noodle,
Is expressing your opinion or having personal standards equivilent to forcing morals down peoples throats?
It depends on how you're expressing your opinion.
I didn't see the stuff on this thread before it was edited but I surmise from the comments that some of it degenereated to name calling. Expressing your opinion about a topic is not shoving morals down people's throat. Calling people names is still not shoving morals down someone's throat, in my opinion, but it is rude and seems to imply there is some other agenda being run other than simply expressing an opinion.
If someone else's opinion is so offensive to you that you feel you have be right, responsibility, or latitude to then call that person bad names then you've crossed the line beyond simply expressing your opinion. If you feel you need to use strong langugae and hateful speech because you've disagreed, then you're no longer attempting to communicate
your opinion about a matter and you've segued into some other agenda - perhaps you're trying to punish the person or shame the person into complying with your agenda. Or, perhaps you're just mitigating your own fear of people that don't think like you.
Is there something inherently offensive in saying...fail to meet this standard and fellowship with me is not an option?
No, though on the recent thread dealing with abortion
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/sho...art=11&vc=1 MEDC said to me:
This, IMHO, makes you a bad person. The fact that you can say that even if the baby experienced pain... and being pulled apart... and you would still be okay with that... you are a sad excuse for a human.
I asked him why he felt the need to share that opinion with me because I am curious about what his agenda is for explaining to me that, in his opinion, I am a sad excuse for a human. He never answered. I'm really interested as to what he thought that opinion was going to accomplish. Was he trying to make me mad? upset me? Was he hoping I wanted to be on his "good excuse for a human" list badly enough to change my opinion?
If he wanted to say "I don't want to be your friend." then why not just say that?
You must be this tall to enter a relationship with me?
I absolutely support personal standards over marriage recovery.
My belief is if the price of recovery is my self respect the price is too high.
I apply that belief to all my posts and am happy to consider myself a bigot on the issue.
Why would you say that to someone on a message board unless that person asks you why you aren't participating? It's one thing to say that to a person you deal with in what we like to call "real life" but a message board is fluid lots of people ignore lots of threads/posts/posters.
Why bother telling people you don't like him/her, she/he is a bad person (or worse), or you don't want to be his/her friend on an anonymous message board? It does come across as agenda-pushing. It does come across as being punitive or manipulative. It does not come across as having a moral disagreement or being respectful and having a different opinion. It doesn't come across as trying to further productive discussion.
Just my $.02,
Mys
