldn't exactly refer to myself as a flag waver either, but since I came out to my family and friends at age 20, I didn't feel like I wanted to live the rest of my life hiding in the shadows of who I truly am, and though some might not need society's validation for living their own private lives, I do believe that society needs a transformation in its understanding so that all of the folks who just want to be real with who they are don't have to dance so daintily their whole lives around a culture who once objected to them. Everyone should feel free to just be themselves and live their lives accordingly without fear of repercussions from those who are incapable of understanding.

[doomer]

One of my absolute best friends was married (to a woman), had a child, later divorced and married a man. They are both fine people and have chosen to remain close to their church and Christianity.

 

Of course it is their choice, but being gay didn't mean they had to give up something that was important to them.

[lawildcat]

I sometimes feel as though I am a gay man trapped in a woman's body...

[doomer]

I sometimes feel as though I am a gay man trapped in a woman's body...

 

I tried to imagine the inverse...being a gay woman trapped in a man's body. I now have a headache.

[doomer]

I sometimes feel as though I am a gay man trapped in a woman's body...

 

I'm still laughing.

[StrongSide]

It may have a psychological explanation. Words of wisdom from Shakespeare in Hamlet " : "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." There is usually a reason when a person is overly aggressive and repetitive in their condemnation of something or someone. I remember as a child watching Jimmy Swaggart sermons on TV. Week after week he harped on how terrible pornography and perversion was and how Christians should stay away from it. There wasn't a week that he didn't spend time condemning porn and some sort of sexual "perversion." We all know what befell Mr Swaggart. He was engaging in the very acts that he so often condemned. I have also known multiple people who have harshly criticized homosexuality, only to have it revealed later that they were dealing with this very issue in their own lives. So, like I said, there is often some psychology going on below the surface.

 

I see what you did here.

[B-Ball-fan]

I sometimes feel as though I am a gay man trapped in a woman's body...

 

I know a straight woman who was a drag queen trapped in a woman's body. Her name is Carol Sherman-Jones, and for years she ran a fantastic friendly downtown Cincy restaurant called "Carols" where she had Betty Boop memorabilia all over the place, and probably 90% percent of her customers were gay.

 

It was truly one of the first fun gay establishments in Cincinnati that was right out in the open on Main St. were one could go and feel like a real human being and socialize in a fun atmosphere and not down some dark seedy back alley hidden away from the real world.

 

It's people like her that had a huge impact on helping to move the world along into a positive direction by providing a place for people to socialize with dignity like they were accepted members of the human race.

 

I even took my Mother there because it fun place to allow her to see real and friendly people, and to show her that her gay son no longer had to live in a world where he could only be himself somewhere in the dark shadows.

 

She even wrote a book about her life and called it...

 

"My Life as a Gay Man in a Straight Woman's Body"

 

[bballfamily]

Yeah, let's hope they do just that. If they pay REAL close attention and really fine tune their spiritual selves, they'll easily come to understand that none of the anti-gay rhetoric they hear from many church-going people have anything to do with true spirituality.

 

Even if you do not abide by the moral teachings of Christianity, same sex couples go against nature. Since sex is for procreation, same sex relationships defy nature's laws.