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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/17/84 chuqui version 1.7 9/23/84; site nsc.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!gatech!nsc!chuqui
From: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Cheshire Chuqui)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: The Start... (flaming Jeff and other hobbies)
Message-ID: <1998@nsc.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 8-Dec-84 16:36:32 EST
Article-I.D.: nsc.1998
Posted: Sat Dec  8 16:36:32 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Dec-84 06:27:40 EST
References: <127@decwrl.UUCP> <1839@sun.uucp> <6450@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Reply-To: chuqui@nsc.UUCP (Cheshire Chuqui)
Organization: Plaid Heaven
Lines: 111
Summary: 


 
>I think that a great many people in this group have been treating
>Jeff Sargent unfairly [...] failure to understand what he is saying.

>It seems that whenever his basic beliefs
>conflict with someone else's, he gets flamed, WHETHER OR NOT he
>actually attacked them.

It isn't that simple, unfortunately. I agree that the veracity of the
comments on Jeff have increased over the last few months, but a lot of that
is simply because people are starting to lose their patience with Jeff. If
you have been reading net.singles for a while you'll find that Jeff tends
to be able to give advice on just about any subject at all. Other people do
this, as well, but Jeff is the case of a person who is giving advice on
something that he really has no experience with. All of his advice is
really 'If I ever get in this postion, my religion would want me to do ...'
rather than 'When I was in that position, I did ... because it worked best
with my religion'. Notice the difference? The problem with a lot of Jeff's
advice is simply that it isn't something that he has tried and is
recommending from experience-- it is something he thought of that sounds
good to him. A good percentage of the time it isn't really realistic or
applicable. The rest of the time it makes me wonder whether or not Jeff
really lives in the same universe I do. 

I don't think that the majority of the flaming comes from not understanding
Jeff-- the people who seem to yell the loudest tend to know Jeff rather
well. Myself, rsk, who works with jeff, Laurie, who goes to school at
Purdue with Jeff-- these are not exactly the random voices off the net.
There have been some un-thinking and rather loud flames on Jeff and these,
I agree, are out of line. But a lot of the abuse that Jeff tends to be
appropriate because the more you know Jeff the more you realize when he is
talking about things that he really doesn't know anything about. Jeff is a
good person and I consider him a friend-- I wouldn't want to do anything to
hurt him. But you can't simply ignore what he says when he is wrong because
someone might actually believe him and get hurt themselves.

>Now, I would also like to address this idea that Christian morals
>do not belong in net.singles.  There are a fair number of Christians
>out there on the net (evidence:  the traffic on net.religion and/or
>net.origins) and probably a lot of them are single.  They have needs
>and interests which are unique to them as Christian singles and
>thus, belong right here in net.singles.  This is NOT net.rec.sex,
>and should not be considered open only to sexually active singles.

Oh, sigh-- here we go again. Every so often in net.singles the discussion
of 'what does it mean to be single and Christian' comes up. Every time it
does, it tends to break down into a 'what does it mean to be single?'
discussion, which is purely inapprropriate to net.singles. I will be the
first to agree that the ethics of Christianity and the hormones of the
average human being tend to put things in conflict and yes, discussion of
this is an appropriate topic for net.singles. 

Unfortunately, past history has shown that the Christians tend to be less
than tolerant to the rest of the people who don't share their viewpoints.
There are a number of people (myself included) who aren't Christian, or who
have decided to modify their Christian faith in various ways. The
discussions, regardless of how they start, seem to invariably end up with
the Christans telling the heathens that they are sinning and the heathens
telling the Christians to take their religion to net.religion. I don't
want to see this group spiral down into turf wars again if I can help it.

The christians and the christian viewpoint are always welcome. there are a
lot of valid things that they can (and should!) contribute to the group.
The thing to remember is that we are here to discuss what it means to be
single, and your faith comes into it only because it affects how you are
single. We are not here to hear how, because we aren't christian, we aren't
as good a single as you are, or as happy a single as you are. As soon as
that very fine line between discussing your faith as a single and judging
my faith as a single you are going to get jumped on. 

>I do not believe that sex is EVIL, only that it has a proper place
>(i.e. marriage).  Is that so hard to live with?

To some of us, yes. Seriously, there are a large number of views out there
(at least one for every reader of this group...) and they all differ. There
is absolutely nothing wrong with waiting until you get married to have sex.
But please realize, and this is where the conflicts tend to arise, that
there is also nothing wrong with NOT waiting until you are married to have
sex. A large number of the people out there have made that choice, and they
don't appreciate being told that their choice is incorrect, because it IS
their choice, and the only person they have to justify it to is themselves.
The idea, once again, is to try to not be judgemental to others, but to
discuss things. People (justifiably so) don't like being told that their
way is wrong, and chrisitanity, because of its background, tends to carry
this philosophy forward easily. Christians need to realize that the
non-Christians are that way because they want to be, and that our values
may be different from yours. Not better, not worse, different. It may be a
sin to you, but it isn't to me, and I don't need to be reminded that it is
a sin to you, because I follow a different path.

>Why can't we all
>learn to accept each other as we are (generally imperfect, although
>there MAY be some exceptions :-), and discuss our opinions freely.

>If you don't agree with what I say, at least consider it in the
>light it is offered, as an attempt to understand you and respond
>to your needs in the best way that I know based on my own experience.

I hate to say this, but the Christian contingent tends to get a lot more
tolerance back from the rest of us than the Christians give us. We DO try
to look at you as you-- I wish the Christians were better at accepting us
as us.

chuq
-- 
From the center of a Plaid pentagram:		Chuq Von Rospach
{cbosgd,decwrl,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui  nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA

  ~But you know, monsieur, that as long as she wears the claw of the dragon
  upon her breast you can do nothing-- her soul belongs to me!~