>>28Abortion is so clearly murder that it staggers me that it's allowed. The only difference between a baby and an unborn baby is that you can't see the unborn one; physiologically they're the same. I think people rely too much on visual information. The hysterical last stand of pro-choice people is often that "it's my body." Their body contains another body, which does not rightly belong to them. They had the choice not to risk having a child, and they allowed themselves to be overcome. The selfishness of killing a person when all you have to give him or her is nine months of your life is astounding to me. We (or I at least) live in a country where you can just give up an unwanted child and be pretty sure they'll have an ok life. So other than the pregnancy itself you need to do nothing. I think probably a lot of people have abortions to spare themselves embarrassment.
There's some limited stuff about not approving of homosexuality in the Bible. However in Christianity strongly homophobic behavior is a fairly recent development, arising a few centuries ago during a political power struggle in Italy. Or so the story goes. This is not useful as an argument, but I thought it interesting, unless of course it's one of these manufactured "facts" the left is fond of. In terms of homosexuals, it seems pretty clear that God has ordained that these people be gay, and that it is not a choice; my religion tells me above all to love people, and this overrides any of that limited and largely disputable biblical evidence I mentioned earlier. I don't think there's anything to be done "about" gay people at any rate. They exist, and it's wrong to hate and/or kill them.
A general point about the difference between Christianity and Judaism: Christianity is a religion of love. Judaism consists of the tribal beliefs that have been discussed here already; Christianity adds a message of love from the mouth of God himself, putting it higher than other commandments. To me, this is the critical difference.
This is also why I choose this religion over, for example, the Tao to which someone alluded earlier. I read the Tao or Dao or whatever you like to call it, and it seemed both obvious and repetitive: the primary message I took from it was one of passivity. For example, one suggestion in it is to "Be like water flowing around a rock," meaning that one should take the path of least resistance. Sometimes being genuinely good means taking the hard path instead. In a similar vein, Buddhism seeks to reject the material, which has the ultimate worldly effect of turning its monks into beggars - they take food from the mouths of the poor. If you don't believe me go and see for yourself. Compare this with the work of the Jesuits, or other Christian orders. Where is the good in trying to deny one's worldliness? Where is the love in failing to help the hungry? I think that in the West we tend to view Asian religions as the least harmful, because they have a less violent history, and less of a culture of interference. However I believe they are insidiously harmful in refusing to address or even acknowledge the material needs of humankind. Intervening on behalf of the helpless is a good thing, and one which I think is worth the mess and unhappiness is causes in the short term.
tl;dr Be nice.