Lastly, and here's where it gets good, while digging around some other recent reviews, I once again skimmed over his intentionally oblivious review of Bowling for Columbine, and once again the "Matthew Shepherd = Jessie Dirkhising" argument stuck in my craw. Here's what the CAP Alerts guy says, and he's shoehorned in virtually-identical comments about several other movies that had anything to do with gay issues.

His mention of Matthew Shepard here is pretty bizarre, if you think about it. Really, CAP guy is talking about how he doesn't like a Michael Moore anti-gun movie (which we've had here on our DVD shelf for upwards of 8 months without ever getting around to watching it) and he compares Moore's methods to those of the "spin of the homosexual agenda." What? How in the hell do those things compare? 

Got a little trouble with gay on the brain, Mr. CAP?

As for the argument itself, it's apparently gained a great deal of love in the anti-gay right wing circles, and it's so patently full of shit that it functions as a sort of Turing Test/Godwin's Law for me. I.E., anyone I see make the "Shepherd = Dirkhising" argument is automatically a lying hack with zero intellectual integrity. While I think the CAP Alerts guy is probably clinically insane, for a variety of reasons (many of which I elaborate on this reviews page dedicated to him), I don't think he's a complete lying partisan hack, like say Ann Coulter is. He (Mr. CAP Alerts) is wrong about virtually everything, but he's wrong from the heart, and he really believes in what he's saying, no matter how much it sounds like lunacy to the rest of us; it's not just a pose he's striking since it'll help him sell books or get on TV more or discredit his political enemies. He really believes what he's saying, and is completely sure he's right and the whole rest of the world is wrong. The fact that it's an argument principally advocated by the fine and upstanding Rev. Fred Phelps should give you an idea of its quality, but that doesn't seem to slow CAP down a bit.

His argument, which I think is just laughably-weak, is what moved me to email him. I thought there might be a chance, however remote, that he would look at the issue logically and objectively, and realize what a completely failed argument he's trying to peddle. My email is below, but first, let me include some background info, in case you don't know who the people are.

Matthew Shepard has an entry on wikipedia that covers things pretty well. Here's a link-heavy quote of the opening paragraphs:

Jesse Dirkhising is, admittedly, far less famous, despite the fact that he died in an even more gruesome fashion. He was held captive for weeks by two gay men who used him as their sex slave until they eventually killed him. I found a site that simply quotes about 50 news articles about the subject (which might tell you something about CAP's claim that the media ignored the issue) and you can read as many as you want right here.

The main argument made by the anti-gay people, a group that certainly includes the CAP Alerts Guy, is that the media has a pro-gay agenda since they relentlessly talked up the Matthew Shepard murder, while virtually ignoring the Jesse Dirkhising case. I addressed that in my email, which is as follows. Since I was trying to get the CAP Alerts guy to actually read it and maybe give it some thought, I of course tried to be polite and reasonable and stayed rigidly on topic, which is why this differs so much from my usual comments on his particular flavor of lunacy.

You can skip my mail entirely if you wish, since it's repeated below, broken up by the dozens of comments he made.

Greetings.

I enjoy your site and the often entertaining movie reviews a great deal, but I had to comment on something after reading the Bowling for Columbine review. It's in regards to your repeated (I've seen you make the argument in several reviews over time.) efforts to equate the death of Jesse Dirkhising with that of Matthew Shepard. I realize it's something you want to push since you disapprove of homosexuality, but have you really given the argument any thought?

Matthew Shepard was gay, and he was brutally murdered precisely because of his sexual orientation.

Jesse Dirkhising was killed in horrible fashion by pedophiles, but his sexual orientation was not the reason for his murder. 

Unless you are claiming the 2 men who killed Jessie Dirkhising did so because he was straight, it's just a horrible case of child abuse. The 2 cases have nothing in common, other than that both are horrible murders of people who did nothing to deserve to die. The media coverage of Matthew Shepard's murder was largely based on the motive, not the details. There are dozens of much more graphic and brutal and cruel murders every week that don't make the national news either.

Even worse, there are thousands (hundreds?) of sexual abuse murders every year in the US, and I'm not even counting what allegedly happens in prisons. Women are raped and murdered by heterosexual men every day, children are molested and killed by their own heterosexual parents, whores are beaten to death by heterosexual Johns, and so on. Common sense tells us that the vast majority of these crimes are perpetrated by heterosexuals on other heterosexuals. Obviously some percentage of them are by gays on gays, or by gays on straights, but unless you've got some statistics that show gays perpetrate sexual assaults disproportionate to their percentage of the population (and I find that extremely unlikely, given how many straight men feel they can force themselves upon a woman or beat/kill their wife/girlfriend if she gets out of line), then your argument is entirely without merit.

If a feminist site quoted every case of a man raping and murdering a woman as evidence that heterosexuality was evil and should be outlawed and that men should be chemically castrated, how much credence would you give that argument?

You can certainly argue that the media paid too much attention to the Matthew Shepard case, and that this demonstrates that they have a bias of some sort, but give up trying to use Dirkhising as a corollary, since that comparison simply doesn't fly. It's as inaccurate as someone arguing religion is evil since it drives so many priests to molest children. I don't expect you'll give up one of your prized arguments just because it doesn't make any sense, but I'd certainly be impressed by your intellectual honesty (no matter how many other things I disagree with you about) if you were able to reconsider this issue.

I didn't seriously think he would change his argument based on anything I said, but I felt better about myself after mailing him, and at least I'd done some online research to learn more about the issue.  Much to my surprise, he replied a few hours later, and in great detail. My mail is double indented and in purple, his is single indented and in purple.  I resisted Fisking his reply to me, mostly since he wouldn't grasp the sarcasm at all, but I can't entirely resist it now. So I'll just do it a little bit; comments made right now are not indented and in black.

On 9/15/04 6:56 AM, the CAP Ministry wrote:

Greetings. I enjoy your site and the often entertaining movie reviews a great deal, but I had to comment on something after reading the recently added Bowling for Columbine review. It's in regards to your repeated (I've seen you make the argument in several reviews over time) efforts to equate the death of Jessie Dirkhising with that of Matthew Shephard.

That is not the purpose of using the Jessie Dirkhising incident to counter the use of the Matthew Shephard incident to foster sympathy for the homosexual practitioners. It is a counterpoint to those who, like you seem to be doing, defend the practice of homosexuality by implying that heterosexual practitioners want to kill homosexual practitioners.

Well, several thousand gay-bashing incidents a year do tend to leave that impression, yes.

I realize it's something you want to push since you disapprove of homosexuality,

So does God. And I do because He does. By the way, neither He nor I "disapprove" of the one who chooses to practice homosexuality. The one who chooses to do so is as precious to Jesus as you and I. It is the chosen behavior He hates. The deed not the doer. And, yes, it is a chosen behavior. Every single non-autonomic movement of the human body is a choice.

Like homophobia?

but have you really given the argument any thought?

Yes. And you will soon see it is a sound argument.

Matthew Shephard was gay, and he was brutally murdered precisely because of his sexual orientation.

He was brutally murdered because of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That he was gay was milked by the homosexual protagonists to magnify their agenda. Anyone who was in the same place at the same time as Shephard would likely have had the same thing happen, a homosexual practitioner or not.

Matthew Shepard was the first murder or serious crime by either of his killers, who had done nothing but petty crimes before that, and they tried to use the "gay panic" defense in court, saying they only killed him when they freaked out because he came onto them. Facts which pretty exactly contradict CAP's comments.

Jessie Dirkhising was killed in horrible fashion by pedophiles,

By homosexual practitioners performing their chosen lifestyle.

You'd think there would be a lot fewer gay men if their "chosen lifestyle" involved regular murder of their lover?

but his sexual  orientation was not the reason for his murder.

He was male. And was murdered by two male homosexual practitioners. That he was male is the very reason they attacked Jessie. So, Jessie's "sexual orientation" AND theirs was most certainly the reason the murderers attacked him.

Well no, that's exactly backwards. Straight men rape women, gay men rape men. The sexual orientation of the victim is irrelevant, unless you think no man has or would ever rape a lesbian.

Unless you are claiming the 2 men who killed Jessie Dirkhising did so because he was straight, it's just a horrible case of child abuse.

It was a horrible case of rape murder by homosexual practitioners. Your use of more polite, "politically correct" terms (more than likely just like you have been taught) does not reduce the horror of it.

Honestly, how often do you hear the media say "rape murder" when they're discussing this sort of thing, in any case, gay or not? He makes it sound like I'm trying to minimize the circumstances, and in his gay-obsessed mind, I probably was.  Although I must admit, it's not often I'm accused of being politically-correct, given the sorts of topics I generally blog about in these parts.

The 2 cases have  nothing in common, other than that both are horrible murders of people who did nothing to deserve to die.

Yes, they do. And I have explained that to you above.

The media coverage of Matthew Shephard's murder was largely based on the motive, not the details.

The fabricated motive. The fabricated motive of murder because of sexual orientation.

That the murder was reported as a hate crime added to the media interest, but it certainly wasn't the only reason it made the news. As I say below, there are thousands of brutal sexual murders a year. Only a very few of the cases make it into the major media, and only those with extenuating circumstances to grab viewer attention. I think the media are scum-suckers too, but it's just childishly-ignorant to put much more into their motives than ratings-hunger. 

There are dozens of much more graphic and brutal and cruel murders every week that don't make the news at all.

And the homosexual rape murder of 14 year old Jessie, murdered *because* of the sexual orientation of the murderers AND the victim, did get any mainstream media coverage at all. And I can't think of many more graphic murders that being sodomized, orally raped (with that which just had been used in sodomizing the youth) then murdered by being choked with his own underwear soaked in gasoline.

Even worse, there are thousands (hundreds?) of sexual abuse murders every year in the US, and I'm not even counting what allegedly happens in prisons. Women are raped and murdered by heterosexual men every day,

That is not a homosexual act. Dirkhising's murder was. Shephard's was not. He was not sexually violated in any way. "Sexual" had nothing to do with Shephard's murder. It was street punks doing what street punks do. Someone alone in the same place at the same time who were maybe wearing a color the punks did not like or a shirt they did not like or had a haircut they did not like would probably have been murdered.

I addressed this issue in my reply to him, but what he's saying here is simply wrong.

Even if he were correct, what would be the relevance? Unless CAP guy is saying that every case of gay-bashing ever was fabricated, the fact that this one case might not have been 100% homosexual-motivated is irrelevant; thousands of others are, and most of those get far less media attention.

childen are molested and killed by their own heterosexual parents, whores are beaten to death by heterosexual Johns, and so on.

And none of these excuse the rape murder of a straight youth by two male homosexual practitioners. And the sins of the perpetrators in your descriptive do not excuse the sins of the murderers of Jessie.

As I said several times in my mail, both Matthew's and Jesse's murders were horrible things done by horrible people. He's the one saying they're different, and making excuses for Matthew's killers by calling them street punks and acting as though they were only out to rob and would have killed anyone, when their own courtroom testimony contradicts that theory.

This is the problem when you try to have a debate with someone motivated entirely by ideology. They've only got one trick in their pony, and they have to go back to it every other paragraph. 

Common sense tells us that the vast majority of these crimes are perpetrated by hetrosexuals on other heterosexuals.

That is simply because the homosexual practitioner population is only about 3% at most of the entire population. Indeed, homosexual relationships are *notorious* for being violent beyond the per capita ratio. Brutally so. Your argument is futile.

My point was that there are tons of such cases every year, and that the vast majority of them don't make it into the national news. Jesse's murder wasn't underreported out of some sort of conspiracy; it was just another gruesome homicide that slipped through the cracks.  He never says anything to refute that; he just changes the subject to talking again about how horrible gays are. Remember what I said about a one-trick pony?

Obviously  some percentage of them are by gays on gays, or by gays on straights, but unless you've got some statistics that show gays perpetrate sexual assaults disproportionate to their percentage of the population (and I find that extremely unlikely,

You've been wrong before. And are now. It is raw statistics that reveal the disproportionately violent nature of homosexual relationships.

given how many straight men feel they can force themselves upon a woman or beat/kill their wife/girlfriend if she gets out of line), then your argument is entirely without merit.

Disproportionate!? Let me share with you some real "disproportionate."

Dr. Judith Reisman, a social researcher who has studied sexual behavior for 24 years, released a new study called Crafting Gay Children which revealed that while heterosexuals outnumber they who chose to practice homosexuality about 44 to 1, the incidence of homosexual practitioners molesting children is up to 40 times greater than heterosexuals. Taking figures from a 1991 population study by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Reisman looks at heterosexual abuse of girls by men and homosexual abuse of boys by men. Taking into account the numbers of homosexual practitioners and the numbers of heterosexuals in the population, the data showed that 8 million girls were abused by age 18 by heterosexual men, a ratio of 1 victim to 11 adult men. However, 6-8 million boys were abused by age 18 by 1-2 million adult homosexual practitioners, a ratio of 3-5 victims for every adult male homosexual practitioner: 0.091 victim per heterosexual adult to 3 to 5 victims per adult homosexual practitioner.

Read some more about the notorious Dr. Judith Reisman here, see her work rebutted here, or just do a Google on her name if you want to see more, though you'll have to scroll down a long way to find any mention of her that's not from a right wing website eager to repeat her "research" conclusions. She's one of those anti-gay pro-abstinence puritans who blame every evil of modern society on loosened moral codes. So what do you expect her "studies" to demonstrate?

Her main claim to fame is from spreading ridiculous lies about Dr. Kinsey's early sex research, and she claims that he paid pedophiles to rape children in order to get more information for his surveys. As you can imagine, the Kinsey institute vociferously denies this claim, and most everything else she says. Here's a quick quote from their official response to her various accusations.

Kinsey was not a pedophile in any shape or form. He did not carry out experiments on children; he did not hire, collaborate, or persuade people to carry out experiments on children. He did not falsify research findings and there is absolutely no evidence that his research "opened flood gates for the sexual abuse of children". Kinsey did talk to thousands of people about their sex lives, and some of the behaviors that they disclosed, including abuse of children, were illegal. In fact, many sexual behaviors, even those some between married adults, were illegal in the 1940's and 1950's. Without confidentiality, it would have been impossible to investigate the very private lives of Americans then, and even now.

Continuing with the CAP email:

And there is no "kind" way to put this ... pedophilia appears to be inherent with the homosexual lifestyle. The existence of the North American Man-boy Love Association (NAMBLA) is proof of it. It must be clearly noted that the report does NOT say every adult homosexual practitioner engages in child sexual abuse. Many have told me they could not even consider such abuse. But if only half of the folks who are adult homosexual practitioners engage in such abuse, that would mean the 3 to 5 victims per adult homosexual practitioner who chooses to sexually abuse children would actually be from 6 to 10 victims. And if only one fourth choose to abuse children, the number of victims rises to 12 to 20 per victimizer. If two plus two equals four...

I hope you are getting the true picture.

So the incredibly-fringe, universally-reviled NAMBLA is representative of the millions of gay men who hate everything about it and would never consider molesting a child? Does that mean we're free to assume the CAP Alerts guy is an insanely-racist murdering neo-nazi since various right wing Christian groups are? Does that mean every heterosexual man wants to rape 8 year old girls since there are sex tour packages available online that fly men to Cambodia and other such countries for just that purpose?

Yes, more of those tricky analogies.

And yes, he really did say that not "every" gay male is a pedophile, and he really did estimate that just 50% of them are. You read that right. He honestly thinks that at least 50% of gay men are active pedophiles. Let that sink in for a minute. He's nuts. He really is mentally ill. I can't deny it any longer.

 

If a feminist site quoted every case of a man raping and murdering a woman as evidence that heterosexuality was evil and should be outlawed and that men should be chemically castrated, how much credence would you give that argument?

A male raping a female, though a crime worthy of hanging in my opinion, is not a homosexual act. You are trying to minimize my argument (and it is not working) by introducing non tangent elements - trying to compare apples to oranges.

No, actually it's called an analogy. He says all gay men are pedophiles, and my comparison was what if women said all men were rapists since some men were. It seems like a pretty one to one comparison to me, intended to point out the absurdity of his conclusion.

You can certainly argue that the media paid too much attention to the Matthew Shephard case, and that this demonstrates that they have a bias of some sort, but give up trying to use Dirkhising as a corollary, since that comparison  simply doesn't fly.

It does. And it lands, too. And can take off again .......

It's as inaccurate

That you say it is inaccurate does not make it so.

as someone arguing religion is evil since it drives so many priests to molest children.

Which, by the way, is a homosexual act. And it is not religion that drives errant priests to homosexual abuse. It is homosexuality that does.

Man, everything goes back to gayness for him, doesn't it?  Can you read this whole email without starting to wonder about him? I mean can a guy see, think, and fear GAYGAYGAYGAY 24 hours a day without having some sexual issues of his own?  I haven't given homosexuality this much thought in my adult life, and I live in San Francisco! (Well, near it, anyway.)

I don't expect you'll give up one of your prized arguments just because it doesn't make any sense,

If they did not make any sense, I would "give [them] up." But they make a great deal of sense ... except to you.

but  I'd certainly be impressed by your intellectual honesty (no matter how many other things I disagree with you about) if you were able to reconsider this issue.

My intellectual honesty in not in question just because you think it substandard.

Eric

PS, I'm not gay, I've never engaged in any homosexual activity, I'm living with a woman I love and though we're committing one of the sins you never fail to  point out in a film (cohabitation), I can assure you that I'm not making this email argument out of some inner gayness.

It certainly is in defense of the practice of homosexuality.

Actually, here he's really wrong. Find a single word in my entire email that defends homosexuality. Go ahead, I'll wait. I never said one word about gayness being good or bad, I simply pointed out the flaws in his illogical argument. He chose to take my email, which was entirely neutral about homosexuality, as a defense of it, just because I pointed out that his attempted anti-gay argument was bullshit.

He sure does love his one-trick pony, doesn't he? 

I've never mailed you about the countless other things you say that I disagree with since I respect your opinions on those matters, no matter how much I disagree with them and your basis for them.

You people keep giving me credit for "opinions." When it comes to sin, I have no authorship to the rules. That I say a behavior is sin doesn't make it so. But what God says does. So stop giving me credit for that which is not even my "opinion."

"You people?"  I wasn't aware I was in any sort of group. And I also find his "it's not my opinion, I'm just doing God's will" to be an incredibly gutless argument.

God's not writing your website, CAP Guy. You are. Take responsibility for your own opinions and comments; don't try to hide behind Baby Jesus.

The Dirkhising = Shephard = gay media conspiracy thing 

It was not a conspiracy. It was a maneuver by the homosexual protagonists to manipulate their agenda into wider exposure/visibility.

So it was a secret maneuver by these secretive gays pulling their strings. But that's not a conspiracy? 

though,  is, I think, factual, and so obviously a specious argument that I was moved to comment on it. 

You are entitled to your opinion.

The thing that annoys me most about his email is the whole cowardly, "It's not my opinion, it's God's opinion." As if that makes him seem humble and obedient, while simultaneously absolving him of all blame for anything he'll ever do, no matter how shit-headed. After all, he found some biblical verse somewhere that could possibly be interpreted as backing up whatever he wanted to do in the first place. You realize, of course, that this "I was just following orders" excuse, whether the orders were divine or human, has been used to justify most every war and atrocity in human history, and that every army in human history, attacking or defending, has been 100% sure that the God or Gods were on their side. Not to mention every sports team, debate club, tennis player, etc.

My reply to his reply is here, and yes, I tried to avoid going into very much detail, since I didn't want him to be able to so easily duck the issue again.  I doubt I succeeded, at least partially since I wrote this in a hurry before leaving for martial arts class Thursday night. As I found out in my 3rd mail to him, it wouldn't have mattered. No matter how short and to the point an email is, he'll find a way to avoid dealing with issues he doesn't want to deal with.

Good evening. 

Thanks for taking the time to reply in such depth. Unfortunately, I still don't see that you've addressed the core issues of my email, which were perhaps not stated clearly-enough.

My point was simply this: You can't compare a hate crime (murder of Matthew Shepard) to a case of pedophile murder/child abuse (murder of Jesse Dirkhising) in a direct fashion. They're both horrible crimes committed by horrible people, but that's where the parallels end.

Your response seems to be:

1) Most (50% was your "at least" figure) homosexuals are pedophiles and the media should pay far more attention to this, especially when an especially horrible crime such as Dirkhising's demonstrates it.

2) Matthew Shepard wasn't a hate crime anyway, since his murders were "street punks" and they would probably have beaten and left to die anyone in that situation and the media shouldn't have paid so much attention to his death.

3) Homosexuality is a horrible thing and we know this because the Bible says so.


#1. Are you serious? You honestly believe that as many as 50% of all homosexual (Men? What about lesbians?) are pedophiles? Do you mean that in terms of a gay 25 year old thinking a 17 y/o guy is hot, and since virtually every heterosexual man alive does that when he sees an attractive teenaged girl, it's not much of an argument. Or do you mean that 50% of the gay men out there, no matter their jobs, personalities, criminal records, etc are potentially going to snatch up and sodomize any 12 y/o they can get alone with? That's just comically ridiculous.

#2. The 2 guys who killed Matthew Shepard were petty criminals, and certainly losers, but they had no serious crimes on their records. They were in the bar that night, drinking for hours, and only started talking to Shepard when they didn't have enough money to cover their bill and used him to pay it, from the news reports I've read. Does that sound like the behavior of coolly calculating criminals?

No one's arguing that Shepard's murderers went in there specifically to pick up a gay man and rob him and beat him to death; neither man had any more history of gay bashing than you'd expect from typically homophobic hick-state rednecks. But they obviously used his gayness against him to get him to pay their bar tab and leave with them, and most damning of all, they tried to use the "gay panic" defense in their trial, saying that he came onto them and they freaked out and killed him because of that. Isn't that basically an admission that it was a "hate crime?" It's not as bad as neo-nazi skinheads grabbing random guys in the street and stomping them, but by their own admission, in their court defense, the 2 guys who killed Shepard did so because he was gay.


#3. I'm not going to go into detail about this one, since it's way out of the scope of this email, and nothing anyone ever says to discredit or point out the contradictions in the bible would change your mind on that front anyway. I do have 2 comments though:

Just out of curiosity, and this is obviously hypothetical -- if scholars unearthed and translated a new hunk of the dead sea scrolls that were obviously written at the same time and by the same people who wrote what's in the bible today (leaving aside the numerous translations of the old scrolls, editing over time, deletion of much of it, etc) and the new scrolls said clearly and unequivocally that homosexuality was okay and not a sin and Yahweh was fine with it... would you change your opinion on homosexuality?

Secondly, you realize that virtually everything bad in the history of Western civilization has been defended by the powers that be with biblical citations? Slavery, anti-Semitism, genocide against the native peoples, witch-burning, the inquisition, innumerable religious wars, the crusades, and on and on? Just taking recent American history; slavery was defended with biblical citations, as was the denial of equal rights for non-whites and women.

This is an old argument, and yes, it's possible to find biblical scriptures to back up almost anything, but is the aforementioned company, all on the wrong side of history, really a group you want to place yourself in?

Eric

PS, and FYI, where do you get the "underwear soaked with gasoline" part about Jesse's death? Is that just an intentional lie to make it all seem even more barbaric and awful, or an honest mistake on your part? I hunted up a few articles on the case last night, and none of them say anything about that. This page has a huge compilation of news coverage of the case, and the word "gasoline" appears nowhere on it. Every news article I've seen says they drugged him with amitriptyline, which is apparently a strong sedative and the overdose of that was a contributing factor to his death. Even if you stick to the equivalency between the cases, you should at least remove this obvious factual error from your comments, since it only serves to discredit your argument.

I will give him credit for something though; he realizes that I'm toying with him. He's lost in his mania, but he is aware enough to tell when someone (me in this case) is engaging him in argument without any personal involvement. I think he's used to mails like the one I posted from a reader in the February 2003 mailbag, where people get so incensed by his particular brand of holier than thou Christianity that they just curse him and yell at him. I did nothing of the sort in my mail, since I see him as a sort of science project, and an intellectual exercise. His opinions are entirely meaningless to me, (As, I suspect, mine are to him.) so I'm able to argue against him from a scientific point of view without getting upset or angry or passionate at all. And when I don't rise to his outrageous comment bait he doesn't get the satisfaction of seeing another sinning pro-gay atheist (as he likely sees most of the world) lose his cool when faced with Biblical-based arguments. And so he tells me never to email him again and that he won't read it if I do.

I'm actually glad he said that, since I got sick of this whole exercise about an email and a half ago and it's nice to have an excuse to stop.  I never would have mailed him at all if not for this blog, since I knew I could post it here as a day's update, and once he replied once I only carried on through a second mail to see what he'd do when I ignored his misdirection arguments.  Not that my arguments were perfect (I should have proofread and gotten my wording and logic tighter.) but I was curious to see if he could keep on track even when it meant making painfully weak arguments and basically admitting that everyone else who interpreted the bible was wrong, while he was right.

And as you'll see, he sure did.  As I did before, my email comments are double indented, his Fisking replies are single intended, and my current comments are in black with no indentation.

Thanks for taking the time to reply in such depth. Unfortunately, I still don't see that you've addressed the core issues of my email, which were perhaps not stated clearly-enough.

Your core issues were addressed perfectly. That you did not like the replies does not make them erroneous.

My point was simply this:

Your point was clear. Trying to modify or amend it now is nothing short of Delphi manipulation.

Then why did you do nothing but go off topic with rants about homosexual pedophiles and avoid my actual questions?

You can't compare a hate crime (murder of Matthew Shepard) to a case of pedophile murder/child abuse (murder of Jesse Dirkhising) in a direct fashion. They're both horrible crimes committed by horrible people, but that's where the parallels end.

Jessie's murder was also a hate crime, son. What you said is like trying to deny comparison because Jessie was 14 and Matthew was adult.

From these two emails, it's clear that one of his diversionary tactics is to deny that there is any such thing as a "hate crime" by expanding the definition so widely as to make it meaningless. He's not an idiot, so he surely knows that "hate crimes" are actual things, and as our legal system defines them, they are crimes motivated by bigotry of one kind or another. More on this in a bit. I'm not defending the definition of "hate crimes" or attacking them as bullshit of the "thought police" or anything like that. I'm simply using the term as it's used in debate. He's refusing to do that, in order to try and obscure the issue.

Your response seems to be:

1) Most (50% was your at least figure)

I am not of the ones who choose to practice homosexual pedophilia. So it is not "my" figure. And that you say I said 50% of homosexual practitioners are pedophiles makes you one of those who would reword a failing argument just to try to capture argumentative superiority, the truth notwithstanding.

Well actually yes it is "your figure," since you slapped into an email without attribution.

homosexuals are pedophiles and the media should pay far more attention to this, especially when an especially horrible crime such as Dirkhising's demonstrates it.

The media should pay accurate attention to the "other side of the fence" and not ignore it because it may shame someone who chooses to practice a hate crime. The mainstream media certainly ripped the heterosexual perpetrators of Shepherd's murder apart, but even mention of Jessie's murder by two homosexual practitioners was rarely mentioned.

Note his regular grammatical errors or wording mistakes. Saying "mention" twice here, for instance. I wouldn't consider pointing this out, since after all, this is email and I'm not running a grammar site.  You'll see why I mention this shortly.

2) Matthew Shepard wasn't a hate crime anyway,

Yes, it was. ALL contemplated murders are hate crimes. That the victim is a homosexual practitioner makes him no more special than a victim who is not.

Here's his, "there are no hate crimes/all crimes are hate crimes" argument, which is fine for an opinion, but he's clearly doing it here just to avoid the issue, when there are clearly-stated legal definitions of "hate crime" in the US, and quite often there are heavier punishments for such crimes. Since gay bashing is quite often prosecuted as a hate crime, it's clear why he wants to pretend hate crimes don't exist.

I only brought up "hate crimes" in the first place since as I said in the first email, the media always pays more attention to crimes that have those sorts of extenuating circumstances. Remember that black guy who was dragged to death behind a pickup a few years ago in Texas? Remember that the drivers were three white guys?  How much media coverage do you think that would have gotten if all the people involved had been of the same race?

Again, I'm not making a value judgment with this, I'm just bringing it up as an example of the disproportionately heavy coverage hate crimes receive by the media, which was part of my initial argument to Mr. CAP Alerts. He obviously doesn't want to address that argument, which is why he's just ignoring it and trying to confuse the definition of a "hate crime" in order to further his misdirection.

since his murders were "street punks" and they would probably have beaten and left to die anyone in that situation and the media shouldn't have paid so much attention to his death.

They should not have given it (to use your word) disproportionate favor *because* he was a homosexual practitioner.

3) Homosexuality is a horrible thing

Practicing homosexuality is a sin. So are some of my own behaviors. And so are some of yours.

So is working on Sundays and eating swine and wearing certain types of mixed textile clothing. The bible is full of ancient moral codes; a large part of being an intelligent adult is deciding which parts of those ancient writings you're going to pay attention to.

and we know this because the Bible says so.

It's infinitely better and more reliable than "the news media says so."

Yes, after all, verifiable facts simply get in the way of pre-conceived notions based on ancient literature.

#1. Are you serious? You honestly believe that as many as 50% of all homosexual (men? what about lesbians?) are pedophiles?

No. I believe the facts that reveal the adult male homosexual practitioner is as much as 40 times more likely to commit child sexual abuse with a boy than a male heterosexual practitioner is likely to commit child sexual abuse with a girl.

Do you mean that in terms of a gay 25 year old thinking a 17 y/o guy is hot, and since virtually every heterosexual man alive does that when he sees an attractive teenaged girl, 

I mean what I said. And the lust heterosexual men express when oogling at teenage girls does not excuse the practice of homosexuality. One sin does not give authority to another.

Note this one? He's acting as if I'm trying to excuse one thing by saying something else is not as bad. I didn't say that, I just included that as an example while trying to get clarification of his point. (You'll see him doing exactly what he accuses me of shortly.) 

it's not much of an argument.

I just shot down your "It's not much of an argument." And that you feel it is not much of an argument does not make it so. "It's not much of an argument" more sounds like grasping to recover a failing argument.

Or do you mean that 50% of the gay men out there, no matter their jobs, personalities, criminal records, etc are potentially going to snatch up and sodomize any 12 y/o they can get alone with? That's just comically ridiculous.

Why don't you ask the North America Man-boy Love Association these questions.

Because that organization doesn't exist in any real sense, other than as a bogey-man for right wing Christians such as Mr. CAP Alerts and a thing for antisocial gay men to claim they sympathize with just to get a rise out of people. Besides, this is another attempted diversion. I'm questioning Mr. CAP Alerts' statement to see if he's serious. I somehow doubt a representative of NAMBLA, if one could be located, would have much of an informed opinion on that matter.

#2. The 2 guys who killed Matthew Shepard were petty criminals, and certainly losers, but they had no serious crimes on their records. They were in the bar that night, drinking for hours, and only started talking to Shepard when they didn't have enough money to cover their bill and used him to pay it, from the news reports I've read. Does that sound like the behavior of coolly

"Coldly."

I was puzzled by his comment here, until it became clear in a moment. He's playing Mr. Grammar Police!

calculating criminals?

Yes.

Since all thieves/murders like to be seen in a public place, for hours, in the location of their intended victim, and allow numerous witnesses to see them leave with him.  Right? On the bright side, we don't have to worry about Mr. CAP Alerts getting away with murder when he eventually snaps, if this is any indication of his criminal acumen. 

No one's arguing that Shepard's murderers went in there specifically to pick up a gay man and rob him and beat him to death;

Premeditation is not the only parameter of a hate crime.

neither man had any more history of gay bashing than you'd expect from typically homophobic hick-state rednecks. 

Neither is one's criminal history the only defining element of a hate crime.

Ahh, and suddenly there are hate crimes!  When it suits his purpose, at least.

But they obviously used his gayness against him to get him to pay their bar tab and leave with them, and most damning of all, they tried to use the "gay panic" defense in their trial, saying that he came onto them and they freaked out and killed him because of that. Isn't that basically an admission that it was a "hate crime?"

Yes. I am not arguing that Shephard's murder was not a hate crime. But so was Jessie's.

It's not as bad as neo-nazi skinheads grabbing random guys in the street and stomping them,

Oh? That sounds quite hateful to me.

Yes, I'm saying the 2nd crime would be more hateful than the 1st. He's confused a bit.

but by their own admission, in their court defense, the 2 guys who killed Shepard did so because he was gay.

And if asked now would they still say the same? If that is true, I did not know that. And, if true, I must change my understanding of the incident. But that does not steal thunder away form the homosexual hate murder of Jessie.

And the jail house recanting of convicted murders is to be trusted because...? Also, God forbid CAP Guy spends 5 minutes reading up on the actual court case he's so often quoting as an example of those horrible pedophile homosexuals. Those pesky facts again. 

 

#3. I'm not going to go into detail about this one, since it's way out of the scope of this email, and nothing anyone ever says to discredit or point out the contradictions in the bible

No one could. People have been trying for a very long time.

would change your mind on that front anyway.

Our inability to grasp the meaning of something in the Bible is not a revelation that the Bible is unclear, contradictory or inconsistent but is a matter of our perception of it. In other words, there is nothing unclear about what God tells us. But since some of His statements do not fit some of our expectations, we attempt to make His Word suit our understanding, which distorts our perception of the Truth. Indeed, thinking the Bible contradicts itself is very convenient for those looking for freedom from accountability. 

Just as his reply is a very convenient way to dodge paying attention to the thousands of obvious errors and contradictions in the Bible. 

 

I do have 2 comments though:

Just out of curiosity, and this is obviously hypothetical -- if scholars unearthed and translated a new hunk of the dead sea scrolls that were obviously written at the same time and by the same people who wrote what's in the bible today (leaving aside the numerous translations of the old scrolls, editing over time, deletion of much of it, etc) and the new scrolls said clearly and unequivocally that homosexuality was okay and not a sin and Yahweh was fine with it... would you change your opinion on homosexuality?

I do not play Delphi games. And I could ask you whether you would accept that the practice of homosexuality was indeed sinful if those same scroll fragments repeated that the practice of homosexuality is sinful.

I'd be happy to answer that question. Since I base nothing in my belief system and morality on what any of the various, millennium-old " holy" books say, such a discovery would have no impact on me whatsoever.

Secondly,

"Second." Saying "secondly" is like saying "nextly." The next subject is a noun now an adjective.

you 

"Do you."

Yes, he's really trying to critique my email grammar here. Twice. The fact that he's wrong in both cases is irrelevant. It's just a sign of how desperately he's trying to restore his happy superior feeling, I guess. If I'm ever in an email argument and find myself resorting to spell-checking and typo-counting, feel free to just tell me straight out that I've lost. I'll try to take it like a man.

 

realize that virtually everything bad in the history of Western civilization has been defended by the powers that be with biblical citations?

No. 

Slavery, anti-Semitism, genocide against the native peoples, witch-burning, the inquisition, innumerable religious wars, the crusades, and on and on?

...are all the result of our freedom of choice. Men did those things. Men who thought they could manipulate His Word into self-serving madness to fill their own bellies. Not God's will. Don't try to blame the evils we ourselves create on God's Word. That is shallow and reflective of closed minded thinking: closed minded in favor of excusing one's self from any manner of authority.

This is my favorite part. Everyone else is wrong in how they use the Bible. Centuries of Christian scholars and religious leaders; all misguided or incorrect or their interpretations. Only Mr. CAP Alerts, in his nearly-infinite wisdom, can correctly apply the nearly-infinitely contradictory Biblical verses with accuracy.

 

Just taking recent American history; slavery was defended with biblical citations, as was the denial of equal rights for non-whites and women.

Again, the result of man's attempts to make the Bible say what he wants it to say.

This is an old argument, and yes, it's possible to find biblical scriptures to back up almost anything,

Only if it is the truth. And apparently you have done too little or too one-sided research about Christians being killed just for being Christian:

Wait, I just said that people have used the bible to excuse and justify innumerable hateful and horrible things, and he said they were all wrong. But then, a paragraph later, he says that biblical scriptures can only be used to back up the truth.  Um... could we keep the complete contradictions in your logic more than once sentence apart, sir?

April 27, 2003: In the twentieth century, Communists persecuted Christians horribly. During the height of Communism, an average of 330,000 Christians were killed every year (Foxe's Book of Martyrs, op. cit., p. 326). Although there are still a few Communist countries, like Cuba and China, where Christians are persecuted and tortured, it is Muslim countries that are responsible for killing the most Christians today. Between 155,000 and 159,000 Christians are currently being killed throughout the world each year - simply for being Christians (ibid.).

Remember earlier when he tried to say I was excusing pedophilia by mentioning heterosexual underaged lust? He's doing the exact same thing here; dodging the "Christians kill while saying the bible tells them to do it" issue by bringing up off- topic "other religions kill Christians too" arguments.

I said nothing about Christians being the biggest persecutors, (though I think historically it could be proven) or Christianity being an evil religion, or no one ever doing anything good based on what they thought the Bible was telling them, or anything like that. He's not real good at addressing my actual arguments, since it's much more fun to just go off topic with his pre-rehearsed arguments.

To address his argument anyway, Muslims, Hindus, and Zoroastrians could be killing 5,000,000 Christians a year on live television and it still wouldn't have anything to do with my comment about a long historical precedent of Christians in positions of power using biblical quotations to self justify their evil acts and repression, racism, sexism, and homophobia. It also doesn't mean modern day Christians are doing the same thing, though I certainly think they are when it comes to gay issues and abortion, but the fact that Mr. CAP Alerts doesn't even bother trying to address this pretty much concedes the argument to me, eh?

As for those outrageous numbers of dead Christians, they've been completely debunked, though to pull a CAP Alerts, I'm not going to go dig up the URLs I read about them. As best I recall, they're basically counting every single dead Christian in areas where there was any sort of ethnic cleansing or religious warfare, and every single person killed by any group who ever killed a single Christian.  Over-counting in every way possible, in other words.

Just do a web search on "Christians killed" and you will get a perspective of the issue of more Christians being killed by non-Christians than non-Christians killed by Christians. About the "religious wars", I am in one right now, fighting the father of lies and his apparent hold on you.

but is the aforementioned company, all on the wrong side of history, 

Where they placed themselves.

So again, in case you missed it the first time; everyone else in history who interpreted the bible to back up their acts was wrong, if their acts disagree with Mr. CAP Alerts' modern sensibilities. No matter that in their time they had 100% agreement among the Christians, complete approval of religious leaders, etc. Quoth Mr. CAP Alerts, "I'm right, everyone else, even devout Christians, is wrong."

Must be nice to live in that sort of a cocoon, eh?

really a group you want to place yourself in?

I am not placing myself in any such "company." I have not killed any witches. I don't have any slaves. I am not fighting in defense of my property and family against those who would steal them such as when the Christians fought back against such oppression in Crusades (I'll bet you didn't know that). Indeed, you sound as one of them who would put me there just to fortify your claims. A typical technique of they who do not have an argumentative leg on which to stand.

His first comment is just foolish; I'm obviously not saying he's literally doing those things; I'm pointing out that others used the bible exactly as he's doing, to defend practices we find abhorrent today.

Secondly, by putting me into a group I don't belong in, he's showing evidence of me doing that to him?

Eric

PS, and FYI, where do you get the "underwear soaked with gasoline" part about Jesse's death? 

From a source not a puppet of political correctness. I haven't the time to look it up just to feed this petty spitting contest.

Again, God forbid he gets his facts straight before repeatedly spouting them on his website. More on his insane logic below. And if there's any spitting going on, it's by him, as he Fisks my email up into half-sentence blocks in order to nitpick every little point, while avoiding taking on any of the larger issues.

Is that just an intentional lie to make it all seem even more barbaric and awful, or an honest mistake on your part?

Neither.

I hunted up a few articles on the case last night, and none of them say anything about that.

Typical of the mainstream media to minimize heinous crimes committed by their favored ones.

Calling his reasoning "logic" is a bit of a stretch, but just consider: There are hundreds of news articles online about the Jesse murder, most of which list the full catalogue of torments those two pedophiles inflicted upon the kid, the tools they used, how long it took, etc. Yet Mr. CAP Alert's logic is that they list all of that, but sneakily-suppress the bit about the gasoline-soaked underwear... for what reason exactly? Like it's okay that they raped and drugged and suffocated the kid, just so long as they didn't use gasoline also?

This page has a huge compilation of news coverage of the case, and the word "gasoline" appears nowhere on it. 

Then it is not likely "true-words."

He's just embarrassing himself here, playing a game with the name of the site that compiled the articles. Look for yourself; just at the top of the page I see long quoted stories from FOX News, CBS, The Seattle Times, and dozens from the local Bentonville, Arkansas newspaper. That's quite a conspiracy to keep the "gasoline" part out of the story, while reporting everything thing else.

And you thought CAP Guy was only right and everyone else was wrong when it came to interpreting the Bible?

Every news article I've seen says they drugged him with amitriptyline, which is apparently a strong sedative and the overdose of that was a contributing factor to his death. Even if you stick to the equivalency between the cases,

The equivalency of the cases being real makes "sticking" to the equivalency of the cases not an option.

you should at least remove this obvious factual error

...in your opinion.

Well no, there really aren't a lot of opinions about factual errors. They're wrong or they're not wrong. He's wrong, he cites no sources for his misinformation other than his own obviously failing memory, and he refuses to spend two minutes of online research time to educate himself.

Now tragically enough, there was another much-publicized pedophile murder of a young boy, and in that case the killers did use a gasoline-soaked rag to kill him. It seems likely that Mr. CAP Alerts read about that one and transposed it with the Jesse Dirkhising murder. I typed "gasoline matthew shepard" into google and immediately found a link to an article in much the same vein at Mr. CAP Alert's comments.  The fact that he's either too stupid or too lazy to do that himself (but can take the hour+ he spent nit picking over my emails) should tell you something about him. I'm not sure what it tells, but something, at any rate.

from your comments, since it only serves to discredit your argument.

Then don't listen to it. I am not going to listen to any more of yours. Indeed, I will see your email in our inbox no more. I do so abhor these spitting contests. They are such time-wasters. You go right ahead and believe what you want to believe and I will do the same.

Actually, by all evidence he dearly loves these spitting contests, since he's the one doing all the spitting. I have tried hard to stick to major points, theological and historical and have tried to cite facts and mainstream news articles and other things when I offered opinion. He does nothing of the kind; his only stats are from idealogically-inclined right wing sources of very questionable-authority, his opinions are his own or derived from his interpretation of the "most interpreted" and "most differed about in interpretation" book in human history, and his email responses are "spitting contests" defined, in which he breaks my comments up into as few words as possible so he can nitpick, rather than honestly discussing the larger points I'm trying to get him to face.

Of course he replied. From looking at the length of this, you'd think I wrote him a novel... but look at my initial mail. It's two paragraphs, with a short introduction paragraph and a couple of single lines. It's really amazing how he can stretch things out with his niggling little comments every 10 words. We could have enjoyed a far better email discussion if he'd stuck to the topic and answered in complete thoughts, rather than dicing my mails up into such tiny chunks. But since he didn't want to have an honest conversation on the issues... he did all he could to avoid having it.

As before, my mail is purple double-indented, his is purple single-indented, and my blog comments are in black and not intended.