Comments on: Do Doctor’s have more power than ministers?

By: annie

annie — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 22:47:32 +0000

So we’re at dinner and Dave’s 13 year old niece discovers that I went to an all girls’ high school. She asks, “If you go to one of those, don’t you turn lez?”
Dave reaches over and touches my leg as if to say, “It’s gonna be okay, Annie.”
I responded, “Obviously not. But ‘lez’ isn’t a nice word to use.”
Her mother tells her that is a rude question to ask somebody. She responds, “Why? I’m just wondering – maybe if you’re only around girls then you turn gay – you know, you take what you can get.”
I told her it doesn’t work that way – people don’t “turn gay.” I told her that I believed people were born “gay” or “straight” and they don’t “choose” to be or “turn” gay.
Then her mother said to me, “Well, I believe that a big part of it is learned.”
I’m somewhat flabbergasted by this because she is a doctor and for some reason I assume a doctor would have an educated opinion about something. I wanted to press her further about it, but Dave squeezes tighter on my knee. I can tell by his face that he does not want to have this debate, so I drop it.
On the way home I question him about it. I was somewhat concerned because it seemed as though he really didn’t want me telling his whole family how I feel about homosexuality. I told him, “Dave I know that it is your family, but you know that I could give a shit about a persons sexuality and I’m not about to hide that.”
He let me know that he has absolutely no problem with me being very vocal about it (phew! Got scared there for a second – maybe people really DO change after marriage!), he just thought Christmas dinner with his Dad was maybe not the best time to enter into a homosexuality debate. Which is probably true. He went on to say that his family knows how he feels about all the so-called “controversial issues.”

I guess I just think that if you are going to change the world, you have to start with the little piece of the world that you come into contact with on a daily basis, and even more so with young people. I just really want to impress upon his niece the idea that “people are people.”
But I guess when I was 13, I was an idiot, too, and said a lot of stupid things just because I didn’t know any better.
anyway my whole point is this – i truly do believe that you to change the world, you start with the little piece of the world that you are in. but yet somehow, the people that are closest to you are the easiest ones to gloss over. why is it that we are more uncomfortable debating “controversial issues” with our family than we are with strangers? or is that just me? i think it is easier to “forgive” the people close to you, even though those are the ones you should really be getting on.

By: annie

annie — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 17:59:54 +0000

hey when you gonna put another post up here???

By: Hashi

Hashi — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 18:04:05 +0000

I say put a doctor and a minister in an octagon ring and have them duke it out.

But in all seriousness, I’d say it simply depends on who you ask. Those with faith would say a minister wields more power, and so forth.

BUT, everyone is familiar with reality. No one has ever seen some celestial figure come to earth and wreak some sort of good upon the earth. No physical [real] evidence is there to back faith, whereas a doctor has all of his credits in his patients.

Call me old fashioned, but I think we should worship the sun and moon as powerful gods.

By: Bao

Bao — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 15:30:02 +0000

A doctor’s work yields more visible results than that of a minister. If someone breaks a leg, and it’s bleeding, there’s bone sticking out, etc., a doctor can heal it so that there is a visible difference. On the other hand, if someone wants to quit smoking and looks to a minister for guidance, the results are less visible to the human eye. It is not to say that there is no difference in the person once they have stopped smoking in excess, but you cannot look at them without an x-ray machine and say, “Hey, his lungs are looking a lot better.” See, now they have to go to a doctor to see the results. Though this does not make either of their jobs less important than the other, it does make the doctor a more powerful figure in society.