Can the FBI turn on the web cams of linux users?

[MartinN]

People have fought long and hard for gender and sexual preference equality.

Unless you define what you mean by gender equality, I am not sure what you mean.

Sexual preference.. well you can choose the right one (opposite sex) or the wrong one (same sex, or something else, maybe animals for some . It's pretty simple. God sanctioned what is right. Man perverts and twists the truth into what he wants. Case in point - the Queen James Bible .

Bigotry and hate is not what any serious religion is about, and millions of people in every known religion have no interest in using their beliefs to peddle hate. Hate may bring the checks in for a TV "preacher" but neither Moses nor Jesus nor Muhammed made their names peddling hate.

I am accepting of different lifestyles - for all I know there could be active homosexuals, fornicators, masturbators, adulterers right here. Will any of what I say have them think twice about their behavior and repent? I hope so. Why do I do this? You say because I am intolerant and hateful. That's one point of view. The other one is, I love the sinner and I hate the sin and I am very well aware that a person can turn away from sin, provided he or she wants to bite the bullet and give up what is very near and dear to them (the orgasms, the lust...the gluttony...the greed ...whatever the sin might be), but at the cost of great personal pain and suffering, so that they can live a life free from habitual sin, and a life of faith, to experience Christ's forgiveness and have it be real like the back of their hand. A life that works and a life that they love and can live powerfully - what's in their heart and mind is what they say and do, with nothing hidden and nothing to be ashamed of. It could be that I want them to have this life because I am intolerant and/or hate them... or it could be something else. I'll let you decide.

Christian Fundamentalists in particular seem to forget that Jesus told people to give away their money and fight for the poor.

I do that on a regular basis. I haven't given all my money, seeing as I have expenses, children and a family to uphold... but I give regularly. Do you?

He applied his whip to the money changers in the temple

Yes, because they were greedy oppressors...thieves too (a den of thieves, IIRC the quote from the bible).

not the sex workers in the streets outside.

Correct, he didn't drive the hookers out of the temple. He did however tell them to repent...to 'sin no more'. As I am telling everyone here who denies Him and would rather enjoy their sweet sweet pleasurable sins, hidden from the eyes of human, never from God....

I once witnessed a re-enactment of that as a protest against predatory payday lenders in DC. Reverend Hagler pulled off his belt and threatened to use it on the manager of an Ace Cash Express outlet. The campaign was a success, the payday lenders all quit DC after we got their interest capped at 24% APR.

Heh.. my dad was a loan shark back in the home country. Also an adulterer to this day...and a very greedy person. You could easily call him the 1% in the old country. I am well aware of usury. This is why to friends I don't loan with interest, but merely a collateral of some sort, insuring that I get my money back, rather than charge some ridiculous amount of interest. That is if I actually loan money to anyone, or rather, a significant amount. Typically, I don't and it is best not to loan money out to anyone, unless you know they are bankable...and have integrity to pay it back, i.e. prior trust/relationship.

Good preacher, Rev Hagler.

[Luke]

Some responses

Unless you define what you mean by gender equality, I am not sure what you mean.

Men and women get same rights, either is bound to take orders from the other on account of gender

Sexual preference.. well you can choose the right one (opposite sex) or the wrong one (same sex, or something else, maybe animals for some . It's pretty simple. God sanctioned what is right. Man perverts and twists the truth into what he wants. Case in point - the Queen James Bible .

I am Bi, and there is some ugly history behind your claims on this: Some tribes of the time of the Bible were simply trying to generate a population increase to make them more powerful in war.
Ever play 0ad or any other realtime strategy game? You will see very quickly why dictators turned to state priests to ban forms of sex that didn't generate population increase.

I am accepting of different lifestyles - for all I know there could be active homosexuals, fornicators, masturbators, adulterers right here. Will any of what I say have them think twice about their behavior and repent? I hope so.

Adultry requires that at least one participant be married and the concept is based on breach of trust/contract. For those of us who are single by choice and open about things the concept does not apply.

As for the rest of the sexual things things you call "sin," asking people to change their sexual preferences is going to war with all of creation and defying the will of nature. It also asks the impossible and causes harm up to and including suicide. I laughed my ass off when some "ex-gay" leader showed up at one of our bars and someone snapped his photo. He had to change his hypocritical ways and accept who he REALLY is.

Glad to hear you donate money, I am not employed and have little to give. On the other hand, most of my politics and untold hours of work is spent fighting the wealthy ruling class, one direct consequence of the actions of one group I was in (MAYDAY DC) was the opening of a homeless shelter in DC that stayed open until the next Mayor. Getting those payday lending loan sharks out of DC was another success. Everyone helps in what ways they can.

[MartinN]

I am Bi, and there is some ugly history behind your claims on this: Some tribes of the time of the Bible were simply trying to generate a population increase to make them more powerful in war.
Ever play 0ad or any other realtime strategy game? You will see very quickly why dictators turned to state priests to ban forms of sex that didn't generate population increase.

Thank you for sharing. If you are willing to bear the burden of being bi, by all means continue. I would like you to stop, repent, turn away from homosexual sex and be with a woman only, in marriage, bound for life. That is God's ideal for man. If you need any assistance with this, I would be glad to point you in the right direction. I love you and accept you - as in you the person, human being - whether you repent or not. I do not judge - I evangelize the Gospel. The one who judges is God, so if you are prepared to face His judgment when you depart from Earth as we all will, then I accept your choice. Personally, I wish you'd accept Christ's payment, but I can only bring the horse to the water....

Adultry requires that at least one participant be married and the concept is based on breach of trust/contract. For those of us who are single by choice and open about things the concept does not apply.

Adultery would not apply in your case.. but fornication and homosexuality do (as it did for me, before I turned). And I admit, we all have a bi-curious side... and some of us have experimented in all kinds of sinister crap in an attempt to fill the bottomless hole of desire and have all miserably failed at it, whether it took us 1, 5, 10, or 50 years to realize this, before we turned to God. No one here pretends to be a saint - we have all sinned and fallen short of God's glory. The point is to turn away by accepting Christ's payment for our sin, repent of our sin, live a godly life, lead others to this kind of life... and eventually make it through the narrow gate and into heaven. It's the most difficult life (to the flesh) to live yet the most rewarding (to the soul).... Luke.

As for the rest of the sexual things things you call "sin,"

I call it as I see it in the bible. That's my index. I am not God. I'm a dirty little sinner like yourself, except I am quite unconfused about it and openly admit it, as well as know who keeps me from sinning for the last 3+ years.... and who's in charge - and that Someone is not me.

asking people to change their sexual preferences is going to war with all of creation and defying the will of nature.

How about you keep your sexual preference but give up the act of having sex with men as well as women outside of marriage?? You can still be gay, bi, whatever - just abstain from sex that isn't sanctioned by the Bible.

Now, I -DO- know exactly why it feels AGONIZING, like going against the "will of nature", believe me, I was there and I was trapped for 20+ years there, in a dark place, where lust was god. Leaving that lifestyle felt like that Sub-Zero fatality move he does in Mortal Kombat - pull out the guy's spine out of his body. That's what leaving sin and coming to Christ physically feels like - agony and pain. No wonder most people would rather not do it. It is like going through the eye of the needle...you being the camel.

It also asks the impossible and causes harm up to and including suicide. I laughed my ass off when some "ex-gay" leader showed up at one of our bars and someone snapped his photo. He had to change his hypocritical ways and accept who he REALLY is.

I can assure you that our self-imagined, real identities are made up. You or I have no "real" identity to speak of, and therein lies the rub. This would be too long to discuss here and I could tell you how you can go and "deconstruct" how you yourself built your own identity (call it 'real' or whatever you want, it has you where you are today), your own contexts, values - and it was mostly in a response to some kind of failure to be a certain way, a compensation of sorts. You could say we are born unencumbered by our identity, and we build it out starting at age 4-5... and then we call the pile of crap we've built by age 21 -" our true self" and get all uppity and defend that like it's the holy grail or the "truth"... when in fact, it is ALL s**t.

Glad you brought up suicide. So let me add more fuel to the fire - it is at the point of suicide where you will find freedom, i.e. by killing yourself........ or here's the alternate way. This is a lot more difficult and you cannot get there on your own - you need others to help you through it and above all God. But it's basically this - the moment you remove the payoff from the orgasms..the sex..that numbs you to what your true feelings are, the turmoil, the depression, the angst, the anxiety that you are masking with your sexual acting out, is the moment you need to be still.

This is easier said than done. What do I mean by "be still"? That is exactly what I mean. When the thought - the MERE thought of acting out of integrity comes up - which at this time for you is probably a habit... you want to let it be, and not do anything about it. When after 6-9 months of therapy I was actually able to let my emotions be for the very first time, without orgasming them away.... masking them... I felt something that I'd been holding back for decades. Grief.... "trauma", they call it... profound sadness over events past that I've never told anyone about... guilt...shame... a s**tload of things that tend to make you wanna withdraw, be constantly angry, unforgiving of everyone and everything. It truly feels like HELL and like you wanna blow your head off, the more sensitive you are... and you seem to be.

That's the eye of the needle. That's what you must overcome - however you know - if you want to get right with God. To take the word of God on faith, that in the end, after the pain and suffering has been endured, the first few difficult steps taken, that what you receive on the other end of that transformation doesn't have a price........ it's priceless. It's a life free of desire, free of sin.... a sense of contentment that no amount of money, sex, drugs can buy. And that my friend can only come from one place and one place only - and you know, instinctively, whom it can come from, what kind of being bestows these kinds of gifts. You'll be too cool for school...and ready to defend the gift you've been given with your life - by dying for the person who is DROWNING in sin, headed straight for hell. No one - and by no one, I mean NO LIVING human being or earthly thing can give you this kind of power to repent. First you gotta humbly ask Him...and then be
prepared for what will come as a result.... the mountain of emotion...angst....anxiety...yes, near suicidal anxiety.

Once you're over the hump - it gets easier. Lust no longer will have a firm hold on you and a temptation will not have you give in anymore. The pain will lessen, the wounds of the past will heal and what seems alien now - God's word, becomes a lifestyle. Call it a "conversion".. I call it - ultimate freedom..of the kind Mandela had in 27 years of prison - the man was free-er there than most of us outside. THAT is the kind of freedom you want in your daily life, and no other but God will give that to you. I am merely a pointer, a tale of sound and fury...an "idiot" as someone called me here . I'm glad to be one, if it's going to even remotely ping someone's heart to look in the ULTIMATE place for personal freedom and living a life unafraid of anything on earth, death included.

Now, I KNOW what I am talking about... but I cannot GIVE this to anyone. You have to reach for this and you gotta want it bad enough, and hopefully, God will give it to you as he did to me. My job is to evangelize it.... nothing else. Hate me all you want .

Glad to hear you donate money, I am not employed and have little to give. On the other hand, most of my politics and untold hours of work is spent fighting the wealthy ruling class, one direct consequence of the actions of one group I was in (MAYDAY DC) was the opening of a homeless shelter in DC that stayed open until the next Mayor. Getting those payday lending loan sharks out of DC was another success. Everyone helps in what ways they can.

Sounds like fun.

God bless.

[Luke]

About as likely as the sun rising in the West and setting east

How about you keep your sexual preference but give up the act of having sex with men as well as women outside of marriage?? You can still be gay, bi, whatever - just abstain from sex that isn't sanctioned by the Bible.

That is NOT going to happen! As a Pagan, I find the idea of telling people to wage war on nature and what Nature made them quite offensive.

You mention the Eye of the Needle, which was another quote that applied to the wealthy (easier for a camel to pass through the Eye of the Needle than for a rich man to go to heaven). I suppose today's bankers and stockbrokers would simply pay the backsmith to make a needle the size of a battleship and march their whole camel caravan through it's eye. If the reference referred as some believe to a gate in the Jerusalem city wall, they would have hired the mason to enlarge the gate. They would do all of this while condemning members of other faiths and calling people's consensual sexual choices "sin."

[steveriley]

Greetings to you my pot-smoking, homosexual-marriage-legislating friend.

Yes to both. You know what, Martin, you should be proud of us in Washington State. For here, we truly live the life of Leviticus 20:13.

what is idiotic however, is one's reluctance to see what's in front of one's own nose.

You mean your invisible friend?

she will near worship you...Men take the lead

Wait...isn't that idolatry? Why are you encouraging women to sin by violating the first and possibly the second commandment? Oh wait, right...women are property (Exodus 21:7), according to your god. Property can't commit sin.

You can still be gay, bi, whatever - just abstain from sex that isn't sanctioned by the Bible.

So concubines (2 Samuel 5:13) are OK, then? Cool. And if I anger god, then my neighbors will get to have sex with my wife (2 Samuel 12:11)? I suppose that's only fair. I'm glad to see that if I need to let the city know I'm planning to alienate my father, I should have sex with his concubine on the roof of his house (2 Samuel 16:15-22). And thank god that we can masturbate (Psalm 16:11) and swallow (Song of Solomon 2:3).

How about you keep your sexual preference but give up the act of having sex with men as well as women outside of marriage??

Besides being obsessed with death, religious people seem obsessed with sex, too. Why would Almighty God, Speaker-Into-Existence Of The Universe, care what we insignificant creatures do with our penises?

but I am not going to stay silent and watch people end up in hell.

Why do you care? Worried that while you're singing "Just As I Am" for the zillionth time up there in heaven, the rest of us will be too busy fucking each other like crazy to notice the heat?

[steveriley]

Oh, and for those who think that Tor is used mostly or only by Bad Guys, please watch this video from the 2013 Chaos Communications Congress. Roger Dingledine and Jacob Appelbaum from Tor will put those notions to rest. Some people need Tor's privacy to commit moral acts against immoral governments.

Tor Network: We're Living In Interesting Times

[MartinN]

You definitely have a knack for standup comedy steve. About as angry, resigned and cynical as George Carlin. Say hello to him when you see him, whenever that may be.

Yes to both. You know what, Martin, you should be proud of us in Washington State. For here, we truly live the life of Leviticus 20:13.


You mean your invisible friend?


Wait...isn't that idolatry? Why are you encouraging women to sin by violating the first and possibly the second commandment? Oh wait, right...women are property (Exodus 21:7), according to your god. Property can't commit sin.


So concubines (2 Samuel 5:13) are OK, then? Cool. And if I anger god, then my neighbors will get to have sex with my wife (2 Samuel 12:11)? I suppose that's only fair. I'm glad to see that if I need to let the city know I'm planning to alienate my father, I should have sex with his concubine on the roof of his house (2 Samuel 16:15-22). And thank god that we can masturbate (Psalm 16:11) and swallow (Song of Solomon 2:3).


Besides being obsessed with death, religious people seem obsessed with sex, too. Why would Almighty God, Speaker-Into-Existence Of The Universe, care what we insignificant creatures do with our penises?


Why do you care? Worried that while you're singing "Just As I Am" for the zillionth time up there in heaven, the rest of us will be too busy fucking each other like crazy to notice the heat?

[MartinN]

I don't doubt it. Sometimes it's fear of retaliation for doing or saying the right thing in the face of massive evil, anger, cynicism and resignation that a tool like Tor can facilitate. Takes courage to stand up for what is right in a fallen world, sometimes risking one's own life ....

Oh, and for those who think that Tor is used mostly or only by Bad Guys, please watch this video from the 2013 Chaos Communications Congress. Roger Dingledine and Jacob Appelbaum from Tor will put those notions to rest. Some people need Tor's privacy to commit moral acts against immoral governments.

Tor Network: We're Living In Interesting Times

[MartinN]

I think you are called Luke for a reason. You've also been more authentic and sharing than anyone else on here.

I've asked God to give you faith in His Son, along with repentance. I don't know if anyone has ever prayed for you. If it is His will to give you this, you can expect things, life, circumstances, "luck", etc to get much, much, much worse than you currently have it... before ultimately getting better. I hope you will experience His loving but firm/just touch... and the Spirit's guidance in your heart out of the maze of crap you've gotten yourself into.

May God bless and guide you.

That is NOT going to happen! As a
Pagan, I find the idea of telling people to wage war on nature and what Nature made them quite offensive.

You mention the Eye of the Needle, which was another quote that applied to the wealthy (easier for a camel to pass through the Eye of the Needle than for a rich man to go to heaven). I suppose today's bankers and stockbrokers would simply pay the backsmith to make a needle the size of a battleship and march their whole camel caravan through it's eye. If the reference referred as some believe to a gate in the Jerusalem city wall, they would have hired the mason to enlarge the gate. They would do all of this while condemning members of other faiths and calling people's consensual sexual choices "sin."

[ACiD]

You definitely have a knack for standup comedy steve. About as angry, resigned and cynical as George Carlin. Say hello to him when you see him, whenever that may be.

Yes it sucks to have your infallible little book thrown at your face. Remember now, it knows no interpretation so you cant deny it without denying your faith!