That's a tautological circular argument. What you are trying to prove is that traditional marriages work better than non-traditional ones. But as part of your argument you cite things like children being born out of wedlock being an indicator of social problems down the road - which is identical to your conclusion.
No, what I was trying to prove was that the legalization of gay marriage was detrimental to the family institution in the Netherlands. Perhaps I wasn't clear. Children born out of wedlock, children in single parent homes, and number of divorces are all indications of the state of the family as an institution. There has been a dramatic rise in all of these statistics since the Netherlands legalized gay marriages and gave legal weight to "registered partnerships." Your Dutch friends are excellent examples of this trend towards the deemphasization of marriage as an important social institution. Even Dutch couples that are serious about sticking together aren't particularly interested in getting "married," and why should they be? After all, the government has removed all of the incentives that used to make marriage a special social institution. Now you can get the same benefits of being married by simply moving into the same apartment.
You made the next jump for me:). I tied the Netherlands' assault on the traditional family to an decrease in the amount of traditional families. Historically these statistics are inevitably followed by severe social problems like juvenile deliquency, occurence of child abuse, depression, and suicide (all of which are far more frequent in children raised outside of traditional families). However, the data isn't in yet as to whether or not the decrease in the traditional Dutch family triggered a corresponding increase in the social problems that have generally followed these statistics.
What we now have is a classic experiment. If you are correct then the deterioration of the Dutch family will not trigger an increase in the social problems that have historically followed family disolution. If I am correct then the Netherlands is in for an increase of social problems that directly correspond to the decrease in the traditional family. I simply believe that there is little sense in following the Netherlands lead in what I see as a risky social experiment before all of the data is in.
In short, the only thing that I tried to prove is that new Dutch laws have weakened the institution of marriage. Whether or not the weakening of marriage will have serious social repercussions remains to be seen. In the meantime I am content to stick to what has currently been shown to work. That's one of the benefits of being conservative. You can let other people be the guinnea pig.
As an aside, I agree with you that the piece of paper from the government does not help people become good parents. However, that doesn't mean that government shouldn't strive to encourage people to get and stay married. Getting married didn't hurt your Dutch friends one bit, did it? In fact, it probably didn't change their relationship at all However, for every Dutch couple like your friends there are several Dutch couples that see the looser cohabitation rules as an easy way to get out of a partnership that becomes difficult (and they all do eventually). Yes, the piece of paper by itself is not much, but it's better than nothing, and it's not like getting married is particularly difficult. Heck, in Las Vegas you can be legally married in 15 minutes. There are certain social and legal benefits to being married, and I believe that the government can and should use these benefits to encourage people to get and stay married.
Either way, before America legislates what is essentially an untried social experiment we should at least wait and see what happens in the Netherlands. Not that the U.S. is likely to follow the Netherlands example any time soon. If the election on Tuesday showed us anything it is tha
I have seen little evidence showing that traditional marriages are the best way to raise children either. I could probably be convinced that, say, a Heinlein marriage would be better. Or community-raised children. Or something else entirely. Certainly there are plenty of traditional families that are horrible for children.
As bad as some parents are statistically speaking traditional marriages are far far better at raising children than any other organization that they have been tested against. I have spent the last couple of days researching this (Google is your friend) and I have yet to see a serious report that provides any results to the contrary. Even the feminist-sponsored studies on single parents and the gay and lesbian sponsored studies on other alternative families were, at best, able to say that they weren't statistically worse than the traditional family, and those results were usually over A) included a self-selection of single parents or gay and lesbian parents and compared them to the general married public or B) covered only a narrow amount of indicators.
In short, as bad as traditional families often are everything else is much worse.
No-one really knows how the children of gay marriages will turn out. Some countries are doing the experiment, but the results will of course be different in the US. How? We don't know. Let's find out, rather than legislating based on ignorance.
Legislation based on ignorance is precisely why I am against the legalization of gay marriages. We don't know the potential risks that gay marriages might bring to the children raised in them. It is unwise and unethical to experiment on children that are up for adoption. If it turns out that gay and lesbian marriages are significantly less adept at raising well adjusted children then our experiment will have endangered thousands of children.
My personal feeling is that the government should have nothing to do with marriage. Marriage is for religions. Adoption and whatnot will probably be government-controlled, but that can be done through civil unions. Of course, I realise that my hatred of religious government puts me in a minority in this country.
This is only peripherally a religious issue. At heart it is about the raising of America's next generation, a social issue. Right now the numbers stack up in favor of traditional marriage. Children in traditional marriages tend to be far healthier and safer than children in other family units. Whether traditional families are better at raising children because of religion, or because humans are simply wired that way is up to you to decide, but the fact remains that traditional families are good for children.
Personally I think that it may be possible that lesbian couples may also prove to be good at raising children, which is good because a lot of lesbian women actually have children. The fact that gay males tend to have 4 times the problem with partner abuse as straight males (no I am not making this up, gay males are four times more likely on average to beat their sexual partner as straight males) does not bode well for the average gay male couple's chances of raising children effectively.
Governments have a duty and an obligation to do what they can to help insure that children have the best chances possible of being raised effectively. Right now, traditional families appear to be the best ways to do that. Traditional marriage certainly encourages the formation of stable families, but I am sure that there are plenty of atheist families that do an excellent job of raising children. From the research I have seen it would appear that the it is the structure that is important (two biological parents) and not the religious beliefs that bind many families together.
Come to think of it, aren't there strict requirements for couples who want to adopt? Why aren't natural parents required to pass th
The problem with this is that the raising of families is not just a religious issue, it's a social one as well. Governments have always had a hand in how children were raised, and our society is no exception. It's hard to look at the data and then say that children in traditional family atmospheres aren't safer and happier (on average) than children raised in other social organizations.
That's the problem with legalizing gay marriage. Gay marriage is a social experiment with little or no evidence to suggest that it is a worthy replacement for traditional marriage. Elevating gay marriage to the status of traditional marriage (an institution that the evidence shows is basically the gold standard for producing healthy well-socialized adults) is absolutely foolhardy. Evidence from the "experiment" in the Netherlands suggests that the legalization of gay marriages and the institution of the "registered partner" has had a profound impact on the institution of the traditional marriage. Less people see the point of becoming "married" when these other relationships have the same legal rights. This has had a profound effect on the number of children born out of wedlock, the number of divorces, and the percentage of children in single parent homes, all of which are indicators of further social problems down the road. Not only does this behavior endanger children, but it costs the society money as well.
To put it bluntly, traditional families are better for society than alternative relationships. As such it only makes sense that the laws should favor the traditional family relationship. The arguments against gay marriage tend to get cast in religious overtones, but even from the clinical view of the social sciences the elevation of gay civil unions to be the equal of traditional marriages just doesn't make sense.
As I said before, even in Belgium, one of the few countries where gay marriage is legal, gay couples are not allowed to adopt children. The reason that they made this exception is that even the liberal population of Belgium is nervous about whether gay marriages are likely to be as good for children as traditional marriages.
That's the funny thing about civil rights. They end where someone else's rights begin. In this case the rights of the gay couples conflict with the rights of the children to be adopted into a "healthy" family.
The gay and lesbian coalition want to paint this as a religious issue because the U.S. liberals have been very successful in using the "separation of Church and State" lever to force their relativist agenda. However, that doesn't change the fact that there are problems with gay marriage on a purely social level.
Again, I disagree with you, but at the same time I do respect your tendancy during this to keep the disagreement one of logic and facts, not one of emotional rhetoric. You are an honest debater.
Thank you. I also appreciate your willingness to discuss this issue rationally. Heck, you even allowed me to change my view without simply crucifying me for inconsistency. Your discussion has helped me solidify my own views on the subject. I really appreciate your time and obvious intelligence. Especially after receiving plenty of posts on this subject that merely assumed I was some variation of subhuman.
When I started discussing this I honestly believed that my objection was primarily centered around what I saw as the abduction of the term "marriage." However, the more I thought about it the more I came to realize that my primary objection is that I believe that the traditional family is the best way to raise children, and that society has an obligation to protect and encourage the traditonal family. That's a fairly fundamental shift.
You are correct that the studies I have seen compare two biological parents to various other configurations of heterosexual couples: single never married, divorced, divorced and remarried, etc. There have been some studies with homosexual parents but these studies have been suspect in that the homosexual parents were self-selected, and in any case they were mostly concerned with whether or not the children in these homes exhibited a higher than average tendency towards homosexuality (they didn't). That's why I stated that currently there simply isn't data to suggest that homosexual parents were as safe as traditional families. This is important because adoption is a very competitive business. If there were piles of children sitting around without any possibility of potential parents then I would be more willing to relent, but that's not the case.
In one of my earlier posts (perhaps not in this thread) I mentioned that we should let someone else try this experiment on their children. The Netherlands legalized gay marriages in 1998, and they will no doubt give us the data we need. However, it is interesting to note that the Netherlands acceptance of gay marriages and other non-marriage civil unions has led to a general decline in the number of married couples and a sizable increase in the amount of single mothers, divorces, and cohabitation, all of which have always been indicators for increased social problems. It is entirely possible that even if gay couples make better parents than straight couples that the effects of deemphasizing traditional marriage might still have tremendous negative impacts on society.
I would like to point out that I certainly believe that gay parents should be able to raise their own children however they see fit (with the same abuse limitations that other couples face). In practice this means that lesbian couples are essentially free to have children through artificial insemination (or whatever). The tricky bit are gay couples who are unable to have children "the old fashioned way." They either must adopt, or they must arrange for a woman to be involved somehow:). Even in Belgium where gay marriages are also legal, these couples are not elligible for adoption.
You can't hardly expect Americans to be less conservative than Belgians.
Most of the studies I have seen about children in gay couples was rather suspect. Basically it boiled down to the fact that the gay and lesbian parents were self-selected. A group of gays and lesbians that wanted to "prove" that gay and lesbian parents were no worse than the nuclear family got together and then compared their statistics against the average for the traditional family.
On the plus side the Netherlands is doing the legalized gay marriage experiment right now, and so it's just a matter of time before we have hard data on the subject. One thing to note, however, is that the Netherlands attack on the traditional family structure has already had fairly high consequences when it comes to the amount of divorces, children born out of wedlock, and cohabitation (all of which are strong indicators for increased social problems of all kinds).
As I said before, the family is essentially the basic building block of society. I think that it is folly to suggest that you can deemphasize family without serious repercussions.
That's interesting. It seems to me that if you look that there is plenty of studies comparing the nuclear family to just about every lifestyle that you can imagine. Including a pile of preliminary studies based around the same sex marriages that have been legal in the Netherlands since 1998. Generally speaking these studies compare juvenile deliquency rates, drug abuse rates, college attendance rates, etc.
Heck, google "parent child behavior study" and you will see what I mean. There's literally piles of studies comparing nuclear families to other social organizations.
Here's an interesting quote from a study on the gay civil union legalization in the Netherlands:
As the Netherlands' experiment in legalizing same-sex unions has illustrated, same-sex marriage in that country constituted one more step in a steady legal and social breakdown of the family. This is not to say that the data imply a causal relationship between the initiation of same-sex marriage and the breakdown of the family in the Netherlands. Rather, the redefinition of marriage furthered a general pattern of cultural and legal erosion of the institution. According to several Dutch social scientists, their fellow citizens "increasingly regard marriage as no longer relevant" because they have been persuaded that "marriage is not connected to parenthood and that marriage and cohabitation are equally valid 'lifestyle choices...
Statement by Professors M. van Mourik, A. Nuytinck, R. Kuiper, J. Van Loon, and H. Wels, in Reformatorisch Dagblad, July 8, 2004.
This is the sort of thing that the Christian community is concerned about. Not only does a break down of the family make it harder to raise our children, but it creates all sorts of social problems that cost everyone a great deal of money.
It's possible that gay and lesbian unions might stack up favorably against the nuclear family, but I doubt it. After all, even mixing in a step parent has statistically measurable consequences to the children involved. Not to mention the problems that deemphasizing marriage is likely to have on society in general.
It's not just the Christian right that believes this, either. The election results indicate that measures protecting the traditional definition of marriage gathered support that cut across party lines.
Yes, but new recruits are going to have to learn your custom software anyhow. I used to do training for a living, and people in call centers generally don't know much about using their computer outside of the two or three applications that they are supposed to use for work. In fact, one of the big problems in these types of environments is people that think that they *do* know something about computers. Either they spend all their time trying to get around the lock down on the client so that they can change their background, or they find something that isn't locked down properly and screw it up completely.
When you weigh the tiny extra cost of training people how to use a Linux box against the huge savings that are possible Linux makes plenty of sense. Especially if you don't need MS Office compatibility. And when you start talking about using something like the Linux Terminal Server Project so that you can switch away from PC clients to thin clients you can *really* save a lot of money, especially in a call center environment. Now, instead of hundreds of full-fledged PCs to administer you have a handful of servers and thin clients that can be replaced by a monkey and that don't contain any moving parts.
That makes sense, and would probably work better for them, but in this great nation you absolutely do *NOT* have the right to be free from being offended. You have the right to turn the other way, hold up a sign, or do what you're doing right now and write about it. Personally I find large portions of modern christianity extremely offensive and a gross perversion of Christ's teachings, but you don't see me out there trying to keep people's mouths shut about it.
That's an excellent point, very well made. It upsets me that something that I take to be sacred is being mocked by others, but that is their right. You can't outlaw mockery without lessening all of our rights to free speech.
And as I have talked about this in other threads I have come to the conclusion that its not just about the name anyhow. I object to gay civil unions being considered marriages because I feel that there is no evidence to suggest that a gay civil union is as good as a traditional marriage at raising children.
That's really why I want another name besides marriage. I am happy to give gay civil unions the same rights to healthcare and inheritance and all that jazz, as traditional marriages, but I am not willing to say that a gay civil union is a drop in replacement for a traditional marriage, especially when children are involved.
Don't get me wrong, I also want to be able to mention "marriage" to my five-year-old without having to add piles of tricky caveats, but my reluctance is mostly due to the fact that I don't believe that gay civil unions are likely to be as beneficial for children as traditional marriages.
Yes, I suspect you are right. It's one thing to have a civil union that allows for inheritance of monies, or makes it possible for the couple to share a healthcare plan. I don't believe, however, that gay civil unions are as beneficial to society as marriages are, and without more evidence I don't think that it is wise to say that a gay civil union is "just as good" on average at raising children as the traditional family. There certainly isn't any hard data that suggest something like that, and there is plenty of data that shows the benefits to children raised by a mother and father.
I know that it sounds trite to say "think of the children," but right now there is no evidence to suggest that a gay civil union is, on average, as healthy a place for a child to be raised as the traditional family. Personally, I think that this is something that shouldn't be left to chance. The children that are being adopted have rights too, after all.
I admit that a huge part of the reason that I think that gay civil unions shouldn't be called marriages is that marriage and family laws are inextricably interwined with most everything in our society. I think that it's a mistake to say that marriages and gay civil unions are "the same thing" simply because both involve two consenting adults. I don't think that you can replace a father with an extra mother or worse replace a mother with an extra father and simply assume that the children involved won't be effected negatively.
I suppose that this is why the whole issue has become such a powerful political issue. The Gay and Lesbian coalition want to take advantage of the benefits of being legally "married," and a large portion of the rest of the U.S. population has serious misdoubts about the wisdom of that.
The question is how to work this out politically. I think that if the gays and lesbian continue to pursue a course of trying to get their civil unions defined as "marriage" they are very likely to face more resistance than they currently are facing. As the results from the election shows there are quite a few Americans that have misgivings about making gay civil unions the equal to traditional marriages.
On the plus side if the gay and lesbian community is willing to use some other name for their unions then they can start building up their own legal precedence around their new term. Most Christians would probably be willing to even let gays adopt children if there was some evidence that such families weren't markedly inferior than traditional marriages.
The family is essentially the building block of civilization. You can't hardly expect to be able to tamper with such a basic part of society without some repercussions.
It's not that "religion" owns the definition of marriage. It is rather that marriage has had a particular legal definition for hundreds of years. The gay and lesbian coalition now wants that word to mean something else, primarily so that they can take advantage of existing "marriage" laws.
It's a tricky issue, and it is very likely to require a whole pile of forms to get re-worded. However, there are quite a few Americans that feel very strongly about this issue. In fact, there are enough Americans that feel strongly about this that I feel that there is a danger of the "tyranny of the majority." The constitutional ammendment in Utah not only defines marriage, but it also states:
No other domestic union, however denominated, may be recognized as a marriage or given the same or substantially equivalent legal effect.
Personally, I think that ammendments such as these could get passed in a lot of the more conservative states.
All beliefs should be open to mockery. The only alternative to that stance is to favor censorship.
That is an excellent point. I would point out that it is somewhat hypocritical of the Gay and Lesbian community to ask me to have an open mind about their lifestyle when they openly mock things that I hold sacred. Still hypocrisy is hardly a crime (and thank goodness).
Besides, that's not truly the point. I suppose that I expect the Gay and Lesbian community to mock my beliefs in the same way that they expect me to disapprove of their lifestyle. The best we can hope for is civility. The point is that the Gay and Lesbian community is trying to subvert the legal definition of the term "marriage."
Hypothetically, would you agree with passing the following proposed law: "Civil unions that are not marriages shall henceforth still recieve all the same legal benefits as actual marriages, and as far as the law is concerned, be different from actual marriages in name ONLY."
Yes, as I stated before, I am not trying to force people to live the way I do. Nor am I trying to take away anyone's rights. I am simply trying to defend what I believe to be a sacred institution. I don't care how other people live their lives. I just happen to believe that maintaining the definition of "marriage" as a man and his wife is important. I want to be able to talk to my children about the joys and benefits of marriage without having to add piles of caveats and define all of the terms.
Is that really too much to ask?
I also believe that children and family are intertwined, and that the breakdown of the nuclear family is in large part the cause of the social problems that our country (and the world) face today. Separating the issues of children and family is not only difficult, it is dangerous. Tons of research exists that concludes that the safest and most effective way to raise well socialized people is with the help of a mother and father. Because of that I am not quite convinced that it is wise to conclude that gay civil unions should have the same opportunities to adopt children that married couples have. There simply isn't enough evidence to show how safe that is. Yes, I realize that raising children is a fairly important "right," but the children being adopted have rights too.
On the other hand, there are plenty of straight couples that are horrific parents, and other piles of other situations where the children would clearly be better off with just about anyone else. So I haven't entirely made up my mind on this issue. I do think that we should perhaps let other countries try the experiment first:).
Thanks for the very civil discussion. I understand that this is a very tricky subject and that the beliefs are strong on both sides of the issue. I appreciate being given the benefit of the doubt.
Now before you go talking about "forcing my belief" on others, just remember that there are two conflicting beliefs in this discussion. I believe that the term "marriage" means a union between a man and a woman and anything else is not a marriage, and the folks on the other side of the divide believe that a "marriage" can be made up of any two consenting people. There's a huge cultural and legal difference there. If the Gays and Lesbians win this battle then they will be forcing their belief on *me*, and this happens to be a subject that I am pretty fired up about.
Not to mention the fact that legal precedence is on my side. Utah was kept out of the union because they defined marriage differently than the rest of the states. So clearly the definition of marriage as one man and one woman has some legal background as well.
I don't care what the Gays and Lesbians *do*, but I do care if they try and spin the legal definition of marriage to mean something that it clearly didn't mean when I was born. Let them come up with their own word for their civil unions. If the Gays and Lesbians truly are after civil rights and are not simply out to subvert the meaning of a word that millions of Americans hold sacred then why not just pick some other word for their civil unions?
I believe that marriage is more than an "f@#$ing" piece of paper, and there is thousands of years of cultural precedence that backs up my view. If people like you are successful in turning marriage into nothing more than a social contract then you are forcing your beliefs on me.
Good luck trying though, it would appear that there are far more people that accept my view of marriage than your view. 11 state constitutions were ammended yesterday with my definition of marriage. That's really what has people riled up about this subject. They want to rewrite what a marriage is, and they aren't getting their way.
As it stands right now the city dwellers feel disenfranchised and dont vote because they feel like their votes dont matter.
First of all, that's hardly true. There was record urban turnout in this last election. Clearly people cared, and clearly they came out to vote.
Second of all, why exactly should I care if you don't vote or not? Heck, the more people that feel disenfranchised the more my vote counts. So feel free not to vote. If you are so politically naive that you think that your vote doesn't count, then you are probably going to choose the wrong candidates anyhow.
Here, I will let you in on a little secret. You want to know why politicians spend so much time and effort courting old people, and almost no time going after the young vote (even though young voters are far more impressionable and easy to sway than cyncial older voters)? The reason is simple. Politicians court older voters because older voters have learned that voting matters (usually the hard way, chances are good they didn't vote when they were young). Senior citizens vote, and because they vote they get what they want.
OK, it's been a long day, shoot me for the bad math:). Still you get my point. The beauty of the electoral system is that it requires Yankees in New York to cooperate with Yuppies on the west coast, and desert dwellers of Las Vegas and New Mexico. That sort of coalition requires far more consensus than simply rounding up all of the folks in the ten largest cities and promising that you will pass laws that favor city dwellers.
Hey, I disagree with all of those things too. However, without taking away people's right to act as they see fit, there is little I can do about any of those things.
I can simply point out to my children that all of those things are not the right way to treat the sacred institution of marriage. I am not interested in setting up a system where everyone is forced to be "good" all of the time. If people want to ruin their children's lives by fooling around with their marriages then they are free to choose that course.
Your little list of reasons is a little shallow on logic for me to believe you. Your belief system seems a little shaky if you're so fervently defensive of it.
I believe that words are important, and clearly the Gays and Lesbians believe the same thing, otherwise they would simply invent their own word and be done with it. I am defending my belief because it has come under attack from a very vocal minority with an agenda that runs counter to my own.
To bring this discussion back to politics, the real reason that Gays and Lesbians should rethink their strategy is that 11 states passed ammendments to their constitutions that specifically define marriage as being between a man and his wife. That two-thirds of the voters in 11 states were willing to go to the trouble to define marriage shows the political clout behind this issue. If the Gays and Lesbians push this issue they will lose, big time.
Heck, this sort of question is *precisely* why the Christian community is so up in arms about this subject. Even ten years ago the idea that someone would try to pass off a definition of marriage that included two people of the same sex would have been preposterous. Such a definition flies in the face of hundreds of years of cultural and legal history. While you are at it you might as well change the definition of "birth" to "reaching puberty."
Marriage is a tradition that goes back thousands of years. It's safe to say that the reason that marriage doesn't have a formal legal definition in the United States is that until very recently no one even imagined defining marriage as anything but the traditional man and woman bound as husband and wife. Heck, Utah was denied admission as a state because they allowed plural marriages. So don't tell me that there aren't legal precendents
The assault on the family in recent years has been so complete that even the definition of marriage is under attack. Christians believe that the family has a vital role in society and that the strength of the family is key to the strength of the community and the country, and because they continue to hold beliefs that have held people in good stead for thousands of years they are made fun of.
Even if you don't think that these traditions are worth upholding, and you likewise are callous enough to think that the beliefs held sacred by millions of your fellow citizens should be open to your mockery there is no denying the fact that of all of the human institutions the family unit is the most tried and true way to raise well socialized citizens. Most of our larger social problems can be traced directly back to failure in the home. I believe that this is reason enough to put marriage on a bit of a pedestal.
I am not asking anyone to believe as I do. Nor am I even slightly interested in regulating how other people live their lives. I do, however, respectfully request that my beliefs and values not be openly mocked. If you want me to respect your lifestyle choices, then I expect you to respect mine.
Besides, as the election yesterday showed there are plenty of people that are more than willing to make the definition of marriage a legal issue. None of these measures had any problem gaining wide support. If the Christian community really wanted to legislate morality it certainly could.
There is never going to be a meaningful debate about electoral college refore. The reason, changing the system would require two thirds of the states to approve the change and that simply isn't going to happen. There are too many states that know that they would become completely meaningless if we switched to a popular vote system.
Take this elections, for instance. Would the Democrats have cared one whit for New Mexico or Nevada if all they needed was a popular majority. Heck no, they would have concentrated all of their efforts on the 10 largest cities and the rest of the country could vote however they wanted. With the current system, however, small states like New Mexico and Nevada can become critical. In point of fact, if Kerry had taken those states (and he came close in both) he would be the next President.
So forget about the system changing. The smaller states actually like the fact that you can have an election like 2000 where the smaller states are able to conjur up enough electoral votes to overrule the more populous areas of the country.
It's a cultural issue. To the vast majority of Americans marriage *means* something besides two people shacked up together. To the Christian the word "marriage" means something. Marriage is something that you teach your children to aspire to, and that you hold sacred. It is one of the most important promises that a Christian makes in his or her lifetime.
That's why the the vast majority of Christians have never gotten excited about gay "civil unions" or any other name. Sure there are fringe groups that basically believe that homosexuality should be made illegal, but those folks are a very small minority.
The problem is that the Gay and Lesbian community took something that was sacred to a huge percentage of Americans and turned it into something that is essentially the polar opposite of marriage. They mocked our belief system, and hundreds of years of our religious and legal tradition, and for the most part they did this simply because it pissed religious people off.
We don't care what these people do in private, and we don't care who they leave their money to when they die, or who is eligble to be their "dependant" for insurance purposes, just don't mock Christians by pretending two men or two women can be "married."
It's not about being uncomfortable with the Gay lifestyle, it is about upholding values that are dear to us.
Here's a clue. I believe that the Democrats kept their same political and social values, and gave a little ground on some of the "moral" issues. The problem with the Democrats is that they trumpet some values that are clearly not mainsteam American. 25% of Americans go to church more than once a week, and yet the Democrats routinely vote to support a woman's right to the most brutal types of partial-birth abortions.
Here's a clue. Only wackos think that a woman should have the right to abort what is essentially a fully formed human being. Kerry could have come out in favor of a ban on partial birth abortions and scored huge points with Christians.
Another real problem for the Democrats is their stance on gay and lesbian marriages. Nearly a dozen states voted to change their constitutions because of the fear that the far left would redefine marriage. The Democrats could easily change their message on gay and lesbian partnerships so that it didn't include the word marriage, and that would make a huge difference to Christians.
The Democrats allowed the fringe left elements of their party to turn this election into a Holy War, and it cost Kerry the Presidency. Gays and Lesbians and the extreme pro-Choice elements of the Democratic party are going to vote Democrat no matter who runs. There are lots of religious Americans that like the Democrats' social position, but that can't vote Democrat because of these fringe issues. Democrats tend to talk about the "religious right" like it is a given that Christians will vote GOP. However, if the Democrats took some of these hot button issues off the table a bit then that would not necessarily be the case.
Alienating a fourth of the electorate, especially when that group is made up of folks that tend to vote, is a very poor choice.
Yes, Bush did win the popular vote this time around. However, it would be much harder for republicans to win the popular vote if the democrats didn't have to spend a lot of time and energy campaigning in places like New Mexico. The entire population of New Mexico is like a New York State rounding error.
To me, that's the beauty of the electoral college. It forces politicians to focus on states where they think they can win instead of just focusing on the areas with the densest population. If the Presidential race was popular the President could simply promise tax incentives to urban voters.
If proportional voting were proposed at the Federal level I'd support it 100% and I think a lot of other Americans would too.
I wouldn't even be surprised if the *majority* of people supported proportional voting. You can bet that the folks in the more populous parts of the country would vote for it.
There isn't a chance in the world that such an ammendment would be supported in the smaller states, however. You can bet that the voters in Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Alaska, Hawaii, both Dakotas, etc. aren't going to go for it. And you can absolutely forget the 2/3 of the states that would be necessary for a constitutional ammendment. The electoral system was designed to keep the smaller less populous states from being drowned out by the larger more populous states, and it does an admirable job of that. The electoral college also forces the candidates to form a consensus from a broad range of regions. For example, voters in New York and California need the support of voters in New Mexico (of all places). This keeps the politicos from simply offering populous regions the most political spoils.
And, why should Bush visit Utah or Idaho when everyone knows that these states are going to vote GOP straight down the line. What voters in these states wanted Bush to do was go out and build consensus in the rest of the states.
That's what I *like* about the electoral college. It forces people in different parts of the U.S. to come together and decide. New York and California can't carry the vote by themselves. They need the support of states like Nevada or New Mexico that live in totally different circumstances than the folks on the coasts. That consensus is just another safeguard against the tyranny of the masses
No, my understanding is that the votes will still be counted, and if Kerry wins in Ohio he will still become President. Kerry's concession speech is nothing more than proof that someone in his campaign can do basic algebra. The fact that CNN is still showing Ohio as "too close to call" is more an indictment of CNN's math skills and their political bias than anything else.
Kerry is not going to make up a nearly 140,000 vote deficit with 200K "provisional" ballots.
Kerry knows that pressing the Ohio issue at this point is only going to make him look like a dork and a poor loser. He needed to win Ohio, and he didn't, full stop.
Almost the entire U.S. system of government was designed around the prevention of mob rule. While Gore might have won enough votes in the populous parts of the country to win the popular vote, he didn't build enough consensus across the United States to carry the electoral vote, and the U.S. system is built around consensus. After all, why should New Yorkers and Californians be able to dictate the policy for the entire U.S. simply because they live in a populous region?
The founders knew that having a majority doesn't make your opinion correct (actually, many of the states were afraid that the heavily populated Virginia would dominate politics) and so they devised a system where the President would have to win consensus of the various states. This forces people from different states and regions to work together to elect the President and it creates the type of give and take that makes for a far more stable political structure.
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No, what I was trying to prove was that the legalization of gay marriage was detrimental to the family institution in the Netherlands. Perhaps I wasn't clear. Children born out of wedlock, children in single parent homes, and number of divorces are all indications of the state of the family as an institution. There has been a dramatic rise in all of these statistics since the Netherlands legalized gay marriages and gave legal weight to "registered partnerships." Your Dutch friends are excellent examples of this trend towards the deemphasization of marriage as an important social institution. Even Dutch couples that are serious about sticking together aren't particularly interested in getting "married," and why should they be? After all, the government has removed all of the incentives that used to make marriage a special social institution. Now you can get the same benefits of being married by simply moving into the same apartment.
You made the next jump for me :). I tied the Netherlands' assault on the traditional family to an decrease in the amount of traditional families. Historically these statistics are inevitably followed by severe social problems like juvenile deliquency, occurence of child abuse, depression, and suicide (all of which are far more frequent in children raised outside of traditional families). However, the data isn't in yet as to whether or not the decrease in the traditional Dutch family triggered a corresponding increase in the social problems that have generally followed these statistics.
What we now have is a classic experiment. If you are correct then the deterioration of the Dutch family will not trigger an increase in the social problems that have historically followed family disolution. If I am correct then the Netherlands is in for an increase of social problems that directly correspond to the decrease in the traditional family. I simply believe that there is little sense in following the Netherlands lead in what I see as a risky social experiment before all of the data is in.
In short, the only thing that I tried to prove is that new Dutch laws have weakened the institution of marriage. Whether or not the weakening of marriage will have serious social repercussions remains to be seen. In the meantime I am content to stick to what has currently been shown to work. That's one of the benefits of being conservative. You can let other people be the guinnea pig.
As an aside, I agree with you that the piece of paper from the government does not help people become good parents. However, that doesn't mean that government shouldn't strive to encourage people to get and stay married. Getting married didn't hurt your Dutch friends one bit, did it? In fact, it probably didn't change their relationship at all However, for every Dutch couple like your friends there are several Dutch couples that see the looser cohabitation rules as an easy way to get out of a partnership that becomes difficult (and they all do eventually). Yes, the piece of paper by itself is not much, but it's better than nothing, and it's not like getting married is particularly difficult. Heck, in Las Vegas you can be legally married in 15 minutes. There are certain social and legal benefits to being married, and I believe that the government can and should use these benefits to encourage people to get and stay married.
Either way, before America legislates what is essentially an untried social experiment we should at least wait and see what happens in the Netherlands. Not that the U.S. is likely to follow the Netherlands example any time soon. If the election on Tuesday showed us anything it is tha
As bad as some parents are statistically speaking traditional marriages are far far better at raising children than any other organization that they have been tested against. I have spent the last couple of days researching this (Google is your friend) and I have yet to see a serious report that provides any results to the contrary. Even the feminist-sponsored studies on single parents and the gay and lesbian sponsored studies on other alternative families were, at best, able to say that they weren't statistically worse than the traditional family, and those results were usually over A) included a self-selection of single parents or gay and lesbian parents and compared them to the general married public or B) covered only a narrow amount of indicators.
In short, as bad as traditional families often are everything else is much worse.
Legislation based on ignorance is precisely why I am against the legalization of gay marriages. We don't know the potential risks that gay marriages might bring to the children raised in them. It is unwise and unethical to experiment on children that are up for adoption. If it turns out that gay and lesbian marriages are significantly less adept at raising well adjusted children then our experiment will have endangered thousands of children.
This is only peripherally a religious issue. At heart it is about the raising of America's next generation, a social issue. Right now the numbers stack up in favor of traditional marriage. Children in traditional marriages tend to be far healthier and safer than children in other family units. Whether traditional families are better at raising children because of religion, or because humans are simply wired that way is up to you to decide, but the fact remains that traditional families are good for children.
Personally I think that it may be possible that lesbian couples may also prove to be good at raising children, which is good because a lot of lesbian women actually have children. The fact that gay males tend to have 4 times the problem with partner abuse as straight males (no I am not making this up, gay males are four times more likely on average to beat their sexual partner as straight males) does not bode well for the average gay male couple's chances of raising children effectively.
Governments have a duty and an obligation to do what they can to help insure that children have the best chances possible of being raised effectively. Right now, traditional families appear to be the best ways to do that. Traditional marriage certainly encourages the formation of stable families, but I am sure that there are plenty of atheist families that do an excellent job of raising children. From the research I have seen it would appear that the it is the structure that is important (two biological parents) and not the religious beliefs that bind many families together.
The problem with this is that the raising of families is not just a religious issue, it's a social one as well. Governments have always had a hand in how children were raised, and our society is no exception. It's hard to look at the data and then say that children in traditional family atmospheres aren't safer and happier (on average) than children raised in other social organizations.
That's the problem with legalizing gay marriage. Gay marriage is a social experiment with little or no evidence to suggest that it is a worthy replacement for traditional marriage. Elevating gay marriage to the status of traditional marriage (an institution that the evidence shows is basically the gold standard for producing healthy well-socialized adults) is absolutely foolhardy. Evidence from the "experiment" in the Netherlands suggests that the legalization of gay marriages and the institution of the "registered partner" has had a profound impact on the institution of the traditional marriage. Less people see the point of becoming "married" when these other relationships have the same legal rights. This has had a profound effect on the number of children born out of wedlock, the number of divorces, and the percentage of children in single parent homes, all of which are indicators of further social problems down the road. Not only does this behavior endanger children, but it costs the society money as well.
To put it bluntly, traditional families are better for society than alternative relationships. As such it only makes sense that the laws should favor the traditional family relationship. The arguments against gay marriage tend to get cast in religious overtones, but even from the clinical view of the social sciences the elevation of gay civil unions to be the equal of traditional marriages just doesn't make sense.
As I said before, even in Belgium, one of the few countries where gay marriage is legal, gay couples are not allowed to adopt children. The reason that they made this exception is that even the liberal population of Belgium is nervous about whether gay marriages are likely to be as good for children as traditional marriages.
That's the funny thing about civil rights. They end where someone else's rights begin. In this case the rights of the gay couples conflict with the rights of the children to be adopted into a "healthy" family.
The gay and lesbian coalition want to paint this as a religious issue because the U.S. liberals have been very successful in using the "separation of Church and State" lever to force their relativist agenda. However, that doesn't change the fact that there are problems with gay marriage on a purely social level.
Thank you. I also appreciate your willingness to discuss this issue rationally. Heck, you even allowed me to change my view without simply crucifying me for inconsistency. Your discussion has helped me solidify my own views on the subject. I really appreciate your time and obvious intelligence. Especially after receiving plenty of posts on this subject that merely assumed I was some variation of subhuman.
When I started discussing this I honestly believed that my objection was primarily centered around what I saw as the abduction of the term "marriage." However, the more I thought about it the more I came to realize that my primary objection is that I believe that the traditional family is the best way to raise children, and that society has an obligation to protect and encourage the traditonal family. That's a fairly fundamental shift.
You are correct that the studies I have seen compare two biological parents to various other configurations of heterosexual couples: single never married, divorced, divorced and remarried, etc. There have been some studies with homosexual parents but these studies have been suspect in that the homosexual parents were self-selected, and in any case they were mostly concerned with whether or not the children in these homes exhibited a higher than average tendency towards homosexuality (they didn't). That's why I stated that currently there simply isn't data to suggest that homosexual parents were as safe as traditional families. This is important because adoption is a very competitive business. If there were piles of children sitting around without any possibility of potential parents then I would be more willing to relent, but that's not the case.
In one of my earlier posts (perhaps not in this thread) I mentioned that we should let someone else try this experiment on their children. The Netherlands legalized gay marriages in 1998, and they will no doubt give us the data we need. However, it is interesting to note that the Netherlands acceptance of gay marriages and other non-marriage civil unions has led to a general decline in the number of married couples and a sizable increase in the amount of single mothers, divorces, and cohabitation, all of which have always been indicators for increased social problems. It is entirely possible that even if gay couples make better parents than straight couples that the effects of deemphasizing traditional marriage might still have tremendous negative impacts on society.
I would like to point out that I certainly believe that gay parents should be able to raise their own children however they see fit (with the same abuse limitations that other couples face). In practice this means that lesbian couples are essentially free to have children through artificial insemination (or whatever). The tricky bit are gay couples who are unable to have children "the old fashioned way." They either must adopt, or they must arrange for a woman to be involved somehow :). Even in Belgium where gay marriages are also legal, these couples are not elligible for adoption.
You can't hardly expect Americans to be less conservative than Belgians.
Most of the studies I have seen about children in gay couples was rather suspect. Basically it boiled down to the fact that the gay and lesbian parents were self-selected. A group of gays and lesbians that wanted to "prove" that gay and lesbian parents were no worse than the nuclear family got together and then compared their statistics against the average for the traditional family.
On the plus side the Netherlands is doing the legalized gay marriage experiment right now, and so it's just a matter of time before we have hard data on the subject. One thing to note, however, is that the Netherlands attack on the traditional family structure has already had fairly high consequences when it comes to the amount of divorces, children born out of wedlock, and cohabitation (all of which are strong indicators for increased social problems of all kinds).
As I said before, the family is essentially the basic building block of society. I think that it is folly to suggest that you can deemphasize family without serious repercussions.
That's interesting. It seems to me that if you look that there is plenty of studies comparing the nuclear family to just about every lifestyle that you can imagine. Including a pile of preliminary studies based around the same sex marriages that have been legal in the Netherlands since 1998. Generally speaking these studies compare juvenile deliquency rates, drug abuse rates, college attendance rates, etc.
Heck, google "parent child behavior study" and you will see what I mean. There's literally piles of studies comparing nuclear families to other social organizations.
Here's an interesting quote from a study on the gay civil union legalization in the Netherlands:
This is the sort of thing that the Christian community is concerned about. Not only does a break down of the family make it harder to raise our children, but it creates all sorts of social problems that cost everyone a great deal of money.
It's possible that gay and lesbian unions might stack up favorably against the nuclear family, but I doubt it. After all, even mixing in a step parent has statistically measurable consequences to the children involved. Not to mention the problems that deemphasizing marriage is likely to have on society in general.
It's not just the Christian right that believes this, either. The election results indicate that measures protecting the traditional definition of marriage gathered support that cut across party lines.
Yes, but new recruits are going to have to learn your custom software anyhow. I used to do training for a living, and people in call centers generally don't know much about using their computer outside of the two or three applications that they are supposed to use for work. In fact, one of the big problems in these types of environments is people that think that they *do* know something about computers. Either they spend all their time trying to get around the lock down on the client so that they can change their background, or they find something that isn't locked down properly and screw it up completely.
When you weigh the tiny extra cost of training people how to use a Linux box against the huge savings that are possible Linux makes plenty of sense. Especially if you don't need MS Office compatibility. And when you start talking about using something like the Linux Terminal Server Project so that you can switch away from PC clients to thin clients you can *really* save a lot of money, especially in a call center environment. Now, instead of hundreds of full-fledged PCs to administer you have a handful of servers and thin clients that can be replaced by a monkey and that don't contain any moving parts.
That's an excellent point, very well made. It upsets me that something that I take to be sacred is being mocked by others, but that is their right. You can't outlaw mockery without lessening all of our rights to free speech.
And as I have talked about this in other threads I have come to the conclusion that its not just about the name anyhow. I object to gay civil unions being considered marriages because I feel that there is no evidence to suggest that a gay civil union is as good as a traditional marriage at raising children.
That's really why I want another name besides marriage. I am happy to give gay civil unions the same rights to healthcare and inheritance and all that jazz, as traditional marriages, but I am not willing to say that a gay civil union is a drop in replacement for a traditional marriage, especially when children are involved.
Don't get me wrong, I also want to be able to mention "marriage" to my five-year-old without having to add piles of tricky caveats, but my reluctance is mostly due to the fact that I don't believe that gay civil unions are likely to be as beneficial for children as traditional marriages.
Yes, I suspect you are right. It's one thing to have a civil union that allows for inheritance of monies, or makes it possible for the couple to share a healthcare plan. I don't believe, however, that gay civil unions are as beneficial to society as marriages are, and without more evidence I don't think that it is wise to say that a gay civil union is "just as good" on average at raising children as the traditional family. There certainly isn't any hard data that suggest something like that, and there is plenty of data that shows the benefits to children raised by a mother and father.
I know that it sounds trite to say "think of the children," but right now there is no evidence to suggest that a gay civil union is, on average, as healthy a place for a child to be raised as the traditional family. Personally, I think that this is something that shouldn't be left to chance. The children that are being adopted have rights too, after all.
I admit that a huge part of the reason that I think that gay civil unions shouldn't be called marriages is that marriage and family laws are inextricably interwined with most everything in our society. I think that it's a mistake to say that marriages and gay civil unions are "the same thing" simply because both involve two consenting adults. I don't think that you can replace a father with an extra mother or worse replace a mother with an extra father and simply assume that the children involved won't be effected negatively.
I suppose that this is why the whole issue has become such a powerful political issue. The Gay and Lesbian coalition want to take advantage of the benefits of being legally "married," and a large portion of the rest of the U.S. population has serious misdoubts about the wisdom of that.
The question is how to work this out politically. I think that if the gays and lesbian continue to pursue a course of trying to get their civil unions defined as "marriage" they are very likely to face more resistance than they currently are facing. As the results from the election shows there are quite a few Americans that have misgivings about making gay civil unions the equal to traditional marriages.
On the plus side if the gay and lesbian community is willing to use some other name for their unions then they can start building up their own legal precedence around their new term. Most Christians would probably be willing to even let gays adopt children if there was some evidence that such families weren't markedly inferior than traditional marriages.
The family is essentially the building block of civilization. You can't hardly expect to be able to tamper with such a basic part of society without some repercussions.
It's not that "religion" owns the definition of marriage. It is rather that marriage has had a particular legal definition for hundreds of years. The gay and lesbian coalition now wants that word to mean something else, primarily so that they can take advantage of existing "marriage" laws.
It's a tricky issue, and it is very likely to require a whole pile of forms to get re-worded. However, there are quite a few Americans that feel very strongly about this issue. In fact, there are enough Americans that feel strongly about this that I feel that there is a danger of the "tyranny of the majority." The constitutional ammendment in Utah not only defines marriage, but it also states:
Personally, I think that ammendments such as these could get passed in a lot of the more conservative states.
That is an excellent point. I would point out that it is somewhat hypocritical of the Gay and Lesbian community to ask me to have an open mind about their lifestyle when they openly mock things that I hold sacred. Still hypocrisy is hardly a crime (and thank goodness).
Besides, that's not truly the point. I suppose that I expect the Gay and Lesbian community to mock my beliefs in the same way that they expect me to disapprove of their lifestyle. The best we can hope for is civility. The point is that the Gay and Lesbian community is trying to subvert the legal definition of the term "marriage."
Yes, as I stated before, I am not trying to force people to live the way I do. Nor am I trying to take away anyone's rights. I am simply trying to defend what I believe to be a sacred institution. I don't care how other people live their lives. I just happen to believe that maintaining the definition of "marriage" as a man and his wife is important. I want to be able to talk to my children about the joys and benefits of marriage without having to add piles of caveats and define all of the terms.
Is that really too much to ask?
I also believe that children and family are intertwined, and that the breakdown of the nuclear family is in large part the cause of the social problems that our country (and the world) face today. Separating the issues of children and family is not only difficult, it is dangerous. Tons of research exists that concludes that the safest and most effective way to raise well socialized people is with the help of a mother and father. Because of that I am not quite convinced that it is wise to conclude that gay civil unions should have the same opportunities to adopt children that married couples have. There simply isn't enough evidence to show how safe that is. Yes, I realize that raising children is a fairly important "right," but the children being adopted have rights too.
On the other hand, there are plenty of straight couples that are horrific parents, and other piles of other situations where the children would clearly be better off with just about anyone else. So I haven't entirely made up my mind on this issue. I do think that we should perhaps let other countries try the experiment first :).
Thanks for the very civil discussion. I understand that this is a very tricky subject and that the beliefs are strong on both sides of the issue. I appreciate being given the benefit of the doubt.
Now before you go talking about "forcing my belief" on others, just remember that there are two conflicting beliefs in this discussion. I believe that the term "marriage" means a union between a man and a woman and anything else is not a marriage, and the folks on the other side of the divide believe that a "marriage" can be made up of any two consenting people. There's a huge cultural and legal difference there. If the Gays and Lesbians win this battle then they will be forcing their belief on *me*, and this happens to be a subject that I am pretty fired up about.
Not to mention the fact that legal precedence is on my side. Utah was kept out of the union because they defined marriage differently than the rest of the states. So clearly the definition of marriage as one man and one woman has some legal background as well.
I don't care what the Gays and Lesbians *do*, but I do care if they try and spin the legal definition of marriage to mean something that it clearly didn't mean when I was born. Let them come up with their own word for their civil unions. If the Gays and Lesbians truly are after civil rights and are not simply out to subvert the meaning of a word that millions of Americans hold sacred then why not just pick some other word for their civil unions?
I believe that marriage is more than an "f@#$ing" piece of paper, and there is thousands of years of cultural precedence that backs up my view. If people like you are successful in turning marriage into nothing more than a social contract then you are forcing your beliefs on me.
Good luck trying though, it would appear that there are far more people that accept my view of marriage than your view. 11 state constitutions were ammended yesterday with my definition of marriage. That's really what has people riled up about this subject. They want to rewrite what a marriage is, and they aren't getting their way.
First of all, that's hardly true. There was record urban turnout in this last election. Clearly people cared, and clearly they came out to vote.
Second of all, why exactly should I care if you don't vote or not? Heck, the more people that feel disenfranchised the more my vote counts. So feel free not to vote. If you are so politically naive that you think that your vote doesn't count, then you are probably going to choose the wrong candidates anyhow.
Here, I will let you in on a little secret. You want to know why politicians spend so much time and effort courting old people, and almost no time going after the young vote (even though young voters are far more impressionable and easy to sway than cyncial older voters)? The reason is simple. Politicians court older voters because older voters have learned that voting matters (usually the hard way, chances are good they didn't vote when they were young). Senior citizens vote, and because they vote they get what they want.
Perhaps you could learn something from them.
OK, it's been a long day, shoot me for the bad math :). Still you get my point. The beauty of the electoral system is that it requires Yankees in New York to cooperate with Yuppies on the west coast, and desert dwellers of Las Vegas and New Mexico. That sort of coalition requires far more consensus than simply rounding up all of the folks in the ten largest cities and promising that you will pass laws that favor city dwellers.
Consensus is good.
Hey, I disagree with all of those things too. However, without taking away people's right to act as they see fit, there is little I can do about any of those things.
I can simply point out to my children that all of those things are not the right way to treat the sacred institution of marriage. I am not interested in setting up a system where everyone is forced to be "good" all of the time. If people want to ruin their children's lives by fooling around with their marriages then they are free to choose that course.
I believe that words are important, and clearly the Gays and Lesbians believe the same thing, otherwise they would simply invent their own word and be done with it. I am defending my belief because it has come under attack from a very vocal minority with an agenda that runs counter to my own.
To bring this discussion back to politics, the real reason that Gays and Lesbians should rethink their strategy is that 11 states passed ammendments to their constitutions that specifically define marriage as being between a man and his wife. That two-thirds of the voters in 11 states were willing to go to the trouble to define marriage shows the political clout behind this issue. If the Gays and Lesbians push this issue they will lose, big time.
Heck, this sort of question is *precisely* why the Christian community is so up in arms about this subject. Even ten years ago the idea that someone would try to pass off a definition of marriage that included two people of the same sex would have been preposterous. Such a definition flies in the face of hundreds of years of cultural and legal history. While you are at it you might as well change the definition of "birth" to "reaching puberty."
Marriage is a tradition that goes back thousands of years. It's safe to say that the reason that marriage doesn't have a formal legal definition in the United States is that until very recently no one even imagined defining marriage as anything but the traditional man and woman bound as husband and wife. Heck, Utah was denied admission as a state because they allowed plural marriages. So don't tell me that there aren't legal precendents
The assault on the family in recent years has been so complete that even the definition of marriage is under attack. Christians believe that the family has a vital role in society and that the strength of the family is key to the strength of the community and the country, and because they continue to hold beliefs that have held people in good stead for thousands of years they are made fun of.
Even if you don't think that these traditions are worth upholding, and you likewise are callous enough to think that the beliefs held sacred by millions of your fellow citizens should be open to your mockery there is no denying the fact that of all of the human institutions the family unit is the most tried and true way to raise well socialized citizens. Most of our larger social problems can be traced directly back to failure in the home. I believe that this is reason enough to put marriage on a bit of a pedestal.
I am not asking anyone to believe as I do. Nor am I even slightly interested in regulating how other people live their lives. I do, however, respectfully request that my beliefs and values not be openly mocked. If you want me to respect your lifestyle choices, then I expect you to respect mine.
Besides, as the election yesterday showed there are plenty of people that are more than willing to make the definition of marriage a legal issue. None of these measures had any problem gaining wide support. If the Christian community really wanted to legislate morality it certainly could.
There is never going to be a meaningful debate about electoral college refore. The reason, changing the system would require two thirds of the states to approve the change and that simply isn't going to happen. There are too many states that know that they would become completely meaningless if we switched to a popular vote system.
Take this elections, for instance. Would the Democrats have cared one whit for New Mexico or Nevada if all they needed was a popular majority. Heck no, they would have concentrated all of their efforts on the 10 largest cities and the rest of the country could vote however they wanted. With the current system, however, small states like New Mexico and Nevada can become critical. In point of fact, if Kerry had taken those states (and he came close in both) he would be the next President.
So forget about the system changing. The smaller states actually like the fact that you can have an election like 2000 where the smaller states are able to conjur up enough electoral votes to overrule the more populous areas of the country.
It's a cultural issue. To the vast majority of Americans marriage *means* something besides two people shacked up together. To the Christian the word "marriage" means something. Marriage is something that you teach your children to aspire to, and that you hold sacred. It is one of the most important promises that a Christian makes in his or her lifetime.
That's why the the vast majority of Christians have never gotten excited about gay "civil unions" or any other name. Sure there are fringe groups that basically believe that homosexuality should be made illegal, but those folks are a very small minority.
The problem is that the Gay and Lesbian community took something that was sacred to a huge percentage of Americans and turned it into something that is essentially the polar opposite of marriage. They mocked our belief system, and hundreds of years of our religious and legal tradition, and for the most part they did this simply because it pissed religious people off.
We don't care what these people do in private, and we don't care who they leave their money to when they die, or who is eligble to be their "dependant" for insurance purposes, just don't mock Christians by pretending two men or two women can be "married."
It's not about being uncomfortable with the Gay lifestyle, it is about upholding values that are dear to us.
Here's a clue. I believe that the Democrats kept their same political and social values, and gave a little ground on some of the "moral" issues. The problem with the Democrats is that they trumpet some values that are clearly not mainsteam American. 25% of Americans go to church more than once a week, and yet the Democrats routinely vote to support a woman's right to the most brutal types of partial-birth abortions.
Here's a clue. Only wackos think that a woman should have the right to abort what is essentially a fully formed human being. Kerry could have come out in favor of a ban on partial birth abortions and scored huge points with Christians.
Another real problem for the Democrats is their stance on gay and lesbian marriages. Nearly a dozen states voted to change their constitutions because of the fear that the far left would redefine marriage. The Democrats could easily change their message on gay and lesbian partnerships so that it didn't include the word marriage, and that would make a huge difference to Christians.
The Democrats allowed the fringe left elements of their party to turn this election into a Holy War, and it cost Kerry the Presidency. Gays and Lesbians and the extreme pro-Choice elements of the Democratic party are going to vote Democrat no matter who runs. There are lots of religious Americans that like the Democrats' social position, but that can't vote Democrat because of these fringe issues. Democrats tend to talk about the "religious right" like it is a given that Christians will vote GOP. However, if the Democrats took some of these hot button issues off the table a bit then that would not necessarily be the case.
Alienating a fourth of the electorate, especially when that group is made up of folks that tend to vote, is a very poor choice.
Yes, Bush did win the popular vote this time around. However, it would be much harder for republicans to win the popular vote if the democrats didn't have to spend a lot of time and energy campaigning in places like New Mexico. The entire population of New Mexico is like a New York State rounding error.
To me, that's the beauty of the electoral college. It forces politicians to focus on states where they think they can win instead of just focusing on the areas with the densest population. If the Presidential race was popular the President could simply promise tax incentives to urban voters.
I wouldn't even be surprised if the *majority* of people supported proportional voting. You can bet that the folks in the more populous parts of the country would vote for it.
There isn't a chance in the world that such an ammendment would be supported in the smaller states, however. You can bet that the voters in Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Alaska, Hawaii, both Dakotas, etc. aren't going to go for it. And you can absolutely forget the 2/3 of the states that would be necessary for a constitutional ammendment. The electoral system was designed to keep the smaller less populous states from being drowned out by the larger more populous states, and it does an admirable job of that. The electoral college also forces the candidates to form a consensus from a broad range of regions. For example, voters in New York and California need the support of voters in New Mexico (of all places). This keeps the politicos from simply offering populous regions the most political spoils.
And, why should Bush visit Utah or Idaho when everyone knows that these states are going to vote GOP straight down the line. What voters in these states wanted Bush to do was go out and build consensus in the rest of the states.
That's what I *like* about the electoral college. It forces people in different parts of the U.S. to come together and decide. New York and California can't carry the vote by themselves. They need the support of states like Nevada or New Mexico that live in totally different circumstances than the folks on the coasts. That consensus is just another safeguard against the tyranny of the masses
No, my understanding is that the votes will still be counted, and if Kerry wins in Ohio he will still become President. Kerry's concession speech is nothing more than proof that someone in his campaign can do basic algebra. The fact that CNN is still showing Ohio as "too close to call" is more an indictment of CNN's math skills and their political bias than anything else.
Kerry is not going to make up a nearly 140,000 vote deficit with 200K "provisional" ballots.
Kerry knows that pressing the Ohio issue at this point is only going to make him look like a dork and a poor loser. He needed to win Ohio, and he didn't, full stop.
Almost the entire U.S. system of government was designed around the prevention of mob rule. While Gore might have won enough votes in the populous parts of the country to win the popular vote, he didn't build enough consensus across the United States to carry the electoral vote, and the U.S. system is built around consensus. After all, why should New Yorkers and Californians be able to dictate the policy for the entire U.S. simply because they live in a populous region?
The founders knew that having a majority doesn't make your opinion correct (actually, many of the states were afraid that the heavily populated Virginia would dominate politics) and so they devised a system where the President would have to win consensus of the various states. This forces people from different states and regions to work together to elect the President and it creates the type of give and take that makes for a far more stable political structure.