Why are so many on the Religious Right gay?
Did anyone else read this in the Herald? Seems a Family First candidate has been disendorsed because of his appearance on a gay porn site, in contradiction with their strongly anti-porn policy. I love his defence, that it wasn't his penis in the photo, that it must have been Photoshopped in.
I found the story particularly interesting because I kinda know that Andrew Quah. He edits on Wikipedia. His main thing is removing accusations of religiosity from Family First's page. In fact, he's probably the best one for such a job because he's not a member of the Assemblies of God. In fact, he considers himself an atheist, no less! (Raised Buddhist, he says, which he considers an atheistic religion. I don't think he practises anymore.) I always found this a little confusing but I suppose there's more than a few non-religious people who appropriate the "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" fallacy.
What I don't understand is how such a person can justify such anti-feminism without Ephesians. I'm glad such an insecure individual is not going to hold office. It's bad enough that our PM thinks gay men getting married will make him love his wife less, we don't need any more people like that in parliament.
posted by Nick @ 4:50 pm
2 comments
2 Comments:
How on earth can someone practice an atheist religious stance? Doesn't it by definition become a moral or philosophical stance? I was interested to read about Hume's is-ought views- something I've also thought about but didn't realise it had been fleshed out so thoroughly.
And yes, Quak's lame excuses made me laugh when I read about it because they just affirmed how stupid he is.
The definition of what counts as a religion is a bit iffy. I would say that any systematic belief in the supernatural that governs how you live your life is sufficient to be called religion. E.g. karma and reincarnation count as religion; belief in fairies doesn't. (Also bear in mind that only some forms of Buddhism are atheist, most actually believe in gods, they just place less emphasis on direct worship than the Abrahamic religions or Hinduism.
And then there's the whole business of Eastern religions not being mutually exclusive. How many Japanese did you meet who were Shinto AND Buddhist? In the conversations I've had with Japanese and Koreans they've had trouble understanding why Western religions are mutually exclusive.
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