2004 Presidential Election.

[tesco samoa]

wohoo i was right the rich white guy won....

wow... i do find it ironic that there is a sea of red for gop...

[Atrocities]

Instar said:

hooray. 4 more years of "compassionate" conservatives and christian right wing. I'm so thrilled.

I would say that the mass majority of Americans would not agree with your views.

Not only did they re-elect the President, but they also gained seats in both the house and senate. Nuff said.

[tesco samoa]

isn't that 51 % of 50% of the people who could vote.

From what I gather 100 million did not vote.

Whats with that senator (Oakie -R )who wants to ban gays from teaching ,? or kill doctors who give abortions. Thats some scary stuff.

How do people like that get in power ?

[CNCRaymond]

Its not about banning gay folks, its about defining marrage as between 1 man and 1 women. NO ONE is saying that gay couples should not have the same legal rights as married couples, only that they cannot use the term married.

Personally I feel that any person, man or women who loves each other and has become life long partners deserve the same legal rights as married couples.

And regardless of the percentage point Tesco, record numbers of people did come out and vote. Of those who did vote, Bush garned a significant percentage over Kerry.

The issue that killed Kerry was gun rights, gay rights, and tax increases. He would have been pro-gun, pro-gay but said marrage is for a man and a women, and promised not to increase or "roll back" taxes, he would be our new president.

He stood by his conviction, something most politicians would never do, and he lost. He will run again in 2008 and win.

And if Senator Oakie-R tries that crap, I hope they drive his arse out of town on a rail road pike! People are poeple. Banning a gay teacher would be saying that a gay teacher is a bad influance on a child. How so? Its BS so don't worry about it.

[Azselendor]

If I recall, Edwards and/or Hilary is favored for the democrats in 2008.

[Phoenix-D]

CNCRaymond said:
Its not about banning gay folks, its about defining marrage as between 1 man and 1 women. NO ONE is saying that gay couples should not have the same legal rights as married couples, only that they cannot use the term married.

Bull. A substantial portion of the anti-gay marriage amendments also Banned civil unions, which IS saying exactly that.

That and we've tried the "seperate but equal" thing before, remember?

[Azselendor]

I wonder how long until the church faxes over the "Now you scratch our back" list for bush to take care of....

[Instar]

Atrocities said:

I would say that the mass majority of Americans would not agree with your views.

Not only did they re-elect the President, but they also gained seats in both the house and senate. Nuff said.

argumentum ad populum

[Will]

Phoenix-D said:

Bull. A substantial portion of the anti-gay marriage amendments also Banned civil unions, which IS saying exactly that.

That and we've tried the "seperate but equal" thing before, remember?

I just wanted to belatedly ditto this. While it is only my personal perspective, my experiences living in a conservative rural area (rural Pennsylvania) and a moderately progressive urban sprawl (Los Angeles) tell me that most of the anti-gay-marriage (or 'pro-family', or 'defenders-of-marriage') activists are simply expressing homophobia, only veiled to varying degrees. Some seem legitimate to people who only follow the quick sound-bytes on the news, while others show the blatant absurdity of the position (IMHO). In California, the "activists" aren't really all that active (in fact, the College Republicans here have the very odd platform of being "pro-choice, pro-environment, pro-gun control", which sounds awfully like a Democrat group... but this is California). The ones who say they oppose gay marriage generally have never met or talked to a homosexual person. Or, more likely, they were never aware of it if they did, so it's mostly an ignorance problem from that viewpoint. In Pennsylvania, on the other hand, I think it's ignorance combined with outright stubborness and fear. There were actually op-ed pieces in the local paper that seriously put forth the argument that the local theatre should be shut down for putting on a production of The Birdcage, before the "gay disease" infected the entire town. Then again, this is in an area of Pennsylvania where people fly the Confederate flag, and there is still blatant and obvious racism.

What I would like is for just ONE person to give me solid, credible arguments for why two people, regardless of their sex, should not be able to get married. I sometimes wonder: Do they not realize that this sounds exactly like the laws banning blacks from marrying whites? There are arguments based on religion, but there is this little bit in the Constitution that says "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", and that's in there for a good reason. The State has no business in the Church, and vice versa. And it must be remembered that marriage was co-opted into religion, and the current religious significance is just the incorporation of very old secular (or pagan, depending on your viewpoint) traditions. In the real world marriage is the legal binding of two people, and any religious attachment to the term is merely coincidental. That little clause of the First Amendment does not prohibit a couple from having a religious ceremony to go along with it, either.

But, with all that, I do support civil unions. On the grounds that a little progress is better than none. The entire civil rights and women's rights movements were and are based on small steps toward the ideal. There are some people who just won't change their mind on certain subjects (such as blacks, jews, women, gays, etc being somehow inferior). Anything that makes the transition easier, like using a different word for the same idea, is a good thing.

[Jack Simth]

Will said:
What I would like is for just ONE person to give me solid, credible arguments for why two people, regardless of their sex, should not be able to get married. I sometimes wonder: Do they not realize that this sounds exactly like the laws banning blacks from marrying whites? There are arguments based on religion, but there is this little bit in the Constitution that says "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", and that's in there for a good reason. The State has no business in the Church, and vice versa.

Bearing in mind, that this is a question of ethics, and as such is fundamentally unarguable on several levels, here is a roundabout and incomplete attempt at one:

Let's start with something else. Something that the supermajority of people believe is wrong: Murder. Murder is illeagal. It is also called wrong in the Bible. Obviously, murder is a religious issue, and the state has no right to intervene. Perhaps it is an ethical issue, instead. With ethics, things ultimately lie on fundamental, unproveable assumptions (some samples: with Kant's "pure logic", one must first assume: 1) that logic is applicable to ethics, 2) that "better" is something to be strived for, and 3) Kant's definition of what has intrinsic value; with self-interest or extended self-interest ethics, one must first assume that personal consequences matter in questions of ethics [not a given in all schools of ethics]; "feels good" ethics usually assume that it either doesn't matter anyway or that nature/God/whatever has provided the ultimate guide when producing your feelings (or that it is an evolutionary process, and if your ethics are flawed, they are supposed to cause you problems), or some variant; with God centered ethics, even assuming that the existence of God and every event statement in the Bible is wholly accurate in every detail, one first needs to assume that the created ethically ought to obey the rules laid out by the Creator; et cetera; et cetera), which are religion-like in nature. Murder penalties are therefore unconstitutional, and thus the state has no right to interfere on that basis.

You can replace "murder" in the above with virtually anything that's illeagal (with minor tweaks to the rest of the text), really - (in no particular order) rape, incest, theft, drug abuse, tax evasion, kiddie porn, gay marriage, or prostitution, to name a few. The above is complete bull, of course. But how can the case be argued that it IS bull? More specifically, can you debunk the above for murder, rape, incest, theft, kiddie porn, et cetera without also debunking the above your favorite issue: gay marriage, especially considering that it uses a good portion of the same basic approach that you used to say that gay marriage should be okay?

Will said:
And it must be remembered that marriage was co-opted into religion, and the current religious significance is just the incorporation of very old secular (or pagan, depending on your viewpoint) traditions.

That is one hypothesis. It isn't proven, however.