Freedom of religion & Gay marriage

[zapatos]

FWIW, Justin... While your OP was littered with false premises and a bunch of conclusions that were rapidly shown to be flawed on numerous accounts, I don't think you were asking or presenting it with either malicious or hateful intent and I personally don't think it should have been so massively and repeatedly neg repped.

I supplied one of the neg reps. I also don't think Justin was malicious or hateful and I meant nothing personal by it. But I think an OP littered with false premises and a bunch of conclusions that can be shown to be flawed on numerous accounts is reason enough to give a neg rep.

[Appolinaria]

FWIW, Justin... While your OP was littered with false premises and a bunch of conclusions that were rapidly shown to be flawed on numerous accounts, I don't think you were asking or presenting it with either malicious or hateful intent and I personally don't think it should have been so massively and repeatedly neg repped.

 

 

I completely agree.

 

I pos repped it yesterday to counter :/

[Moontanman]

Justin didn't just fall off a turnip truck, he knew what he was saying. He started out by making a a disingenuous claim that many dishonest theists use, the idea that somehow all religious people agree on the same things. All scientists are atheists or evolutionists cannot be Christians or that both sides be taught,

 

This idea of religious people just wanting to protect marriage is bogus from the start, they want to disenfranchise homosexuals and in my state atheists as well...

[DJBruce]

Why not do away with governments recognizing marriages, and instead simply have them recognize partnerships in whatever form they may be. While this might seem liking playing semantics it appears -- at least to me -- that many of those who oppose same sex marriage do so because to them regardless of the origin of marriage they feel marriage does carry a religious connotation. So by completely removing the government from recognizing marriages people are free to view marriage as they please, but it means that everyone is granted equal status under the law.

[Moontanman]

Why not do away with governments recognizing marriages, and instead simply have them recognize partnerships in whatever form they may be. While this might seem liking playing semantics it appears -- at least to me -- that many of those who oppose same sex marriage do so because to them regardless of the origin of marriage they feel marriage does carry a religious connotation. So by completely removing the government from recognizing marriages people are free to view marriage as they please, but it means that everyone is granted equal status under the law.

 

 

Where I live the religious part of the population passed a constitutional amendment to make sure that couldn't happen.

[doG]

Where I live the religious part of the population passed a constitutional amendment to make sure that couldn't happen.

That should be challenged as unconstitutional. IMO, the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which guarantees freedom of religion effectively guarantees freedom from religion as well and the 14th Amendment extends that to the citizens of the states of the union. Religious majorities should not be able to pass laws via polls that effectively force religious views on others.

[iNow]

many of those who oppose same sex marriage do so because to them regardless of the origin of marriage they feel marriage does carry a religious connotation.

The most reasonable response to this is point is, why does that even begin to matter?

 

By applying even remedial scrutiny we can immediately see that it truly does not matter, especially since atheists are allowed to marry every single day and nobody has issues with that. Nobody is proposing that states no longer be involved in marriage because it's religious to some folks and atheists are doing it. Nope, they just want to overhaul the entire system because two dudes might want to express their love as a couple.

 

The proposal is basically, "Because you won't let us force black people to drink from a different water fountain than white people, we propose instead that steps be initiated to immediately remove all water fountains from every state institution throughout entire the nation. Bring your own damned water if you're thirsty, you frakkin n!77@r homos."

[John Cuthber]

If the church and the state really can't agree about who should be allowed to marry then it's the church that should get out of the game.

Plenty of people do without the church. It's not necessary.

On the other hand we all rely on the state.

Also I don't get to vote for the local church so it should not be in a position to dictate how I act; in particular it should have no say in whom I may marry.

[DJBruce]

The most reasonable response to this is point is, why does that even begin to matter?

 

By applying even remedial scrutiny we can immediately see that it truly does not matter, especially since atheists are allowed to marry every single day and nobody has issues with that. Nobody is proposing that states no longer be involved in marriage because it's religious to some folks and atheists are doing it. Nope, they just want to overhaul the entire system because two dudes might want to express their love as a couple.

 

I agree that the idea seems ridiculously idiotic since it is just renaming a current institution. However, if it would pacify some of those who are upset about same sex marriage, and at the same time extend equal rights to a portion of the population currently being discriminated against wouldn't it be better than our current situation?

 

The proposal is basically, "Because you won't let us force black people to drink from a different water fountain than white people, we propose instead that steps be initiated to immediately remove all water fountains from every state institution throughout entire the nation. Bring your own damned water if you're thirsty, you frakkin n!77@r homos."

 

 

I am not sure I agree with your analogy here iNow. In the my idea no one losses and real privileges, and in fact a large portion of the people gain the ability to marry. A more apt analogy would be deciding to paint all the separate water fountains purple, call them all springs, and then let whoever wants to use them use them. Again this seems ridiculous because it is just changing the name of one thing to the other, but would't having purple springs be better than segregated water fountains?

 

Also I don't get to vote for the local church so it should not be in a position to dictate how I act; in particular it should have no say in whom I may marry.

 

 

The church would not be dictating who you can marry instead the government would take the legal contract that is marriage cross out the word marriage and right partnership.

[Moontanman]

That should be challenged as unconstitutional. IMO, the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which guarantees freedom of religion effectively guarantees freedom from religion as well and the 14th Amendment extends that to the citizens of the states of the union. Religious majorities should not be able to pass laws via polls that effectively force religious views on others.

 

 

Something like 35 states have passed similar laws, these people don't want to save marriage they want to disenfranchise anyone who is not of the same mind set as they are. It's simply not true that all Christians don't want Gays to marry nor do they want non religious people to be denied civil unions. But this subset of religious people want their own beliefs and values forced on every one else. it's just part of the fundie agenda to eliminate all schools of thought but their own. They want to teach religion in schools as science and they want to eliminate contraception not just abortion and they do this by claiming it is the will of god.

 

These people, in the US anyway, have tremendous power, they want nothing less than a theocracy, a fundamentalist theocracy that requires that everyone follow biblical law. Several preachers, pastors, priests, or juju men in my state have actually come forward to assert that homosexuals should be rounded up into concentration camps and if not actively killed then allowed to die. (they can't reproduce)

 

As despicable as these people are the so called moderates are just as bad f not worse for not speaking out against the promotion of such atrocities but because they are all in the same club they cannot bring them selves to criticize their compatriots.... personally I think this is just as despicable as the fundies who assert these things should be done.

 

I wish this was aberrant behavior but sadly in the USA it is becoming mainstream religious thought...

 

 

 

 

 

Fundies have taken control of the Republican party...

 

At least we don't have to worry about sea level rise....

 

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/2012/05/30/nc-makes-sea-level-rise-illegal/?WT_mc_id=SA_WR_20120606

[John Cuthber]

 

The church would not be dictating who you can marry instead the government would take the legal contract that is marriage cross out the word marriage and right partnership.

If only the church was allowed to conduct marriages then they would very clearly be in a position to dictate who could marry whom.

 

There is no reason to give them that authority.

If they want to have some sort of ceremony, that's fine by me, but don't expect me to take part.

If they want to exclude some people from their little party, then that's their prerogative, but they should not exclude me or anyone else from marriage because marriage is more important then the church.

 

Why not do it the other way round.

Why not have the church cross out the word "marriage" and make up some new word? After all it's not as if they ever had a legitimate monopoly on marriages in the past: why give them one now?

[JohnB]

After all it's not as if they ever had a legitimate monopoly on marriages in the past: why give them one now?

 

They've had for quite some time in the West, a couple of thousand years or so. We have to deal with how things are, not how they were. It doesn't matter that Normans have only had control of England for 1,000 years, we accept that and work from there. The Christian churches have had the monopoly for a couple of thousand years, start with that reality and work from there. Otherwise you just finish up going back and back until we have no records at all and really have bugger all idea of what really went on.

 

I think that the only thing we can truly say about the distant past is that marraiges were important (at least ruling class ones were) and the priests of the dominant religion or God made sure that they were in on the deal.

 

I do think the "gay marraige" bit and religion is really an attempt by many deal with something by not dealing with it. People are afraid of opening a very large can of worms and are hoping that keeping it in the religious region will delay the opening.

 

My personal thought is that the word "marraige" should be reserved for the religious and that there should be a secular "Civil Union" that carries all the rights of marraige for other couples that the secular government decides it should apply to. This both opens the can and solves the problem be redefining the concepts.

 

iNow did a great post on the 14th Amendment and walked around the edge of the problem. "Marraige" was, is now, and always will be discriminatory in some fashion. If we are going to have discrimination (and we will certainly continue to have it) let's make it government sanctioned where the arguments are out in the open.

 

The thing nobody wants to mention and is avoided by couching the debate interms of "Who we love" or genitalia is this. Every single argument for gay marraige can be modified and used by NAMBLA or similar groups.

 

To paraphrase iNow

"What relevant secular reason do you have to treat couples of very different ages differently than couples sharing similar ages?"

 

Or even,

"What relevant secular reason do you have to treat couples sharing similar genitals differently than couples sharing different genitals?"

"Different genitals" Some farm boys sure do love their goats. Note that iNow effectively demolished the argument about ability to produce offspring.

 

If you want to run the debate in terms of "What right does society have to interfere wih personal relationships? Blah blah". Then you have face the obvious result of this. What right does society have to interfere with a 40 year old marrying a 6 year old? And in the days of easy divorce, he can get rid of her at 12 and have himself a new bride.

 

Or is it wrong to discriminate on the basis of sex but is alright on the basis of age difference? Or age for that matter, why can't two 7 year olds get married? There is a very slippery slope that nobody wants to admit exists.

 

If there are rules, then here will always be somebody who feels that they are discriminated against. If there are no rules, then there are no cohesive societal values and shortly afterwards, no society. This is the lesson of history.

 

And to be very clear. The gay community is not made up of perverts like NAMBLA and other groups are and would be totally horrified at their arguments for gay marraige being used by such groups to advance their cause. But the fact remains that no argument so far put forward in support of gay marraige cannot be used for perverted purposes and the only defence against those arguments is to be discriminatory.

 

Messy, very very messy.

[iNow]

If marriage becomes for the religious only, then atheists cannot be married either. That's pretty silly, and nobody seems to be requesting that atheists only be allowed to have civil unions. Why the double standards? Because butt sex grosses some people out. Ultimately, I recommend they simply grow up and get over it. Sex between black and white people used to gross some people out, too.

 

How is gay marriage different than man boy love, or kids, or sex with goats? It's called informed consent. Two adults who love each other are able to consent or refuse the advance. Children and goats cannot be considered to have the mental capacity to offer consent, ergo your comparison there fails, too.

 

The slope is not slippery, and the only mess is with those who pretend their disagreement with same sex marriage is anything but bigoted.

[doG]

After all it's not as if they ever had a legitimate monopoly on marriages in the past: why give them one now?

They've had for quite some time in the West, a couple of thousand years or so. We have to deal with how things are, not how they were.

Really? Are you actually trying to claim the church has had a monopoly on marriages for a couple of thousand years or so? I'll wager you can't support that assertion.

 

My personal thought is that the word "marraige" should be reserved for the religious and that there should be a secular "Civil Union" that carries all the rights of marraige for other couples that the secular government decides it should apply to. This both opens the can and solves the problem be redefining the concepts.

No it doesn't. It gives the church an undeserved win over something that was never theirs to begin with. The church needs to keep their nose out of other people's business.

[JohnB]

Really? Are you actually trying to claim the church has had a monopoly on marriages for a couple of thousand years or so? I'll wager you can't support that assertion.

 

Did you miss the phrase "in the West"? What happened in the near, middle and far east is not relevent. Are you trying to claim that the Christian churches especially haven't had a near monopoly throughout Christendom for at least 1500 years? Were there secular marraige officials wandering around? There seems to be a great lack of mention of them in historical records. Out of curiousity, who else was providing marraige services throughout the Christian world if not the religions?

 

How is gay marriage different than man boy love, or kids, or sex with goats? It's called informed consent. Two adults who love each other are able to consent or refuse the advance. Children and goats cannot be considered to have the mental capacity to offer consent, ergo your comparison there fails, too.

 

Wrong. Mainly because I wasn't making a comparison of the situations, but of the arguments. Gay marraige is something between consenting adults, on this we agree. Now give me a logical and valid reason that it should be restricted in that way. If parents want to marry off their 6 year old daughter, they are legal guardians and quite capable of deciding all other aspects of the life of that child. If push comes to shove, what reason, beyond your own personal disgust, can you give for not allowing it?

 

What reason, besides our own predjudices, can we have for defining "adult" as over 16? Or 18, 21, whatever. This varies from nation to nation and from State to State but you get my drift. Remember that it wasn't all that long ago that women in the West were married at 12. (Some of them, at least) The very fact that "Age of Consent" laws vary from place to place demonstrates that they are not based on any factual reasons but are the result of purely person predjudices.

 

For that matter, many societies have operated without "informed consent" for many years. Please give a factual reason why your version of "informed consent" is the correct way to go and why your opinion should over ride the adult informed consent of some parents. You'll give these parents the right to say yes or no to life saving surgery and so literally decide whether their child lives or dies, but won't let them decide who their child should marry and when?

 

I'm not against gay marraige, but I'd like you to justify decrying discrimination against one group while practicing discrimination against another. A further point, for what reason except your own personal views should marraige be limited to "Two" consenting adults? Why not 3 or 4 or 10? Won't that make life interesting for bigamists? Do we go for "If the second spouse is aware then it isn't bigamy"? How do you prove what the second spouse did or did not know?

 

The idea of using marraige and civil unions is my first approximation at answering all the questions I asked you. Let the religions have the word "marraige" to do with what they will. We will keep the Civil Unions as part of our society and as a society we will decide who can have them. It leaves society free to define the Unions as "between two consenting adults" and society gets to define "adult". When NAMBLA or whoever come along and complain "Why do you let the Gays have the Union but deny it to us?" we as a society can answer "Because gays are consenting adults and valuable members of our community and you lot are a bunch of child molesting perverts. That's why. So P*ss off."

 

The slope can be quite slippery and the only people who can't see the possibility of a big mess are those who are too busy handing out insulting labels to bother to think the whole thing through.

[iNow]

Religious people still do marry children to older men. I can cite sources from stories just in the past month if you'd like. I read one last week of an 11 year old girl being married to a 60 year old man, and a 7 year old girl a few months ago being married to a 50 year old. It happens.

 

My point was to offer you a relevant secular reason why it might be legally prevented, and that reason was the ability to offer an informed consent to the union. We have an established baseline and precedent for this informed consent measure. People must be of a certain age to drive, and to drink, and to vote, and to serve in the military, and to work... That threshold could equally be used for marrying ages. I don't care. I'm neither arguing for or against marriage to younger people. I'm simply responding that arguments against have secular reasons that are relevant when supporting them. Arguing that people having the same genitals should not be allowed to marry lack those relevant secular reasons.

 

As for marrying multiple people and being polygamous, all the power to you. I have no problem with that, either. I would just put some restrictions on the amount or type of state benefits allowed to be collected. For example, if you're collecting social security on a deceased spouse, the total sum given in payment from the government for that deceased spouse should be fixed. If the government will pay $500 in benefits for a deceased spouse, then that's the total sum paid... whether it goes to one spouse or five spouses, the paid amount never surpasses $500. Now, if there are multiple spouses and they need to divide it, that's theirs to figure out, but not a reason to prevent them from being legally married. Again, this is both a relevant and a secular argument.

 

No slippery slope.

[ecoli]

What reason, besides our own predjudices, can we have for defining "adult" as over 16? Or 18, 21, whatever. This varies from nation to nation and from State to State but you get my drift. Remember that it wasn't all that long ago that women in the West were married at 12. (Some of them, at least) The very fact that "Age of Consent" laws vary from place to place demonstrates that they are not based on any factual reasons but are the result of purely person predjudices.

 

Isn't this the best way to do it, though? Let people define what it means to be an adult on the local/community/ even state level. Because the definition is somewhat arbitrary, so the decision should be based on community values. Most states have large enough populations that extreme values tend to average out and you get something that most reasonable people can live with.

 

I don't mind some hypocrisy: maybe we should take away a 6 year old's right to marry and have sex, allow gays to get married and be ok with being slightly hypocritical and arbitrary. After all, gays are ASKING for the right to marry in the eyes of the law. 6 year olds aren't.

[doG]

Did you miss the phrase "in the West"? What happened in the near, middle and far east is not relevent. Are you trying to claim that the Christian churches especially haven't had a near monopoly throughout Christendom for at least 1500 years? Were there secular marraige officials wandering around? There seems to be a great lack of mention of them in historical records. Out of curiousity, who else was providing marraige services throughout the Christian world if not the religions?

More claims and still no support. A couple of thousand years or so is 1500 years or so? Which is it and can you support it? No historical records? Are you really claiming the native Americans didn't even have marriage ceremonies, or the equivalent in their culture, performed by the tribal chief long before any kind of records were kept? That the lack of records means they didn't happen? Long before any preacher came prancing around here? What about the Mayans? They were getting married long before Jesus was even born. No, I really doubt your assertion as valid. Why don't you see what kind of support you can dig up and practice using that link button in the post editor?

[John Cuthber]

"They've had for quite some time in the West, "

Plain wrong.

I can get married in a registry office.

"Otherwise you just finish up going back and back until we have no records at all and really have bugger all idea of what really went on."

Since all the old records were kept by the church, that's rather close to begging the question. It's certainly not a way to get an unbiased outcome.

In any event, you seem not to know what's going on now if you think churhes have a monopoly on marriages.

 

"I think that the only thing we can truly say about the distant past is that marraiges were important (at least ruling class ones were) and the priests of the dominant religion or God made sure that they were in on the deal."

I don't think that for two reasons. First is that it's not actually backed up by evidence: it's just supposition. Secondly whatever we were before we were humans would quite possibly have been an ape that formed strong pair bonds. If that's the case then we may have had pair bonding rituals long before we had priests.

My made-up scenario is just as good as yours.

 

"My personal thought is that the word "marraige" should be reserved for the religious and that there should be a secular "Civil Union" that carries all the rights of marraige for other couples that the secular government decides it should apply to. This both opens the can and solves the problem be redefining the concepts."

This may be your thought but, as has been pointed out, it's based on the false premise that marriage is something to do with churches.

 

"iNow did a great post on the 14th Amendment and walked around the edge of the problem. "Marraige" was, is now, and always will be discriminatory in some fashion. If we are going to have discrimination (and we will certainly continue to have it) let's make it government sanctioned where the arguments are out in the open."

Indeed, lets .

Particularly if the alternative is to let an unelected church make the decision.

 

"The thing nobody wants to mention and is avoided by couching the debate interms of "Who we love" or genitalia is this. Every single argument for gay marraige can be modified and used by NAMBLA or similar groups."

That's a rather iffy "thin end of the wedge" argument.

 

"If you want to run the debate in terms of "What right does society have to interfere wih personal relationships? Blah blah". Then you have face the obvious result of this. What right does society have to interfere with a 40 year old marrying a 6 year old? And in the days of easy divorce, he can get rid of her at 12 and have himself a new bride."

Whatever right society has to make decisions is a lot more legitimate than the right of any church to make those decisions.

 

"Or is it wrong to discriminate on the basis of sex but is alright on the basis of age difference? Or age for that matter, why can't two 7 year olds get married? There is a very slippery slope that nobody wants to admit exists."

Slippery slope arguments are logical fallacies anyway. Just because something might happen does not mean it will happen. Please stop using them.

However, whatever stops us sliding down that slope is the society's opinion. That's normally codified into law and enforced by governments. That's who I want to see in charge of weddings.

The argument would work just as well the other way.

Imagine that only the civil government was authorised to conduct marriages and someone was suggesting that the church might also get that authority.

I could argue (just as (il)logically) that "if you let the church decide who can marry, it will be the "NAMBLA or similar groups" next.

The argument is wrong in both directions.

You shouldn't let minority interest groups make decisions about important stuff (I know we do but...)

 

"If there are rules, then here will always be somebody who feels that they are discriminated against. If there are no rules, then there are no cohesive societal values and shortly afterwards, no society. This is the lesson of history"

A valid argument in favour of a government of some sort. But utterly irrelevant to the issue of churches conducting weddings.

You show that it's a good idea to let society decide this sort of thing. Why let the church overrule that decision?

[Anders Hoveland]

Gays can do whatever they want, but they should not expect the government to recognise it. But it is also wrong to give special legal rights and tax exemptions to normal married people.

 

As to whether gays should be allowed to adopt, perhaps the best solution is what adoption agencies are already doing: just give them the crack babies!

[JohnB]

It's late but...

 

doG, why bloody bother? You are obviously incapable of reading and understanding what I'm writing so I doubt a link will educate you.

 

You must be the only person on the planet who thinks that native Americans and Mayans are somehow to be classified as part of Western European culture. I said "In the West" f*cking twice! You even quoted it and then ignored it. So I ask again, why bloody bother?

[Arete]

As to whether gays should be allowed to adopt, perhaps the best solution is what adoption agencies are already doing: just give them the crack babies!

 

Nature provides us with numerous examples of nominally "homosexual" individuals engaging in the rearing of offspring, both in other species and our own. When we apply evolutionary models of kin selection and inclusive fitness to these scenarios, they fit within the bounds of having positive net effects on evolutionary fitness.

http://en.wikipedia....sexual_behavior

http://en.wikipedia....clusive_fitness

 

This article discusses a study in Samoa, where homosexuality in males has a long history of acceptance and looks at the care given by heterosexual males, women and homosexual males to children. Homosexual men were shown to provide significantly more care to peripherally related children (nieces, nephews, cousins, etc) than hetero men or women. As these children are carrying a component of the homosexual males genes, and the fact that an additional caregiver - such as a homosexual male - can maximise offspring survival, having/being a homosexual man in such a situation confers a population/familial level of evolutionary success.

http://www.news-medi...nt-of-view.aspx

 

When it comes down to it, there's evidence for homosexual individuals positively impacting the success of populations of socially interacting organisms which cooperatively raise young - and when objectively evaluating the broad 'acceptability' of homosexuals raising offspring the evidence is pretty strong that the net evolutionary effect is positive and more than likely has been an element of human societies since their inception - especially given the extremely high prevalence of homosexuality in our nearest relatives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosex...and_other_apes

 

Can you show any actual evidence of homosexual parenting having a negative effect on the development of offspring?

[Moontanman]

It's late but...

 

doG, why bloody bother? You are obviously incapable of reading and understanding what I'm writing so I doubt a link will educate you.

 

You must be the only person on the planet who thinks that native Americans and Mayans are somehow to be classified as part of Western European culture. I said "In the West" f*cking twice! You even quoted it and then ignored it. So I ask again, why bloody bother?

 

 

JohnB, why is it important to restrict what other people and churches do? Right now there are churches who will marry same sex couples. No one is suggesting forcing a church that does not want to marry same sex couple to do so. As far as the slippery slope argument goes in my state the slope was turned upside down the religious right with a constitutional amendment banned not only same sex couples they also banned civil unions by same sex couples and even civil unions by non religious M/F couples.

 

The slippery slope is that religion asks for a yard and then takes a mile. They don't want to just stop gay marriage they want to stop all non religious unions, premarital sex, any sex outside wedlock, and stop the use of birth control, yes i said birth control, abortion is the rallying cry but contraception is the real demon they are fighting.

 

Religion wants the control over everyone personal life thy used to have in the relatively recent past and they will lie, cheat, misrepresent the words of others and out right fabricate bullshit to convince their sheep to vote the "right" way.

[John Cuthber]

It's late but...

 

doG, why bloody bother? You are obviously incapable of reading and understanding what I'm writing so I doubt a link will educate you.

 

You must be the only person on the planet who thinks that native Americans and Mayans are somehow to be classified as part of Western European culture. I said "In the West" f*cking twice! You even quoted it and then ignored it. So I ask again, why bloody bother?

JohnB

While you make false statements like the assertion that religion has had a monopoly on marriages in the past, you are not really in a position to educate anyone.

 

The UK is part of the West unless you hadn't noticed.

So is France

http://www.weddingsinfrance.com/requirements/civil_requirements.html

So is Germany

"It used to be that a marriage in Germany was legal only if it was conducted in a registrar's ("Standesamt") office. You could have a religious ceremony later. "

(From)

http://marriage.about.com/od/germany/p/germany.htm

And Spain

http://www.andalucia.com/law/marriage/home.htm

And even Italy

http://www.italy-weddings.com/how_to_get_married_in_italy.htm

 

Between them that's a lot more people than are in the USA.

 

I can get married in a registry office if I choose- no church involved.

 

Do you understand that the reason you were ignored is that you were flat out wrong?

Edited June 15, 2012 by John Cuthber

[doG]

It's late but...

 

doG, why bloody bother? You are obviously incapable of reading and understanding what I'm writing so I doubt a link will educate you.

 

You must be the only person on the planet who thinks that native Americans and Mayans are somehow to be classified as part of Western European culture. I said "In the West" f*cking twice! You even quoted it and then ignored it. So I ask again, why bloody bother?

 

"The West":

 

The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident (from Latin: occidens "sunset, West"; as contrasted with the Orient), is a term referring to different nations depending on the context...

 

In the contemporary cultural meaning, the Western world includes many countries of Europe as well as many countries of European colonial origin in the Americas and Oceania, such as the United States of America, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Chile, etc...

 

My education is just fine. Still waiting for you to support your assertion.

 

Mods, could you please deal with the personal attacks and lack of support of John's assertion?