Political & Elections

With regard to the opinion piece you quoted from the Washington Times: the editorial writer displayed a complete lack of understanding of the 9th Circuit Court's ruling. 

The point the editorial totally overlooks is that California permits gay unions already, and Prop 8 did not attempt to change the law that permits gay unions.  (The court in fact said that if Prop 8 had forbidden gay unions and gay marriage, the ruling may have been different. )  If gay union is identical in rights and responsibilities to gay marriage, but Prop 8 forbids the unions from being called "marriage", then the court examined whether such a distinction in name is supported by the state Constitution.  As the Court said,

It is enough to say that Proposition 8 operates with no apparent purpose but to impose on gays and lesbians, through the public law, a majority’s private disapproval of them and their relationships, by taking away from them the official designation of ‘marriage,’ with its societally recognized status. Proposition 8 therefore violates the Equal Protection Clause.

 

As for you first point, that is a perfect example of the death of irony.

 

 

This phenomenon....

Since half of the moral spectrum is essentially invisible to liberals they are dumbfounded in their attempts to understand conservatives, and are left with practically no other option but to attribute conservative views to some sort of mental or moral dysfunction, like racism, homophobia, religious zealotry, “climate of hate,” "paranoid style," etc., etc., etc.

...is reflected in the 9th Circuit Court's recent decision about gay marriage:

the 9th Circuit concludes that the only plausible explanation for Californians to want to define marriage as the union between one man and one woman is “the constitutionally illegitimate basis of animus toward” homosexuals. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/8/9th-circuit-delusion/

Follow-up on Anoka School District.

What a fair, nonsensational piece on bullying in their schools looks like:

 

http://www.startribune.com/local/north/138982374.html

-- Edited by hope on Thursday 9th of February 2012 10:32:20 AM

I'm very different from religious zealots. … And I’ll never shut up about it.
DonnaL, you’re a perfect fit, along with the Sabrina Rubin Erdely who wrote the article, with the typical pattern of liberal thought. I know I keep banging this same drum, but it’s true:

There are six (seven really, another will be announced in the next year or two) ingredients, if you will, of morality, that are a part of the human psyche as a result of natural selection. Three of them are focused on the individual, three on binding people together into cooperative communities. The conservative psyche employs all six in equal balance. The liberal psyche uses the individualizing ones almost exclusively. Liberal thought does not acknowledge the other three as part of morality.

Since half of the moral spectrum is essentially invisible to liberals they are dumbfounded in their attempts to understand conservatives, and are left with practically no other option but to attribute conservative views to some sort of mental or moral dysfunction, like racism, homophobia, religious zealotry, “climate of hate,” "paranoid style," etc., etc., etc.

You love your son. You’re on a crusade on his behalf, and others like him.

I’m a parent too. I get that. More power to you.

But seriously, part of your crusade stands on a foundation of ignorance about what really makes people tick. And because of this ignorance you are alienating many of the the very people you need to bring over to your side. Your “comforting delusion” (see quote below) about many of those who disagree with you is working against you, in a big way.

You’d stand a much better chance of success with your crusade if you made more of an effort to understand where people are really coming from. If you did that then you’d realize that many of them (though not all) are coming from a place that is real and legitimate.

You need to watch this video:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html

You need to read this book after it comes out in a few weeks: http://righteousmind.com/about-the-book/introductory-chapter/

Here’s an excerpt from the video:
When the liberal team loses, as it did in 2004, and as it almost did in 2000, we comfort ourselves. (Laughter) We try to explain why half of America voted for the other team. We think they must be blinded by religion, or by simple stupidity. (Laughter) (Applause) So, if you think that half of America votes Republican because they are blinded in this way, then my message to you is that you're trapped in a moral matrix, in a particular moral matrix. And by the matrix, I mean literally the matrix, like the movie "The Matrix."

But I'm here today to give you a choice. You can either take the blue pill and stick to your comforting delusions, or you can take the red pill, learn some moral psychology and step outside the moral matrix.

No way, samurai. I stand my ground on this one. Crumbcakes stink (unless, of course, they are doused in massive amounts of liquor). LGM or SGL, you are wrong, and I won't ever let you forget it!

Okay, I'm back to work. Everyone carry on with the unpleasantries

"Take you, for example. ;)"

What in the world makes you think I'm gay?  It seems you're as much of an expert on me as you are on everything else!  If you were actually even remotely as familiar with what I've written on CC as you pretend, you'd know that I haven't said that I identify as such, and have made clear that same-sex marriage isn't even close to being at the top of my list of the most important issues facing LGBT people.  And my son agrees with me.  (Of course, he can already get married in New York State, and New Jersey will follow soon enough.  Whether you like it or not.) 

And, of course, I'm not the one who tried to hijack this thread by bringing up the subject.

I defy you, by the way, to find any "screed" of mine that a rational human being could describe as "anti-Christian."  Unless you think the term "Christian" is limited to fundamentalist bigots, which would be a great surprise to all the Christians I know who are either LGBT themselves, or are extremely LGBT-friendly.  (In a meaningful way, not the "Some of my children's best friends are gay" excuse.  My son has plenty of friends who freely admit that their parents are homophobic, so that hardly proves anything about you.)

You may not think I deserve respect -- since I apparently don't know my place and all -- but at least I have an idea about what bigotry means and what effect it has on people.  Not just because of my own history, not just because my son is gay, but because I'm Jewish and the child of a Holocaust survivor who lost 11 members of her immediate family.  So give me some credit.

You?  You don't even have a clue.  And you're way too self-satisfied to learn from people who do, whose lives are actually at stake in all this.

 

Crumbcakes are delicious, busdriver.  It's sad that I can't convince you of that.  

Wait.  Was that when I was littlegreenmom that we discussed crumbcakes? Landsharks like them too, apparently.

P.S. If you don't think this article was designed to elicit a specific anti-Christian reaction, look at the hundreds of comments. What's the average IQ again? Draw your own conclusions.

Truly is a stroll down memory lane....

Gay marriage doesn't threaten me or what I believe about marriage. If two people love each other and want to commit to each other, I say more power to them.  

I find it interesting that it is so offensive to some. 

Oh, please. You don't know the first thing about me. You started making assumptions about me immediately. I, on the other hand, know about you. I have read your posts on CC. I have read some of your anti-Christian screeds.

And you know what? I haven't spent time stating that bullying/suicide of gay kids (or any kids) is terrible, blah blah blah, because anyone with half a brain knows that. I've raised two kids who have close gay friends.The youngest goes to the most "gay-friendly university" in the states (Penn--look it up). I support civil unions and the idea that gays certainly deserve respect as much as anyone else--that is some do and some don't. They are no better than any other human beings. Take you, for example. ;)

In my opinion the RS story was a lurid piece of garbage, for many reasons. Of course, according to you, one is not entitled to a negative opinon about it. It's a piece of writing, for pete's sake.  Good to know we have to agree with the pc thought police on pieces of journalism now.

It's about gay marriage, Donna. Admit it. You even called winchester a "homophobe" after reading his/her tactful post. There is no pleasing you. You won't be happy until you achieve complete and total control.

-- Edited by hope on Tuesday 7th of February 2012 07:30:12 PM

-- Edited by hope on Tuesday 7th of February 2012 07:30:59 PM

If I remember my reading, there were 9 suicides, 4 of which were gay teens, and one of that group quoted a mother as saying there were other issues at play. It is hard to siphon out the truth because the article was so luridly written. Yet the title of the piece was "One Town's War on Gay Teens."

Donna, I know how militant you are on this issue, so I'll try not to take your insults personally. I am familiar with your posts on CC. Suffice it to say that you (and others like you) frighten me.

Now I'll let you have the last word.

Just briefly skimming over the article, one focuses of the tragedy and horror of what was basically murders of these teens. But doesn't it also read that they were pretty much blaming Michelle Bachmann and like for their suicides? Instead of the actual people that bullied them into suicide?

People have died for their religion, cartera. Look it up.

This country was founded on the right to practice ones religious beliefs. The Catholic church has been around 2,000 years.

But I realize this is meaningless to you and Donna, because you know better.

-- Edited by hope on Tuesday 7th of February 2012 05:52:41 PM

-- Edited by hope on Tuesday 7th of February 2012 05:54:59 PM

I have little doubt, hope, that someday people like you will be viewed in exactly the same way that all the people frothing at the mouth in the 1950's about interracial marriage being anti-Christian and a sign of the apocalypse are viewed now.  As an embarrassment.   (And that's wholly apart from your equating "Christian" with people who agree with you, and your outrageous persecution fantasies.  No wonder you were banned from CC!) 

Winchester, your sort of flowery rhetoric is just double-talk, and of course it's based on homophobia.  Fortunately, more and more people recognize it for what it is, and are no longer willing to be silent about it.  Pro-LGBT advocacy -- which goes far beyond the subject of same-sex marriage -- persuades more and more people all the time; your "suggestions" are not only presumptuous but but I don't believe for a moment that they would be more successful than current efforts. 

It's not surprising, by the way, that there's such a strenous effort to change the subject to same-sex marriage from the indefensible cruelty, bullying, and heartlessness described in that article.   All of which does, in fact, come from a particular brand of religious belief and practice.   Whatever reaction people have is entirely justified, and it has nothing to do with their IQ.  (You shouldn't go there.)  I know enough people who were brought up in that kind of extremist religious lifestyle -- but managed to escape -- and every one of them has talked about the way they were brainwashed to hate, and simultaneously to view themselves as victims.

Of course you'll always be free to believe what you want and state your beliefs, no matter how much you like to imagine yourself as an early Christian being thrown to the lions.  But I hope that the power of people with such beliefs to destroy children's lives, both literally and figuratively, will decline as the years go by, and more and more children in that position realize that they aren't alone, and that there's nothing wrong with them.

-- Edited by DonnaL on Tuesday 7th of February 2012 05:39:19 PM

-- Edited by DonnaL on Tuesday 7th of February 2012 05:40:12 PM

-- Edited by DonnaL on Tuesday 7th of February 2012 05:41:03 PM

If two people love each other and want to commit to each other, I say more power to them. ... I find it interesting that it is so offensive to some.

Totally agree. There is more than one type of legitimate, loving relationship, which deserves equal respect from the culture, and equal status under the law; Male/male, female/female, and male/female.

But "marriage" is to "relationships" as "rose" is to "flowers." Trying to convince people that male/male or female/female relationships are "marriage" or that adding those relationships to the definition of marriage somehow enhances it, is like saying that the word "rose" suddenly now also applies to tulips, or that adding the concept of tulips to the definition of "rose" somehow enhances it.

Only the male/female relationship is marriage. And no, this is not just semantics. There is real meaning to the definition of the word, and real centuries long cultural sentiment associated with it.

I think this sentiment is behind some of the objection to gay marriage, and I think if gay marriage advocates could find a way to demonstrate that they recognize, understand, and accept this sentiment then they'd win more converts to their side of the argument.

Not all of the objection to gay marriage are due to bigotry or homophobia (much is, but not all). Some of the objection is grounded in moral intuitions that are real, and legitimate, even if those who feel those intuitions do a poor job of articulating them, and even if not everyone shares them.

One has a much higher probablity of gaining respect if one shows it, and shows that one empathizes with another's view, than if one demands respect and claims that the other's view is backward or unenlightend.

If you want to be included, be inclusive.



(Don't mean to get all serious in this thread. This is not a "hill I am willing to die on," just thought I'd throw those two cents out there as food for thought.)

-- Edited by winchester on Tuesday 7th of February 2012 03:39:46 PM

99% of the article is a slanted, lurid piece focused on Christian-bashing. Balanced it was not.

Rolling Stone should be ashamed.

 

You have no idea what went on with my being banned. Actually, your assumptions amount to ad hominems, which of course are allowed on CC when they go one way. I am sure you fit in very well over there, which is why I find your "complaint" in this case quite funny.

-- Edited by hope on Tuesday 7th of February 2012 10:58:36 AM

Hope, I don't recognize your user name or remember reading any of your CC posts, but I very much doubt that your opposition to same-sex marriage was a reason, primary or otherwise, for your being banned from CC.  Many posters who expressed such opposition are still there.

Persistently nasty and hostile comments about LGBT people, on the other hand, have definitely gotten people banned for violating the rule against personal attacks (which people aren't permitted to circumvent by casting aspersions on entire groups -- aspersions which necessarily include the individual posters with whom they're arguing, who are members of those groups).  So pardon me for drawing certain conclusions.

Longprime, I've noticed some recent anti-Obama rants by Xiggi, too.  Amazing how flagrantly he violates the rules he loves to enforce against others.  Maybe not so amazing.

PS:  The Rolling Stone article was "controversial" only to those who agree that it's those kids' own fault they committed suicide (what with homosexuality being such an "unhealthy lifestyle" for 13-year olds), and that bullying had nothing to do with it.  Anyone who believes that richly deserves all the "nastiness" they get.   And I'm glad that people are starting to be afraid to voice such opinions; I hope that in my son's lifetime, if not my own, they'll be limited to the same dark, fetid corners of the Internet where racists and  anti-Semites roam.

-- Edited by DonnaL on Tuesday 7th of February 2012 10:03:06 AM

-- Edited by DonnaL on Tuesday 7th of February 2012 10:07:15 AM

Recently, Xiggi, had some posts, long ranting posts. Me, I flagged them as "report problem post", 2 of them. Thread took a tangent and I lost interest. 

Did I post it to get a rise out of people? Don't be ridiculous.
I posted it, obviously, because it's an extremely important issue and I thought people should know about it. (At least enough people saw it that I was thanked in a couple of PM's.) It didn't actually occur to me that *anyone* would object to it; being against bullying is about as non-controversial and non-inflammatory as possible.

I should have remembered that there's an anti-gay contingent among the moderators. Still, I didn't think anyone would stoop that low.

I didn't see the thread, but I wouldn't think there would be much support for bigoted bullies.

I rarely venture into CC, anymore.  Usually when I feel like I want to help the kiddos with college advice.  Then I stay for a few posts and then leave, usually in annoyance.  

The more things change, the more they stay the same.