Paula is in a powerful position within the movement and will probably sway a lot of her fellows.

Homosexuals will keep forcing issues until there is a backlash that will cause a lot of misery.

It has happened in the past, noteably in England in the Victorian era and that ushered in over a hundred years of persecution within the Empire and the later Commonwealth.

quote="Samuel"]It has happened in the past, noteably in England in the Victorian era and that ushered in over a hundred years of persecution within the Empire and the later Commonwealth.

Some major events in Britain and the U.S.:

Prior to 1533 CE: Anal sex in Britain was considered a religious infraction and was punished within ecclesiastical courts. It was not considered to be a civil offense against the state.
1533: A British "Buggery Statute" was enacted. It defined sodomy as sexual activity between two men or as bestiality involving an animal and either a man or woman.
1624: In the colony of Virginia, Captain Richard Cornish was charged under the British Buggery Statute with having raped his male servant. He was found guilty. Both the perpetrator and the victim were hanged.
1628: The British jurist Sir Edward Coke described same-sex behavior as "against the ordinance of the Creator and order of nature." He suggested that the usual execution techniques of burning alive or burying alive be replaced by simple hanging.
1629: "Five beastly Sodomiticall boys" confessed to homosexual activity. They were probably hanged, because Massachusetts law called for the death penalty for persons over 14 years of age who committed sodomy.
1631: In the first reported trial for homosexual sex in England, the Earl of Castlehaven was convicted of sodomy with his male servants. Because of his rank, he was beheaded.
1641: Sodomy became a capital crime in Massachusetts, but only between males.
1642: Connecticut included sodomy among its 12 capital crimes.
1646: Jan Creoli was executed in New Netherland (present-day New York) for sodomizing a ten-year old boy. His victim was "only" flogged.
1647: Rhode Island follows the lead of Massachusetts.
1656: New Haven passes a law making sodomy punishable by execution for both men and women.
1660: Jan Quisthout vander Linde was executed for sodomy. His victim, a boy, was whipped.
1662: Rhode Island passed a sodomy law.
1682: Pennsylvania, a Quaker colony, became the first jurisdiction in America to make sodomy a non-capital offence. Punishment was in the form of whipping, a fine equal to 1/3 of the offender's estate, and six months of hard labor.
1700: Pennsylvania amended its sodomy punishment to life imprisonment or castration.
1712: South Carolina adopted the British buggery law.
1718: The sodomy law in Pennsylvania was revised to make it a capital offense.
1718: New Hampshire passed its first sodomy law.
1719: Delaware passed a sodomy law.
1776: Maryland adopted English common law, which included the criminalization of sodomy.
1784: Georgia also adopted English common law.
1785: Massachusetts passed a sodomy law.
1787: New York passed a sodomy law.
1790: Pennsylvania and South Carolina each passed a sodomy law.
1791: The original 13 states ratified the Bill of Rights. By that time, they all treated sodomy as a criminal offense. Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina had specific sodomy laws in place. Maryland, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia had adopted either the common law of England or specific English statues; both criminalized sodomy. "Sodomy was a crime at common law in New Jersey at the time of the ratification of the Bill of Rights. The State enacted its first criminal sodomy law five years later." 3,4

In the years following independence from Britain, the death penalty was gradually removed from the former colonial laws. However, sexual behavior between persons of the same gender remained a criminal act throughout the U.S. until the 1960s.

In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. It guaranteed equal treatment for all persons under the law. At that time all but 5 of the 37 States in the Union had criminal sodomy laws. Subsequently, all of the states eventually outlawed sodomy.

If you could describe this in more detail or post a link or something this would be interesting to read - I don't really know anything about it

. . . not any way to improve society at all. I mean, if you said Aboriginal Australians couldn't get married because some parts of society want to act violently towards them, or if you said Muslims couldn't get married for the same reason, you'd obviously be making a . . .

Appalling behavior and the type of thing that ought to be stopped but the thoughts can persist.

If you could describe this in more detail or post a link or something this would be interesting to read - I don't really know anything about it

Umm, bear with me if I don't follow, but it looks like the information you posted states that laws against homosexuality were introduced, and, well, people asking for same-sex marriage are asking for the opposite. So I don't see how this could lead to a "repeat" of the types of events posted. As well as this, you same information shows that over time, the world has become more accepting of homosexuality than the 16th century.

Well you did ask me.

Godwin's Law must inevitably surface in any discussion of homosexuality and society through time.
Not only the Jews were murdered by the Third Reich, homosexuals came in for their share as did the mentally retarded and Gypsies.

Forgive me if I sound naive, but pandering the worst parts of society - here exampled by the threat of physical violence and murder - is not any way to improve society at all. I mean, if you said Aboriginal Australians couldn't get married because some parts of society want to act violently towards them, or if you said Muslims couldn't get married for the same reason, you'd obviously be making a ridiculous anti-anti-discrimination argument, ignoring the constitution and its history of changes, ignoring anti-discrimination laws, and blatantly trashing the value of equality, and with it most forms of ethics.

Well, I didn't say any of that.

Appalling behavior and the type of thing that ought to be stopped but the thoughts can persist.

Don't be deluded into thinking that it could not happen again, the Jews in Germany in the early 1930s thought that pogroms were a thing of the past.
I was over on the north coast with some old hippy mates last year and in a small town's cafe a local pillar of the community said to another group, "I think it's great that you have 'come out' because when you become a menace to society we can kill the lot of you". There were nods of approval around the room, latent fear and hate is there.
Appalling behavior and the type of thing that ought to be stopped but the thoughts can persist.

I might add that despite all the talk of equality there is a persistent underlying distaste, even hatred, of homosexuals in Australian society and not only among the so called 'red necks'.
This is particularly noticeable listening to school children although the higher years are not really children.

The de-valuing of hererosexual marriage by homosexuals is all part of why so many people in our society hate them; at the moment such hate is probably based on unknown or unrecognized factors, factors moreover which may be but figments of the imagination.

In the long run I think that the best and safest thing for homosexuals to do is to settle for a parallel form of civil union but not to insist on calling it marriage.

Many heterosexual people see this insistance on 'marriage' as being an attempt to drag heterosexuals down to the level of homosexuals; to destroy the legal and normal concept of marriage.

Self-fulfilling prophecy.

Meanwhile over in Uganda . . .

Keep a low profile in Uganda or you're likely to get killed

So the question is, what should we as a society do when a problem occurs? Should we ask the victims and potential victims to give up their freedoms and the rest of us just ignore it? (that is, keep a low profile)

We could ask them to enjoy their freedoms and not push things.

I think it is really strange that your response to a group of people being threatened with violence is to tell that group to keep their head down and not to provide any assistance

I think it is really strange that your response to a group of people being threatened with violence is to tell that group to keep their head down and not to provide any assistance

That is not my response I am merely saying that they should not push things.
I'm all for individuals from any law abiding group being protected and being able to protect themselves when unlawfully attacked if the police or other authorities are not able to do so.