In a message dated 3/28/01 2:22:37 AM Eastern Standard Time, mistral@centurytel.net writes:

<< Well, not meaning to offend, but I am genuinely puzzled - do you not find there to be a difference between saying an _action_ is wrong, and saying a _person_ or group of people is sick? <<

This eye of the beholder thing isn't really difficult, if you can step outside your little room for a moment. Let me try to make you understand. Please do *not* be offended by what I'm about to say; this is not meant to offend, it's my *reality*.

I was born and raised a Jew, in an orthodox Jewish community. In 'my' community, Christianity is not just another religion. It's regarded as a malevolent sickness that afflicts many people in the Western world, and aggressively tries to recruit anyone who will not see the world the way its members do. The symbol of this religion is a cadaverous dead Jew on a stick. At every historical opportunity, including a massive example only 5 decades past, followers of this religious and moral belief system have had no problem with facilitating massive amounts of dead Jews, for no other reason than a 2 thousand year old legend about some Jews who caused the death of an apocryphal character they claim was the son of God. This strikes us as very funny, since it's common knowledge that the Romans did the actual killing of this mythical character, but the Romans cannot be persecuted, because they were the guys who had the poor judgement to adopt, promote and force this religion on the rest of Western Civilization over the next few centuries.

Since then, more blood has been shed 'in the name of God' than any other cause. More torture. More looting. More warfare. More persecution. More massacres. More annihilation of native and indigenous cultures. All because the souls who embraced the cross felt themselves morally superior to those beings who had not. If there *had* been a Jesus, how do you think he would feel about this? Who would he choose to embrace, if he made that much-touted return? Perhaps that's what was meant by the meek inheriting the Earth. I know to you that sounds ironic at best and disgustingly sacreligious at worst, but that is ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW, and a very real one. It is a form of empthy, one that is totally discounted by the Christian doctrine because it's *dangerous* for members of an autocratic, aggressive prosthelitizing faith to empathize with the people and the belief system of others.

Jews, Muslims, Pagans, Buddhists, Hindus, and followers of many other faiths reside among us on this list. They have their own faith system, each of which has its own problems, some of them the very same as Christianity. Ignoring them or discounting their opinions doesn't make them go away. Disparaging a different point of view on a moral issue, like a form of sexuality that offends Christians, isn't going to make it go away, nor is it going be 'wrong' to someone who isn't a Christian. Contrary to what you've been told, you can't pretend the whole world is Christian, with the same lines drawn over acts, beliefs and morals. That is not reality...it's a fairy tale.

...

Because every time this

sort of issue comes up, it just floors me. We all do things that other people think are wrong. If I cheated on my income tax, I'd consider that I'd done something immoral; I certainly wouldn't consider that I was sick. Those two concepts are poles apart to me. <<

If the subject were stealing, or murder, you would have a good parallel here. The issue is what other people do in the privacy of their own bedroom, with mutual consent. Christianity seems to obsess on this topic to the point of mania. And mania is a form of sickness. Why does what two consenting adults do in a bedroom have ANYTHING to do with the price of tea in Rome? Who appointed the members of this faith sexual watchdogs on what sexual acts are and are not morally acceptible? Why don't they ban sex between heterosexual couples who are unable to have children? They can't procreate, so they must be doing it just for pleasure and affection. Isn't that a 'sin'?

...

As I sit here eating my turkey sandwich and reading my lyst mail, I come

across a post from Neil. Now, I know Neil thinks it's immoral for me to eat my turkey sandwich - but I don't assume that he thinks I'm a sick and evil person because of it. He might, but I'm not going to jump to that conclusion, because it isn't productive, fair, or kind; and if I did jump to that conclusion, my upset would be my own doing, not his.>>

Annie's comments were an attempt to make certain lyst members see the parallel between telling other lyst members that a certain category of fanfic is sick and offensive and how it looks from the other side. You may think it's immoral to read or perform the acts in a piece of slash fanfic; but you don't assume everyone else believes as you do. You don't jump to that conclusion, because it isn't productive, fair, or kind; if you did jump to that conclusion, your upset would be your own doing, not anyone else's (your own words above).

Perception. Empathy. Respect. Stretch open the door in that little room a bit.

Leah