I'll give you Kissinger and Arafat, but Gorbachev deserved it. He instituted many of the changes (namely Glasnost and nuclear arms reduction) that Sakharov militated for, and god knows what got into his wife about it (Sakharov had been dead when Gorbachev's prize was awarded, so who knows what he would have thought about it). He deserves kudos for those achievements as well as presiding over a basically non-violent collapse of the Soviet Union, which could have been a great deal worse.
I agree with most posters here that Gore's prize is at best very premature.
An excellent point, however when he was using the porn example he was talking about how everything should be available without restriction to adults. I don't support Yee's position by any means; I'm not crazy about government regulation in the first place, and regulations on art and speech (which I was gratified to here Yee happily concedes that games are both) invariably lead to bad things. I simply appreciate politicians who are willing to engage their critics and try to explain with reason and erudition, rather than simply shouting at strawmen with emotional appeals.
The Longest Journey. It's Alice in Wonderland and even has cute talking animals. What isn't immediately apparent is the sexually frank dialogue (including discussions of homosexuality and date rape), cursing, and some even more seriously fucked-up shit...and the best part is you don't see much of any of that for the first four to five hours or so. So, yeah, it is quite possible for a game to seem like it is appropriate for one age level and actually be something quite different.
p.s. I *loved* TLJ. It was a fantastic adventure game. I still am seriously irritated for not having been able to pick up Dreamfall.
Clearly this Yee character is from an alternate universe, where politicians consider policy with a decent amount of reflection and don't feel the need to demonize the horreur de jour.
He makes an especially interesting point in that, unlike movies, it is unrealistic for parents to provide guidance for their children throughout the entire gameplaying experience because games are pretty damn long-playing compared to comparable media.
The worst is when he does it in the name of comic relief and makes what JRRT created as strong, competent elements into common oafs. The ents are a prime example of this.
Wait...what? Of all the things, the Ents were pretty damn close to how JRR Tolkien wrote them; very deliberate to the point where they appeared slow and oafish, but terrible when roused, and pretty out-of-touch with the world in any case. If anything, Tolkien's Treebeard was sillier than Jackson's.
On the other hand, I was pretty irritated when the elves showed up at Helm's Deep. I'll admit, 300 against tens of thousands looks pretty ridiculous on screen (even if it's Spartans v. Persians, never mind scraggly horsemen v. orcs), but the additional troops robbed it of that 'Battle of New Orleans' sort of feel, and also made the elves unnecessarily sympathetic.
Cigarette taxes are a tax on the addicted, a quality that has precious little to do with intelligence, but tends to very strongly correlate with economic status. It is taking money by taking advantage of a habit that has partially compromised the person's free will and choice; damn scummy, if you ask me. Further, the tax cuts into a larger proportional quantity of a poor smoker's income than a rich person, since it is a consumption tax.
While I agree that free expression is primarily a freedom of private citizens, public officials are not stripped of all rights to expression, even in the context of their official roles and capacities. The dividing lines can be dicey, especially with religious expression.
You misunderstand; perhaps I came off as too defensive. I was attempting to distinguish myself from people (and they do exist) who uncritically swallow the ideas and ideologies of their favorite media, whether it be books, movies, or video games, simply because it is their favorite, and not because of the relative quality of the particular ideas being presented. A video game, per se, is no more or less worthy a conduit for serious ideas than any other media, though particular games may be individually more or less valuable in that regard. I think when it comes to vagaries of media, genre plays a more important role than medium in judging suitability. For example, I think it was Penn Jillette who remarked that comedy is a frustrating medium for social critique because the message gets short-circuited by the laughter, but on the other hand being funny does allow one to say more provocative things than might otherwise be tolerated.
I like to triangulate the ideas I run into from different sources. The whole "people secretly like to be watched" thing is nothing new, but its presentation in Deus Ex was particularly succinct, skillful, and therefore memorable. Also, taking into account the general composition of the/. crowd and their relative interests, I would imagine it to be more likely that a reader would be more familiar with Deus Ex than some other sources.
Here's a distinction: in the case of the homicide-by-car, the speech is direct evidence of premeditation for the act. The motivation itself (vengeance upon a person who slept with one's spouse) is secondary, if not completely irrelevant. Likewise, if a person runs down a member of a different race with a car and precedes the act with a hurled racial epithet, I'd take that as legitimate evidence of premeditation, warranting the greater charge, and could care less that the specific motivation that cause the premeditation was racism instead of vengeance. The elevated charge is based simply upon the legitimate interest of punishing more harshly those who, for whatever reason, would consciously consider murder, as opposed to those that are simply reckless, negligent, insane, or intemperate.
The same holds true for your other examples; in each case the statement made indicates a premeditation to commit an illegal act, and it is this element that is aggravating, not the content of the speech that indicates the motivation for the premeditation.
Maybe like in Britain they'll come equipped with loudspeakers so that the all-seeing overlords can chastise you to discontinue your deviant and/or naughty thoughts. That'll nip those perversions right in the bud! If they're really industrious they could automate that part as well, with pre-recorded messages by someone with a suitably authoritative-sounding voice (I nominate James Earl Jones).
City camera is pointed at a window in which is visible the screen of a computer at a public internet cafe. You log on to/. at the cafe. Bam! Suspicious activity! See, it's applicable.:)
Also, and call me crazy if I'm crazy, but its awfully hard to live as a free, responsible person online if you can't live as a free, responsible person offline. Hence, meat-space rights are relevant to YRO.
Have you ever played Deus Ex? Near the end of the game, a character notes that surveillance fulfills a role that used to be reserved for religiously-inspired deities, in that at some level people want to be watched because they crave notice and approval, to believe that they matter and to erase the feeling of loneliness that civilization can otherwise paradoxically inspire. Humans, being social creatures, have a need to be a part of a greater whole, and define themselves at least partially by other people's labels and opinions. We may love our privacy, or seem to externally, but deep down we crave to be valued. The character points out that as the original religious paradigm began to lose significance, the need started to be re-located onto worship of fame, cults of personality, and ubiquitous state surveillance. Sound familiar?
Not that I normally take my sociological cues from video games, but this observation strikes me as an accurate one.
Totally agree. I'd say to be effective, however, the informed public is greatly aided in preventing abuse by official judicial checks on the worst cases, by for example in this case removing the legislative cover. I don't understand folks who (like the GP of the thread) are so cynical that they argue such decisions don't matter at all. Though, I can understand the sentiment of frustration of people who observe those who see decisions like this and figure that the courts have it handled and so conclude they don't have to be vigilant, thus allowing abuses to continue below the level of judicial scrutiny.
Because the business of government would grind to an actual halt. Applying constitutional principles is not so mechanical as application of mathematical principles; there is a great deal more room for interpretation, ambiguity, contradiction, and honest disagreement. To impeach or otherwise penalize a legislator for authoring or voting for an act that is later found unconstitutional would be difficult at best, because a reasonable defense would be an assertion by the legislator that he had a good faith belief his actions were constitutional.
If that were not admitted as a defense, then legislators would never legislate, because they could be punished at any later time potentially for any act they take as a legislator. That's not to mention that such a process would be surely corrupted to political ends, and there are also shades of ex post facto in such an idea, as the determination of unconstitutionality could only occur after the law was passed; before such a ruling, it is indeterminate whether a particular vote or sponsorship actually violated the constitution, and certainly there is no reasonable way for that person to determine how the courts will rule on the act in the future as the vote is happening.
Then we agree. I was arguing against was hating the government for no reason, i.e. as a starting position before evidence is brought to bear. If the evidence shows the government to be corrupt, malignant, malicious, inefficient, and/or inhumane, then by all means hate the government! All I'm saying is that a person should allow for the possibility that it isn't, and not prejudge the situation.
Actually, I'd be curious to see (in the long shot alternate universe that R. Paul wins the party nomination) how the dems would approach handling him. He's consistent, old-school conservative which is something they haven't debated against in a very long time, and he was against the Iraq War from the beginning, which makes him more anti-war than everyone on the Dem's side except Obama and Kucinich, nerfing their biggest soft-support issue.
He also deserve kudos for co-sponsoring legislation with reps on both sides of the aisle to encourage (via favorable tax laws) employee-owned corporations. He said (and I agree) that common ownership is a better protection of workers and a better incentive for work than unions and minimum wage laws (though in some circumstances I will concede that those are necessary).
You are right. That's why I said the decision was good but of limited utility. It prevents only one type of abuse (wrongful conviction by inappropriate procurement of evidence). I have to ask you, though, do you really believe that those who have a propensity to misuse police powers wait till they have legislative cover before they do so? J. Edgar Hoover et. al. conducted politically-motivated surveillance long before anything like the PATRIOT Act was enacted.
Very good point. I was being snarky and misplaced my fact sense; if the monument was paid for by tax dollars, then it indeed does cross a line. Not making excuses for Ron Paul (because we should have an expectation that our leaders be on top of their game), but politicians often take stands on issues without being informed of the minutiae of the situation, not necessarily because they're are careless, but sometimes because they have more important issues to concentrate their detailing on. I find it extremely hard to believe that R. Paul would support the monument if he was aware that tax dollars were appropriated to purchase it, and find it more likely he just didn't pay the correct amount of attention to the situation. However, I could be wrong, in which case this is a good example of him not being consistent with his stated principles.
On second thought, he might have had more trouble with the issue because of federalism concerns, as IIRC the federal courts got involved. If that is the case, he'd still be wrong (as the 14th Amendment and incorporation doctrine would make such an establishment clause violation a clear federal matter), but it would make more sense in viewing his principles.
True. However, the courts already make a sharp distinction between expressive speech and expressive action; burning a cross on a lawn, for example, is intended to cause real harm of the sort you describe, and has no external speech value (unless it's in a Madonna music video...;)). The problem with hate crime legislation per se is that it serves to dissolve the distinction between prohibited acts and prohibited motivations; I don't have much problem with "Hate Crime Legislation" that has a discrete evidentiary burden for a criminalized act intended and normally understood to intimidate a community of persons. However, the difficulty of crafting such legislation finely enough to avoid the criminalization of attitudes and intents that are distasteful but not terroristic is such that I am skeptical any body of legislators (being human and thus subject to the passions and hysterias of the crowd) can successfully do so in all but the most obvious and clear-cut types of behaviors.
I personally think government should solemnly give up the notion it can make people better and concentrate on preventing people from harming each other with overt acts. The protection of communities, including disadvantaged ones, comes from them being assured that they are secure in their persons from harm, and that only comes from the Rule of Law being clear and acting to quash destructive behaviors and acts by applying that rule. Suppressing ideologies for their own sake is never very successful.
Yeah. It's so difficult to be pleasant; it must take specialized training. But seriously, if you want to blame someone for outsourcing jobs, blame those who set up the current international financial system which allows free flow of capital; that is what facilitates job market mobility. That happened back in the 1970's with the abolition of most capital controls, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't Ron Paul's fault.
Which is disturbing in and of itself, because it means he hears the disembodied voice of Alex Trebek in his head and always believes he is participating in a game of Jeopardy!. Seriously, this would explain a lot.
* Opposes federal funding for pretty much everything
* Pro-tax cuts, nearly all of which go to the rich...anti-inflationary money policy, nearly all of which benefits the poor
* Anti-U.N....and any other organization that subsumes state sovereign autonomy
* Favors cutting gas taxes as gas taxes are nearly exclusively a tax on the poor (much like cigarette taxes)
* Against corporate welfare
* Glorifies Ronald Reagan...nobody's perfect.:)
* Supports corporate efforts to ship US jobs to China, because jobs are a finite and static resource and employment is a zero-sum competition? They certainly aren't; ask any economist. This point is just plain stupid.
* Attacks gun control (so...?) and D.C. self-rule, which is a messy and complicated political football, complete with constitutional entanglements.
* Anti-union...does it bear mentioning that unions these days are pretty corrupt and generally are ineffective at bettering their members' circumstances?
* Opposes hate crime legislation, as a crime is a crime is a crime, by statute. I'm pretty sure if you kill someone, the thing they would care about is their being dead, not what was going through your head when you did it.
* Supports "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"; Ron Paul is not good on homosexual equality issues.
* Opposes allowing same-sex partners to adopt...again, this is Ron Paul legitimately being stupid.
* Voted to allow bigoted Alabama judge to post Ten Commandments in courtroom, as free expression is just one of those things we used to care about...
* Co-sponsored Constitutional amendment pushing coerced prayer in public schools...I'm sorry, this is the only one I hadn't heard. Citation, please?
* Opposes restoring the Pledge of Allegiance to the version without "Under God"...so?
* And so on and so forth. Yes, he is truly all that is opposed to what is right and true...LOL.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll give you Kissinger and Arafat, but Gorbachev deserved it. He instituted many of the changes (namely Glasnost and nuclear arms reduction) that Sakharov militated for, and god knows what got into his wife about it (Sakharov had been dead when Gorbachev's prize was awarded, so who knows what he would have thought about it). He deserves kudos for those achievements as well as presiding over a basically non-violent collapse of the Soviet Union, which could have been a great deal worse.
I agree with most posters here that Gore's prize is at best very premature.
An excellent point, however when he was using the porn example he was talking about how everything should be available without restriction to adults. I don't support Yee's position by any means; I'm not crazy about government regulation in the first place, and regulations on art and speech (which I was gratified to here Yee happily concedes that games are both) invariably lead to bad things. I simply appreciate politicians who are willing to engage their critics and try to explain with reason and erudition, rather than simply shouting at strawmen with emotional appeals.
The Longest Journey. It's Alice in Wonderland and even has cute talking animals. What isn't immediately apparent is the sexually frank dialogue (including discussions of homosexuality and date rape), cursing, and some even more seriously fucked-up shit...and the best part is you don't see much of any of that for the first four to five hours or so. So, yeah, it is quite possible for a game to seem like it is appropriate for one age level and actually be something quite different.
p.s. I *loved* TLJ. It was a fantastic adventure game. I still am seriously irritated for not having been able to pick up Dreamfall.
He was decent as Hector. Also, there was that one where he was a Mossad agent...that one was good too.
Point being, even Al Pacino had his Gigli. One poor performance does not an actor break.
Clearly this Yee character is from an alternate universe, where politicians consider policy with a decent amount of reflection and don't feel the need to demonize the horreur de jour.
He makes an especially interesting point in that, unlike movies, it is unrealistic for parents to provide guidance for their children throughout the entire gameplaying experience because games are pretty damn long-playing compared to comparable media.
The worst is when he does it in the name of comic relief and makes what JRRT created as strong, competent elements into common oafs. The ents are a prime example of this.
Wait...what? Of all the things, the Ents were pretty damn close to how JRR Tolkien wrote them; very deliberate to the point where they appeared slow and oafish, but terrible when roused, and pretty out-of-touch with the world in any case. If anything, Tolkien's Treebeard was sillier than Jackson's.
On the other hand, I was pretty irritated when the elves showed up at Helm's Deep. I'll admit, 300 against tens of thousands looks pretty ridiculous on screen (even if it's Spartans v. Persians, never mind scraggly horsemen v. orcs), but the additional troops robbed it of that 'Battle of New Orleans' sort of feel, and also made the elves unnecessarily sympathetic.
I can confirm the location of Praxis, but...
What?
I cannot confirm the existence of Praxis.
Or perhaps Ricardo Montalban...also aged, but still has the voice.
Cigarette taxes are a tax on the addicted, a quality that has precious little to do with intelligence, but tends to very strongly correlate with economic status. It is taking money by taking advantage of a habit that has partially compromised the person's free will and choice; damn scummy, if you ask me. Further, the tax cuts into a larger proportional quantity of a poor smoker's income than a rich person, since it is a consumption tax.
While I agree that free expression is primarily a freedom of private citizens, public officials are not stripped of all rights to expression, even in the context of their official roles and capacities. The dividing lines can be dicey, especially with religious expression.
You misunderstand; perhaps I came off as too defensive. I was attempting to distinguish myself from people (and they do exist) who uncritically swallow the ideas and ideologies of their favorite media, whether it be books, movies, or video games, simply because it is their favorite, and not because of the relative quality of the particular ideas being presented. A video game, per se, is no more or less worthy a conduit for serious ideas than any other media, though particular games may be individually more or less valuable in that regard. I think when it comes to vagaries of media, genre plays a more important role than medium in judging suitability. For example, I think it was Penn Jillette who remarked that comedy is a frustrating medium for social critique because the message gets short-circuited by the laughter, but on the other hand being funny does allow one to say more provocative things than might otherwise be tolerated.
I like to triangulate the ideas I run into from different sources. The whole "people secretly like to be watched" thing is nothing new, but its presentation in Deus Ex was particularly succinct, skillful, and therefore memorable. Also, taking into account the general composition of the /. crowd and their relative interests, I would imagine it to be more likely that a reader would be more familiar with Deus Ex than some other sources.
Here's a distinction: in the case of the homicide-by-car, the speech is direct evidence of premeditation for the act. The motivation itself (vengeance upon a person who slept with one's spouse) is secondary, if not completely irrelevant. Likewise, if a person runs down a member of a different race with a car and precedes the act with a hurled racial epithet, I'd take that as legitimate evidence of premeditation, warranting the greater charge, and could care less that the specific motivation that cause the premeditation was racism instead of vengeance. The elevated charge is based simply upon the legitimate interest of punishing more harshly those who, for whatever reason, would consciously consider murder, as opposed to those that are simply reckless, negligent, insane, or intemperate.
The same holds true for your other examples; in each case the statement made indicates a premeditation to commit an illegal act, and it is this element that is aggravating, not the content of the speech that indicates the motivation for the premeditation.
Maybe like in Britain they'll come equipped with loudspeakers so that the all-seeing overlords can chastise you to discontinue your deviant and/or naughty thoughts. That'll nip those perversions right in the bud! If they're really industrious they could automate that part as well, with pre-recorded messages by someone with a suitably authoritative-sounding voice (I nominate James Earl Jones).
City camera is pointed at a window in which is visible the screen of a computer at a public internet cafe. You log on to /. at the cafe. Bam! Suspicious activity! See, it's applicable. :)
Also, and call me crazy if I'm crazy, but its awfully hard to live as a free, responsible person online if you can't live as a free, responsible person offline . Hence, meat-space rights are relevant to YRO.
Have you ever played Deus Ex? Near the end of the game, a character notes that surveillance fulfills a role that used to be reserved for religiously-inspired deities, in that at some level people want to be watched because they crave notice and approval, to believe that they matter and to erase the feeling of loneliness that civilization can otherwise paradoxically inspire. Humans, being social creatures, have a need to be a part of a greater whole, and define themselves at least partially by other people's labels and opinions. We may love our privacy, or seem to externally, but deep down we crave to be valued. The character points out that as the original religious paradigm began to lose significance, the need started to be re-located onto worship of fame, cults of personality, and ubiquitous state surveillance. Sound familiar?
Not that I normally take my sociological cues from video games, but this observation strikes me as an accurate one.
Totally agree. I'd say to be effective, however, the informed public is greatly aided in preventing abuse by official judicial checks on the worst cases, by for example in this case removing the legislative cover. I don't understand folks who (like the GP of the thread) are so cynical that they argue such decisions don't matter at all. Though, I can understand the sentiment of frustration of people who observe those who see decisions like this and figure that the courts have it handled and so conclude they don't have to be vigilant, thus allowing abuses to continue below the level of judicial scrutiny.
Because the business of government would grind to an actual halt. Applying constitutional principles is not so mechanical as application of mathematical principles; there is a great deal more room for interpretation, ambiguity, contradiction, and honest disagreement. To impeach or otherwise penalize a legislator for authoring or voting for an act that is later found unconstitutional would be difficult at best, because a reasonable defense would be an assertion by the legislator that he had a good faith belief his actions were constitutional.
If that were not admitted as a defense, then legislators would never legislate, because they could be punished at any later time potentially for any act they take as a legislator. That's not to mention that such a process would be surely corrupted to political ends, and there are also shades of ex post facto in such an idea, as the determination of unconstitutionality could only occur after the law was passed; before such a ruling, it is indeterminate whether a particular vote or sponsorship actually violated the constitution, and certainly there is no reasonable way for that person to determine how the courts will rule on the act in the future as the vote is happening.
Then we agree. I was arguing against was hating the government for no reason, i.e. as a starting position before evidence is brought to bear. If the evidence shows the government to be corrupt, malignant, malicious, inefficient, and/or inhumane, then by all means hate the government! All I'm saying is that a person should allow for the possibility that it isn't, and not prejudge the situation.
Actually, I'd be curious to see (in the long shot alternate universe that R. Paul wins the party nomination) how the dems would approach handling him. He's consistent, old-school conservative which is something they haven't debated against in a very long time, and he was against the Iraq War from the beginning, which makes him more anti-war than everyone on the Dem's side except Obama and Kucinich, nerfing their biggest soft-support issue.
He also deserve kudos for co-sponsoring legislation with reps on both sides of the aisle to encourage (via favorable tax laws) employee-owned corporations. He said (and I agree) that common ownership is a better protection of workers and a better incentive for work than unions and minimum wage laws (though in some circumstances I will concede that those are necessary).
You are right. That's why I said the decision was good but of limited utility. It prevents only one type of abuse (wrongful conviction by inappropriate procurement of evidence). I have to ask you, though, do you really believe that those who have a propensity to misuse police powers wait till they have legislative cover before they do so? J. Edgar Hoover et. al. conducted politically-motivated surveillance long before anything like the PATRIOT Act was enacted.
Very good point. I was being snarky and misplaced my fact sense; if the monument was paid for by tax dollars, then it indeed does cross a line. Not making excuses for Ron Paul (because we should have an expectation that our leaders be on top of their game), but politicians often take stands on issues without being informed of the minutiae of the situation, not necessarily because they're are careless, but sometimes because they have more important issues to concentrate their detailing on. I find it extremely hard to believe that R. Paul would support the monument if he was aware that tax dollars were appropriated to purchase it, and find it more likely he just didn't pay the correct amount of attention to the situation. However, I could be wrong, in which case this is a good example of him not being consistent with his stated principles.
On second thought, he might have had more trouble with the issue because of federalism concerns, as IIRC the federal courts got involved. If that is the case, he'd still be wrong (as the 14th Amendment and incorporation doctrine would make such an establishment clause violation a clear federal matter), but it would make more sense in viewing his principles.
True. However, the courts already make a sharp distinction between expressive speech and expressive action; burning a cross on a lawn, for example, is intended to cause real harm of the sort you describe, and has no external speech value (unless it's in a Madonna music video...;)). The problem with hate crime legislation per se is that it serves to dissolve the distinction between prohibited acts and prohibited motivations; I don't have much problem with "Hate Crime Legislation" that has a discrete evidentiary burden for a criminalized act intended and normally understood to intimidate a community of persons. However, the difficulty of crafting such legislation finely enough to avoid the criminalization of attitudes and intents that are distasteful but not terroristic is such that I am skeptical any body of legislators (being human and thus subject to the passions and hysterias of the crowd) can successfully do so in all but the most obvious and clear-cut types of behaviors.
I personally think government should solemnly give up the notion it can make people better and concentrate on preventing people from harming each other with overt acts. The protection of communities, including disadvantaged ones, comes from them being assured that they are secure in their persons from harm, and that only comes from the Rule of Law being clear and acting to quash destructive behaviors and acts by applying that rule. Suppressing ideologies for their own sake is never very successful.
Yeah. It's so difficult to be pleasant; it must take specialized training. But seriously, if you want to blame someone for outsourcing jobs, blame those who set up the current international financial system which allows free flow of capital; that is what facilitates job market mobility. That happened back in the 1970's with the abolition of most capital controls, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't Ron Paul's fault.
Which is disturbing in and of itself, because it means he hears the disembodied voice of Alex Trebek in his head and always believes he is participating in a game of Jeopardy!. Seriously, this would explain a lot.
* Opposes federal funding for pretty much everything
* Pro-tax cuts, nearly all of which go to the rich...anti-inflationary money policy, nearly all of which benefits the poor
* Anti-U.N....and any other organization that subsumes state sovereign autonomy
* Favors cutting gas taxes as gas taxes are nearly exclusively a tax on the poor (much like cigarette taxes)
* Against corporate welfare
* Glorifies Ronald Reagan...nobody's perfect. :)
* Supports corporate efforts to ship US jobs to China, because jobs are a finite and static resource and employment is a zero-sum competition? They certainly aren't; ask any economist. This point is just plain stupid.
* Attacks gun control (so...?) and D.C. self-rule, which is a messy and complicated political football, complete with constitutional entanglements.
* Anti-union...does it bear mentioning that unions these days are pretty corrupt and generally are ineffective at bettering their members' circumstances?
* Opposes hate crime legislation, as a crime is a crime is a crime, by statute. I'm pretty sure if you kill someone, the thing they would care about is their being dead, not what was going through your head when you did it.
* Supports "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"; Ron Paul is not good on homosexual equality issues.
* Opposes allowing same-sex partners to adopt...again, this is Ron Paul legitimately being stupid.
* Voted to allow bigoted Alabama judge to post Ten Commandments in courtroom, as free expression is just one of those things we used to care about...
* Co-sponsored Constitutional amendment pushing coerced prayer in public schools...I'm sorry, this is the only one I hadn't heard. Citation, please?
* Opposes restoring the Pledge of Allegiance to the version without "Under God"...so?
* And so on and so forth. Yes, he is truly all that is opposed to what is right and true...LOL.