quote:I have also seen mixed faith marriages where it really works and only one spouse is active. It looks to me like the difference is the behavior of the non-believing spouse.
This reasoning seems suspect to me. Cannot the believing spouse be at fault somehow through their behavior?
Furthermore, how representative do you think your experience is?
quote:"I am not going to go to church and I resent you spending Sunday away from me. I know there are things I could do to support you in your wish to be active, but I'm not going to because I'd be happy if you gave it up."
How connected are the first and second statements here? What 'things I could do' are there that the non-believing spouse is unwilling to do that means the gesture (or non-gesture) is selfish?
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I'm sure that the peer group of the religious partner puts pressure, both openly and more subtle, on both partners and on the couple to "reform."
Any relation under constant stress must find a resolution to the situation to become healthy. So either the non-religious partner needs to convert, the religious partner needs to leave the church peer group, or the peer group needs to stop inflicting pressure.
Since the peer group's disfavor is institutionalized, only convert or leave are available options to remove the negative pressure.
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quote:What 'things I could do' are there that the non-believing spouse is unwilling to do that means the gesture (or non-gesture) is selfish?
Help get the kids ready. Read what scriptures they do share in common together. Not schedule things for Sunday so they constantly have to choose. Not be resentful or grumpy or begrudging about it. Treat the other person's beliefs like an integral part of them that they love as part of them rather than an inconvenience. Not criticize the church so the believer has to be on the defensive. Maybe not NEVER criticize the church, but this is definitely a "pick your battles" situation, and rarely pick that one because it SUCKS to be blamed as a member for other member's actions. You can't change their actions, you can't apologize, but you're put in the position where the only way to soothe the hurt is join in the criticism, and then you find that your spouse has put you in the position of choosing them over church, and that just sucks.
And in return, the believer should never make their spouse feel like they are less, or missing anything. Should respect the non-believer for the goodness in them, and accept them and be happy in the relationship as it currently is. Not definitely express a wish that the non-believer would change. Show appreciation and love for the things the believer does to support them.
I knew one family where the non-member spouse would attend sacrament meeting - not all three hours, but enough - so the member didn't have to spend 100% of their time kind-wrangling. And for my own parents, when the one was lonely or discouraged, the other would encourage, because they knew the member and knew the conversion was real, but everyone needs propping up sometimes.
quote: Help get the kids ready. Read what scriptures they do share in common together. Not schedule things for Sunday so they constantly have to choose. Not be resentful or grumpy or begrudging about it. Treat the other person's beliefs like an integral part of them that they love as part of them rather than an inconvenience.
Everything else sounds good, but the part in bold really doesn't fit with your own description. In the case of a believing and non-believing couple, the believing spouse has already scheduled something for Sunday-all Sundays in fact. Does the non-believing spouse not have the same right? I don't see any problem with the couple arriving at the decision that, for one of them, Sundays are for church-but I'm leery of the suggestion that if the other spouse wants to do something different on Sundays, they are the one scheduling something and thus being selfish.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: ... Based on the results of this study, we can conclude that religion and ethnicity have little impact on divorce rates.
Religion? Most likely, I agree with what MattP on that one and share his doubt about your interpretation of the 35% number.
Ethnicity? I disagree. This is but one of many studies on this subject I have come across and Asians show a consistently lower divorce rate.
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Church is only three hours long. Making other plans during that time only once in a blue moon, when there is no other time to do it, would be a real show of support. Only rarely MUST things occur at 11:00 on Sunday morning. The member can't reschedule church, so it forces the choice. It would be very supportive to be very selective about when you force that choice.
quote:the believing spouse has already scheduled something for Sunday-all Sundays in fact. Does the non-believing spouse not have the same right?
That's treating the believer's religion and wish to be active in it like a burden and inconvenience - like it is a personal affront and something you wish would go away. It's the oppositive of supportive.
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What about if the non=believing (or otherwise believing) spouse also had a Sunday commitment? Say, one Sunday a month her family got together for brunch?
Or if, rather than religion, one spouse always spent Sundays with his family or friends. Would a spouse be expected to be supportive and schedule around that?
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quote:That's treating the believer's religion and wish to be active in it like a burden and inconvenience - like it is a personal affront and something you wish would go away. It's the oppositive of supportive.
Cannot the same thing be said in the reverse, is my point.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: It is, in fact. It isn't the only way, but when one person strongly believes and the other doesn't, the one that doesn't demanding the other give it up rather than working out a half-time compromise seems really selfish.
I was more objecting to your characterization of whatever experience you had as the norm. You don't know what's normal, you know what happens in your church. You also don't know the dynamics of these people's relationships. Another way of looking at it, equally reasonably (which is to say vaguely) is to say that the people who marry outsiders put themselves before their church, and by not going, but their spouse before their church as well. I'd say if you choose to marry someone not of your church, claims of victimhood over these types of disagreement are not so strong. It comes with the territory, and if you don't know that going in, then you're not too bright. So really, it's the couple putting their marriage before anything else, and one of them making a sacrifice.
Meh. Maybe the outsider sacrifices golf or late nights partying- it's not like you would say the spouse who doesn't party is putting him/herself first by insisting that the other *not* go out and party every week. Marriage is two people- there are lots of sacrifices, I'm sure. Maybe you need the athiest to be selfish and self-centered, but that's kind of your own baggage. If I ever get married, I'll marry someone who is aware of what I need from them, not someone who I will then become a burden on and an embarrassment to, which seems to be pretty much your idea of a mixed marriage.
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I think the bigger problem comes when one person changes religious affiliation after the wedding (for example, after having children, crisis of faith, whatever). In that, both people thought they had picked one life, but things change and adjusting to that change can be hard.
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quote:In that, both people thought they had picked one life, but things change and adjusting to that change can be hard.
Yep. The messiest situations I've seen are when a LDS couple turns into a mixed couple. I don't actually know directly of any marriages that started out mixed that didn't work out (so far).
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"I don't actually know directly of any marriages that started out mixed that didn't work out "
My parents started marriage with different religions. Didn't work out for them, though it took a while (but I think my mother's approach to religion was part of the reason why).
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Perhaps people shouldn't marry if they have such different religious beliefs. My quibble was with the idea that this is the fault of the non-believer, and not the believer. Seems to me that if two people choose to get married, they ought to get their crap sorted first. After that it's pretty much everybody's fault if things go south later on.
ETA: and as for changes later on, well, that's why I still believe in divorce. People change. People make the mistake, or have the misfortune, of marrying someone who isn't satisfied with the way their lives have turned out. Whether that means somebody starts going to church, or somebody stops going, the problem is with both people if they can't adapt to their new circumstances together. Probably if that happens, it was *always* going to be a problem. That doesn't seem like fault to me, that seems like life. Why blame the heathens for that? Religious people should be immune to such discourtesies of human nature?
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quote:Perhaps people shouldn't marry if they have such different religious beliefs.
That's an idea that religions have often espoused, and people often think it's because religious folk are so smug they like isolating themselves from everyone else.
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Yeah, I don't know about smug, but isolating? Sure.
Personally, I think relationships between people should be the first priority. I like the idea of the most important entity in the world to me being another tangible creature like myself. When religions come between relationships, it's doing it wrong.
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"Personally, I think relationships between people should be the first priority."
Well, to be fair, if there WAS an omnipotent deity that demanded our attention, created us, and gives us our very existence essentially as a whim, and you believe this being is also good, then putting him/her/it first makes a sort of sense.
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The whole topic of what one owes to a creator and whether said creator deserves worship is really a separate conversation. Suffice to say that I wouldn't demand that *my* kids put me before their spouses.
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Yes. And neither would I. Of course, I highly doubt either of us are very much like the judeo-christian god.
I suppose it is a separate conversation, but it's still an interesting one, or at least it's a relevant one, when considering mixed marriages of this sort.
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I don't know how relevant this is but i think that the statistical data about "being a Christian" might be a little off in that the majority of Americans consider themselves Christians. In fact i've had several people respond to inquiries about their religious affiliation with "Of course I'm Christian, I'm American."
This seems especially prevalent among the poorer less educated people i've talked to who don't seem to have any rational behind their beliefs other than that it was the way they were raised, what they were told was right or what was most convenient. This may just be common to southern state culture though as i've lived in the south all my life.
I of course do not know what methods the researchers used to try to account for this sort of groupthink or perhaps embarrassment of "if i don't mention I'm a christian they might not think I'm a true American." So maybe this concern is not well founded.
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Depends on the pollster and on the user-side, what data is available.
I personally prefer questions like "How important is religion in your life?" For instance, Gallup sometimes uses a religiosity index which incorporates that, how often a person worships, and whether they have confidence in religious organizations.
Actually, Barna which was the pollster that I linked to before has this odd unique category of "notional Christian" which appears to be "someone who claims to be Christian but we've (Barna) have decided isn't really Christian enough" which tipped me off to their background as targeting evangelical Christians.
So basically, it depends (and on what question you're asking). For example, it appears that you're claiming that many people in the South are Christian because they're badly educated and poor. I fully agree Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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well, i suppose part of the claim i was making is that if one is poor they tend to be religious because it helps to ease their mind about their worldly disadvantages. If one is uneducated they have no idea why they believe what they believe and so their belief is (or seems) inherently useless. The other part would be that in the south it seems that the term "American" is just as synonymous with "Christian" as it would be with "Hard Working" or even "good" (us policing the world and going against that whole axis of evil thing.)
It reminds me of a conversation i had with a (very)liberal feminist friend i have. One of her female friends was hit by her husband, this couple claims to be conservatively christian. My friend saw this as representative of conservative christian males displaying his dominance and "God given" rights to control his woman. I see that the couple is poor, both are alcoholics, both were married at an early age (right out of high school) and that though both claim to be Christians they go to church rarely. So basically i just see a violent, immature douche.
I worry when i see statistics about different groups (ethnic groups, gender groups, religious etc.) that they may be using to broad a data set for the statistics to reflect accurately on the target group.
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Gordon Allport was among the first psychologists to really systematically study the psychology of religion. He wrote about his studies in his 1950 book The Individual and His Religion, which I'd still recommend people interested in the issue give a read.
One of the things that he was trying to deal with was the pretty clear evidence that, taken as a whole, "religious" (at the time this really meant Christian) people were significantly inferior to non-religious people on several major aspects of morality, prejudice probably being his major concern (He also wrote The Nature of Prejudice - again, an important read).
Allport was religious himself and was aware (as I think most of us are) that there were some pretty terrific religious people out there. So he set out to determine what differences there were between these people and the religious who were among the most prejudiced (and a host of other "bad" things) in American society. He initially discovered a curvilinear relationship between dedication to religion and these things. That is, in general, people who had little to no dedication did pretty well, people who had moderate dedication did very poorly, and people who were highly dedicated did even better than the people with no dedication. (sidenote: A really good determiner of a "bad" Christian is someone who really wants the 10 commandments posted on public property but can't actually tell you what the 10 commandments are.)
With successful refinements to his studies, he was able to move from this to shared characteristics and traits of people that correlated better with these things.
It's really an error of statistical grouping to talk about all religious people in regards to a lot of things. There are, as Allport discovered, very different populations among religious people. The reason why "religious" people, as a whole, look worse is because the people that do worse than the baseline population far outnumber the people who are greatly superior to the baseline population.
Interestingly, the characteristics and traits that he identified are very often better determiners for these sorts of things than is a person's actual religion. Their effect cuts across religion.
Further studies have shown that it cuts across things other than religion as well. I don't know of any reputable studies on this, but empirically, it's been pretty obvious to me that evangelical atheists who have the characteristics Allport identified also have the other "bad" things that he showed correlated with these traits.
Again, the specific content of the belief is often much less of a determiner than the structure of the belief and how the belief is held. I don't expect nearly any of that other bit to stick, but that's the takeaway I'd love to leave people with.
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hmmm, well generally I've never had much interest in psychology, probably because i don't like feeling like everyone is so easily group-able and easily explained. I am going to have some reading time this summer so i might have to check those books out because they do sound interesting.
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quote:Originally posted by Ecthalion: ... if one is poor they tend to be religious because it helps to ease their mind about their worldly disadvantages. If one is uneducated they have no idea why they believe what they believe and so their belief is (or seems) inherently useless.
For the former, there is a pretty good poll on Gallup showing a good correlation between poor economic circumstances and the satisfaction that people derive from religion (as well as the amount of), not just in the South of the US but throughout what is sometimes called the 'Global South'.
You can reason to this conclusion in a number of ways, yours, mine, Marxist reasoning about religion as an 'opiate of the people,' etc.
As for the latter, I would just basically say that 'if it quacks like a duck, and acts like a duck.' In other words, if someone like you describe claims they are a Christian with "God-given rights" and all, acting in the way they think is Christian, I have no reason to question that.
That cuts both ways actually, I look with extreme doubt towards those those Christians that try to define Mormons as non-Christian. I'm inclined to take people's word for who they are themselves.
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Actually, maybe another takeaway is to ask, in a long running series of discussions about religion, where we have a group of people who claim to value science over any other way of knowing about things and seem to be very invested in the topic of religion, why am I the only person who knows about these things?
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For the most part i tend to believe what people say about their beliefs. I suppose i question some people's genuineness because i do know many Christians that are quite moderate and rational people and so i (perhaps wrongly) accept that since the larger group of people who claim this belief are this way and have a generally well defined set of beliefs that those who do not are outliers.
This could be a flawed assumption because generally i like moderate, rational, and stable people and so am not around too many people that are terribly polarizing. The actual majority of Christians may not be anything like the majority i know.
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quote:Allport was religious himself and was aware (as I think most of us are) that there were some pretty terrific religious people out there. So he set out to determine what differences there were between these people and the religious who were among the most prejudiced (and a host of other "bad" things) in American society. He initially discovered a curvilinear relationship between dedication to religion and these things. That is, in general, people who had little to no dedication did pretty well, people who had moderate dedication did very poorly, and people who were highly dedicated did even better than the people with no dedication. (sidenote: A really good determiner of a "bad" Christian is someone who really wants the 10 commandments posted on public property but can't actually tell you what the 10 commandments are.)
Interesting stuff. As a result of this discussion I've been looking at a variety of studies that have been done looking at the correlation between religion and various indicators of health, stability and happiness. I've been musing over the fact that studies which look at very general indicators of religiousity (like membership or stated religious preference) tend to find either no significant difference religious and non-religious people or a negative effect of religion. But studies that use a more stringent criteria for religiosity (such as regular church attendance, volunteering of time, adherence to religious restrictions, financial contribution etc) tend to find a strong positive effect of religion.
It occurred to me that one obvious implication of this, is that (for the religious average to be the same (or worse) than the non-religious average, "bad" Christians would have do worse on average than people with no religion. Which correlates very strongly with Allport's study.
I've been musing over what this means and don't really have a clear answer yet. It may mean something simple such as that people who are by nature willing to honor their commitments to a religion, are the same kind of people who are willing to honor commitments to marriage, family, education and career.
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I think it's simpler than that. I think attending church regularly means that you have a tighter social circle on which you depend, and moreover trains you to have a certain level of discipline in your daily life. Both these things are enormous assets.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I think it's simpler than that. I think attending church regularly means that you have a tighter social circle on which you depend, and moreover trains you to have a certain level of discipline in your daily life. Both these things are enormous assets.
That explains the first part, but doesn't explain the second. It doesn't explain why people who profess religion but are not dedicated to it do worse than those who are not at all religious.
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I think "worse" is highly subjective based on what you personally value and weight certain outcomes. That said, accepting the proposition for the sake of argument and only for the context of North America, I suspect that identifying yourself as non-religious is a very conscious choice and demonstrates a level of dedication to being non-religious which is higher than the average level of dedication to be religious.
Ecthalion is not wrong when he goes over the social pressure to identify as religious.
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One could even assert that in the East Asian context, the lessened importance of religion is replaced with secular ways of tightening social circles (less individualism and more emphasis on family) and secular ways of training discipline (Confucianism). So I think there is truth in TomD's assertion.
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quote: I suspect that identifying yourself as non-religious is a very conscious choice and demonstrates a level of dedication to being non-religious which is higher than the average level of dedication to be religious.
I think that is true of those who consider themselves to be atheists. In my experience it is not at all true of most people who consider themselves agnostic or non-religious.
Its worth noting that Allpart didn't describe people as atheists or non-religious, he described them in terms of dedication to religion.
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: One could even assert that in the East Asian context, the lessened importance of religion is replaced with secular ways of tightening social circles (less individualism and more emphasis on family) and secular ways of training discipline (Confucianism). So I think there is truth in TomD's assertion.
First off, I think its misleading to talk about East Asians with regards marriage since there are significant cultural differences between countries. Attitudes towards marriage in Japan, Korea and China are very different. If you throw Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines into it, you've got more diversity than you do in Europe. And that's without touching on South Asians. For example the marriage rate in Japan is substantially lower than in China. The divorce rate in the Philippines is officially zero since divorce is illegal.
To some extent, the low divorce rates in parts of East Asia are reflective of oppressive attitudes towards women and restrictive divorce laws. I worked closely with two women who immigrated to the US from China and then divorced their husbands. They were the ugliest divorces I've ever seen. Both women received death threats. I had to help one of the women go into hiding to avoid her abusive husband. I asked one of my male Chinese colleagues about this and he laughed. He said it was a expected response. He even said if his wife left him, he might threaten to kill her (although he probably would stop with threats and wouldn't actually kill her). At any rate, since that time I am no longer impressed by low divorce rates in China or among Chinese immigrants to North America. Low divorce rates do not necessarily translate to high rates of stable happy families.
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quote:I think "worse" is highly subjective based on what you personally value and weight certain outcomes.
No argument there, but the studies I've been seeing are looking and objective criteria like divorce rates, longevity, and financial stability. When I said moderately religious people "do worse", it was with regard to these objective measures.
Unless you want to move to arguing about whether or not high divorce rates are a bad thing, I'm not sure what point you were trying to make.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: In my experience it is not at all true of most people who consider themselves agnostic or non-religious.
In my experience, it is. That simply reflects how strong the default presumption of being religious is and the associated cultural bias.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: In my experience it is not at all true of most people who consider themselves agnostic or non-religious.
it's the case here and I live in one of the more culturally expressive and liberal areas of america.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: In my experience it is not at all true of most people who consider themselves agnostic or non-religious.
In my experience, it is. That simply reflects how strong the default presumption of being religious is and the associated cultural bias.
I don't know what your experience is in this area. I've spent most of my adult life in academic circles where the default assumption is that people are not religious so I tend to assume that people are non-religious until I find otherwise. Since most people know I am religious, I do end up being asked about it fairly frequently. The most common attitude I've found among the non-religious is apathy not antipathy. Its not something they care very much about one way or the other.
The experience I've had with LDS people who no longer go to church is pretty similar. There are those who have some antipathy toward the religion or to particular religious individuals, but by far the most common attitude is apathy. They just don't care enough about religion to be concerned about it.
It doesn't surprise me that other peoples experiences differ but I suspect there is a strong selection bias. People who are apathetic about religion, don't general get drawn in to religious discussions.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: If you throw Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines into it, you've got more diversity than you do in Europe. And that's without touching on South Asians. For example the marriage rate in Japan is substantially lower than in China. The divorce rate in the Philippines is officially zero since divorce is illegal.
First off. Most of this is simply irrelevant. When I say East Asia, I mean East Asia. So no Philippines, no Thailand, no Malaysia, no Vietnam, no Laos, and no Cambodia.
South Asia is right out. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. (I'm not even sure why you would remotely think that I think Confucianism would have any relevance to South Asians)
quote: Low divorce rates do not necessarily translate to high rates of stable happy families.
I don't believe I've ever said anything about happiness. In fact, I only got drawn into this since you touted low divorce rates as a benefit of regularly attending church and I found it amusing that Asians beat you on your own measure. Now, you're moving the field.
That said, I think you understand if I am as unimpressed by your *two* anecdotes as you would be if I used Ecthalion's example of a man beating his wife using his God-given rights to portray Christians as a whole.
Instead, simply let it be said that growing up here, I've seen my share of marriages from both cultures and my experience is the opposite of yours.
Lastly, I was following up with TomD who AFAIK was talking about the whole range of indicators for judging doing "better."
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quote:One thing which helps monogamy get so difficult is when social conservatives try to sustain outdated and unrealistic social models such as abstinence before marriage, which is one of the reasons why red states have significantly more family instability and fewer successful marriages than blue-staters.
So family stability and sucessful marriages have from the start been the baseline for this discussion not divorce. Samp is the one who presented the divorce statistics. I just pointed out that they don't mean what he claimed. There has been no moving the target, except perhaps by you.
Second, Asians don't beat me at my own standard which would be Mormons who marry in LDS temples who have a divorce rate of 6%, significantly lower than that for Asians.
My only reason for entering into this discussion was to rebut Samprimary's still completely unsupported assertion that an emphasis on abstinence before marriage results in unstable unhappy marriages.
Its my understanding that until very recently, premarital sex was considered highly unacceptable in China. Is that incorrect?
Finally, My three (not two) anecdotes about the Chinese and divorce were all involving immigrants from the PRC. If I remember correctly, you and your family are from Hong Kong as are the majority of Chinese in the Toronto area. In my experience, there are some very significant cultural differences between immigrants to the west from Hong Kong and the PRC and that those from Hong Kong have signficantly more liberal attitudes toward women than are common in the PRC.
This was part of my objection to you lumping together all East Asians in one group. East Asia is a very diverse region (even if you exclude South East Asia). (Although I should add the study you were referencing referred to Asians so it presumably included all of Asian, not just East Asia). If you are talking about Hong Kong, talk about Hong Kong.
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quote:Instead, simply let it be said that growing up here, I've seen my share of marriages from both cultures and my experience is the opposite of yours.
I'm curious. Why do you suppose that my male colleague (immigrant from the PRC) would tell me that my experiences were expected based on typical chinese male attitudes? His statements were pretty consistent with what I have read about more traditional attitudes toward women in China. Is it a myth that women have historically had very limited rights in China? I know that currently women are offered full rights under Chinese law but peoples attitudes about such things commonly lag behind the laws, particularly when we are talking about marital roles.
I mean, I really expected my colleague to say something like "Those men were totally *#$&@#$." I was really rather taken back when he laughed and sad that was just part of chinese culture.
[ May 20, 2010, 05:37 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Why do you suppose that my male colleague (immigrant from the PRC) would tell me that my experiences were expected based on typical chinese male attitudes?
Because it is. It is also part of typical white male attitudes which it would be reasonable to assume he is less familiar with.
For example:
quote:The findings of this study suggest that although factors such as the relationship between victims and abusers or the type of abuse experienced do not vary greatly by race and ethnicity, the path into services and the service needs of groups tend to differ somewhat depending on such demographic characteristics.
quote:12.8% of Asian and Pacific Islander women reported experiencing physical assault by an intimate partner at least once during their lifetime; 3.8% reported having been raped. The rate of physical assault was lower than those reported by Whites (21.3%); African-Americans (26.3%); Hispanic, of any race, (21.2%); mixed race (27.0%); and American Indians and Alaskan Natives (30.7%). The low rate for Asian and Pacific Islander women may be attributed to underreporting.
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Mucus, I know that spousal abuse is not absent in American culture, but honestly I can't imagine any American born PhD level scientist, working at one of Americas premier Universities, laughing it off as something that men just do. One reason he wouldn't be familiar with this kind of thing among whites, is that whites (and most other Americans) go out of their way to hide it from everyone because it isn't socially acceptable. I can't imagine any American born person with that level of education so freely admitting that they would do the same sort of thing if their wife divorced them.
Which suggests to me that this part of Chinese culture is much more widely accepted, even among the highly educated "enlightened" Chinese than it is in America.
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It suggests to me that hiding personal information is part of white culture which is much more widely accepted, even among the highly educated who one would hope would hide the truth less.
Edit to add: And more seriously, I think it is common knowledge that Chinese culture is more tolerant of personal questions. It should also be uncontroversial that political correctness is simply alien to Hong Kong and very new to China. Do the math and you will find that Chinese people will admit to all sorts of personal questions that white people won't.
Example: Go do a random survey of Chinese people, ask them point blank how much they make. Do the same with a bunch of white people. I'm fairly certain that absent institutional policy, the former will answer much more readily. This doesn't mean much about how much the two groups make in terms of income though.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Since most people know I am religious, I do end up being asked about it fairly frequently. The most common attitude I've found among the non-religious is apathy not antipathy.
They may be politely concealing their antipathy. I do this pretty regularly, depending on company.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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