Actually the smoking bans are not a liberal/conservative thing at all. In fact, the latest smoking ban in Austin is backed by none other than Karl Rove. Most liberals I know are opposed to it.
And as for the FDA and OSHA issues, those are safety and "protections from corporate power" things, and not about banning ideas or thoughts or pictures or words at all. It's about learning form abuses of the past, and working to try and balance out the power equation rather than thinking of the elderly or the sick as "free for medical experiements".
I don't need to rethinki my hypothesis. The facts still support it loud and clear. Sure, the loony left has its share of dictatorial members who want to ban things, but not only have they no power to do so, they never will. They'll always be a fringe element.
However, the fascist fringe on the right has all the power now, and they are constantly moving to ban anything they don't like. Recent bills introduced attempt to ban any books that have gay characters or which were written by gay authors banned from any public school or library... never mind banning abortion, banning gay marriage, trying to regulate cable like broadcast TV and thus ban 'naughty words' from all TV, etc, etc.
See, there's the difference though. Liberals just want to label things so consumers can make informed decisions. Conservatives just want to outright ban or heap huge fines on things so that everyone must conform to their views of what is right and wrong. I'll take the liberal way, thanks.
In fact, the 'lie' itself was purposely crafted and spread by Rush Limbaugh. Al Franken has a decent history of this spin in his book "Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them". It's a good read. And well backed by facts.
You don't really think that the development of the internet would have stopped without his work, do you?
Of course not. But it would have taken longer, been less well-funded, and may even have taken a slightly different direction. He had a vision of what the Internet could be before most people in congress had any clue.
He was a forward thinking man. He also helped modernize the phone and communications systems in the White House.
He also did a lot of work in trying to cut government waste.
He deserves credit where credit is due. Things would have happened without him, to be sure, but he was a good champion and facilitator and agitator towards progress.
What was misleading was the DELIBERATE spin that Rush Limbaugh put on it, when he seized on Gore's legitimate and truthful statement that he took the initiative in creating the Internet in order to ridicule Gore. The lie that Gore said "I invented the internet" was a mendatious meme that spread like wild-fire, unfortunately, fanned on by the right-wing media and their aggressive deception campaign.
This award is too little, too late, but at least it's some mild exoneration for him. Still, I doubt the erronious meme will die any time soon.
Perforce has handled file renames and atomic commits for years now. I'm just curious why Perforce isn't used more widely, as it sounds like Subversion is just now trying to catch up with where Perforce has been for a long time now.
Would a subtitled alien language that everybody magically understands have been better?
Yes. Emphatically yes.
The main thing I hated about the first episode (and the second) is that it's just so rife with unnecessary anachronisms from OUR world... ones completely lacking from the first trilogy. Phantom was filled with bad Jackie Chan b-movie accents, racist overtones and accents both middle-eastern and carribean, a stupid two-headed pod-race announcer that practically screamed "SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!", and worse.
The original trilogy did nothing of the kind. Alien races were truly alien, speaking alien tongues and having *created* cultures... not lame parodies of racist stereotypes as in the first two episodes.
Phantom Menace would have been vastly improved by putting as much time and effort in creating the new aliens and their languages and cultures, as they put into Padme's gowns.
Additionally it would have been nice to see any sign that Darth Maul was really evil. Oh sure, he LOOKED evil enough, but other than fighting when Obi Wan and Qui Gon attacked him, he really didn't do much that showed us who he was... unlike how the character of Darth Vader was built in the first movie.
I'm still hoping against hope that the movie does well, maybe a sequel movie does well too, and then HBO or ShowTime or SciFi pick up the series for another TV run. But damn, that's a long time to wait... and it probably won't happen anyway.
FOX ruined FireFly by not showing the 2 hour "premier", starting with the second episode, and then showing most of the rest out of order.
It almost lost me as well, but I toughed it out, and by the end of its run, the last four episodes, I was hooked. In fact, the last episode aired -- Objects in Space -- is one of the best hours of drama I've ever seen on TV.
I bought the DVD set when it came out and watched them in order, and was stunned at how much I liked it, including episodes I hated when I saw it on TV. It's amazing how much having the background information from the 2-hour pilot helps, as well as seeing them in order.
Give it a chance. Rent the DVDs from NetFlix, or just buy the DVD set and watch them through in order. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. It's a very rich and interesting universe, with some really complex and interesting characters. And the unaired episodes are quite good as well.
And word has it that there isn't much in the way of 'western stuff' in the movie itself... just like in the series, the western stuff sorta faded in to the backgroudn when they were dealing with Alliance planets (i.e. not stuck out on back-water planets), and dealing with the River story (which is the primary story of this movie).
Homosexuality is no more inherently immoral than Heterosexuality is inherently moral.
It's not the state of being, at all, that is the moral issue.
And the issue of civil marriage licenses is a secular issue anyway... any specific religion's idea of its morality shouldn't really be relevant. Granting same-sexu couples a civil marriage license wouldn't compel a single church to change its marriage policies or to validate or accept any unions it did not wish to. Even today, many churches will not perform or recognize inter-faith or inter-racial marriages. Many will not perform a marriage between first cousins, while others will. This is their right, to determine their own rules for their on rituals and ceremonies. This is freedom of religion.
But my religion finds that a union between any two people, forged out of love, and dedicated to building a life together, is deeply and fundamentally moral, even if the two people involved are of the same sex. So why should the State choose to enforce YOUR religion's idea of what is moral or what is a valid marriage, while ignoring MY religion's ideas on the same subjects? How is that freedom of religion? And it's not like my religion is some wacked out or weird one... six US presidents and several of the Founding Fathers shared the same religion as me.
In short, your opinion (and it is just an opinion) that homosexuality is somehow immoral should not affect the secular civil rights that any gay person should be able to have.
It may not be an equal rights issue in their eyes, but they're simply wrong. It is an equal rights issue, period. Objectively.
Anyone who has seen what gay couples have to go through, especially those with children, on a day to day basis can see this fact plainly.
It's not a moral issue at all. We're not discussing religious ceremonies, religion, or what churches should be required to do. At all.
This is about nothing more than a set of civil rights, responsibilities, and priveleges afforded to couples by the state.
Just because they dont' see it as being against equal rights, doesn't mean that isn't EXACTLY what they're fighting against. I'm sure those who were fighting to maintain slavery didn't see themselves as bigots, and I'm sure those who fought against interracial marriages didn't see themselves as fighting against equal rights. That doesn't change the objective fact that that is exactly what they were doing.
In many decades hence, the people fighting against the equal treatment of gays under civil law will be viewed with exactly the same distain as those who fought against equal treatment of blacks and other minorities in the past.
Everyone knew that was coming, but interracial marriage is still marriage (ie, man/woman: the very definition of the thing).
It is now, but only a few decades ago, 90% of the American population would have disagreed with you. See how the definition of marriage changes fluidly over time? It always has, and it always will.
Gay marriage means changing the meaning of marriage.
No, it really doesn't. At least not the definition of civil marriage. Many civil marriage laws are even written today without regard to gender. And to make such laws apply to same sex couples, one only needs to replace any references to "husband" and "wife" with "spouse". Voila, the definition works just fine. Nothing is changed. Gay couples can and do raise children (either biological children from previous relationships, or children that are adopted, resulting from artifical insemination, or suragates), and many such families simply NEED the rights and responsibilities and protections afforded by the civil marriage contract... rights and responsibilities that simply are not avialable through any other means.
The legalization of same-sex civil marriage would not in any way affect the ability of churches and religions to define marriage in whatever way they wish.
But the fact is: marriage IS a civil right. It is ALSO a religious ceremony. It is two separate and distinct things. You can always have one without the other, but most people get both, and most people seem to confuse the two.
Same sex couples can already get religious ceremonies in several churches (Unitarians, The Metropolitan Community Church, The Reform Jewish Synagog, The Liberal Quakers, etc). And atheists can get civil marriage licenses from the Justic of the Peace, even if they never intend to have children.
When interracial marriage was legalized back in the 50's, over 90% of the population was against it. The majority was wrong then. And the majority are wrong now. Allowing same sex couples won't cause massive social change on any real front, any more than interracial marriage has. Some small percentage of marriages will be gay couples, and that's that.
Gay people are some of the wealthiest, most comfortable people in the US.
That oft-repeated statistic is actually not all that true. It has, in fact, been rather thoroughly debunked. You'd do well not to rely in this "factoid" when trying to defend the idea that discrimination against gay people somehow isn't wrong.
And I think it's fair to compare the gay rights movement to the civil rights movement in many areas and in many ways, because much of the rhetoric used by the opposition to the equal rights of others 'not like themselves' is practically identical. And equally wrong.
See, marriage is, by definition, a union of a man and a woman.
That is your very narrow definition of the word, it is true. But it's not the only definition that has ever been used in history.
Marriage is constantly evolving. Marriage used to be one man and as many women as he wanted. Marriage used to be about property, not love. Marriage wasn't always considered 'sacred' either.
Today, marriage is generally about love and life-time partnership. By this definition, gay people most certainly cannot get married, because they are barred from marrying the people they love and wish to build a life together with. In fact, the civil rights afforded to married couples are specifically designed around two people living as one.
The religious definition of marriage can be anything that religion wants it to be. Many churches to this day will not perform inter-faith or even interracial marriages. And that's fine.
But any given religion's definition of marriage should NOT be forced on everone via secular law. My church does not in any way prohibit same-sex marriages, and in fact has been joining same-sex couples into holy unions for decades.
There is no compelling reason for The State to deny same-sex couples a civil marriage licence. This is a completely separate issue from religious marriage ceremonies.
There is most definitely discrimination here, your rationalizations to the contrary notwithstanding.
The issue here, to my mind, is equal protection under the law.
It's not about things you don't have as single that someone else does have as married.
It's about treating two equivalent situations different based on some irrelevant issue. In this case, it is treating two relationships as different under the law based on the sex of one of the members of the couple. THESE couples get rights, but THOSE couples don't, for an arbitrary reason that is not under the control of either party (we don't "control" whom we fall in love with and who our soul mates are).
Again, I don't think that civil rights should be subject to mob rule.
And it is the right-wing that is trying to encode discrimination such as this -- a limiting of a set of available rights that essentially denys those rights arbitrarily and completely form one subset or class of citizens -- into state and even the federal constitution that I find even more abhorrent.
The basis for such discrimination is nothing more and nothing less than simple ignorance and bigotry. These laws and amendments are nothing more than punative punishment on gays and lesbians, and their relationships and families. There is simply no compelling interest for the state to deny marriage licenses and the associated rights and responsibilities to gay couples, and in fact there is evidence that denying gay couples a civil marriage license actually hurts society on the whole. Additionally the only rationale provided for such laws and amendments is religious in nature, and codifying a particular religion's dogma into secular law just seems unconstitutional to me on the face of it.
These are not minority protections. They are legal privileges. Desirable things, understandably, but it is nothing like the right to speak, or vote, or have due process. You do not help your case by pretending that it is.
The right to not be compelled by the state to testify against your spouse, and the right to not have your spouse deported because they are not a citizen are very much liek the right to speak or vote or have due process. You do not help your case by pretending that they are not.
I put it to you that you disagree with me precisely because you are ignorant. Ignorant of the impact on gay people of these punative laws that deny them, their spouses, and their children the same rights and protections that you and others take for granted.
You talk about freedom as though it means being able to feel good about yourself.
Nowhere have I said anything that would lead any reasonable person to that conclusion. That is your invention and your attempt to inject motivations and words into me that you have prepared talking points to tear down.
I talk about freedom as it is, or at least should be: equal treatment under the law for all individuals. I think that I should have, just like you, some say in every single aspect of my governance, period. But I also think that just because you don't like who I love and share my life with, that you cannot and should not be able to deny me the same rights you enjoy, in the same way you enjoy them. Similarly, I should not be denied the same rights you enjoy becuase the color of my skin is different than yours.
And as to your last point, marriage is most definitely a civil liberty. It is a civil license that grants rights that can be obtained in no other way, such as the aforementioned rights of immigration and the right to not be compelled to testify against your spouse. Those are very obviously civil rights, limiting the government's ability to meddle in my personal relationship and partership without any valid reason for doing so. Unless and until you can provide a compelling reason for the state to be able to come in and break up my relationship, but to NOT be able to do the same to YOUR relationship, you have not proven your case.
And the burden, dear friend, is on you and those who would try and deny me equal rights and equal protection... not for me to prove I am somehow worth of being treated equally.
Nice regurgitation of right-wing talking points there.
That a justice might use foreign laws as one aspect in the justification of their decision doesn't bother me in the least, and I'm not sure why it bothers you. OBviously they came to the result of their decision based on the constitution and thoughtful deliberation. In the explaination of the decisions, I think it's perfectly fine to cite any source they want to in an attempt to make it clear why they decided the way they did.
And as for ruling against the will of the people, THAT IS THE JOB OF JUSTICES. Otherwise it'd just be put up to popular vote.
I point out that many of the best decisions have been against majority opinion, in many cases against super-majority opinion. Decisions like the abolishment of segregation or the legalization of interracial marriage. Nobody today really looks back on those as bad decisions (unless they're an unrepetant racist), but at the time, they were wildly unpopular. More than 90% of the people were against the legalization of interracial marriage.
That number is somewhat less for gay marriage (70-something percent at last poll, I think) today, and the people opposing it today are just as wrong as the people opposing interracial marriage were back in the 50's. It's only a matter of time, but sooner or later, same sex marriage will be legal... just like it's becoming in Canada, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, and across Scandanavia.
And even in the case of the Vermont decision on gay marriage, the judges did NOT "legislate from the bench". A legitimate case was brought before them, and the judges found no constitutional backing for denying the same sex couples equal protection and rights under the law, so they TURNED IT BACK TO THE LEGISLATURE to rectify the issue as they saw fit. The Legislature there decided to rectify with civil unions. It was a very heated debate then, but now nobody cares. The sky didn't fall. It's similar in Massachucettes. All this strong opposition, but they decided to pass gay marriage, and it's done, and really, the sky didn't fall.
All this opposition is manufactured outrage and once it's all done, nobody will care, and twenty years down the pike everyone will wonder what the fuss was all about.
And as for changing the meaning of language, that's just B.S. The definition of marriage changes constantly, generation to generation. Besides, gay marriage doens't affect one single church or religious institution in any way. The fact is that "marriage", the word, applies to two completely separate things... the religious ceremony (untouched by allowing gay marriages), and a civil licence that grants rights and responsibilities to two partners in society.
I have two friends, Mark and Jennifer. They are both athiests. He had a vasectomy, and she is unable to bear children due to cervical cancer which cause the removal of her uterus. THey met and fell in love. They got married by walking down to the city hall with the correct fee, and two witnesses, and got their marriage license.
As long as it's perfectly legal for those two to get married, you'll have a very hard time justifing or rationalizing your reasons for wanting to deny the same right to Bill and Ted, or Jane and Marsha.
You don't have to like it. But your dislike of it is no justification for denying over a thousand very real rights to other people you don't even know.
What minority protections are at stake here, anyways?
Just because you are ignorant of the more than 1000 rights granted by a civil marriage license (among them are rights that cannot be obtained through any other means like rights of immigration and the right to not be compelled by the state to testify against your partner), that does not mean such rights don't exist.
Your whole rant was completely ignorant, I have to say. We're talking about the civil rights of individuals and equal protection under the law. Such things should never be put to public vote, as they are in herent in the whole idea of the constitution, and to the very idea of what it means to be free.
Of course citizens should have a say in the laws that govern them, but they should not have any say in which people should be targeted by punitive denials of civil liberties just because they don't like them.
An individual's civil rights are not subject to your approval. If we waited for the masses to vote for things like equal rights for african-americans, they'd still be in chains. Civil rights for minorities are rarely won by popular vote, and "mob rule" would be a horrible way to determine who gets what rights anyway.
Federal courts haven't been arbitrarily reading their own values into the constitution. The constitution has a pretty clear "equal protection" clause, and is pretty clear about separating church and state (if not explicitly in the constitution, then in the subsequent writings of the authors thereof, Thomas Jefferson in particular was very clear about the concept).
If a state super-majority were to decide to strip people of color of their right to vote, the Judiciary would have ever right to step in and say "no, that's wrong", and they'd be absolutely right to do so. That's not being an "activist judge" (the latest code-word for a judge who decides something based on reason and logic rather than on the speaker's prejudices and wishes). That's a judge doing their job. Just because a judge comes to a decision you don't personally like or feel comfortable with, doesn't mean they're being "activist" or in fact that they are wrong.
The judges coming down on the side of treating gays and gay couples equally under the law are making the correct decisions. You don't have to like it, and that is your choice and your right. But that doesn't mean that the judges are wrong.
More specifically, those were state CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS not just state laws. The whole reason for that is because they're afraid that activist judges would overturn laws already in the books. Currently 39 states have "Defense of Marriage Acts" as laws, as well as the federal DOMA.
Even more specifically, they're afraid that knowledgable and competent judges will rightly find their bigoted and pointless laws in violation of constitutional protections, and over-turn them. So they have to circumvent the fact that the courts aren't packed with reactionary bigots by encoding their own bigotry and ignorance right into the constitution itself.
It wasn't activist judges that made gay marriage legal in Massachusettes. A valid court case was brought before the judges and the judges rightly ruled that there was no constitutional reason to not grant the civil licence, and turned the issue back to the legislature to rectify. Which they did. And gee, the sky didn't fall.
Equal Protection under the law: it's for everybody.
Religious right-wing bigots hate that, though, which is why they're going through and trying to circumvent rational judicial rulings by encoding their hateful bigotry into the very constitutions themselves.
There's a reason the founding fathers put the Bill of Rights in there and stated over and over again that the Constitution and its amendments were there to protect minorities from the "tyranny of the majority". Civil Rights should never be put up to a popular vote. An individuals basic and fundamental rights should never be subjected to mob rule.
It should be noted that when interracial marriage was legalized, over 90% of the population was against interracial marriage. It should also be noted that virtually all of the histrionic gnashing of teeth about the disaster that "changing marriage" would unleash upon the country that we're seeing over the gay marriage issue is almost identical to the same crap that was spewed by foes of interracial marriage several decades ago.
And yes, marriage is a civil right. Among the more than 1000 rights granted by a civil marriage license are such things as freedom from being compelled by the state to testify against your spouse, and the freedom from having the government break up your family and deport a spouse because they're not a citizen. These are rights that are not available in any other way, through any other legal document that can ever be drawn up.
The simple fact is that these laws are not only pointlessly punitive encoding of ignorant bigotry into law, but they're violations of religious freedom. My religion, and the religions of a great many people, does not prohibit same-sex unions or marriages. The only real justifications ever cited against same-sex marriages are religious in nature. Why should the dogma of one religion be encoded into law (or the constitution) and not another? The state, as yet, has cited absolutely no compelling reason for denying gay couples a civil marriage license.
As long as two athiests who cannot have children (like my friends Mark and Jennifer) can go down to the justice of the peace and get a marriage license with nothing more than the required fee and two witnesses, then I can see no rational, reasonable, or ethical justification for denying the same exact right to a gay couple.
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Actually the smoking bans are not a liberal/conservative thing at all. In fact, the latest smoking ban in Austin is backed by none other than Karl Rove. Most liberals I know are opposed to it.
And as for the FDA and OSHA issues, those are safety and "protections from corporate power" things, and not about banning ideas or thoughts or pictures or words at all. It's about learning form abuses of the past, and working to try and balance out the power equation rather than thinking of the elderly or the sick as "free for medical experiements".
I don't need to rethinki my hypothesis. The facts still support it loud and clear. Sure, the loony left has its share of dictatorial members who want to ban things, but not only have they no power to do so, they never will. They'll always be a fringe element.
However, the fascist fringe on the right has all the power now, and they are constantly moving to ban anything they don't like. Recent bills introduced attempt to ban any books that have gay characters or which were written by gay authors banned from any public school or library... never mind banning abortion, banning gay marriage, trying to regulate cable like broadcast TV and thus ban 'naughty words' from all TV, etc, etc.
See, there's the difference though. Liberals just want to label things so consumers can make informed decisions. Conservatives just want to outright ban or heap huge fines on things so that everyone must conform to their views of what is right and wrong. I'll take the liberal way, thanks.
In fact, the 'lie' itself was purposely crafted and spread by Rush Limbaugh. Al Franken has a decent history of this spin in his book "Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them". It's a good read. And well backed by facts.
You don't really think that the development of the internet would have stopped without his work, do you?
Of course not. But it would have taken longer, been less well-funded, and may even have taken a slightly different direction. He had a vision of what the Internet could be before most people in congress had any clue.
He was a forward thinking man. He also helped modernize the phone and communications systems in the White House.
He also did a lot of work in trying to cut government waste.
He deserves credit where credit is due. Things would have happened without him, to be sure, but he was a good champion and facilitator and agitator towards progress.
What was misleading was the DELIBERATE spin that Rush Limbaugh put on it, when he seized on Gore's legitimate and truthful statement that he took the initiative in creating the Internet in order to ridicule Gore. The lie that Gore said "I invented the internet" was a mendatious meme that spread like wild-fire, unfortunately, fanned on by the right-wing media and their aggressive deception campaign.
This award is too little, too late, but at least it's some mild exoneration for him. Still, I doubt the erronious meme will die any time soon.
It's not just the BBC, it's http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7734108/, and http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Movies/05/04/film. starwars.rating.ap/index.html too...
Interesting how the text is nearly identical...
Perforce has handled file renames and atomic commits for years now. I'm just curious why Perforce isn't used more widely, as it sounds like Subversion is just now trying to catch up with where Perforce has been for a long time now.
Would a subtitled alien language that everybody magically understands have been better?
Yes. Emphatically yes.
The main thing I hated about the first episode (and the second) is that it's just so rife with unnecessary anachronisms from OUR world... ones completely lacking from the first trilogy. Phantom was filled with bad Jackie Chan b-movie accents, racist overtones and accents both middle-eastern and carribean, a stupid two-headed pod-race announcer that practically screamed "SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!", and worse.
The original trilogy did nothing of the kind. Alien races were truly alien, speaking alien tongues and having *created* cultures... not lame parodies of racist stereotypes as in the first two episodes.
Phantom Menace would have been vastly improved by putting as much time and effort in creating the new aliens and their languages and cultures, as they put into Padme's gowns.
Additionally it would have been nice to see any sign that Darth Maul was really evil. Oh sure, he LOOKED evil enough, but other than fighting when Obi Wan and Qui Gon attacked him, he really didn't do much that showed us who he was... unlike how the character of Darth Vader was built in the first movie.
How much more black can it be?
The answer is none! None more black!
I'm still hoping against hope that the movie does well, maybe a sequel movie does well too, and then HBO or ShowTime or SciFi pick up the series for another TV run. But damn, that's a long time to wait... and it probably won't happen anyway.
FOX ruined FireFly by not showing the 2 hour "premier", starting with the second episode, and then showing most of the rest out of order.
... just like in the series, the western stuff sorta faded in to the backgroudn when they were dealing with Alliance planets (i.e. not stuck out on back-water planets), and dealing with the River story (which is the primary story of this movie).
It almost lost me as well, but I toughed it out, and by the end of its run, the last four episodes, I was hooked. In fact, the last episode aired -- Objects in Space -- is one of the best hours of drama I've ever seen on TV.
I bought the DVD set when it came out and watched them in order, and was stunned at how much I liked it, including episodes I hated when I saw it on TV. It's amazing how much having the background information from the 2-hour pilot helps, as well as seeing them in order.
Give it a chance. Rent the DVDs from NetFlix, or just buy the DVD set and watch them through in order. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. It's a very rich and interesting universe, with some really complex and interesting characters. And the unaired episodes are quite good as well.
And word has it that there isn't much in the way of 'western stuff' in the movie itself
Homosexuality is no more inherently immoral than Heterosexuality is inherently moral.
It's not the state of being, at all, that is the moral issue.
And the issue of civil marriage licenses is a secular issue anyway... any specific religion's idea of its morality shouldn't really be relevant. Granting same-sexu couples a civil marriage license wouldn't compel a single church to change its marriage policies or to validate or accept any unions it did not wish to. Even today, many churches will not perform or recognize inter-faith or inter-racial marriages. Many will not perform a marriage between first cousins, while others will. This is their right, to determine their own rules for their on rituals and ceremonies. This is freedom of religion.
But my religion finds that a union between any two people, forged out of love, and dedicated to building a life together, is deeply and fundamentally moral, even if the two people involved are of the same sex. So why should the State choose to enforce YOUR religion's idea of what is moral or what is a valid marriage, while ignoring MY religion's ideas on the same subjects? How is that freedom of religion? And it's not like my religion is some wacked out or weird one... six US presidents and several of the Founding Fathers shared the same religion as me.
In short, your opinion (and it is just an opinion) that homosexuality is somehow immoral should not affect the secular civil rights that any gay person should be able to have.
It may not be an equal rights issue in their eyes, but they're simply wrong. It is an equal rights issue, period. Objectively.
Anyone who has seen what gay couples have to go through, especially those with children, on a day to day basis can see this fact plainly.
It's not a moral issue at all. We're not discussing religious ceremonies, religion, or what churches should be required to do. At all.
This is about nothing more than a set of civil rights, responsibilities, and priveleges afforded to couples by the state.
Just because they dont' see it as being against equal rights, doesn't mean that isn't EXACTLY what they're fighting against. I'm sure those who were fighting to maintain slavery didn't see themselves as bigots, and I'm sure those who fought against interracial marriages didn't see themselves as fighting against equal rights. That doesn't change the objective fact that that is exactly what they were doing.
In many decades hence, the people fighting against the equal treatment of gays under civil law will be viewed with exactly the same distain as those who fought against equal treatment of blacks and other minorities in the past.
Everyone knew that was coming, but interracial marriage is still marriage (ie, man/woman: the very definition of the thing).
It is now, but only a few decades ago, 90% of the American population would have disagreed with you. See how the definition of marriage changes fluidly over time? It always has, and it always will.
Gay marriage means changing the meaning of marriage.
No, it really doesn't. At least not the definition of civil marriage. Many civil marriage laws are even written today without regard to gender. And to make such laws apply to same sex couples, one only needs to replace any references to "husband" and "wife" with "spouse". Voila, the definition works just fine. Nothing is changed. Gay couples can and do raise children (either biological children from previous relationships, or children that are adopted, resulting from artifical insemination, or suragates), and many such families simply NEED the rights and responsibilities and protections afforded by the civil marriage contract... rights and responsibilities that simply are not avialable through any other means.
The legalization of same-sex civil marriage would not in any way affect the ability of churches and religions to define marriage in whatever way they wish.
But the fact is: marriage IS a civil right. It is ALSO a religious ceremony. It is two separate and distinct things. You can always have one without the other, but most people get both, and most people seem to confuse the two.
Same sex couples can already get religious ceremonies in several churches (Unitarians, The Metropolitan Community Church, The Reform Jewish Synagog, The Liberal Quakers, etc). And atheists can get civil marriage licenses from the Justic of the Peace, even if they never intend to have children.
When interracial marriage was legalized back in the 50's, over 90% of the population was against it. The majority was wrong then. And the majority are wrong now. Allowing same sex couples won't cause massive social change on any real front, any more than interracial marriage has. Some small percentage of marriages will be gay couples, and that's that.
Gay people are some of the wealthiest, most comfortable people in the US.
That oft-repeated statistic is actually not all that true. It has, in fact, been rather thoroughly debunked. You'd do well not to rely in this "factoid" when trying to defend the idea that discrimination against gay people somehow isn't wrong.
And I think it's fair to compare the gay rights movement to the civil rights movement in many areas and in many ways, because much of the rhetoric used by the opposition to the equal rights of others 'not like themselves' is practically identical. And equally wrong.
See, marriage is, by definition, a union of a man and a woman.
That is your very narrow definition of the word, it is true. But it's not the only definition that has ever been used in history.
Marriage is constantly evolving. Marriage used to be one man and as many women as he wanted. Marriage used to be about property, not love. Marriage wasn't always considered 'sacred' either.
Today, marriage is generally about love and life-time partnership. By this definition, gay people most certainly cannot get married, because they are barred from marrying the people they love and wish to build a life together with. In fact, the civil rights afforded to married couples are specifically designed around two people living as one.
The religious definition of marriage can be anything that religion wants it to be. Many churches to this day will not perform inter-faith or even interracial marriages. And that's fine.
But any given religion's definition of marriage should NOT be forced on everone via secular law. My church does not in any way prohibit same-sex marriages, and in fact has been joining same-sex couples into holy unions for decades.
There is no compelling reason for The State to deny same-sex couples a civil marriage licence. This is a completely separate issue from religious marriage ceremonies.
There is most definitely discrimination here, your rationalizations to the contrary notwithstanding.
The issue here, to my mind, is equal protection under the law.
It's not about things you don't have as single that someone else does have as married.
It's about treating two equivalent situations different based on some irrelevant issue. In this case, it is treating two relationships as different under the law based on the sex of one of the members of the couple. THESE couples get rights, but THOSE couples don't, for an arbitrary reason that is not under the control of either party (we don't "control" whom we fall in love with and who our soul mates are).
Again, I don't think that civil rights should be subject to mob rule.
And it is the right-wing that is trying to encode discrimination such as this -- a limiting of a set of available rights that essentially denys those rights arbitrarily and completely form one subset or class of citizens -- into state and even the federal constitution that I find even more abhorrent.
The basis for such discrimination is nothing more and nothing less than simple ignorance and bigotry. These laws and amendments are nothing more than punative punishment on gays and lesbians, and their relationships and families. There is simply no compelling interest for the state to deny marriage licenses and the associated rights and responsibilities to gay couples, and in fact there is evidence that denying gay couples a civil marriage license actually hurts society on the whole. Additionally the only rationale provided for such laws and amendments is religious in nature, and codifying a particular religion's dogma into secular law just seems unconstitutional to me on the face of it.
These are not minority protections. They are legal privileges. Desirable things, understandably, but it is nothing like the right to speak, or vote, or have due process. You do not help your case by pretending that it is.
The right to not be compelled by the state to testify against your spouse, and the right to not have your spouse deported because they are not a citizen are very much liek the right to speak or vote or have due process. You do not help your case by pretending that they are not.
I put it to you that you disagree with me precisely because you are ignorant. Ignorant of the impact on gay people of these punative laws that deny them, their spouses, and their children the same rights and protections that you and others take for granted.
You talk about freedom as though it means being able to feel good about yourself.
Nowhere have I said anything that would lead any reasonable person to that conclusion. That is your invention and your attempt to inject motivations and words into me that you have prepared talking points to tear down.
I talk about freedom as it is, or at least should be: equal treatment under the law for all individuals. I think that I should have, just like you, some say in every single aspect of my governance, period. But I also think that just because you don't like who I love and share my life with, that you cannot and should not be able to deny me the same rights you enjoy, in the same way you enjoy them. Similarly, I should not be denied the same rights you enjoy becuase the color of my skin is different than yours.
And as to your last point, marriage is most definitely a civil liberty. It is a civil license that grants rights that can be obtained in no other way, such as the aforementioned rights of immigration and the right to not be compelled to testify against your spouse. Those are very obviously civil rights, limiting the government's ability to meddle in my personal relationship and partership without any valid reason for doing so. Unless and until you can provide a compelling reason for the state to be able to come in and break up my relationship, but to NOT be able to do the same to YOUR relationship, you have not proven your case.
And the burden, dear friend, is on you and those who would try and deny me equal rights and equal protection... not for me to prove I am somehow worth of being treated equally.
Nice regurgitation of right-wing talking points there.
That a justice might use foreign laws as one aspect in the justification of their decision doesn't bother me in the least, and I'm not sure why it bothers you. OBviously they came to the result of their decision based on the constitution and thoughtful deliberation. In the explaination of the decisions, I think it's perfectly fine to cite any source they want to in an attempt to make it clear why they decided the way they did.
And as for ruling against the will of the people, THAT IS THE JOB OF JUSTICES. Otherwise it'd just be put up to popular vote.
I point out that many of the best decisions have been against majority opinion, in many cases against super-majority opinion. Decisions like the abolishment of segregation or the legalization of interracial marriage. Nobody today really looks back on those as bad decisions (unless they're an unrepetant racist), but at the time, they were wildly unpopular. More than 90% of the people were against the legalization of interracial marriage.
That number is somewhat less for gay marriage (70-something percent at last poll, I think) today, and the people opposing it today are just as wrong as the people opposing interracial marriage were back in the 50's. It's only a matter of time, but sooner or later, same sex marriage will be legal... just like it's becoming in Canada, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, and across Scandanavia.
And even in the case of the Vermont decision on gay marriage, the judges did NOT "legislate from the bench". A legitimate case was brought before them, and the judges found no constitutional backing for denying the same sex couples equal protection and rights under the law, so they TURNED IT BACK TO THE LEGISLATURE to rectify the issue as they saw fit. The Legislature there decided to rectify with civil unions. It was a very heated debate then, but now nobody cares. The sky didn't fall. It's similar in Massachucettes. All this strong opposition, but they decided to pass gay marriage, and it's done, and really, the sky didn't fall.
All this opposition is manufactured outrage and once it's all done, nobody will care, and twenty years down the pike everyone will wonder what the fuss was all about.
And as for changing the meaning of language, that's just B.S. The definition of marriage changes constantly, generation to generation. Besides, gay marriage doens't affect one single church or religious institution in any way. The fact is that "marriage", the word, applies to two completely separate things... the religious ceremony (untouched by allowing gay marriages), and a civil licence that grants rights and responsibilities to two partners in society.
I have two friends, Mark and Jennifer. They are both athiests. He had a vasectomy, and she is unable to bear children due to cervical cancer which cause the removal of her uterus. THey met and fell in love. They got married by walking down to the city hall with the correct fee, and two witnesses, and got their marriage license.
As long as it's perfectly legal for those two to get married, you'll have a very hard time justifing or rationalizing your reasons for wanting to deny the same right to Bill and Ted, or Jane and Marsha.
You don't have to like it. But your dislike of it is no justification for denying over a thousand very real rights to other people you don't even know.
What minority protections are at stake here, anyways?
Just because you are ignorant of the more than 1000 rights granted by a civil marriage license (among them are rights that cannot be obtained through any other means like rights of immigration and the right to not be compelled by the state to testify against your partner), that does not mean such rights don't exist.
Your whole rant was completely ignorant, I have to say. We're talking about the civil rights of individuals and equal protection under the law. Such things should never be put to public vote, as they are in herent in the whole idea of the constitution, and to the very idea of what it means to be free.
Of course citizens should have a say in the laws that govern them, but they should not have any say in which people should be targeted by punitive denials of civil liberties just because they don't like them.
An individual's civil rights are not subject to your approval. If we waited for the masses to vote for things like equal rights for african-americans, they'd still be in chains. Civil rights for minorities are rarely won by popular vote, and "mob rule" would be a horrible way to determine who gets what rights anyway.
Federal courts haven't been arbitrarily reading their own values into the constitution. The constitution has a pretty clear "equal protection" clause, and is pretty clear about separating church and state (if not explicitly in the constitution, then in the subsequent writings of the authors thereof, Thomas Jefferson in particular was very clear about the concept).
If a state super-majority were to decide to strip people of color of their right to vote, the Judiciary would have ever right to step in and say "no, that's wrong", and they'd be absolutely right to do so. That's not being an "activist judge" (the latest code-word for a judge who decides something based on reason and logic rather than on the speaker's prejudices and wishes). That's a judge doing their job. Just because a judge comes to a decision you don't personally like or feel comfortable with, doesn't mean they're being "activist" or in fact that they are wrong.
The judges coming down on the side of treating gays and gay couples equally under the law are making the correct decisions. You don't have to like it, and that is your choice and your right. But that doesn't mean that the judges are wrong.
More specifically, those were state CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS not just state laws. The whole reason for that is because they're afraid that activist judges would overturn laws already in the books. Currently 39 states have "Defense of Marriage Acts" as laws, as well as the federal DOMA.
Even more specifically, they're afraid that knowledgable and competent judges will rightly find their bigoted and pointless laws in violation of constitutional protections, and over-turn them. So they have to circumvent the fact that the courts aren't packed with reactionary bigots by encoding their own bigotry and ignorance right into the constitution itself.
It wasn't activist judges that made gay marriage legal in Massachusettes. A valid court case was brought before the judges and the judges rightly ruled that there was no constitutional reason to not grant the civil licence, and turned the issue back to the legislature to rectify. Which they did. And gee, the sky didn't fall.
Equal Protection under the law: it's for everybody.
Religious right-wing bigots hate that, though, which is why they're going through and trying to circumvent rational judicial rulings by encoding their hateful bigotry into the very constitutions themselves.
There's a reason the founding fathers put the Bill of Rights in there and stated over and over again that the Constitution and its amendments were there to protect minorities from the "tyranny of the majority". Civil Rights should never be put up to a popular vote. An individuals basic and fundamental rights should never be subjected to mob rule.
It should be noted that when interracial marriage was legalized, over 90% of the population was against interracial marriage. It should also be noted that virtually all of the histrionic gnashing of teeth about the disaster that "changing marriage" would unleash upon the country that we're seeing over the gay marriage issue is almost identical to the same crap that was spewed by foes of interracial marriage several decades ago.
And yes, marriage is a civil right. Among the more than 1000 rights granted by a civil marriage license are such things as freedom from being compelled by the state to testify against your spouse, and the freedom from having the government break up your family and deport a spouse because they're not a citizen. These are rights that are not available in any other way, through any other legal document that can ever be drawn up.
The simple fact is that these laws are not only pointlessly punitive encoding of ignorant bigotry into law, but they're violations of religious freedom. My religion, and the religions of a great many people, does not prohibit same-sex unions or marriages. The only real justifications ever cited against same-sex marriages are religious in nature. Why should the dogma of one religion be encoded into law (or the constitution) and not another? The state, as yet, has cited absolutely no compelling reason for denying gay couples a civil marriage license.
As long as two athiests who cannot have children (like my friends Mark and Jennifer) can go down to the justice of the peace and get a marriage license with nothing more than the required fee and two witnesses, then I can see no rational, reasonable, or ethical justification for denying the same exact right to a gay couple.
But that's just my two cents.
It annoys me more that all the planets have the same atmosphere and gravity.
...except hat mirrordot is slashdotted, and all the links to the icon pics are broken. So that doesn't help at all.
You want to re-imagine Wonder Woman as a fem-bot?
At least he's not looking at Amy Acker (Angel's "Fred") to play the role...
Joss does have such a weird thing for way-too-skinny stick-women.
Wonder Woman has CURVES.