Ive yet to meet any person - who takes religion serious- who isnt 2 or 3 conversations away from admitting they hate a certain group who don't agree with them, in this instance, gay people. By hate, I mean contempt/disregard and/or the And what right do they have to promise anyone an eternal punishment in hell etc. whilst its not been said outright in recent posts, itheres an undercurrent of contempt - its easy to hide your personal prejudices, in fact have them confirmed, in the pages of a book.

Two good quotes which I think explains how stupid and naive these beliefs can be when not kept in check:

"Thus the mildest criticism of religion is also the most radical and the most devastating one. Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did. Still less can they hope to tell us the "meaning" of later discoveries and developments which were, when they began, either obstructed by their religion or denounced by them. And yet — the believers still claim to know! Not just to know, but to know everything. Not just to know that god exists, and that he created and supervised the whole enterprise, but also to know what "he" demands of us — from our diet to our observances to our sexual morality. In other words, in a vast and complicated discussion where we know more and more about less and less, yet can still hope for some enlightenment as we proceed, one faction — itself composed of warring factions — has the sheer arrogance to tell us that we already have all the essential information we need. Such stupidity, combined with such pride, should be enough on its own to exclude "belief" from the debate. The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species. It may be a long farewell, but it has begun and, like all farewells, should not be protracted.

"One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody-not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms-had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would like to think - though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one - that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell."
— Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything)

I dont see why anyone with more than a moderate belief in religion should be given any airtime in any debate. Its a fantasy and a delusion and people who push it should be treated as a bit flaky. In fact, just as its been said for gay people here, so as it should for religious people-I dont care what they do, as long as its behind closed doors and I don't have to listen or be witness to it.