When I read articles like this I just think “leave them, they are evil bloodsuckers with nothing of their own.” This has nothing to do with honor and every thing to do with sadism and sickness; twisted souls that have long ago lost their way.

And then you end up paying the price for belonging to “us”, shunning “them”, and shunning anyone who accepts “them”. How easy it is to simply attack “them” than to readjust “us” to include “them”!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_LGBT_people#Relationship_between_religious_condemnation_and_violence

And better it should confronted head on and given a ‘thumb down’ instead of tolerated as cultural thing.

Seriously, misogyny and oppression of women and gays is universal among ALL religions (even the sacred cows of religious culture, the Tibetan Buddhists, were, until the Chinese arrived, not very nice to openly gay people, although from the rumors I’ve heard, pederasty among the priesthood was quite acceptable… Ahh, priesthoods never change, do they?)

Thank goodness those of us in the West have gotten beyond our hangups with outdated modes of conservative religious thought — erm… uhh… well, except the Mormons, Catholics, Baptists, Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, etc. who make up 76% of the U.S. population.

Many Jewish and Christian moderates do struggle with the radicals in their own faiths. I personally don’t enjoy being criticized (and I am fringe anyway, so almost no-one cares what I think), but, well, if a criticism is valid and within reason, so be it. I figure I can stand being criticized a lot better than, say, young women can stand death threats.

Croak!

If we survive long enough, and remain high-tech enough that Western-style individualism is a viable strategy, it’ll probably evolve out in a few million years.

Quite right. Where societies differ today is the degree of that oppression, and the extent to which it is sanctioned by the state. The differences are not trivial.

Seriously: click on the link, and look around the site. After you do, I don’t think you’ll ever again be able to look at the intolerance of “other” religions and cultures in quite the same way.

It’s not a fad, it’s not a result of external influence or cultural pressure, it’s one of the original commandments of the religion itself, contained in its most holy book.
Just because other religions have similar or identical issues doesn’t give Islam a free pass. That’s like saying segregation was not an American thing because they were “beating the Negroes” in South Africa as well.

Orthodox clerics represented a political threat to Stalin’s power.

Just like the Inquisition and the Crusades were carried out to counter political threats to the entrenched hierarchy of Catholicism. Fancy that.

This is not the same thing as killing in the name of atheism. Thanks for playing, try again.

When the facts don’t fit your narrative, you just change them. You can’t imagine how much you come off like a religious fundamentalist.

We all will kill over an idea. If the idea is strong enough in our minds, we will kill over it. We have seen this again, and again, and again throughout human history, on the countrywide level, on citywide levels, within communities, within families. The concept is really nothing new. 

Leviticus Chapter 21 verse 9

If a kohen’s daughter becomes desecrated through adultery she desecrates her father; she shall be burned in fire.

Holy books are full of all kinds of crap — some of it nice, (judge not, good samaritan) some cruel, (suffer a witch, commands to stone people to death for minor infractions) some nonsensical. (Ezekiel ate a babelfish, and saw robots)

The Qu’ran also says to be kind to Jews and Christians, as they believe similarly.

Cherry-picking religious quotes from any holy book is bad form, and leads nowhere fast.

Keeping up appearance is still a very potent stick in the western world, no matter how little we like to talk about it.

Prof. Steve Dutch of the University of Wisconsin says it best, he calls it ‘The world’s most toxic value system’.

Ricky Gervais summed it up pretty well recently on a post on WSJ:

“”Do unto others…” is a good rule of thumb. I live by that. Forgiveness is probably the greatest virtue there is. But that’s exactly what it is -­‐ a virtue. Not just a Christian virtue. No one owns being good. I’m good. I just don’t believe I’ll be rewarded for it in heaven. My reward is here and now. It’s knowing that I try to do the right thing. That I lived a good life. And that’s where spirituality really lost its way. When it became a stick to beat people with. “Do this or you’ll burn in hell.”

You won’t burn in hell. But be nice anyway.”

How damn hard is that and why is it that the really, really religious people often seem to be the first to forget it or to ignore it when it is inconvenient?

Fundamentalists are never good, of any religion or political view.

On the other hand the quote from the Jewish bible is a direct order straight from God’s mouth to burn at the stake the daughter of a priest who commits acts of sexual dishonor.

Yet what do we see in practice? No case in known history of a Jew murdering his own daughter for adultery, yet widespread acceptance of honor killing as a cultural norm across the Muslim, Hindu and Sikh world.

Religion has nothing to do with it.

Because they’re human beings (too). We are all hypocrites. Or most of us, anyway.

We wage war over oil, but helping half the human race achieve freedom from sexual tyranny?… That’s a war I’d be willing to fight.