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miss.a.p1600
07-28-2020, 04:42 PM
^and would you believe that if the main contraceptive failed, the morning after pill (while now available without a prescription) is hard to find in stock.

When women can’t find emergency contraceptives within the effectiveness timeframe they then are forced to decide upon abortion or not.

So yes these idiotic politicians are counterproductive

Raziel
07-28-2020, 04:54 PM
Yeah, but if a guy can't afford a 99 cent condom, then he needs to worry less about getting pussy, and more about finding a JOB. Solves the whole problem.

It's on us, too. Not just Women.

eagle2
07-28-2020, 08:08 PM
Yeah that IS weird. But its not the domain of the Church to do that. Parents need to do that. People can get contraception, condoms are 99 cents (I'll admit i have no idea how much the pill for women cost), just teach your kid to use a wrap and call it a day, fuck the Church on that.

I'm not saying the church should be providing contraception or educating people about it. I'm saying the church shouldn't be opposing it. The church consistently opposes sex education that includes contraception, as well as condom distribution programs. This is the reason why the US has the highest teen pregnancy rate and highest abortion rate of all developed countries. The Netherlands, where all children get a comprehensive sex education, including contraception, and where contraception is free to everyone, has the lowest teen pregnancy abortion rates of any developed country.

eagle2
07-28-2020, 08:09 PM
Yeah, but if a guy can't afford a 99 cent condom, then he needs to worry less about getting pussy, and more about finding a JOB. Solves the whole problem.

It's on us, too. Not just Women.

Teenagers in school might not have money to buy condoms, or have access to them if they don't have a car.

Raziel
07-28-2020, 10:33 PM
99 cents? I could afford 99 cents. Just WALK to the gas station.

rickdugan
07-29-2020, 04:32 AM
No, I don't know what your religious organization believes, but I know what actions they've taken. Your church tried to prevent a 9 year old girl who was raped from getting an abortion, even though giving birth could have killed her. Your church refused to allow a woman to get an abortion, even though it was necessary to save her life. She ended up dying. In both of these cases, your church decided the life of the fetus had greater value than the person carrying it.

Your interpretation of one off events that I honestly know nothing about, and I suspect that you don't know much about either, does not support your position that the entire Catholic Church places the value of one life over another. It does not. I'm guessing that, in each of these isolated cases, the devil was in the details and involved the judgment of facts on the ground by a single priest or bishop.


Your church is still trying to impose its backwards beliefs on everyone else, regardless what its members think. Your church opposes every effort to make contraception more accessible to more people, and to educate teenagers about safe sex and contraception. This is a major factor as to why the United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate of any western country.

Let me get this straight, you believe that the Catholic Church is responsible for teen pregnancy too? You don't think that every kid 14 and up knows what a condom is, or how to get one? That's just getting silly now. :)


You don't understand. Your church is still fighting today, to prevent victims of these priests from being compensated for the harmed caused to them, and your church still protects these priests who were responsible.
You either don't understand or don't care, that some of the money you donate to your church is used for protecting priests who sexually abused children and for fighting to prevent women from having access to contraception. It's no small amount either. Over $1 billion has been spent on legal fees over sexual abuse cases and for buying the silence of victims.

Settling lawsuits with victims and including non-disclosure agreements is done by every religious and secular institution in the world as a means of avoiding more expensive litigation and limiting bad press. The priests involved were, in almost every case, moved out of direct responsibilities with parishioners. With that said, I agree that they should have been prosecuted and since I guess I have to say it for the umpteenth time now, that policy has changed. But the reality is that most of the priests who were involved in the worst of those allegations are either dead now or in retirement homes.

rickdugan
07-29-2020, 05:00 AM
Look, I fully own the mistakes the Catholic Church made in dealing with pedophile priests and I don't disagree that there have been other bad decisions made, from time to time, in the name of the Church. Each Diocese and even each Arch Diocese has certain levels of autonomy, so the choice of an African Archdiocese in 2005 to oppose local legislation, for example, may not be the same choice that other local Catholic leaders in other countries would have made.

But none of the stuff you brought up relating to the modern era reduces the vast good done by the institution for millions of people every single day. For everyday Catholics, this is the face of the modern Church. Were the Catholic Church to disappear today, countless millions (I bolded and underlined so that this point would start to sink in) of poor and desperate would suffer much for its loss.

I know that the abortion position, in particular, really sticks in your craw. But unlike contraception prohibitions, which frankly most Catholics think is silly and just ignore, the abortion issue is far more serious for practicing Catholics. In their view, every abortion is a baby killed. So if you tally up the number of abortions vs. women who die from illegal procedures, the tally of deaths tilts overwhelmingly towards the babies lost. Again you and some others don't share this view, but I'm simply sharing a glimpse into the opposing mindset before you demonize them further for what, from their perspective, is well intentioned.

I think this brings us pretty much full circle now.

Raziel
07-29-2020, 05:36 AM
Remember, Rick, Contraception means you don't HAVE TO HAVE AN ABORTION BECAUSE IT NEVER HAPPENS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

If a Woman is on the pill (or whatever else, Women's contraception mystifies me) AND the Man wraps (Which i do understand), there's no baby at all.

Raziel
07-29-2020, 05:44 AM
I would talk about Abortion, but i was told not to by a mod earlier in this thread.

All i will say is that most abortions are done in the first trimester. It's a Guppy, not a human. So no real Baby was killed. Or a clump of cells. No more Human than a tumor is Human.

Raziel
07-29-2020, 05:55 AM
BTW Djoser, i wasn't really talking about Abortion, i was talking about the Fetus or Zygote. So i stuck by your admonition, but i realize i skirted the line a little bit.

rickdugan
07-29-2020, 08:08 AM
I would talk about Abortion, but i was told not to by a mod earlier in this thread.

All i will say is that most abortions are done in the first trimester. It's a Guppy, not a human. So no real Baby was killed. Or a clump of cells. No more Human than a tumor is Human.

Translation of Raz's Post: "Hey gang, we were told not to argue about abortion, but I'm going to insert my opinion anyway and then pretend that I didn't just do that. Clever, right?" ;D

No Raz, it was actually terribly obvious, lol. There is a reason why we are not going down this road. I had several responses to those dramatically oversimplified characterizations, but I am not posting them because this is not the forum for it. It is a complicated issue with a lot of strong feelings on both sides of the debate.

I don't know why you and eagle feel the need to continue pounding this drum, but be assured that those on the other side of the debate feel as much moral authority for their position as you do for yours, if not more. So maybe we should let it go? :)

Raziel
07-29-2020, 08:55 AM
Dude, i''m Raziel. Angel of secrets. Oh, wait, you didn't know that? Maybe you shout read Paradise Lost. Don't call me Raz. The women here can, you can't.

Feel free to PM me your bullshit arguments.

Raziel
07-29-2020, 08:58 AM
And i didn't pretend anything, did you read THE POST JUST UNDER THAT?

rickdugan
07-29-2020, 09:10 AM
And i didn't pretend anything, did you read THE POST JUST UNDER THAT?

I did indeed read this Raz. I think the proper characterization for it was "sophistry." You didn't skirt the line, you plunged over it with gleeful abandon. And just a moment later you doubled down with the "bullshit" characterization. ;)

So why don't we truly honor the mods request and refrain, as hard as it may be for some, from having this debate here. Sound good?

eagle2
07-29-2020, 02:14 PM
Your interpretation of one off events that I honestly know nothing about, and I suspect that you don't know much about either, does not support your position that the entire Catholic Church places the value of one life over another. It does not. I'm guessing that, in each of these isolated cases, the devil was in the details and involved the judgment of facts on the ground by a single priest or bishop.


The Vatican defended the decision to oppose allowing the 9 year old girl to get an abortion and for excommunicating the girl's mother and the doctor who performed the abortion. In other words, this was the church's policy. For more:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/brazil-rocked-by-abortion-for-9-year-old-rape-victim-1640165.html

The woman who died because she was not allowed to get an abortion:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/11/woman-ireland-dies-after-being-denied-abortion-during-miscarriage/321475/

Opposing these abortions was nothing but cruel, and one person ended up dead as a result. It would have been two if your church got its way.




Let me get this straight, you believe that the Catholic Church is responsible for teen pregnancy too? You don't think that every kid 14 and up knows what a condom is, or how to get one? That's just getting silly now. :)

Your church greatly contributes to our high teen pregnancy rate by opposing sex education that includes contraception, and opposing any effort that makes contraception more accessible.

You don't know that every child old enough to have sex knows about condoms or how to get them. Your statement is based entirely on defending your church's opposition to valid sex education. Not every teenager lives within walking distance of a store where you can buy condoms and many teenagers from poor families do not have money to buy them.




Settling lawsuits with victims and including non-disclosure agreements is done by every religious and secular institution in the world as a means of avoiding more expensive litigation and limiting bad press. The priests involved were, in almost every case, moved out of direct responsibilities with parishioners. With that said, I agree that they should have been prosecuted and since I guess I have to say it for the umpteenth time now, that policy has changed. But the reality is that most of the priests who were involved in the worst of those allegations are either dead now or in retirement homes.

No they weren't. In most cases they were transferred to other parishes where they sexually abused more children. In Boston, it is estimated that 6 percent of the priests were pedophiles who had sexually abused children. Your church knew what these priests were doing, and did nothing to stop them. I suggest seeing the movie "Spotlight" to get a better understanding of what was going on in Boston. Another good movie is "The Magdalene Sisters". It portrays how teenage girls were enslaved by your church. The movie takes place in 1960s Ireland, not the middle ages. One of the women portrayed in the movie said the nuns were much crueler than depicted in the movie, but it still gives you an idea of what went on.

The only reason why your church did anything at all about priests sexually abusing children is because they got caught, not because they had a change of heart, and we still don't know for certain this isn't still going on.

rickdugan
07-29-2020, 03:25 PM
Eagle, this is getting circular and painful. You're covering the same ground over and over as if, if you just spin it in a different way, all of these one off instances of bad decisions and people acting badly under the Catholic umbrella somehow undo the whole of the good deeds that the institution has done, for countless millions of people, over the last several decades or even just in the current era. They don't. As salacious and dramatic as each example is, it's mostly regurgitation of ground already covered and invariably involves discreet numbers of people.

I also can't sit here and agonize over what some bad actors did mostly before I was born because the people involved are either dead or close to it. We also don't know what informed some of those decisions at the time, including whatever competing medical guidance was being provided to those involved Catholic officials regarding the two (8 and 11 years old) one off abortion controversies. We also don't know why certain Arch Diocese (not all - many did exactly what I said they did) thought that they could rehabilitate pedophile priests. But even during these various times over 70 years, these isolated issues did not represent the whole of the institution and they certainly do not define it now.

Btw I am still chuckling over the whole condom thing. I'm trying to imagine the Catholic Church somehow preventing teens with social media accounts and smart phones from learning about condoms or going to the free condom dispensaries stationed in multiple places in every inner city neighborhood in America. I guess we need to send out more priests to guard those dispensaries. LMAO.

rickdugan
07-29-2020, 03:45 PM
Hey eagle, also re: U.S. teen pregnancies, perhaps we could think of far more likely causes than some insidious Catholic agenda secretly being relied upon by schools across America? Shit, was a school the place where almost any of us, when we were kids, learned to put a condom on anyway? LOL. :)

How about the fact that we have more latchkey kids now than ever before? Horny teens and ready access to empty houses are a perfect recipe for more teen sex, no? Especially when they are being sexualized at increasingly younger ages through the aforementioned smartphones and social media accounts.

Add to that perhaps the fact that these kids are just not as afraid of STDs as many of us were when we were kids. AIDS is no longer a death sentence, is no longer spreading like it used to and most STDs can be cured with an antibiotic. These kids are just not being exposed to the fear provoking ads and reports that led us as kids to reach for that piece of latex.

Just a few thoughts. :)

RaeRae
07-30-2020, 08:06 AM
Btw I am still chuckling over the whole condom thing. I'm trying to imagine the Catholic Church somehow preventing teens with social media accounts and smart phones from learning about condoms

I'm in my early thirties and from the midwest, and as a teenager and an adult, I have literally been in the awkward position multiple times of being the person to explain birth control types and how they work to people who grew up very religious. This is including explaining this to grown adults who have children. Not everyone is exposed to the exact same information as you.

The school system I grew up in literally explained nothing about sex ed other than don't have it or you'll get pregnant or an STD. I only found out more about sex ed as an early teen after being abused by a grown ass man. Before that happened, I had unsupervised access to the internet at home and still didn't know. What I did know was that my church and the people within it made damn sure to constantly demonize people who have sex outside of marriage and that all contraception is evil. I couldn't even talk to anyone from the church about what happened to me because they would see me as nothing but a whore who tempted the man into committing a sin.

Please do not assume that all people have the exact information as you, even if they have social media and other internet access.

Raziel
07-30-2020, 10:51 AM
There was an original series Star Trek episode where the Enterprise encounters a planet where it's so overpopulated that everyone lives pretty much shoulder to shoulder. SUPER overpopulated. That's the world these people want. Seems pretty sucky to me.

That's what they want. Wrap, guys. Girls, do whatever it is you do for contraception. Have a baby when you decide to, NOT when you don't. The dude is only in there for 15 or 25 minutes (Unless he knows the shit i know, sorry, studied male porn stars so i can last a bit longer that that) Your in it for nine fucking MONTHS.

rickdugan
07-30-2020, 11:23 AM
I'm in my early thirties and from the midwest, and as a teenager and an adult, I have literally been in the awkward position multiple times of being the person to explain birth control types and how they work to people who grew up very religious. This is including explaining this to grown adults who have children. Not everyone is exposed to the exact same information as you.

The school system I grew up in literally explained nothing about sex ed other than don't have it or you'll get pregnant or an STD. I only found out more about sex ed as an early teen after being abused by a grown ass man. Before that happened, I had unsupervised access to the internet at home and still didn't know. What I did know was that my church and the people within it made damn sure to constantly demonize people who have sex outside of marriage and that all contraception is evil. I couldn't even talk to anyone from the church about what happened to me because they would see me as nothing but a whore who tempted the man into committing a sin.

Please do not assume that all people have the exact information as you, even if they have social media and other internet access.

I'm sorry that a grown man did such a horrible thing to you. As a father to young girls, I feel deep anger and outrage every time I see a story like that. I hate to ask Rae, but where in the world were your parents in all of this? Why couldn't you talk to them?

miss.a.p1600
07-31-2020, 07:17 AM
...I no longer waste my valuable time engaging with people who act like trolls.

Save your time N hit that ignore button or invoice it for the mindless “debates”

Djoser
07-31-2020, 07:37 AM
...I no longer waste my valuable time engaging with people who act like trolls.

Save your time N hit that ignore button or invoice it for the mindless “debates”

Sorry, I edited this because it was either that or delete it, with many others.

But your advice is excellent, and much needed right now.

Raziel
07-31-2020, 01:22 PM
Again, above here there were posts deleted. I promise you i'm not a nut, talking to myself. Some of my own posts were deleted.

Hey, Djoser, this isn't against you. It was kind of a fight, so i can understand why my posts were deleted. Don't mind me, i just don't want people to perceive me as crazy.

Djoser
07-31-2020, 09:14 PM
We're ALL a little crazy right now. ;D

Fuck I just had leave my hangout club; where I worked before my present club. It was a fucking mob scene and I get claustrophobic--unless I'm working in which case I get adrenalized, it's a weird thing but crowds never bother me when working.

One of the only clubs of ANY kind open in town (they are trying the 'juice bar' trick), and they have to close at 11 pm, so it was a total madhouse, like everyone trying to pack 6 hours of friday night into the hour from 10-11 PM.

I was still kinda waking up and heard a friend of mine was having a bad night there, so went to show moral support and make it rain. The timing was perfect, she was onstage when I arrived, but after that I simply had to get the fuck out of that place. :eek:

Anyway total digression, the point is, the world seems to be a little crazy right now haha!

I'm not mad at anybody just had to clean it up a bit.

Try to be cool...

Raziel
08-01-2020, 12:25 AM
Sure. He's on ignore, so i won't be interacting with him.

Raziel
08-12-2020, 08:32 AM
It would be interesting to see which religion has caused the most death and suffering,.

Probably all of them. Odds are, every religion has caused some death. There are many religions, and they all have fake "believers" who just want power. Not everyone is Jesus (Or Yeshua, his real name, who was probably a true blue).

Except, maybe, Wicca, those are the most peaceful people in the world. Love them. I doubt they killed anybody.