anonemouse

Weird. Couldn't they, you know, just submit changes to Wikipedia if they didn't like the content? Seems a little extreme to go to the trouble to making their own entire Wiki-thingy.

That's very cool! I think you are in very good hands!

Anyone else see the spammer that we've attracted? All they can post is That's it. For at least 16 (at the moment) posts!

My family has a week-long vacation every summer at a lake in Tennessee. I want to be able to water-tube behind a boat, fall off, and be able to pull myself back onto the tube without swimming it to the boat and climbing on from there. I want to be able to walk uphill and have a conversation at the same time. I want to be able to go to an amusement park and ride rollercoasters without wondering whether I am too fat to fit in the seats. I want to be able to apply for any job I want and not wonder whether I am fit enough to perform the duties. I want to be able to buy clothes that aren't simply different colors of the same style (if you find a style that fits and looks halfway decent, buy lots!). I want to be able to wear pretty shoes with heels. I want to be able to find attractive underwear that fits.

They're coming across like they are being paid by an insurance company or something. Geeze. They've not introduced themselves or anything, just posted that message.

Ignore swilson, please. She/he's spamming the board with this crap.

I was going to reply to this, and then realized that I wasn't sure which conversation you were referring to. There's been, like, three or four. Ah well, that's the great thing about this place. We can have multiple conversations at the same time.

Ya know, the person that truly disgusted me in that whole mess was Bill Frist. Boy, was I disgusted to be from Tennessee when that whole thing was going on.

That's true, but her parents wanted to believe that she would get better and that she was fully consious of what was happening around her. If they believed that, then what they were doing to her was torture. Instead of starving once, she starved at least twice. I really don't know how her parents can look at themselves in the mirror.

I think that they were in denial. They were no longer keeping her alive because they thought it was what she would have wanted, they were doing it so that they didn't have to come to the realization that their daughter was gone. And if the husband was telling the truth, and he promised her that he wouldn't let her live like that, he owed it to her to fulfill her wishes. I really believe he loved her. He may have found another person, but that doesn't necessarily mean her loved her any less. I would like to believe that if I truly loved someone, but they were in a situation like that, I would do anything in my power to make sure that their wished were carried out. I feel for the parents, but I think that the bottom line is that the wishes of the patient must be carried out, even if she only told them to her husband.

To me, what the parents were doing was basically torture. The husband would get the tubes removed, and she would be in the process of passing, and they would get court orders to have the tubes put back in. Instead of just letting her pass away, they forced her to go through the process again and again. Eventually, I think you get to a point where you just have to let someone go, even if you think it isn't the right thing to do, because forcing them to go through torture because you don't want to lose them is unconscionable, IMO.

Education or lack thereof definitely play a role in it.

And I was talking about me personally, not speaking for the medical community. I personally don't feel that any type of sexuality is abnormal (as long as both partners are legally able to consent). Shoes get you off? Fine. Smelling someone's hair? Good for you. Like being strangled during sex? I don't get the appeal, but whatever floats your boat. If they are like you say, and "just plain wrong", then no. But what's "just plain wrong"? You consider abortion to be "just plain wrong", but I don't. Infanticide? No. Euthanasia? That's a gray area. If the person being euthanizes is able to speak up or otherwise state their opinion, then I would say no. Otherwise? I think it will probably be legal. Personally, I hope that if I ever get old and sick, but am unable to sign consent forms, I want my family to be able to put me out of my misery.

Maybe it's income tax that we don't have. I dunno, it's one of the two.

That's because I doubt they are. Most people (or at least me) don't care what other people think, they make up their own minds based on what THEY think. To use a well-known hospital case as an example, the Schiavo case, I couldn't care less what other people thought. To me, what the parents were doing was sickening. Believe me, that wasn't a hugely popular viewpoint, at least here in Kentucky. So, I don't think most people make up their mind based on popular opinion. They make up their mind and form their opinions based on their morals and the way they look at the world.

Gadget, have you ever heard of the Kinsey scale? I think it is fairly accurate, IMO. Here is the scale: IMO, I think that anyone who says that they were "cured of homosexuality" probably didn't rate higher than 1 or 2. In other words, the majority of the time, they were attracted to the opposite sex anyway, so there wasn't much to give up. I highly doubt that anyone who was predominantly homosexual were ever really "cured" of their sexuality. Like I said earlier, you can get off with just about anyone, but that doesn't mean you are truly attracted to them. You can't change that. I won't suddenly find really ripped guys attractive, no matter how much I try.

Well, I'd say it's as good a method of shaping our opinions as letting one denomination's interpretation of the Bible shape them.

Or they felt so strongly that it was a sin that they were willing to hide what they were from themselves and the people around them.

I personally feel that "abnormal sexual behavior" is anything where one or both partners are not able to legally say "yes". That includes incest, pedophilia, bestiality, necrophilia, etc. To say that homosexuality not being classified as "abnormal" anymore is simply a function of our society becomeing more PC is a cop-out, IMO. To me, it is because our society is becoming more educated and more accepting of people that aren't necessarily in the "main stream". If we sat around and said that the knowledge we had in the past is good enough for the future, our society would never get anywhere. Black people would still be thought to be anatomically and physiologically different from white people and doctors would still practice blood-letting and would still think that drilling holes in people's heads would cure them of all sorts of evils.

The good thing about Tennessee is that while we do have a high sales tax, we don't have a property tax at all. When I was interning in Massachusetts, the average house price was around $500,000 where I was. This was for a very small house also, usually 2-3 bedrooms, 1-2 baths. In fact, the wildlife refuge I was at was right on the coast of the Cape, and the house and land next to us was for sale for about $12,000,000, for about an acre or two of land.

Ditto. I refuse to lie and pretend that I believe in a God or other higher power when I don't. Somehow, I think that if there is a God, he or she would look down on me pretending to be a believer in God more than he or she would on living my life as a good, moral person that didn't believe in God.

You guys should see the taxes in Tennessee. We have 9.75 percent sales tax.

It's amazing how many people don't understand that. Atheism isn't something that one day we just randomly decide sounds good. I firmly believe that for most of us, it is a gradual realization. Sort of like coming to the conclusion that "wow, so that's what I am". And even after coming to that conclusion, it's something that most of us struggle with for years before we accept. I saw on the news about two weeks ago, that Atheists are the most distrusted segment of the population, and to me that's horrible. That's exactly why most of us struggle with the realization that we are Atheists. We understand that simply because we happen to believe differently than the vast majority of the world, we are looked down upon, considered to be second-class citizens in many cases, and likely to be discriminated against. I think that Atheism is very much like homosexuality in that we don't actively choose to be the way we are. We just are. For me, even after 18 years, church and the Bible just never felt right. It felt like someone was trying to tell me this huge story that didn't make sense. My Atheism isn't something I am open about, though, unless I am close to the people around me and someone asks me what I believe. That's simply because I know how people react. Wheetsin's said it before, you can tell how people really feel about Atheism and Atheists when you tell them. In many cases, you can see the disgust cross their faces.

Yeah, I occasionally read the blog of a stripper that posts at some of the communities that I frequent. It's amazing some of the crap the "customers" put her through. A large percentage apparently think that her being a stripper gives them the right to request anything from her or do anything to her.

I agree, although in my experience, being here has reaffirmed my beliefs. I think that as I hear more and more people's points of view on politics, it makes me question even more. I expect people to give me a decent reason to change my politics when they tell me I am believing in the wrong thing. I think this forum, in particular, helps all of us to refine our beliefs and learn more about the other beliefs out there.