Come on! How are we supposed to have an intelligent conversation about this when sensationalized propaganda garbage like this is posted? This is no better than showing a segment from the "700 Club" and making some sort of Christian zealot point. It's all emotion, there's no rational argument here. We aren't given any circumstance other than the supposed wrongs that have been committed to this family. Is the fact that the woman's parents were murdered really relevant? Do we really need to see the boys playing tennis and smiling? Why did people break into their house? What happened? What were the terms of her threat of deportation? This video leaves so much important information out and gives us an ideal family, victimized by some faceless, oppressive government. It's not so cut and dry people. Linking LGBT issues with race relations is already stretching it quite a bit. This movie just throws in another complex issue, immigration, into the mix. We can't just pile on all these mostly unrelated issues and expect to solve anything. It's like saying that my father was a lefty who grew up going to Catholic school. He was discriminated against too, can we have a class about lefties? Is this class about "RACE Relations" or about people who get discriminated against?

I am for gay marriage, equal rights and what have you. I am against the dissemination of propaganda posing as informative media, just to stir up comments...especially in the context of a pedagogical setting like this.

Yay! Someone challenging Professor Richards for a change. Let me continue the process:

hy-poc-ri-sy -- the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform

The key word here is "beliefs". Religion is a series of these subjective ideas and throughout time they have never been black and white. Someone can very well be religious, but still be homosexual. One does not need to take an outdated book literally to be devout. A religious text is open for interpretation, just as the "XXX Bible" post shows us. I don't think you're a hypocrite if you behave in a way that is forbidden by some words that you think lost their meaning, if they ever had any. In today's class, Sam's particular way of framing the religious perspective on LGBT did not leave room for this exception. Like the guy in the video said, it definitely felt like "it's broke, let's keep breaking it". It left out the possibility of something new, not to mention the acceptance of all the practicing religious LGBT's. Two of the gay men I know are devout Catholics, one of whom was even in the seminary for a time. They can look past some quotes in the Bible and not be hypocritical.

Too much weight is put on these passages. We live in a secular society and in it we seek increasing civil rights. We pride ourselves with freedom of religion, but when it comes to the way some people live their lives we force our religion on them. Where's the freedom in that?

There needs to be room for synthesis. Synthesis of human rights, universal ethics, with existing spirituality...even if that requires alternate interpretations of some old words.

This reminds me of Quantum mechanics and the idea that things change when observed. We try to categorize everything, justify it with science, connect it with “wisdom”, but our interference with it may only help its extinction (whether we’re speaking of a species or a language). Throughout history it seems like our curiosity, however well intentioned it may have been, was harmful in the end. These are broad and sweeping statements indeed, but I don’t think they’re too far fetched. Science always needs to justify itself. Are the answers that it seeks worth the exposure of fragile specimens (again, species and/or languages)?

Certainly, there is value in languages though. Talk to a Spanish major, have them try to translate a Spanish poem to you and, if they are true to the language they study, they will find it difficult to completely do. There will be words, phrases even, that will not come across the language divide. English will lack the words to accurately purvey the author’s art as they intended. This example shows the uniqueness, diversity and richness of two well-studied languages. As the BBC article implies, there is plenty more to be lost than art; especially when considering lesser-studied, endangered ones. Languages encapsulate knowledge of their native environment. We see this in our own States and regions with dialects, let alone between completely different cultures. On the flipside though, we need to ask ourselves if that knowledge wouldn’t eventually be grasped without speaking that endangered language. Wouldn’t we eventually figure those things out? This of course is only the lesser of two arguments for preserving them. The main argument is to hold on to a culture: to preserve diversity.

It’s odd though. Simultaneously we have movements promoting equality (i.e. RRP) all the while people preach about preserving diversity. We’re all the same aren’t? We all need to eat regardless of what language you say you’re hungry in. Losing these endangered languages is the result of an ever-homogenizing global society. Is it sad that all these ways of living are being lost? Absolutely. But I think letting them slip away is better than trying to force people to recognize them. To be perfectly cynical, the machine is rolling far too strong them to live on.

First of all, France is not the United States. They can make their own choices about the preservation and upkeep of their culture. They can require their citizens to dress similarly. They may proceed however they see fit if their democracy allows it. Too many of my fellow classmates are imposing "American" ideals on this foreign country without knowing anything about the French constitution or government structure. Sure, much of our democracy is modeled off of France, but the intricacies of personal freedoms (in the purely legal sense) can be totally different.

The world is getting smaller and smaller. With new technologies and new ways of traveling it has become relatively easy to move from country to country. If someone is uncomfortable, or they feel persecuted, they can move. It's harsh, but it's the reality. The United States was born because of this. People settle where they are most tolerated and where they see a future for themselves. I think we forget this in this globalized world. With everyone moving around because of business, we think that every country should standardize their laws; find the median so that everyone is comfortable. Even if there ideally should be standardization, our country does not have the moral high ground to demand it. There is plenty of intolerance and injustice right in our hometowns. We don't need to look across the Atlantic to find it, then spout our ideals like we don't have dirty hands.

Secondly, we need to look at European countries with a historical perspective. They may have been around longer, but they haven't been anywhere near as diverse as the Unites States. France, in particular, is a country that is adamant in preserving their culture. With an influx of other cultures in their citizenry, their now experiencing a backlash. Anything Muslim related obviously gets the most press, because of the Western worlds insistence that its where terrorists come from, but France is tough on plenty of foreign influences. They're just trying to maintain the status quo. Is it right? Maybe not, but its not like we haven't tried it before. It is unfair to be smug and think France is completely in the wrong. They are a country that is one, proud of their culture and two, struggling with the integration of new cultures into that.

Chiles