You really are a funny little creature, Jox. Tell you what, since you've got such a hard-on for me now, I'll send you some of my underwear. Let me know if you want boxers or briefs. Skidmarks are extra.

Seriously though, if you don't think the FBC has far too much control over the politics, legislation, and enforcement in Jacksonville, you either never truly lived in the city, or you had your head up your ass the entire time.

Guess which one I'm betting on?

I'm through here. You've exposed yourself for what you are, and my patience is exhausted. Go ahead and tally a victory in your Warriors for Christ handbook.

Hey, no problem Syuni. Hopefully you'll stop reinforcing generic stereotypes of fellow Christians! I don't have a hard-on for you, I just called you to the carpet for what you wrote. That's the great thing about it - I didn't judge you as a Christian, despite you doing that of me, I just judged you on what you wrote, on this thread, in context. What more can a man ask for than to be judged on his actual actions and not stereotypes?

I did enjoy the conspiracy theory stuff, though. First Baptist Church as the mob, gotta love it.

Have a nice day!

Sorry, Jox. The criticism you've levied is that threads devolve into anti-Christian threads. Blanket, across-the-board anti-Christian. Now that you've been called out on that, you try to change the topic to what level of generalizations is okay. Your ass is showing.

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Hope is the new black.

Let me see if I understand, Bearne.

A post has to indicate, explicitly, that it is about ALL Christians for it to be anti-Christian? So if thread one damns bible belt Christians, and another thread damns Catholics, and the third damns Methodists... it would be wrong of me to declare that threads devolve into being anti-Christian?

Your logic is unbelievable. But, we all know you're not really discussing this with me, since you're ignoring points and blindly repeating your insults, just like you eventually do in every thread. Are you done with the thread now?

Yes, it would be wrong, without any context as to *why*.

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Hope is the new black.

And what would be the context in this case?

For example, let's say the topic is the reinstatement of the rogue bishops associated with the Society of St Pious X, one of whom is a notorious Holocaust denier, and the impact that has on relations between the Vatican and Israel.

Or the topic is the treatment of pedophile priests.

Or the topic is the colusion of the Mormon Church and the Knights of Columbus to defeat Proposition 8.

None of those topics, in my mind, are "anti-Christian." Rather they would discussions of activities undertaken by bad actors misusing the name of God. But if I started a thread on any of those, I would be accussed of starting "another anti-Christian thread."

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Hope is the new black.

I don't know what the freaking context is in this case. The entire thread is ridiculous.

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Hope is the new black.

Ahh hell, I'll make it easy for you.

Is that an anti-gay post?


Is that an anti-black post?

There you go, I called to mind stereotypes of larger communities just like the "bible belt", and then a caricature/stereotype of someone in that community.

Your response?

It's hard to say without proper context. Could be taken either way, honestly. The speaker could be attacking all blacks/gays or attacking a particular sort of person they've had experience with.

Seeing as I know plenty of gay guys in San Francisco who have that exact attitude, No. That's a pretty accurate description of a sub-section of the SF gay community.

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Hope is the new black.

But I never said a sub-set of the San Fran gay community. I said the SF gay community. There was no language in the post about a sub-set of the bible belt. So, I guess you agree with me, then? What about my stereotyping of blacks in my example? You can't pick and choose, because although you have some personal experience with SF, you have none with Bible Belt or blacks, and the implication is the same. "This large group of people is bad."

Are you going to keep breaking down the stereotype until it's at a threshold that's comfortable for you?

I took umbrage to his post because I AM in the Bible Belt, and while there are bad apples, just like anywhere, I have had very positive experience in the Christian community here.

And I think we've all met and interacted with black / gay / Jewish / female / insert status people who tend to go out of their way to interpret every interaction through a lens of "how can I be offended?" Frankly, I would think that changing up that sentence would make you realize that the original post was about some Christians, rather than a blanket statement about all of them.

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Hope is the new black.

"But I never said a sub-set of the San Fran gay community. I said the SF gay community."

No, Jox, you didn't. Go back and read the *exact* sentence you typed out. It isn't a blanket condemnation of the entire SF gay community. It just isn't.

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Hope is the new black.

I would think YOU would have a better concept of the danger of labeling an entire group of people under one umbrella, especially defined as broadly as the bible belt. Seriously. I would think you of all people would know better. That's why I am totally shocked that you could support such a huge double standard. If less people thought of gays as Syuni posted about Christians in the south, we'd be a lot further along the gay rights trail than we are. But you know, as well as I, that the "SF Gays" are demonized and branded in a way that turns people against gays. Just like the Bible Belt. It's used to stereotype southerners as small-minded hicks, and that's EXACTLY how it was used by Syuni.

Put yourself in someone else's shoes. What image does "San Francisco" and gay conjure? What image does "ghetto" and black conjure?

What image does Bible Belt and Christian conjure?

I guess we're at a "agree to disagree" spot, then. I don't read Syuni original post as the kind of blanket condemnation that you do and, for me, the rewrites you did just reinforce that it's a criticism of a specific human characteristic rather than a blanket statement. If I did read it the way you did, I'd likely agree with you.

For the record, I have lived both in the Bible Belt (TX for five years) and in minority-majority neighborhoods. The same human foibles exist in all of them.

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Hope is the new black.

What image does "Bertha Betterthanyou" conjure? Does it conjure up images of all Christians in an area? Does it conjure up images of Christians at all, taken out of the context of the original post?

Compare it to the "names" you made up for your rebuttal post, and ask yourself if the same thing can be said, and ask yourself if what you've posted is comparable. I'll give you a hint right now: it's not.

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A preachy, in your face, ignorant know-it-all?

What does it conjure for you?

As much as I disagree with Bov, the persecuted act is tiring. Rarely have I seen such poor reading comprehension when a person cannot understand the difference between generalizations and admitted anecdotal evidence.

Oh, Venen. They are not mutually exclusive, you know, right? You can use anecdotal evidence to do anything you want, even paint a broad generalization. Tarot does it all the time. Go read one of her novella's and give me a report on what you've learned.

It's very classy-- hell very "Christian" of you to pull unsolicited bashes on someone else in the forums that hasn't even entered the conversation.

Joxur just doesn't get that, by adhering to Christianity, he's holding himself to a certain standard of behavior. When he fails to meet that standard, it's not a big deal to anyone but him. Except when he constantly talks in public about how he's a Christian, in which case everyone holds him to that standard. When he fails to even try to live up to it, the measure of his worth is lessened not only in his own eyes, but in the eyes of everyone he keeps telling about his beliefs.

You can't constantly claim a moral code and then make no effort to live up to it. Even if your code is completely different from those around you, they'll still look poorly upon you violating it, especially if you claim it's important to you.

Joxur, shut up now and get out of the thread while you still have some measure of dignity left. At the rate you're going, I doubt anyone here really thinks of you as a very Christian person.

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Unfortunately, Tyral, there's folks like Jox in the world to whom "Christianity" is nothing more than a social club that they get to claim membership to.

I'm not a big fan of religion to begin with (Big shock, I know) but people like Jox just make it even worse. At least I have a level of personal respect for people who try hard to follow the moral guidelines set down before them by their chosen religion.

It's a can't-win situation for me. I can let comments go that paint people like me in a negative light, or I can respond. If I don't respond, I'm a bad person in MY eyes. If I do respond, I'm a bad person in YOUR eyes.

But, all things considered, I'm not losing much sleep over what Fribur, Tyral and others think of my Christian-ness. Like I said, I'm not out to convert people who have an axe to grind. Rather than pander to you and pat you on the head, I'd rather just respond to your stereotypes with forthright honesty, from my point of view. I've done a pretty effective job outlining why painting all Bible Belt Christians in a negative light is just as bad as painting broad segments of gays, blacks or other groups in a negative light. Notice that none of you have a response to that, except Bearne.I don't think you really understand the irony in your post, Fribur. You just made a broad generalization. Good job

This is why I don't get into religious threads, and why I bowed out of the "Hell" thread very quickly once I realized that it was just there for people with an axe to grind, not about honest debate or discussion. I think what you guys are really upset about is someone (a fair number of us, actually) getting in the way of your routine Christian-bashing dogpile.

No. You didn't. Somehow you ignored the posts telling you that you didn't. Not sure how you did that.

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Yes, but that broad generalization is 100% correct. Show me a single sect of Christianity that believes the Bible is the Word of God, that believes that your unsolicited attack on Tarot was a good, Christian thing to do. Show me, and I'll concede your point.



You really ought to be careful. While there are definitely some serious Christian haters on this board, the particular people you are complaining about in this thread are far more complex than you are maintaining. My own history on this subject is rather convoluted, and if you pay attention to threads like these you would see that about half the time at least I'm right on YOUR side. I get very tired of anti-Christian rhetoric here, and I've said so many times. Unfortunately for you, I also can't stand it when someone who calls themselves a devout Christian makes Christianity look bad by talking the way you sometimes do on these boards. You HELP them with your rhetoric, proving them correct.

Tarot wins.

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Tarot, are you feeling OK? Your last two posts are an image and then a one-word reply.

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Working.

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I imagine tarot is tired of talking about the same 10 topics with the same 20 people for the last 10 years.

I have a "goddamn it, Worthy" and a "Neesha sucks balls" macro set up to autopost every two weeks for me now.

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Regarding the original topic of this thread, here's another great example of how out of touch the GOP is.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/20 ... get-obama/

Yeah, I saw that this morning. First thing that came to mind was, "Aren't they trying to reinvent themselves, and stop making the same dumb decisions from the past?"

If the GOP is going to change their image, they need to fire Michael Steele and make some hard decisions about the direction of the party and who to cut loose (Palin).

As of today, Liberty University (the fundamentalist university founded by Jerry Falwell) has declared that being a Democrat is incompatible with Christian doctrine, and rescinded the charter of the school's Democratic Party student group. Bear in mind that in order to be considered for admission to Liberty, you have to submit a statement of faith declaring your fundamentalist/evangelical bona fides.

Click the Link!

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Hope is the new black.

Reggie McFro.

That could be construed as racist.

Somehow not surprised that crazy people would do crazy things. ;P

Oh come on,anyone who lived in Jax for any amount of time knows about FBC. If you haven't, you weren't paying attention. For those who live elsewhere, think of them as the Jacksonville version of "Focus on the family" I always hated that odious lighthouse they installed downtown with full lights blazing all night long to crash ship... er draw in the faithful..

Here's an example of some of the crap they pull: http://www.jacksonville.com/news/column ... _troubling

Posters from Jax who somehow heard about FBC in 2006 and are not syuni: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/archive/i ... 38134.html

Wikipedia has heard of FBC:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_G._Lindsay,_Jr.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Bapt ... cksonville

If you did live in Jacksonville, I don't know how you missed them.

Is this a joke? Your first link is the only one that hints of the vast government/church cabal that Syuni references. I can give you link upon link of corrupt large churches. There are churches in Atlanta with pastors driving Rolls Royces and under indictment. No evidence of shady, hypocritical assholes running churches proves Syuni's point that FBC "runs" Jacksonville. Does that mean those churches run Atlanta? Will I be pulled over by the ATL PD because I'm daring to speak out against religious intolerance?

The second link blames FBC for Jacksonville's infrastructure, which is laughable. Furthermore, the second link is a comment from a visitor. Shall I find similar comments about every city in America? But I'll humor you and take on each of the points one by one.

Jax beach held up as the epitome of proper development - have you ever been there? Jax beach is a *shit hole*. Fernandina, St. Augustine, Ponte Vedra, basically every beach surrounding Jax Beach is far nicer.

The Landing? Really? Town Center is an example of how to do shopping properly, not the landing. The landing has nothing going on, is completely empty all of the time and is a huge failure. THAT's the example the poster uses of "good" downtown development?

Last but not least, the most laughable part is where the poster blamed FBC for the fact that Jax could not handle the Super Bowl. Pro tip - if your plans involves shipping in cruise ships because your city doesn't have the hotel rooms to host the super bowl - perhaps you're just not quite ready for it yet.

Again, who is it that isn't connected to Jacksonville? The fact you posted a link with those comments is eye opening. Your other two links are what lead me to believe you're trolling. One is a wikipedia link with no data.

The second is a boilerplate wikipedia entry for the church itself, but contains nothing about.. anything. It's a standard wikipedia page. Many churches have that - who cares? My church with 380 Sunday attendance has a wikipedia page.

I am unsure why the wiki link I copy pasted didn't work, but if this link I am copying again doesn't come up, you can search google by his name, the article is the first that comes up in google when you type "homer g lindsey jr" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_G._Lindsay,_Jr.

the first link was along the lines of the crap they pull, the second was more of a "this is the opinions of people who live in Jacksonville and deal with these jokers". You acted like Syuni was a crazy person for suggesting that they run Jax, he isn't. Anyone who has lived there for any amount of time knows that. People in Jacksonville talk about it and gripe about it all the time, so Syuni was not coming out of left field for a Jax resident. If you spent 10 years living there and have no idea who they are, you had your head in your arse for that period of time.

Well, be sure to find a safe place to hide when the roving bands of Baptists are on the prowl. Perhaps the booming shopping & dining mecca of Jacksonville Landing.

joxur down!

Oil up!

No, wait. That sounds like a line from a bad porn movie.

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"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."

-- Marcus Tullius Cicero