What people seem to forget, I think, is that evangelical Christianity is a bit.....different than the other mainstream churches. Of course, a Catholic - for instance - will be against abortions and gay marriage too (not all of course), but he's more likely to keep it to himself and not make it public.

See, I don't think this is what Tony says. Imho he says that Laderach has a right to his own stands while we have ours. I disagree with Laderach's views but think his company leadership and production should be viewed separately (he seems to be running it well, they are successful) from his beliefs and stands on traditional family. I cannot say he is a bad business owner or the chocolate is "guilt-packed" because he's got different views than me. I think that the campaign is actually supporting his sales, asking others to boycott overpriced (and delicious) chocolate to help those ethical issues most probably hurts the cause more than Laderach venting his convictions.

This is how I read Tone's stuff but I may be wrong, sure..

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"L'homme ne peut pas remplacer son coeur avec sa tete, ni sa tete avec ses mains." J.H. Pestalozzi

“The only difference between a rut and a grave is a matter of depth.” S.P. Cadman

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." A. Einstein

That may or not be 'artificial' insemination depending on the method.

Insemination is the standard way of....didn't you lot do biology at school?

Sounds about right. The way I would have put it is "Evangelicals are much more likely to be a little TOO vocal". Semantics.

I "apologize" Tony's synecdoque, attempting to colloquialize the rather long "artificial insemination" for just "insemination". I don't intent to grand-stand, but as this is a bit of a touchy subject I'd steer clear of ad personam jokes. I understand it's a joke, but it can easily derail a perfectly civilized discussion.

Not having heard of this, I quickly checked it out and learnt one thing: Being a company is definitely not easy anymore these days:

<< The State of Arizona has pulled the plug on a US$1m grant it planned to offer Nike to build a new factory after the State’s Governor claimed Nike had bowed to political correctness by withdrawing a trainer allegedly featuring racist symbolism. Nike received numerous complaints about its use of an old US flag – which has been subsequently embraced by white nationalists – on the special edition Air Max 1 Quick Strike Fourth of July. Nike-sponsored sportsman Colin Kaepernick was one of the more vocal critics of the trainers, now selling on websites for US$1,500. >>

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It's all a matter or perspective.
So move your butt and look at it from the other side

It is. You are. Read it again. He is anti abortion, anti gay couples adopting, anti-gay couples using artificial insemination, anti -transgender people using the toilet assigned to their gender because they may pose a threat.


This is just a guess but I suspect Mr Clifton only sits at the front of the bus and thinks "obey" should be an integral part of marriage vows and that every gay guy who sees him wants to love him long time.

I'm quoting myself. As predicted, MC is selectively responding. Bit of an own goal there luv.


Utilising new ignore capability.

I will defend Tony's right to his opinion, no matter what the opinion is, don't get me wrong. But I like to call things by their name, and in this particular case he stated in no unclear terms that he IS against abortion and, and he IS against gay couples receiving artificial insemination.

That's awesome.

Alright. I am glad that those two separate things were established - the right to have an opinion and what the opinions are. We can, of course, argue with the 2nd, why we agree or disagree. Not about Tony.

I think that comes from that particular definition of faith. I also think that we cannot do much about their definition of faith, except maybe offer new ideas the way they would at least think about them. Or not eat chocolate. The 1st seems easier but I tend to grant religious freedom to people around me.

But everyone is doing that on all sides of the argument!
They don't pose a threat. The threat is from men who say they self-identify as women to gain access to women's spaces, but they don't really. Or as I mansplained to one young lady - not all men are nice.

Furthermore my daughters have said that it is really unpleasant to see male genitalia on display in the ladies changing rooms. It makes them feel rather unsafe and to some extent violated.

(Funny thing though, I doubt there'd be many complaints about a non-transitioned trans-man using the male changing rooms. Humans are weird.)

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Down with racism. Long live miscegenation!

But it's their human right apparently

Transgender prisoner who sexually assaulted inmates jailed for life

Lots of Catholics are for gay marriages and pro-choice. In fact, besides the Pope and Vatican, I don't see a great difference between Catholics and other evangelical churches.

It's actually quite amazing how anal we all get about urinating and defecating, we all do it, without exception, several times a week, nothings changed in last 200 years, not much likely to change in next 200 years, yet we make suce a fuss about it.


What is the difference between stuffing food in a hole and waste comming out of a hole ?


We ALL do it, from the Queen of England down to the most miserable little wombat in Australia !

Let's keep the brain development of a penis out of this unless it's relevant to the topic.... Wait, this might just explain everything.

I understand (and agree) and this is a related but different issue. I believe it was fully trans folk that were the "problem".

Folk are indeed weird.

I don't have a penis and have an opinion. What does it explain?

That particular chocolate is too good and the company has been run well, to use it as a lever. There are more efficient ways to improve human rights.

I think we are faced with a moral dilemma nowadays regarding christian evangelism (coming from either evangelicals, or even catholics). They have every right to preach their faith. Unfortunately this is often executed in less than ideal ways, e.g. highly offensive activism (think Westboro Baptist Church style demonstrations) or attempts to influence political decisions and regulations (in this case, Christians for Today). The later is a common day occurrence.

Now to the topic at hand: Switzerland is, like it or not, a secular state, without complete separation of state and religion (by the way, there's an interesting read about the differences between the US and Switzerland in this regards here). Any attempt to influence legislation on the grounds of religion will be met with an equally and opposed reaction by those who reject religion (at least it's not unrealistic to assume it will). Nowadays over 25% of tax payers declare adherence to no church, and I can imagine some of them are both "less than sympathetic" to organized religion, as well as sensitive to social equality; let's call them secular social activists. Why do we think differently of religious activists than we do of secular-social activists? Why do we believe religious activists have a right to express their opinion (and we even think of them in a very "forgiving" way, because their beliefs come from religion), and we think secular social activists need to be more tolerant, and that they are grand-standing and accuse them of virtue-signalling?

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The internet makes it easy to be a jerk and forget the person we're talking to is a human. It also makes us see messages from awful people and assume they come from normal peers.

I personally agree with your observations. Coming from a formely forced atheist and completely secular society, it seems even more evident to me. But. Isn't it part of their beliefs, hence aren't they just better prepared than us? Is it the fact that they are active and ready and articulate because they are trained, that grates on us. Because we aren't active enough?

Our inaction is what made some people win votes, and opponents' training. And by action I really don't mean boycotting chocolate or dissing Laderach on foreign language forum. I think he just wants the open the question, not clip human rights.

Hence - step up the plate. Not you personally, you do, your posts are engaged and informative.

I don't have the time to dig into this now but I am not worried in CH where people vote on issues locally. They are less likely to "forgive" than elsewhere. Secular or religious, here it makes no difference, in my experience.

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"L'homme ne peut pas remplacer son coeur avec sa tete, ni sa tete avec ses mains." J.H. Pestalozzi

“The only difference between a rut and a grave is a matter of depth.” S.P. Cadman

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." A. Einstein

Heretic probably. Using troll in this context is utterly ridiculous.