The Glade 4.0

And I'll fight that fight when it shows up on my doorstep. As it stands today the opposite and equally abhorent is true: the right to freely practice your religion is currently more equal than the right of all Americans to be equally protected by contract law.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

That isn't the problem. The problem is that no 3rd party has actually started to form a strong enough grassroots drive to get enough people behind it to be viable.

Frankly as Jesse Ventura showed in Minnesota, if you don't have a significant party to back you (i.e. have seats in the other governing bodies you deal with) then you're going to get stonewalled by the other 2 major parties.

3rd parties seem to think that the way to get momentum is to win the Presidency. This is wrong. They way to gain momentum is to at a grassroots level gain support and traction and start to take over the local, state governments and then start sending representatives and senators to Washington.

This elevation of gay rights as a big issue in national elections really bugs me. In fact I usually phrase my stance similar to the first post. People are dying. People are wasting away in prison. All for some stupid drug war that is doing us no good. How is gay marriage more important than that? Until we start throwing gay people in prison, I don't give a **** about gay marriage. Not on the national level anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I support gay marriage. It just really annoys me that it's become such a huge, defining issue. We have so many other problems in this country that are a lot bigger and hurt people a lot worse.

That battle is already being raged Rynar.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Aizle:

You should familiarize yourself with Federal election law, the court precedents, and various regulatory agencies that govern elections in the United States. Ross Perot had some serious fallout. Obama's Administration made it possible for the Republicans and Democrats to both invalidate legal, binding state elections, despite both being private corporations. If you think Third-Parties can actually get on ballots, you should check the Federal Court dockets starting 1 October of any given general election or interim election year for Federal elections.

The Republican Party and Democratic Party both sue religiously to keep viable third-parties off ballots. Michael Badnarik was blocked in all 9 states he had petition for ballot access in 2004, despite meeting the minimum signatures and going through all the hoops prior to publically announcing his candidacy at the beginning of the Primary Cycle. He was removed from the ballot in 4 states where the Libertarian Party has mandatory access.

Moreover, Federal Election counters discount all write-ins and all-third parties as "statistically insignificant" vote pools in the elections that actually do go a popular vote per FEC guidelines.

So, tell me ...

Why do you keep supporting the Status Quo and calling yourself a liberal?

And, just to be topical, why are you rewarding Obama for legislation and policy directives that were either post-approval or already in-implementation before he took Office? That timeline posted includes a ton of things previous administrations and congresses started.

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No, Rori, it really isn't. And even if it was, that still doesn't give you the moral high ground in denying a segment of the population equal protection under the law.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Why is the option of getting the government out of the marriage business never floated? Why is telling the government "no" considered so radical? Why do people accept this restriction put on what is a contract between two consenting adults?

No really I want to know.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Yep.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

/facepalm

This is the dumbest thread ever. "Look me in the eye and tell me..." *looks him in the eye* "take your false dichotomy, your oversimplification, and your one-issue mentality, and shove it up your ***".

they have equal rights to marriage as defined.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Every time someone uses this stupid *** argument, I really just want to punch them in the face. Just sayin.

FIFY

So you're saying that men and women should have different rights codified into law, built around an antiquated notion of gender roles, and that it's much more just than the assumption that all individuals should be treated equally under the law?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Men and women do nothave different rights under the law in regard to marriage, in any state.

Other than that, the rights of men and women will always be slightly different because their bodies are. Men will never have the right to have an abortion.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I was waiting for someone to notice:
1) The timing of events on that list
2) the low-scale symbolic nature of the events on that list

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They absolutely do as the second party to the contract. The first party has equal rights regardless of gender, the second party does not.


Sure they do. You are a man, the argument you just made is a complete abortion, and yet you have every right to it.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I don't typically refer to myself as a liberal. Everyone here does. /shrug

I dislike that valid opposition is suppressed and would like that to change. That said, I have yet to see a 3rd party candidate or platform that I feel better addresses my view points than the democratic one (with it's many faults) so it hasn't been a real issue for me personally.

I'm sure there are many items on that list that started earlier. Similarly, I'm sure that if he really disagreed with them he could have halted or at least slowed many of them down. I'm not really rewarding Obama with anything, however I do feel that in the last 2 years he's pretty much been the most supportive President on GLBT issues we've had to date. Clinton probably would have him beat if it weren't for that abortion of a bill called the defense of marriage act.

Blowing the limbs off of children and increasing terrorist activity isn't a "real issue for you personally"?

Jailing American citizens with a system that entirely bypasses Constitutional protections and the DoJ entirely isn't a "real issue for you personally"?

I still have the signature of Burke don't I?

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke (paraphrased)


"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for
himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their
case may, by change of circumstances, become his own. " Jefferson

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

LoL

Here's the breakdown as I see it

Any consenting adults can love/ have sex/live with whoever they want. Gay strait,what have you.

As far as I understand it, they draw up whatever kind of "contact" they want to draw up.

Social/Moral acceptance can't be forced onto be people by the government, nor should they try.

So fairness/equality doesn't fit into it.

The tax breaks and such that we give to traditionally married couples to help ensure that the children they birth stay with their natural parents. Homosexual couples can't have children that are geneticaly their own so there is no reason. Strait single people don't get those tax breaks/benefits either. So again, not discriminatory. Again my ideal tax policy is the flat tax with no deductions. Make $100, the government gets $10. It's worked for God for over 3500 years.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

So, if I understand where you've shifted your goalposts to now to take up a new argument, it's that you believe that social engineering through tax incentives is just. I didn't realize you were such an ardent supporter of the ACA.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I'm so confused. I find myself agreeing with Rynar.


someone hold me.

Aizle:

You are aware that Obama's justice department provided the lawyers necessary to defend California's state constitutional amendment prohibited gay marriages, right? Indeed, they provided those lawyers under the President's orders. So, I'm failing to see how you can factually call him supportive of gay marriage when he purposely and intentionally disrupted the best chance at stopping the states from prohibiting it themselves.

Oh, and he did so, because Barack Obama is the first and only President to actually enforce the Defense of Marriage Act you just mentioned.

Funny that ...

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