a person who advocates an opposing or unpopular cause for the sake of argument or to expose it to a thorough examination.
So please bear in mind that while I present this accusation, I believe it is a wrong one but present it to draw out counter arguments against it. It should be regarded as a charge leveled by one or more members of the homosexual community against the Christian Naturist community.
The Accuser wrote:You so called "Christian" Naturists who hide behind yoiur bible are nothing but a bunch of hypocrites. You either condemn or reject or fail to support the homosexual rights movement when you were in the same boat seeking the same tolerance that we ask for ourselves and our lifestyle.
In the earlier part of this century, (20's thru 50's, mostly, but still some today) your movement was seeking to go without clothing without legal persecution and supression by the powers of the state denying you free practice of your life style, even sometimes trying to deny you custody of your children and other such sanctions and generally suppressing your lifestyle.
It matters not one whit that you say the Bible permits what you do! It was a matter of your lifestyle being suppressed by someone else's religious ideas that they claimed sprang from the very same Bible, often expressed with the power of the state because you were a minority and they were the majority. It was their religious interpretation and belief that was used to deny you your freedom. Now it is your religious interpretation of that Bible that you want to impose on us and deny us our freedom in this country whose constitution saysCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion
Now today, many of you are "conservative christians" and you reject tenets of our lifestyle and oppose our practise of them. The shoe is on the other foot now, and you are the oppressors. Even while you seek more acceptance for nudity and less interference from the powers that be and even demand protection from the excesses of your opponents and seek to use the law for your protection; you object when the state intervenes to protect our rights to not be discriminated against and you oppose our efforts to obtain the sort of acceptance that you have largely gained and are seeking to expand. Many of you would even discriminate by trying to keep us out of your naturist "preserves" and clubs.
You are not naturist Christians, you are naturist hypocrites. If you don't like that title and don't want to change, give us a good list of reasons why this analogy is false.
Fortunately that accusation correctly identifies the argument as basically an analogy and even gives a primary avenue to defeat it, if good reasons for rejecting the analogy can be proffered. There may be other avenues to deflect its assertion, (e.g. the analogy contains multiple assertions and they might be dealt with separately). Prima facie, it looks as if there may be at least some analogous factors in the argument. Also, the accuser seems to have some knowledge of the history of naturist movement in the U.S. during the 20th century.
-- Are Naturist Christians guilty of wanting for themselves what they reject to grant to the homosexual community in this matter?
-- How much of this accusation is justified?
-- What can be said against this argument?