Klanky

By confident I meant that they are quite fixed in their beliefs and hard wired, including here on Shia chat. It's probably a human thing. I am quite confident that you are all wrong about all sorts of things.

In my experience almost all religious people are quite confident in their opinions

For the occasion I will be having a nice Easter dinner with my family and eating chocolate even though I'm no longer Christian but its traditional and nice. I don't like the look of that pink chocolate blockquote widget

Are celebrity homosexuals destroying families? That's news to me

He's talking about people who "present" as homosexual. Whatever that means I'm not sure but it's quite a common thing for straight people to complain about gays pushing homosexuality in their face while forgetting altogether that sexuality is not really a private thing anyway - couple has a wedding ceremony, has a baby, live openly together, share harmless comments about opposite gender, ask strangers if they're married etc. The sexuality behind all this is so open that nobody even thinks about it. Virtually nobody has sex in public, the problem is in all the lies, repression, and pretence that goes into spending your life pretending you're not attracted to the same gender. It's better and healthier to just "present" it and be done with it.

I think I read about a building in Spain that is both church and mosque. Suggesting such a compromise wouldn't project the kind of image that Erdogan likes for himself, probably.

I think he's saying homosexuals need to remain strictly closeted

Also Oman has more mosques than it has people, it's amazing. Mosques everywhere. When they all start up the call to prayer thing simultaneously the immersive surround sound effect effect is quite psychedelic.

I went to wadi Bani khalid and it was far from serene and silent. There were hundreds of cars parked there, and hundreds of people in and around the pools picnicking and shouting and playing. I didn't hang around in case I got stuck in a traffic jam trying to get out! It was a nice location though. Oman is beautiful, I'd like to go back and see more of the mountains and go to Salalah.

Re the gender reassignment thing.... It seems to be common (quite generally, not just among religious people, although I have seen it in shiachat) that people assume gay people who take the passive sexual role are playing the role of a female, or want to be female or something like this. I think this feeds into the idea of reassignment as a solution to the problem of homosexuality. It's also quite misguided, imo. As already pointed out, it's about orientation, not gender. For a start, I don't think these active/passive concepts even apply to lesbians at all. For men, they are men who are attracted as men to men and most of them do not limit their sexual options according to perceived notions of male/female roles. You might as well give someone a horse's tail as gender reassignment surgery for all the relevance it has to male/male or female/female attraction. Basically it is a way for straight people to shoehorn gay people into something that they can get their head around.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/01/12/a-London-television-station-has-convinced-Iran-the-shah-was-great/

I'm going to Oman next week, I'm excited. No Iran this year unfortunately.

I'm sure they start because they see a opportunity to make a few quid. I don't see why male modeling should be any better or worse than female, it's all just marketing at the end of the day, appealing to the natural instinct people have to try to be attractive to others. I can't say I've ever noticed male models promoting or encouraging violence or aggression against women. I also think it's probably impossible to generalize about their character - the only thing they have in common with each other is that they get paid to be walking mannequins.

I found the hotels generally pretty good value but the quality/price ratio is a bit all over the place e.g. a really nice place for next to nothing followed by not so great place for a lot more. I want to go back

8/10