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A Celebrity's Opinion. Who Cares?

Thor 2 said:
Distressing that. The Christians are losing their "basic freedoms" to spew their hate filled message to the World.
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No, this you should be pleased about.

My daughter is 20, and we live in a hugely religious part of a fairly irreligious country. I've watched a lot of her friends go from devout little baptist christian or muslim girls to absolute rebellion against religion.

In every case, the reason they've gone that way is because in the beautiful, sexually open 21st century, these kids go to school every day with easily identifiable gay, lesbian & trans of both types. The kids know for sure these aren't bad people, because bad people make themselves bloody obvious at school, often by bullying the trans/gay/... person.

They see these kids, day in, day out, having the same and more struggles as themselves, playing the same games, sharing dressing rooms, sharing attraction to boys, everything exactly the same, and then they go home and to church to hear them denounced as sinners.

Fail.

In fact, it's caused the exact opposite effect to intentions. I've been thinking as I type, and I can come up with eight kids in her friend group who have thrown away religion solely because of the religion's treatment of LGBT people.

Embrace these guys - as long as christians stick to backing pieces of santorum like Folau, they're shooting themselves in the foot. And if it's their money - who cares? Slightly older jet for the pastor.
 
The Atheist said:
Good.

If I were an Aussie, I'd start up a GoFundMe for the ARU to help them pay for their fees.

Betcha it would make 10 times whatever the little jerk gets.
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I doubt it would

The whole reason this has got out of hand is not him being an idiot just tweeting what the bible says.

It is the complete over reaction to it by everyone with the ability to write and get uber offended on behalf of other people.

If people just ignored the dude's spewing what the bible says and the RA sack the idiot in private it would have just disappeared to the back pages after a couple of days.

Quite a funny backlash though
 
The Atheist said:
No, this you should be pleased about.

My daughter is 20, and we live in a hugely religious part of a fairly irreligious country. I've watched a lot of her friends go from devout little baptist christian or muslim girls to absolute rebellion against religion.

In every case, the reason they've gone that way is because in the beautiful, sexually open 21st century, these kids go to school every day with easily identifiable gay, lesbian & trans of both types. The kids know for sure these aren't bad people, because bad people make themselves bloody obvious at school, often by bullying the trans/gay/... person.

They see these kids, day in, day out, having the same and more struggles as themselves, playing the same games, sharing dressing rooms, sharing attraction to boys, everything exactly the same, and then they go home and to church to hear them denounced as sinners.

Fail.

In fact, it's caused the exact opposite effect to intentions. I've been thinking as I type, and I can come up with eight kids in her friend group who have thrown away religion solely because of the religion's treatment of LGBT people.

Embrace these guys - as long as christians stick to backing pieces of santorum like Folau, they're shooting themselves in the foot. And if it's their money - who cares? Slightly older jet for the pastor.
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A few years ago at my high school, we had a so-called 'theme day' for the teachers only. The theme was students with other ethnic backgrounds than Danish, i.e. primarily children of immigrant parents from Muslim countries. One speaker was the minister of equality issues, whose parents were immigrants.
But the most interesting speaker was a former student who had been rather fundamentalistic at one point but had softened somewhat before he graduated.
He told us that he used to be a 'hard core' Muslim, but then he had been together with another boy, i.e. he had discovered that he was gay.
He also told us that he was surprised by the attitude of other Muslims at the schools. In general, they had been very accepting of his own change of 'attitude'. And one 'headscarf girl', which is what we call the Muslim girls who dress like Muslims unlike the ones who are Muslims but dress like ordinary Danish girls, even told him that she thought that he was now much more who he really was, and that she liked him better this way.
 
psionl0 said:
Not at all.

A few years ago, former tennis great Margaret Court also publicly expressed similar views and made news briefly because of it. The difference is that she is retired from tennis (she is now a pastor) and didn't have a tennis association to go to war over. So the controversy was quickly over. If her tennis career in the 1960s hadn't been as stellar as it was, it is doubtful that she would have rated more than a byline in the press.
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Missed it again, oh dear.:o

Actually the last time Margaret expressed her Christianity inspired, homophobic views was a year and a half ago, after Billie Jean King's suggestion, that a venue bearing her name be renamed.

Anyway your comment just re-enforces what I have been saying. If Court didn't have a history of being able to hit a tennis ball rather well, anything she said would not be in print.
 
rjh01 said:
Can this figure be independently confirmed? Could be that someone is artificially inflating the figure and that the money will never be produced.
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I was wondering about that yesterday, so went through as if I was making a payment with fake details (I don't want those nutters knowing my email address)

I was trying to work out if it is actual donations or "pledges" to donate (Which could be a load of pants and people having a laugh)

Goes straight to online bank payment, so it is real and not inflated.

Unless the counter is fake. But I doubt it given the gofundme one was sitting at 750k before they riled everyone up
 
The Atheist said:
No, this you should be pleased about.

My daughter is 20, and we live in a hugely religious part of a fairly irreligious country. I've watched a lot of her friends go from devout little baptist christian or muslim girls to absolute rebellion against religion.

In every case, the reason they've gone that way is because in the beautiful, sexually open 21st century, these kids go to school every day with easily identifiable gay, lesbian & trans of both types. The kids know for sure these aren't bad people, because bad people make themselves bloody obvious at school, often by bullying the trans/gay/... person.

They see these kids, day in, day out, having the same and more struggles as themselves, playing the same games, sharing dressing rooms, sharing attraction to boys, everything exactly the same, and then they go home and to church to hear them denounced as sinners.

Fail.

In fact, it's caused the exact opposite effect to intentions. I've been thinking as I type, and I can come up with eight kids in her friend group who have thrown away religion solely because of the religion's treatment of LGBT people.

Embrace these guys - as long as christians stick to backing pieces of santorum like Folau, they're shooting themselves in the foot. And if it's their money - who cares? Slightly older jet for the pastor.
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Pleased and even optimistic perhaps? Maybe so in spite of the pain being caused right now.

Folau's list is interesting. Eight sins that will damn you to hell, with homosexuality in number two spot, but commanding all the attention. Some of the others are obviously Biblically inspired also, like idolators, but some others, for instance drunks, not so. A couple of God's favourites like Noah and Lot were drunks and not shown the door. I would have liked to see rapists and wife beaters on the list, but God doesn't seem to have an issue with these folk.
 
Thor 2 said:
I would have liked to see rapists and wife beaters on the list, but God doesn't seem to have an issue with these folk.
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Wife beating is a centuries old christian policy.

The bloke owns the woman after all, so has every right to beat and or rape her. Only idiot laws passed in the last 30 years have changed that opinion.

I couldn't even raise a laugh when, in the '80s, a group of old christian men protested because the courts were removing their god-given right to give the Mrs a whack if she gets lippy.

Rape & incest is what most the OT's about.
 
psionl0 said:
If your point is that Falau's dismissal and subsequent GoFundMe activities have nothing to do with why he is still in the news (otherwise what are you disagreeing about?) then I am proud to have missed it.
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Not just trying to cloud the issue are you?

My point, and the thread title, is simple. The opinion of celebrities who can kick footballs or hit tennis balls are taken notice of by fans. This is regardless of the expertise the celebrity may have in these topics.

If Folau was just another guy down the street his extreme (and minority) views, would be dismissed as those, of just another Bible thumping wanker. To his fans however, Folau is a greater than real life person, he is seen as someone who is "in the know" about stuff, the average bloke doesn't have a handle on.
 
Thor 2 said:
Not just trying to cloud the issue are you?



My point, and the thread title, is simple. The opinion of celebrities who can kick footballs or hit tennis balls are taken notice of by fans. This is regardless of the expertise the celebrity may have in these topics.



If Folau was just another guy down the street his extreme (and minority) views, would be dismissed as those, of just another Bible thumping wanker. To his fans however, Folau is a greater than real life person, he is seen as someone who is "in the know" about stuff, the average bloke doesn't have a handle on.
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You ever think maybe it's the other way around? His fans like him because he's got the same handle on stuff as they do?

People aren't always looking for a sage to instruct them. Sometimes they're looking for a regular guy they can relate to. I wonder if this aspect of human nature is accounted for, in your philosophy.
 
Thor 2 said:
Not just trying to cloud the issue are you?

My point, and the thread title, is simple. The opinion of celebrities who can kick footballs or hit tennis balls are taken notice of by fans. This is regardless of the expertise the celebrity may have in these topics.

If Folau was just another guy down the street his extreme (and minority) views, would be dismissed as those, of just another Bible thumping wanker. To his fans however, Folau is a greater than real life person, he is seen as someone who is "in the know" about stuff, the average bloke doesn't have a handle on.
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The way you carry on, one would think that Israel Folau was some sort of sporting super star. The fact is that he doesn't even play Aussie rules! He is just a rugby player and nobody (outside of NSW) is interested in rugby.

It would take a lot more than just a judgmental religious tweet to keep him in the news day after day and to have entire threads in ISF dedicated solely to him. And that is what has happened.
 
psionl0 said:
The way you carry on, one would think that Israel Folau was some sort of sporting super star. The fact is that he doesn't even play Aussie rules! He is just a rugby player and nobody (outside of NSW) is interested in rugby.

It would take a lot more than just a judgmental religious tweet to keep him in the news day after day and to have entire threads in ISF dedicated solely to him. And that is what has happened.
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He did play Aussie rules for 2 years

They signed him up as a newbie on a 1.5 million a year contract. From rugby where he was on over a million

So yes he is, if not a super star, extremely rated and known.

Having said this I think the 2 million he has raised is just as much a backlash over the way over top "Folau is evil, we must crush him" reaction from the hand wringing offended on behalf of others, virtue signalling, SJWs, than people that care about his actual case.

And even started on his wife ffs

It got to the stage where ANZ who sponsor NZ netball made some stupid pointless statement over her.
 
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