On October 20 2011 09:35 ilovelings wrote: How does allowing people who love each other to get married infringe someone else's right?
It doesn't, but it shouldn't be allowed regardless, according to them. I haven't seen an argument yet that says it does. Just a bunch of religious diehards that want their religious morality imposed on others.
Whoa Whoa Whoa! The constitution does not "Give us rights". The constitution limits what powers the federal government has. The amendments in the bill of rights were put in there to specifically because of how important they were, but it in no way says these are the only rights.
The tenth amendment "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Saying the Constitution doesn't "give us this right" imo is a very poor way to frame a statement. It would be much better to say "the constitution gives the federal government this power".
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster.
The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is.
Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy.
America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city.
If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante.
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
With that all said, I'm disappointed in the GOP field of candidates. Of the two most serious contenders, Perry looks like he's got too much baggage to wrap up the nomination, but Romney is little more than a smooth-talking liar. It pains me to think that the GOP is likely to nominate the man who did Obamacare for his state (with disasterous consequences btw) even before Obama did Obamacare for the nation. Conservatives are supposed to trust him to repeal it? Give me a break. And God-forbid Romney be charged with any Supreme Court appointments; Bush '41 was ever a fake conservative and he gave us Souter, so I shudder to think what bench-legislating moron Romney would foist upon the nation.
The pope and thereby the leader of the catholic church on earth has accepted abortion under certain circumstances. In europe there is a whole science behind when a child can be aborted and when it should not. I completely agree that killing a child days before birth is murder. however, killing it within the first month is however just removal of a parasite. Point being: You cannot take a stand just for the sake of the stand. Understand why you have it at least and don't just quote bumper stickers.
Evolution and prayer is not used, in schools in europe at all. Not Intelligent design, though a serious religious/culture/moral is being taught. Neither has Darwins theories got any substantial meat on it other than living things get better developed for the way they live through generations. The Darwinism in the US is mostly propagande to piss off religious people and has nothing to do with Darwin and his very inconsistent science, really. However in science you need a certain understanding of the past and it is hard for most to understand it if intelligent design has to be fit in. Most religious scientists are putting serious interpretation into understanding the bible in a way, where it can fit into science.
Gay marriage probably should not be in church anyway, but why take away the advantages of marriage in a stately manner?
My whole point is: If you are willing to accept that your understanding of the Bibel has to be bend somehow to fit in the same paradigm as science, there is absolutely no problem in having them both. However, if you cannot accept that an interpretation of the Bibel is absolutely needed for it to fit todays society it is a problem with your view.
Putting these kinds of decissions into federal law is wrong on so many levels from my european point of view.
I agree with you on much of this, though to be honest I didn't write my original post (or the succeeding ones) to get bogged down in the specifics of one issue or another (we could do that, but it wasn't the point of my original post).
I just wanted to say that atheist liberals have no more of a monopoly on righteousness and truth than religious conservatives and that criticism of one position or another should take the form of "I think your position is bad for reasons x, y, and z" as opposed to "I think your position is bad because you're one of those brainless morons who believes in God".
One of the main reasons I give those opinions is that though I am social-liberal in europe and for all intends and purposes atheistic, there are easy ways around the issues without wasting political breath on them. We are very conscious about keeping religion low in politics and schools. And I am 100 % for that.
My issue is how people like Bachman proposes intelligent design as a part of the schools subjects. To have religion in class would probably be good to some extend, but creationism can easily make people warp science around that religious belief. Letting that be a possibility is to me completely out there in wacky world. Defending that proposal without at least some modifiers is just not worth discussing.
To make it clear: The rethoric of the conservatives and to less extend liberals is completely worthless and doesn't leave a real discussion except for a trench-war. At the same time they hopefully will never make laws regarding those issues. Therefore, why use them as political bait? The issues are worthless in political sense.
Proponents against gay marriage, like Ron Paul, don't believe in gay marriage because they don't believe that God recognizes it. That being said, there's no need to have any government regulation about it because whatever government says can't influence the Will of God, whatever that may be.
That's why Ron Paul believes that marriage, not just gay marriage, shouldn't be a government issue at all, but he'll leave it to the states to hammer out. It's a religious issue, not a politcal one.
Other Republican candidates are more than happy to use the federal ban hammer over the entire nation over a religious issue.
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster.
The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is.
Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy.
America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city.
If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante.
However, why should you make legislature that limits the rights of a person to do something that doesn't hurt anyone?
who cares if 51% believes it's wrong, or 99% of people believe it's wrong. If it doesn't infringe on the constitutional rights of anyone else it should be allowed.
And if marriage is indead a holy insitution pre-dating government, then why should we have government sponsorship of marriage?
Let's remove all economic benefits from marriage so it REALLY IS a spiritual thing, and then if a church doesn't want to marry to gays because it's against its religious ideals... fine it won't.
Who are you to say what does or does not "hurt" someone? Maybe you think that gay marriage or abortion or socialized medicine don't "hurt" anyone, but I and millions of others would strongly disagree.
But let's say for the sake of argument that, for example, gay marriage doesn't "hurt" anyone as an objective fact. So what? Gay marriage is not a Constitutional right. This means that if there are enough people who think it a repugnant thing they should and do have the right to vote against it. Here's a parallel example: no one is "hurt" in mixed martial arts because the fighters engage in it of their own free will, but different states are free to permit or deny the practice of the sport in their domains because, like gay marriage, mixed martial arts is not a Constitutional right.
As for ending government recognition of marriage, I can agree with you there. I would rather end the practice of officially recognizing marriage than allow the state to re-define an institution which has stood, largely unchanged, for the better part of all of recorded human history.
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
It doesn't because the existence of gay marriage, doesn't infringe on your human rights. Abortion is more contraversial though.
As for not teaching faith, well I think this is a question of whether it would be a class that teaches a student vitally important skill or information or not. I'm against public schools in general, though and private schools to some extent can already teach faith if they want. This issue should be completely separate from the evolutionary issue though.
Whether or not to teach evolution in a public school is more of a scientific issue. I think that you can teach it in school just fine, because Evolution as a scientific theory explains a great deal of what we know about species, still not everything, but there hasn't been any natural occurances that directly contradict evolution, although there are some that evolution has not yet fully explained.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
No. Because luckily we have the constiution which protects our rights from oppressive legislation.
And which rights might those be? Don't assume that the right to do the things you want to do is automatically in the Constitution; chances are it is not. This is what really rankles lots of Conservatives. People are always claiming they have the Constitutional right to this, that, and the other thing when no fair reading of the Constitution or its history could EVER support any of the rights so claimed.
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
But when you're talking about issues of whether or not to take away a person's personal liberty which doesn't actually harm anyone... Should the people have a right to do that even if they're unananymous in their decision?
Everyone likes more liberty, not less, but being a part of a democracy means living by the decisions of the community as a whole once those decisions are made. Yes, we have a Constitution, and yes, that Constitution prevents majority rule from taking away specific liberties from the people (e.g., the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to be free from enslavement). But the Constitution doesn't limit the ability of the body politic, or any subunit thereof, from doing what it wants to do within the boundaries of the Constitution.
Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way.
Finally, to the person who mentioned that we are a republic and not a democracy, you are only half right and inconsequentially at that. We are indeed a republic, but a democratic republic, and I don't see how the matter of representation in government at all detracts from the idea that this is a democratic country and that citizens have the right to vote their consciences, regardless of how those consciences are formed (religious, a-religious).
Because in the constitution it says that state and religion are to be SEPERATE. Also go ahead vote for what you believe in, there is nothing wrong with that, except when you infringe on others rights. That is why we are a democratic-republic, to ensure that we don't have a tyranny of the majority. If you don't believe that gays should have a spiritual marriage or religious marriage, sure that is your belief and you are entitled to it. But when you infringe on their right to get married by a judge, that is when things get messed up. There are plenty of people back in the 1960's who didn't want blacks and whites (interracial marriages). If that's what the country wanted is that what we should have done for the majority at the expense of the minority.
Also ya gay marriage, abortion, and atheist schools and none of that crap is in the Constitution, but neither are countless other things that we do today. The Constitution was deliberately made vaguely because the original writers cannot protect what issues would happen 100, 200, or 300 years from them, they only provided the framework for this country to be founded upon. If you think we should follow the Constitution to the letter, then these issues are the least of your worries and that is whole different discussion altogether.
How does my voting against gay marriage involve the imposition of my religion on you? How does my voting against abortion involve the imposition of my religion on you? Do either of those votes, even if successful, compel you to believe what I believe? No, they do not, so stop repeating the logically broken mantra that voting according to my religious beliefs is somehow a violation of the separation of church and state. It is not such a violation, and if it WERE, then America would logically be an atheist state by default, which is completely and totally antithetical to the history and nature of this country.
Note also that the term "separation of church and state" isn't even in the Constitution; it was something Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter - i.e., not legally binding. The specific language, taken from the First Amendment, is that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion". Notice several important aspects of this language. First, the Constitutional language binds Congress, not the states or municipalities or any other branch of government. Second, the language prohibits laws respecting establishments of religion, it does not prohibit religious displays, religious language, or otherwise require the state to be an edifice to atheism.
Think this analysis of the language isn't enough? What about some history then? Despite the First Amendment being a part of the original Constitution as passed and ratified by the Founders, several states maintained state religions until well into the 1800s. Presidents from Washington to Lincoln regularly invoked the grace of God in public addresses and official documents. Christmas was declared a national holiday by Grant (I think). Thanksgiving, for God's sake (literally!), was declared a national holiday for giving thanks to God. Congress, to this day!, pays a religious leader to open each session of Congress with prayer.
Consider the text and history of the Constitution before bringing up "separation of church and state" to auto-kill a political position favored by religious Americans. Yes we believe in God. Yes we have religious values. Yes we have the right to vote based on those religious values just as atheists have the right to vote based on their religious values (let's get one thing straight - atheism is a religion too because it requires you to believe, without proof, that God does not exist).
As for your contention that the Constitution can be made to mean whatever we want it to mean, I agree ... it's called the Amendment process. Last I checked, I haven't seen any Amendments granting a right to gay marriage, abortion, or any number of other things. But I have seen Supreme Court Justices saying things are in the Constitution when clearly they are not. I don't know about you, but I don't like being ruled by people I can't vote for (or against).
On October 20 2011 09:42 adacan wrote: Whoa Whoa Whoa! The constitution does not "Give us rights". The constitution limits what powers the federal government has. The amendments in the bill of rights were put in there to specifically because of how important they were, but it in no way says these are the only rights.
The tenth amendment "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Saying the Constitution doesn't "give us this right" imo is a very poor way to frame a statement. It would be much better to say "the constitution gives the federal government this power".
Most definitely correct.
Perhaps I should re-frame my argument along these lines: the feds, the states, and individual municipalities should have the right to collectively decide to permit or deny gay marriage, abortion, and other things because these rights are NOT explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution, nor is the power to regulate or abolish them denied to the different branches and subunits of government.
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster.
The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is.
Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy.
America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city.
If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante.
However, why should you make legislature that limits the rights of a person to do something that doesn't hurt anyone?
who cares if 51% believes it's wrong, or 99% of people believe it's wrong. If it doesn't infringe on the constitutional rights of anyone else it should be allowed.
And if marriage is indead a holy insitution pre-dating government, then why should we have government sponsorship of marriage?
Let's remove all economic benefits from marriage so it REALLY IS a spiritual thing, and then if a church doesn't want to marry to gays because it's against its religious ideals... fine it won't.
Who are you to say what does or does not "hurt" someone? Maybe you think that gay marriage or abortion or socialized medicine don't "hurt" anyone, but I and millions of others would strongly disagree.
But let's say for the sake of argument that, for example, gay marriage doesn't "hurt" anyone as an objective fact. So what? Gay marriage is not a Constitutional right. This means that if there are enough people who think it a repugnant thing they should and do have the right to vote against it. Here's a parallel example: no one is "hurt" in mixed martial arts because the fighters engage in it of their own free will, but different states are free to permit or deny the practice of the sport in their domains because, like gay marriage, mixed martial arts is not a Constitutional right.
As for ending government recognition of marriage, I can agree with you there. I would rather end the practice of officially recognizing marriage than allow the state to re-define an institution which has stood, largely unchanged, for the better part of all of recorded human history.
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
It doesn't because the existence of gay marriage, doesn't infringe on your human rights. Abortion is more contraversial though.
As for not teaching faith, well I think this is a question of whether it would be a class that teaches a student vitally important skill or information or not. I'm against public schools in general, though and private schools to some extent can already teach faith if they want. This issue should be completely separate from the evolutionary issue though.
Whether or not to teach evolution in a public school is more of a scientific issue. I think that you can teach it in school just fine, because Evolution as a scientific theory explains a great deal of what we know about species, still not everything, but there hasn't been any natural occurances that directly contradict evolution, although there are some that evolution has not yet fully explained.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
No. Because luckily we have the constiution which protects our rights from oppressive legislation.
And which rights might those be? Don't assume that the right to do the things you want to do is automatically in the Constitution; chances are it is not. This is what really rankles lots of Conservatives. People are always claiming they have the Constitutional right to this, that, and the other thing when no fair reading of the Constitution or its history could EVER support any of the rights so claimed.
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
But when you're talking about issues of whether or not to take away a person's personal liberty which doesn't actually harm anyone... Should the people have a right to do that even if they're unananymous in their decision?
Everyone likes more liberty, not less, but being a part of a democracy means living by the decisions of the community as a whole once those decisions are made. Yes, we have a Constitution, and yes, that Constitution prevents majority rule from taking away specific liberties from the people (e.g., the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to be free from enslavement). But the Constitution doesn't limit the ability of the body politic, or any subunit thereof, from doing what it wants to do within the boundaries of the Constitution.
Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way.
Finally, to the person who mentioned that we are a republic and not a democracy, you are only half right and inconsequentially at that. We are indeed a republic, but a democratic republic, and I don't see how the matter of representation in government at all detracts from the idea that this is a democratic country and that citizens have the right to vote their consciences, regardless of how those consciences are formed (religious, a-religious).
Because in the constitution it says that state and religion are to be SEPERATE. Also go ahead vote for what you believe in, there is nothing wrong with that, except when you infringe on others rights. That is why we are a democratic-republic, to ensure that we don't have a tyranny of the majority. If you don't believe that gays should have a spiritual marriage or religious marriage, sure that is your belief and you are entitled to it. But when you infringe on their right to get married by a judge, that is when things get messed up. There are plenty of people back in the 1960's who didn't want blacks and whites (interracial marriages). If that's what the country wanted is that what we should have done for the majority at the expense of the minority.
Also ya gay marriage, abortion, and atheist schools and none of that crap is in the Constitution, but neither are countless other things that we do today. The Constitution was deliberately made vaguely because the original writers cannot protect what issues would happen 100, 200, or 300 years from them, they only provided the framework for this country to be founded upon. If you think we should follow the Constitution to the letter, then these issues are the least of your worries and that is whole different discussion altogether.
How does my voting against gay marriage involve the imposition of my religion on you? How does my voting against abortion involve the imposition of my religion on you? Do either of those votes, even if successful, compel you to believe what I believe? No, they do not, so stop repeating the logically broken mantra that voting according to my religious beliefs is somehow a violation of the separation of church and state. It is not such a violation, and if it WERE, then America would logically be an atheist state by default, which is completely and totally antithetical to the history and nature of this country.
It's completely logical, despite you simply saying it isn't. You're voting to deny someone else the ability to do something - because of your religion. You're trying to use your vote to prevent someone else from being able to do something that does NOT infringe upon anyone else's rights. It should not be a voting manner in the first place.
The simple fact you think it's a good thing that we should be able to vote on matters such as this is kind of scary to me. Do you really think that system is good? Do you think, in the future, if enough atheists came about and decided to vote in a law that stated "no two Christians may legally be married" that it should hold?
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster.
The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is.
Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy.
America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city.
If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante.
However, why should you make legislature that limits the rights of a person to do something that doesn't hurt anyone?
who cares if 51% believes it's wrong, or 99% of people believe it's wrong. If it doesn't infringe on the constitutional rights of anyone else it should be allowed.
And if marriage is indead a holy insitution pre-dating government, then why should we have government sponsorship of marriage?
Let's remove all economic benefits from marriage so it REALLY IS a spiritual thing, and then if a church doesn't want to marry to gays because it's against its religious ideals... fine it won't.
Who are you to say what does or does not "hurt" someone? Maybe you think that gay marriage or abortion or socialized medicine don't "hurt" anyone, but I and millions of others would strongly disagree.
But let's say for the sake of argument that, for example, gay marriage doesn't "hurt" anyone as an objective fact. So what? Gay marriage is not a Constitutional right. This means that if there are enough people who think it a repugnant thing they should and do have the right to vote against it. Here's a parallel example: no one is "hurt" in mixed martial arts because the fighters engage in it of their own free will, but different states are free to permit or deny the practice of the sport in their domains because, like gay marriage, mixed martial arts is not a Constitutional right.
As for ending government recognition of marriage, I can agree with you there. I would rather end the practice of officially recognizing marriage than allow the state to re-define an institution which has stood, largely unchanged, for the better part of all of recorded human history.
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
It doesn't because the existence of gay marriage, doesn't infringe on your human rights. Abortion is more contraversial though.
As for not teaching faith, well I think this is a question of whether it would be a class that teaches a student vitally important skill or information or not. I'm against public schools in general, though and private schools to some extent can already teach faith if they want. This issue should be completely separate from the evolutionary issue though.
Whether or not to teach evolution in a public school is more of a scientific issue. I think that you can teach it in school just fine, because Evolution as a scientific theory explains a great deal of what we know about species, still not everything, but there hasn't been any natural occurances that directly contradict evolution, although there are some that evolution has not yet fully explained.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
No. Because luckily we have the constiution which protects our rights from oppressive legislation.
And which rights might those be? Don't assume that the right to do the things you want to do is automatically in the Constitution; chances are it is not. This is what really rankles lots of Conservatives. People are always claiming they have the Constitutional right to this, that, and the other thing when no fair reading of the Constitution or its history could EVER support any of the rights so claimed.
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
But when you're talking about issues of whether or not to take away a person's personal liberty which doesn't actually harm anyone... Should the people have a right to do that even if they're unananymous in their decision?
Everyone likes more liberty, not less, but being a part of a democracy means living by the decisions of the community as a whole once those decisions are made. Yes, we have a Constitution, and yes, that Constitution prevents majority rule from taking away specific liberties from the people (e.g., the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to be free from enslavement). But the Constitution doesn't limit the ability of the body politic, or any subunit thereof, from doing what it wants to do within the boundaries of the Constitution.
Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way.
Finally, to the person who mentioned that we are a republic and not a democracy, you are only half right and inconsequentially at that. We are indeed a republic, but a democratic republic, and I don't see how the matter of representation in government at all detracts from the idea that this is a democratic country and that citizens have the right to vote their consciences, regardless of how those consciences are formed (religious, a-religious).
Marriage itself my not be specifically defined as a constitutional right, but treating people unequally is NOT Constitutional. Big difference.
And you just hit the nail on the head with your analogy. It's the STATE'S decision to make that call, not the federal government, yet you have some Republican frontrunners who proclaim sweeping federal legislation to control things like this. And isn't that antithetical to Republican ideals of limited government involvement? This is why it keeps becoming a contentious issue, even within the party itself. You've got fiscal conservatives/social moderates mixed in with these extremely opinionated far-right whackjobs. And if a Republican candidate doesn't storm through the door proclaiming they're going to put the concept of abortion into a cannon and launch it into the sun, they immediately lose that base.
Almost all courts in the U.S. have found marriage to be a fundamental human right.
I don't think that's exactly true. They just always end up throwing specific cases (such as Loving vs Virginia) out because the opposition always fails to construct a valid, Constitutional argument to deny two people their decision to marry one another. That doesn't specifically make it a Constitutional right, but that does make it protected by Constitutional law in an indirect way.
While having power to neither grant nor remove an individual right, the Supreme Court has legally recognized some fundamental rights not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, including:
* the right to interstate travel * the right to vote * the right to privacy (which includes within it a set of rights) including; * a. the right to marriage * b. the right to procreation * c. the right to an abortion * d. the right to private education (Homeschooling one's children) * e. the right to contraception (the right to use contraceptive devices) * f. the right of family relations (the right of related persons to live together)
I never said constitutional, but fundamental, which if anything should supercede it, but oh well.
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster.
The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is.
Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy.
America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city.
If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante.
However, why should you make legislature that limits the rights of a person to do something that doesn't hurt anyone?
who cares if 51% believes it's wrong, or 99% of people believe it's wrong. If it doesn't infringe on the constitutional rights of anyone else it should be allowed.
And if marriage is indead a holy insitution pre-dating government, then why should we have government sponsorship of marriage?
Let's remove all economic benefits from marriage so it REALLY IS a spiritual thing, and then if a church doesn't want to marry to gays because it's against its religious ideals... fine it won't.
Who are you to say what does or does not "hurt" someone? Maybe you think that gay marriage or abortion or socialized medicine don't "hurt" anyone, but I and millions of others would strongly disagree.
But let's say for the sake of argument that, for example, gay marriage doesn't "hurt" anyone as an objective fact. So what? Gay marriage is not a Constitutional right. This means that if there are enough people who think it a repugnant thing they should and do have the right to vote against it. Here's a parallel example: no one is "hurt" in mixed martial arts because the fighters engage in it of their own free will, but different states are free to permit or deny the practice of the sport in their domains because, like gay marriage, mixed martial arts is not a Constitutional right.
As for ending government recognition of marriage, I can agree with you there. I would rather end the practice of officially recognizing marriage than allow the state to re-define an institution which has stood, largely unchanged, for the better part of all of recorded human history.
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
It doesn't because the existence of gay marriage, doesn't infringe on your human rights. Abortion is more contraversial though.
As for not teaching faith, well I think this is a question of whether it would be a class that teaches a student vitally important skill or information or not. I'm against public schools in general, though and private schools to some extent can already teach faith if they want. This issue should be completely separate from the evolutionary issue though.
Whether or not to teach evolution in a public school is more of a scientific issue. I think that you can teach it in school just fine, because Evolution as a scientific theory explains a great deal of what we know about species, still not everything, but there hasn't been any natural occurances that directly contradict evolution, although there are some that evolution has not yet fully explained.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
No. Because luckily we have the constiution which protects our rights from oppressive legislation.
And which rights might those be? Don't assume that the right to do the things you want to do is automatically in the Constitution; chances are it is not. This is what really rankles lots of Conservatives. People are always claiming they have the Constitutional right to this, that, and the other thing when no fair reading of the Constitution or its history could EVER support any of the rights so claimed.
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
But when you're talking about issues of whether or not to take away a person's personal liberty which doesn't actually harm anyone... Should the people have a right to do that even if they're unananymous in their decision?
Everyone likes more liberty, not less, but being a part of a democracy means living by the decisions of the community as a whole once those decisions are made. Yes, we have a Constitution, and yes, that Constitution prevents majority rule from taking away specific liberties from the people (e.g., the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to be free from enslavement). But the Constitution doesn't limit the ability of the body politic, or any subunit thereof, from doing what it wants to do within the boundaries of the Constitution.
Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way.
Finally, to the person who mentioned that we are a republic and not a democracy, you are only half right and inconsequentially at that. We are indeed a republic, but a democratic republic, and I don't see how the matter of representation in government at all detracts from the idea that this is a democratic country and that citizens have the right to vote their consciences, regardless of how those consciences are formed (religious, a-religious).
Marriage itself my not be specifically defined as a constitutional right, but treating people unequally is NOT Constitutional. Big difference.
And you just hit the nail on the head with your analogy. It's the STATE'S decision to make that call, not the federal government, yet you have some Republican frontrunners who proclaim sweeping federal legislation to control things like this. And isn't that antithetical to Republican ideals of limited government involvement? This is why it keeps becoming a contentious issue, even within the party itself. You've got fiscal conservatives/social moderates mixed in with these extremely opinionated far-right whackjobs. And if a Republican candidate doesn't storm through the door proclaiming they're going to put the concept of abortion into a cannon and launch it into the sun, they immediately lose that base.
Almost all courts in the U.S. have found marriage to be a fundamental human right.
Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way.
How ironic.
Regardless so much of your post just makes me cringe, realizing there are some educated people out that try to impose their own religious beliefs on others. And no matter how much you say you aren't, which I've seen you post, you are.
If I am trying to impose my religious beliefs on you by, say, voting against gay marriage, are you not also trying to impose your religious (or a-religious) beliefs on me by voting for gay marriage? Or is it only imposing beliefs if I disagree with you?
And there's no irony at all in stating that democratic governance means we all have a collective right to decide how to live as a society. You get to vote for gay marriage because you are a part of our democratic society. I get to vote against gay marriage because I too am a part of our democratic society. Only one of us can win. But whoever wins, the point is that someone's view gets to prevail, and the losing side shouldn't bm the other by saying that their point of view is illegitimate for one dumbass reason or another (e.g., "they're just voting based on their religious views, which are totally unacceptable and wrong and bad, unlike my atheist views, which are perfect and right and just").
If you think I am wrong, by all means scream it from the rooftops and convince more voters to vote your way. But don't bust out with lame non-arguments like "you're imposing your religion on everyone" because you generate and perpetuate the logically false idea that religious values are somehow inferior to atheist values. Considering that religious values have guided human civilizational development for the entirety of recorded human history, I'd say they've been doing a decent job.
On October 20 2011 08:11 ilovelings wrote: I lol'd when Paul acknowledged that America was an Empire.
I do not understand the whole migration debate in the US. It is a nation that was built by migrants, so why suddenly no one likes them?
It's kind of funny when you think about it. First and second generation migrants comprised 50% of the US army during WW1 and 2 and now they are considered a magical evil entity.
What I don't understand is how people get immigration and illegal immigration so easily confused....Yes, immigrants built the nation. But illegal immigrants are another matter. That is a strawman, no one is saying that. Illegal immigrants come to the country illegaly, mostly from Mexico and they're a drain on the economy (Though to be fair, a lot of them do pay their share of taxes).
The migration problem in the US exists because there is no plan. Countries like Australia & Canada have planned migration policies. Declaring it illegal is not gonna stop Mexicans who want in, and it actually makes them criminals, and negates social integration of the migrants. After considering this, you should add the fact that the US is in the middle of an Economical crisis, that leads to the traditional "blame game" which gets exacerbated by the Mass Media. As long as there is no plan to integrate the people who want to live and work in the US of A, big problems will arise.
You are again conflating illegal immigration with legal immigration. The US doesn't have a "plan" for illegal immigrants because.... they shouldn't BE there in the first place.
The US has a fine legal immigration policy (Canada's immigration policy is actually more strict fyi).
30 years ago, part of my family (my cousins) migrated to Australia. They were sent to the middle of the Australian Outback (by the Australian Goverment) to work the land. Now, they are pretty much Australians as everyone else. That was a quite nice policy : We will give you a job, and you will have to work for it. Now they own a beautiful estate, and some houses in Perth.
Again, your family emigrated to Australia LEGALLY did they not? You're comparing apples to oranges as Herman Cain would say. There are 11 million illegal immigrants in the US right now, mostly unskilled immigrants who suck up low wage jobs. Imagine if those 11 million "spots" instead went to LEGAL immigrants such as your family instead. Or maybe to professors or researchers, or managers, or people with advanced degrees/abilities or investors or students or entrepreneurs (Mostly first preferences in their immigration policy). America has a right, just like every other nation out there to put its best interests FIRST.
Also, since you cannot deport 11 million illegals what you can do at least is take away their economic incentives to come here such as free education.
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster.
The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is.
Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy.
America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city.
If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante.
However, why should you make legislature that limits the rights of a person to do something that doesn't hurt anyone?
who cares if 51% believes it's wrong, or 99% of people believe it's wrong. If it doesn't infringe on the constitutional rights of anyone else it should be allowed.
And if marriage is indead a holy insitution pre-dating government, then why should we have government sponsorship of marriage?
Let's remove all economic benefits from marriage so it REALLY IS a spiritual thing, and then if a church doesn't want to marry to gays because it's against its religious ideals... fine it won't.
Who are you to say what does or does not "hurt" someone? Maybe you think that gay marriage or abortion or socialized medicine don't "hurt" anyone, but I and millions of others would strongly disagree.
But let's say for the sake of argument that, for example, gay marriage doesn't "hurt" anyone as an objective fact. So what? Gay marriage is not a Constitutional right. This means that if there are enough people who think it a repugnant thing they should and do have the right to vote against it. Here's a parallel example: no one is "hurt" in mixed martial arts because the fighters engage in it of their own free will, but different states are free to permit or deny the practice of the sport in their domains because, like gay marriage, mixed martial arts is not a Constitutional right.
As for ending government recognition of marriage, I can agree with you there. I would rather end the practice of officially recognizing marriage than allow the state to re-define an institution which has stood, largely unchanged, for the better part of all of recorded human history.
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
It doesn't because the existence of gay marriage, doesn't infringe on your human rights. Abortion is more contraversial though.
As for not teaching faith, well I think this is a question of whether it would be a class that teaches a student vitally important skill or information or not. I'm against public schools in general, though and private schools to some extent can already teach faith if they want. This issue should be completely separate from the evolutionary issue though.
Whether or not to teach evolution in a public school is more of a scientific issue. I think that you can teach it in school just fine, because Evolution as a scientific theory explains a great deal of what we know about species, still not everything, but there hasn't been any natural occurances that directly contradict evolution, although there are some that evolution has not yet fully explained.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
No. Because luckily we have the constiution which protects our rights from oppressive legislation.
And which rights might those be? Don't assume that the right to do the things you want to do is automatically in the Constitution; chances are it is not. This is what really rankles lots of Conservatives. People are always claiming they have the Constitutional right to this, that, and the other thing when no fair reading of the Constitution or its history could EVER support any of the rights so claimed.
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
But when you're talking about issues of whether or not to take away a person's personal liberty which doesn't actually harm anyone... Should the people have a right to do that even if they're unananymous in their decision?
Everyone likes more liberty, not less, but being a part of a democracy means living by the decisions of the community as a whole once those decisions are made. Yes, we have a Constitution, and yes, that Constitution prevents majority rule from taking away specific liberties from the people (e.g., the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to be free from enslavement). But the Constitution doesn't limit the ability of the body politic, or any subunit thereof, from doing what it wants to do within the boundaries of the Constitution.
Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way.
Finally, to the person who mentioned that we are a republic and not a democracy, you are only half right and inconsequentially at that. We are indeed a republic, but a democratic republic, and I don't see how the matter of representation in government at all detracts from the idea that this is a democratic country and that citizens have the right to vote their consciences, regardless of how those consciences are formed (religious, a-religious).
Because in the constitution it says that state and religion are to be SEPERATE. Also go ahead vote for what you believe in, there is nothing wrong with that, except when you infringe on others rights. That is why we are a democratic-republic, to ensure that we don't have a tyranny of the majority. If you don't believe that gays should have a spiritual marriage or religious marriage, sure that is your belief and you are entitled to it. But when you infringe on their right to get married by a judge, that is when things get messed up. There are plenty of people back in the 1960's who didn't want blacks and whites (interracial marriages). If that's what the country wanted is that what we should have done for the majority at the expense of the minority.
Also ya gay marriage, abortion, and atheist schools and none of that crap is in the Constitution, but neither are countless other things that we do today. The Constitution was deliberately made vaguely because the original writers cannot protect what issues would happen 100, 200, or 300 years from them, they only provided the framework for this country to be founded upon. If you think we should follow the Constitution to the letter, then these issues are the least of your worries and that is whole different discussion altogether.
How does my voting against gay marriage involve the imposition of my religion on you? How does my voting against abortion involve the imposition of my religion on you? Do either of those votes, even if successful, compel you to believe what I believe? No, they do not, so stop repeating the logically broken mantra that voting according to my religious beliefs is somehow a violation of the separation of church and state. It is not such a violation, and if it WERE, then America would logically be an atheist state by default, which is completely and totally antithetical to the history and nature of this country.
It's completely logical, despite you simply saying it isn't. You're voting to deny someone else the ability to do something - because of your religion. You're trying to use your vote to prevent someone else from being able to do something that does NOT infringe upon anyone else's rights. It should not be a voting manner in the first place.
The simple fact you think it's a good thing that we should be able to vote on matters such as this is kind of scary to me. Do you really think that system is good? Do you think, in the future, if enough atheists came about and decided to vote in a law that stated "no two Christians may legally be married" that it should hold?
Okay, so let's say I am a raging, dedicated atheist, but I hate gay people for one reason or another. If I vote against gay marriage because I hate gay people, is that somehow better than voting against gay marriage because I believe in God and in a moral code that prohibits homosexual sex? If I vote against gay marriage as an atheist I'm not doing so because of my religion - I don't have a religion that has a viewpoint on the matter one way or another. So, would that be okay? Or is the heart of the matter that you really just don't like the fact that I disagree with you on this issue?
Politics is hard because it involves winners and losers. Your point of view will not always win. But that doesn't mean that people who take the opposite point of view are inherently stupid or bad. You either just need to do a better job of convincing them that you are right, or reconsider your own position.
The point I was trying to make was that if you want to ban x you have to show in the Constitution where the government has the power to ban x. It isn't enough to say the constitution doesn't give you the right to x. We have a constitution so that the federal government's influence in our lives is severely restricted.
On banning gay marriage most of this has been done through amending state constitutions as far as I know, I am kind of ignorant on the issue. At a federal level though banning gay marriage would be a gross overreach by the federal government.
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster.
The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is.
Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy.
America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city.
If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante.
However, why should you make legislature that limits the rights of a person to do something that doesn't hurt anyone?
who cares if 51% believes it's wrong, or 99% of people believe it's wrong. If it doesn't infringe on the constitutional rights of anyone else it should be allowed.
And if marriage is indead a holy insitution pre-dating government, then why should we have government sponsorship of marriage?
Let's remove all economic benefits from marriage so it REALLY IS a spiritual thing, and then if a church doesn't want to marry to gays because it's against its religious ideals... fine it won't.
Who are you to say what does or does not "hurt" someone? Maybe you think that gay marriage or abortion or socialized medicine don't "hurt" anyone, but I and millions of others would strongly disagree.
But let's say for the sake of argument that, for example, gay marriage doesn't "hurt" anyone as an objective fact. So what? Gay marriage is not a Constitutional right. This means that if there are enough people who think it a repugnant thing they should and do have the right to vote against it. Here's a parallel example: no one is "hurt" in mixed martial arts because the fighters engage in it of their own free will, but different states are free to permit or deny the practice of the sport in their domains because, like gay marriage, mixed martial arts is not a Constitutional right.
As for ending government recognition of marriage, I can agree with you there. I would rather end the practice of officially recognizing marriage than allow the state to re-define an institution which has stood, largely unchanged, for the better part of all of recorded human history.
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
It doesn't because the existence of gay marriage, doesn't infringe on your human rights. Abortion is more contraversial though.
As for not teaching faith, well I think this is a question of whether it would be a class that teaches a student vitally important skill or information or not. I'm against public schools in general, though and private schools to some extent can already teach faith if they want. This issue should be completely separate from the evolutionary issue though.
Whether or not to teach evolution in a public school is more of a scientific issue. I think that you can teach it in school just fine, because Evolution as a scientific theory explains a great deal of what we know about species, still not everything, but there hasn't been any natural occurances that directly contradict evolution, although there are some that evolution has not yet fully explained.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
No. Because luckily we have the constiution which protects our rights from oppressive legislation.
And which rights might those be? Don't assume that the right to do the things you want to do is automatically in the Constitution; chances are it is not. This is what really rankles lots of Conservatives. People are always claiming they have the Constitutional right to this, that, and the other thing when no fair reading of the Constitution or its history could EVER support any of the rights so claimed.
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
But when you're talking about issues of whether or not to take away a person's personal liberty which doesn't actually harm anyone... Should the people have a right to do that even if they're unananymous in their decision?
Everyone likes more liberty, not less, but being a part of a democracy means living by the decisions of the community as a whole once those decisions are made. Yes, we have a Constitution, and yes, that Constitution prevents majority rule from taking away specific liberties from the people (e.g., the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to be free from enslavement). But the Constitution doesn't limit the ability of the body politic, or any subunit thereof, from doing what it wants to do within the boundaries of the Constitution.
Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way.
Finally, to the person who mentioned that we are a republic and not a democracy, you are only half right and inconsequentially at that. We are indeed a republic, but a democratic republic, and I don't see how the matter of representation in government at all detracts from the idea that this is a democratic country and that citizens have the right to vote their consciences, regardless of how those consciences are formed (religious, a-religious).
Marriage itself my not be specifically defined as a constitutional right, but treating people unequally is NOT Constitutional. Big difference.
And you just hit the nail on the head with your analogy. It's the STATE'S decision to make that call, not the federal government, yet you have some Republican frontrunners who proclaim sweeping federal legislation to control things like this. And isn't that antithetical to Republican ideals of limited government involvement? This is why it keeps becoming a contentious issue, even within the party itself. You've got fiscal conservatives/social moderates mixed in with these extremely opinionated far-right whackjobs. And if a Republican candidate doesn't storm through the door proclaiming they're going to put the concept of abortion into a cannon and launch it into the sun, they immediately lose that base.
Almost all courts in the U.S. have found marriage to be a fundamental human right.
On October 20 2011 09:00 Penitent wrote:
Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way.
How ironic.
Regardless so much of your post just makes me cringe, realizing there are some educated people out that try to impose their own religious beliefs on others. And no matter how much you say you aren't, which I've seen you post, you are.
If I am trying to impose my religious beliefs on you by, say, voting against gay marriage, are you not also trying to impose your religious (or a-religious) beliefs on me by voting for gay marriage? Or is it only imposing beliefs if I disagree with you?
No one is forcing you to marry a person that's of the same gender as you. So by having gay marriage being legal no one is directly infringing on your rights.
But if 2 gay people of the same sex want to be married but you they can't, because you don't let them because you dont' want them to you're infrining on their harmless pursuit of happiness.
Look at it this way:
say you change you mind you realize you're gay and you want to marry someone who's the same sex as you, but you already passed the law... so you cant' get married.
If a gay couple decide that they don't want to get married, they can still not get married even if it would be legal for them to marry.
Signet wrote: It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster.
The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is.
First time poster and you're already putting people into boxes and calling them "hippocritical"/stupid? (protip: it's spelled "hypocritical." This is a) an ironic example of emblematic stupidity b) causing me to envision a critical hippopotamus.)
Now nevermind that I've voted for more Republicans than Democrats for federal offices... more Libertarians than Democrats as well... but yeah, I'm a total partisan hack. You got me.
Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy.
America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city.
If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante.
If you'd read a little more of my post, you'd see that I actually said I think that conservative opposition to abortion has logical secular arguments to support it (even though I disagree with the assertion that life begins at conception, their stance a valid conclusion for people who agree with said assertion).
As Kiarip said, if marriage is supposed to be a sacred religious tradition then get it out of the hands of the government. I think many people would support simply allowing the government to grant "civil unions" to all adult couples who want one, while leaving "marriage" as a religious/cultural event that is separate from the government.
Beyond that, I do accept that some people want to define "marriage" in the Christian tradition while still allowing equal rights for gays... I disagree with these people for a few reasons, but I don't think they're being awful. But what we've repeatedly seen are laws being passed that not only define marriage as between a man and a woman, but also deny gays the right to legal equality through a civil union. That's simple hate, and I won't respect it.
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
Having been a conservative for the first 20+ years of my life, at no time did I ever feel like the teaching of evolution as the accepted scientific theory was anything resembling an attempt to impose liberal or whatever beliefs on me, not any more than the theory of gravity (which has way more gaps in it than evolution does but isn't subject to anything resembling the same political attacks) or integration by parts. The good Lord gave us a brain and the five senses so that we could use them... closing our eyes does nothing to achieve that.
In science, the emphasis is on the "provable" (or more accurately, falsifiable). Darwinian evolution makes specific predictions that can be tested - such as the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria or changes in the color of moths in response to soot produced by early industrial factories. Nobody is saying that the theory is totally complete and will never change. In fact significant changes have been made to the theory of evolution, such as the replacement of gradualism with punctuated equilibrium.
Chromosome numbers and speciation are addressed here: http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom.html Note the discussion of predictions made by the theory. Again this is the critical part. If evidence emerges that contradicts something this theory implies, then the theory must be revised or replaced. If another testable hypothesis is able to better explain the known data, it will become the accepted theory.
Intelligent Design cannot be tested because it doesn't make these kind of predictions, and it rests on the existence of God (which for all practical purposes cannot be scientifically observed or falsified). It's basically arguing that unless you can explain every evolutionary step that every species ever took from primoridal ooze to modern-day humans, then God has to have been directly involved along the way. It's a terrible argument, and more relevantly to the discussion of scientific curricula, it's totally non-scientific. The reason ID shouldn't be taught alongside evolution isn't that ID is incorrect (we'll never know that until we die). It's that ID isn't a scientific theory.
on the other hand, it might be appropriate for a survey of religions or Christian philosophy course. Although I think there are many more interesting debates in apologetics than an attempt to explain away evolution.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
Again, it's a matter of degree. Someone wanting to impose affirmative action (which I diasgree with, but understand the arguments for redressing lingering inequality) isn't really the same as someone wanting to impose a ban on interracial marriage or to impose slavery (which not only do I disagree with, but any decent human being should as well).
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
There's a gulf between not respecting anyone's beliefs if they don't think like you and treating all beliefs as equal. I damn sure won't accept a totalitarian system of government or something like Sharia law and I see no reason to afford those beliefs any respect. On the other hand, I'm generally respectful of libertarian beliefs even though I no longer feel that this is the best/proper way to run an economy... hell, I'm respectful of Rothbardian-style anarchists and I think that's doomed to failure.
In fact I may have a broader range of respect/acceptance than I gave myself credit for, because I'm even willing to tolerate some amounts of social conservatism if I feel like it's coming from a good place. Ireland is run as a heavily Christian country, but they don't throw it out the window when the Bible says to do something that might be considered "left of center." Hence they've outlawed all non-life threatening abortions... and have universal healthcare. (in fact it's the religious Fine Gael party that's pushing for full nationalized healthcare) For that matter the FG opposes gay marriage but at least supports civil unions... so while I disagree with them on that, I don't feel like they're just being a bunch of assholes.
But this ideology of cherry-picking the conservative parts of the Bible and saying "we have to legislate this" while at the same time taking the progressive parts of the same book and saying "oh, that's not really the government's job" is, in my opinion, just an excuse to bully people while hiding behind religion. And I don't respect that.
And yes, I think people who refuse to allow their beliefs and opinions to be swayed by evidence are being a little dense. Hence the mention of somebody believing the earth is 10,000 years old, when there are mountians of evidence to the contrary. Now whether someone personally believes this was all created by a micromanaging God, a watchmaker God, or no god at all isn't something that would cause me to question their ability to think.
If somebody steadfastly believed that America was founded in the 1930s by Russian Communists and refused to change their mind no matter what evidence they were shown, would you really say that their beliefs are equally valid? There's little difference between that and Young Earth creationism.
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster.
The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is.
Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy.
America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city.
If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante.
However, why should you make legislature that limits the rights of a person to do something that doesn't hurt anyone?
who cares if 51% believes it's wrong, or 99% of people believe it's wrong. If it doesn't infringe on the constitutional rights of anyone else it should be allowed.
And if marriage is indead a holy insitution pre-dating government, then why should we have government sponsorship of marriage?
Let's remove all economic benefits from marriage so it REALLY IS a spiritual thing, and then if a church doesn't want to marry to gays because it's against its religious ideals... fine it won't.
Who are you to say what does or does not "hurt" someone? Maybe you think that gay marriage or abortion or socialized medicine don't "hurt" anyone, but I and millions of others would strongly disagree.
But let's say for the sake of argument that, for example, gay marriage doesn't "hurt" anyone as an objective fact. So what? Gay marriage is not a Constitutional right. This means that if there are enough people who think it a repugnant thing they should and do have the right to vote against it. Here's a parallel example: no one is "hurt" in mixed martial arts because the fighters engage in it of their own free will, but different states are free to permit or deny the practice of the sport in their domains because, like gay marriage, mixed martial arts is not a Constitutional right.
As for ending government recognition of marriage, I can agree with you there. I would rather end the practice of officially recognizing marriage than allow the state to re-define an institution which has stood, largely unchanged, for the better part of all of recorded human history.
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
It doesn't because the existence of gay marriage, doesn't infringe on your human rights. Abortion is more contraversial though.
As for not teaching faith, well I think this is a question of whether it would be a class that teaches a student vitally important skill or information or not. I'm against public schools in general, though and private schools to some extent can already teach faith if they want. This issue should be completely separate from the evolutionary issue though.
Whether or not to teach evolution in a public school is more of a scientific issue. I think that you can teach it in school just fine, because Evolution as a scientific theory explains a great deal of what we know about species, still not everything, but there hasn't been any natural occurances that directly contradict evolution, although there are some that evolution has not yet fully explained.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
No. Because luckily we have the constiution which protects our rights from oppressive legislation.
And which rights might those be? Don't assume that the right to do the things you want to do is automatically in the Constitution; chances are it is not. This is what really rankles lots of Conservatives. People are always claiming they have the Constitutional right to this, that, and the other thing when no fair reading of the Constitution or its history could EVER support any of the rights so claimed.
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
But when you're talking about issues of whether or not to take away a person's personal liberty which doesn't actually harm anyone... Should the people have a right to do that even if they're unananymous in their decision?
Everyone likes more liberty, not less, but being a part of a democracy means living by the decisions of the community as a whole once those decisions are made. Yes, we have a Constitution, and yes, that Constitution prevents majority rule from taking away specific liberties from the people (e.g., the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to be free from enslavement). But the Constitution doesn't limit the ability of the body politic, or any subunit thereof, from doing what it wants to do within the boundaries of the Constitution.
Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way.
Finally, to the person who mentioned that we are a republic and not a democracy, you are only half right and inconsequentially at that. We are indeed a republic, but a democratic republic, and I don't see how the matter of representation in government at all detracts from the idea that this is a democratic country and that citizens have the right to vote their consciences, regardless of how those consciences are formed (religious, a-religious).
Marriage itself my not be specifically defined as a constitutional right, but treating people unequally is NOT Constitutional. Big difference.
And you just hit the nail on the head with your analogy. It's the STATE'S decision to make that call, not the federal government, yet you have some Republican frontrunners who proclaim sweeping federal legislation to control things like this. And isn't that antithetical to Republican ideals of limited government involvement? This is why it keeps becoming a contentious issue, even within the party itself. You've got fiscal conservatives/social moderates mixed in with these extremely opinionated far-right whackjobs. And if a Republican candidate doesn't storm through the door proclaiming they're going to put the concept of abortion into a cannon and launch it into the sun, they immediately lose that base.
Almost all courts in the U.S. have found marriage to be a fundamental human right.
On October 20 2011 09:00 Penitent wrote:
Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way.
How ironic.
Regardless so much of your post just makes me cringe, realizing there are some educated people out that try to impose their own religious beliefs on others. And no matter how much you say you aren't, which I've seen you post, you are.
If I am trying to impose my religious beliefs on you by, say, voting against gay marriage, are you not also trying to impose your religious (or a-religious) beliefs on me by voting for gay marriage? Or is it only imposing beliefs if I disagree with you?
And there's no irony at all in stating that democratic governance means we all have a collective right to decide how to live as a society. You get to vote for gay marriage because you are a part of our democratic society. I get to vote against gay marriage because I too am a part of our democratic society. Only one of us can win. But whoever wins, the point is that someone's view gets to prevail, and the losing side shouldn't bm the other by saying that their point of view is illegitimate for one dumbass reason or another (e.g., "they're just voting based on their religious views, which are totally unacceptable and wrong and bad, unlike my atheist views, which are perfect and right and just").
If you think I am wrong, by all means scream it from the rooftops and convince more voters to vote your way. But don't bust out with lame non-arguments like "you're imposing your religion on everyone" because you generate and perpetuate the logically false idea that religious values are somehow inferior to atheist values. Considering that religious values have guided human civilizational development for the entirety of recorded human history, I'd say they've been doing a decent job.
The reason it is considered imposing to deny gay marriage is based on the idea that we all have the right to marry who we please by default and it is the governments job to justify taking away that right. The only way you could see pro-gay marriage views as imposing is if you believe the government grants us rights, instead of just selectively limiting them. And if I ever heard a good, objective reason for banning gay marriage (grounded in quantifiable facts) then I would be open to limiting it as a right but I have never seen one.
In other words, the reasons for allowing gay marriage are far more compelling than gay marriage itself.
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster.
The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is.
Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy.
America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city.
If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante.
However, why should you make legislature that limits the rights of a person to do something that doesn't hurt anyone?
who cares if 51% believes it's wrong, or 99% of people believe it's wrong. If it doesn't infringe on the constitutional rights of anyone else it should be allowed.
And if marriage is indead a holy insitution pre-dating government, then why should we have government sponsorship of marriage?
Let's remove all economic benefits from marriage so it REALLY IS a spiritual thing, and then if a church doesn't want to marry to gays because it's against its religious ideals... fine it won't.
Who are you to say what does or does not "hurt" someone? Maybe you think that gay marriage or abortion or socialized medicine don't "hurt" anyone, but I and millions of others would strongly disagree.
But let's say for the sake of argument that, for example, gay marriage doesn't "hurt" anyone as an objective fact. So what? Gay marriage is not a Constitutional right. This means that if there are enough people who think it a repugnant thing they should and do have the right to vote against it. Here's a parallel example: no one is "hurt" in mixed martial arts because the fighters engage in it of their own free will, but different states are free to permit or deny the practice of the sport in their domains because, like gay marriage, mixed martial arts is not a Constitutional right.
As for ending government recognition of marriage, I can agree with you there. I would rather end the practice of officially recognizing marriage than allow the state to re-define an institution which has stood, largely unchanged, for the better part of all of recorded human history.
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
It doesn't because the existence of gay marriage, doesn't infringe on your human rights. Abortion is more contraversial though.
As for not teaching faith, well I think this is a question of whether it would be a class that teaches a student vitally important skill or information or not. I'm against public schools in general, though and private schools to some extent can already teach faith if they want. This issue should be completely separate from the evolutionary issue though.
Whether or not to teach evolution in a public school is more of a scientific issue. I think that you can teach it in school just fine, because Evolution as a scientific theory explains a great deal of what we know about species, still not everything, but there hasn't been any natural occurances that directly contradict evolution, although there are some that evolution has not yet fully explained.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
No. Because luckily we have the constiution which protects our rights from oppressive legislation.
And which rights might those be? Don't assume that the right to do the things you want to do is automatically in the Constitution; chances are it is not. This is what really rankles lots of Conservatives. People are always claiming they have the Constitutional right to this, that, and the other thing when no fair reading of the Constitution or its history could EVER support any of the rights so claimed.
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
But when you're talking about issues of whether or not to take away a person's personal liberty which doesn't actually harm anyone... Should the people have a right to do that even if they're unananymous in their decision?
Everyone likes more liberty, not less, but being a part of a democracy means living by the decisions of the community as a whole once those decisions are made. Yes, we have a Constitution, and yes, that Constitution prevents majority rule from taking away specific liberties from the people (e.g., the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to be free from enslavement). But the Constitution doesn't limit the ability of the body politic, or any subunit thereof, from doing what it wants to do within the boundaries of the Constitution.
Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way.
Finally, to the person who mentioned that we are a republic and not a democracy, you are only half right and inconsequentially at that. We are indeed a republic, but a democratic republic, and I don't see how the matter of representation in government at all detracts from the idea that this is a democratic country and that citizens have the right to vote their consciences, regardless of how those consciences are formed (religious, a-religious).
Because in the constitution it says that state and religion are to be SEPERATE. Also go ahead vote for what you believe in, there is nothing wrong with that, except when you infringe on others rights. That is why we are a democratic-republic, to ensure that we don't have a tyranny of the majority. If you don't believe that gays should have a spiritual marriage or religious marriage, sure that is your belief and you are entitled to it. But when you infringe on their right to get married by a judge, that is when things get messed up. There are plenty of people back in the 1960's who didn't want blacks and whites (interracial marriages). If that's what the country wanted is that what we should have done for the majority at the expense of the minority.
Also ya gay marriage, abortion, and atheist schools and none of that crap is in the Constitution, but neither are countless other things that we do today. The Constitution was deliberately made vaguely because the original writers cannot protect what issues would happen 100, 200, or 300 years from them, they only provided the framework for this country to be founded upon. If you think we should follow the Constitution to the letter, then these issues are the least of your worries and that is whole different discussion altogether.
How does my voting against gay marriage involve the imposition of my religion on you? How does my voting against abortion involve the imposition of my religion on you? Do either of those votes, even if successful, compel you to believe what I believe? No, they do not, so stop repeating the logically broken mantra that voting according to my religious beliefs is somehow a violation of the separation of church and state. It is not such a violation, and if it WERE, then America would logically be an atheist state by default, which is completely and totally antithetical to the history and nature of this country.
It's completely logical, despite you simply saying it isn't. You're voting to deny someone else the ability to do something - because of your religion. You're trying to use your vote to prevent someone else from being able to do something that does NOT infringe upon anyone else's rights. It should not be a voting manner in the first place.
The simple fact you think it's a good thing that we should be able to vote on matters such as this is kind of scary to me. Do you really think that system is good? Do you think, in the future, if enough atheists came about and decided to vote in a law that stated "no two Christians may legally be married" that it should hold?
Okay, so let's say I am a raging, dedicated atheist, but I hate gay people for one reason or another. If I vote against gay marriage because I hate gay people, is that somehow better than voting against gay marriage because I believe in God and in a moral code that prohibits homosexual sex? If I vote against gay marriage as an atheist I'm not doing so because of my religion - I don't have a religion that has a viewpoint on the matter one way or another. So, would that be okay? Or is the heart of the matter that you really just don't like the fact that I disagree with you on this issue?
Politics is hard because it involves winners and losers. Your point of view will not always win. But that doesn't mean that people who take the opposite point of view are inherently stupid or bad. You either just need to do a better job of convincing them that you are right, or reconsider your own position.
Ok, then you're not trying to impose your religious beliefs - you're just a bigot/asshole. But we all know that the entire crusade against gay marriage isn't random bigoted assholes - so that's why that isn't the argument against. The entire cause for controversy is religion.
It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster.
The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is.
Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy.
America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city.
If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante.
However, why should you make legislature that limits the rights of a person to do something that doesn't hurt anyone?
who cares if 51% believes it's wrong, or 99% of people believe it's wrong. If it doesn't infringe on the constitutional rights of anyone else it should be allowed.
And if marriage is indead a holy insitution pre-dating government, then why should we have government sponsorship of marriage?
Let's remove all economic benefits from marriage so it REALLY IS a spiritual thing, and then if a church doesn't want to marry to gays because it's against its religious ideals... fine it won't.
Who are you to say what does or does not "hurt" someone? Maybe you think that gay marriage or abortion or socialized medicine don't "hurt" anyone, but I and millions of others would strongly disagree.
But let's say for the sake of argument that, for example, gay marriage doesn't "hurt" anyone as an objective fact. So what? Gay marriage is not a Constitutional right. This means that if there are enough people who think it a repugnant thing they should and do have the right to vote against it. Here's a parallel example: no one is "hurt" in mixed martial arts because the fighters engage in it of their own free will, but different states are free to permit or deny the practice of the sport in their domains because, like gay marriage, mixed martial arts is not a Constitutional right.
As for ending government recognition of marriage, I can agree with you there. I would rather end the practice of officially recognizing marriage than allow the state to re-define an institution which has stood, largely unchanged, for the better part of all of recorded human history.
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
It doesn't because the existence of gay marriage, doesn't infringe on your human rights. Abortion is more contraversial though.
As for not teaching faith, well I think this is a question of whether it would be a class that teaches a student vitally important skill or information or not. I'm against public schools in general, though and private schools to some extent can already teach faith if they want. This issue should be completely separate from the evolutionary issue though.
Whether or not to teach evolution in a public school is more of a scientific issue. I think that you can teach it in school just fine, because Evolution as a scientific theory explains a great deal of what we know about species, still not everything, but there hasn't been any natural occurances that directly contradict evolution, although there are some that evolution has not yet fully explained.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
No. Because luckily we have the constiution which protects our rights from oppressive legislation.
And which rights might those be? Don't assume that the right to do the things you want to do is automatically in the Constitution; chances are it is not. This is what really rankles lots of Conservatives. People are always claiming they have the Constitutional right to this, that, and the other thing when no fair reading of the Constitution or its history could EVER support any of the rights so claimed.
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
But when you're talking about issues of whether or not to take away a person's personal liberty which doesn't actually harm anyone... Should the people have a right to do that even if they're unananymous in their decision?
Everyone likes more liberty, not less, but being a part of a democracy means living by the decisions of the community as a whole once those decisions are made. Yes, we have a Constitution, and yes, that Constitution prevents majority rule from taking away specific liberties from the people (e.g., the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to be free from enslavement). But the Constitution doesn't limit the ability of the body politic, or any subunit thereof, from doing what it wants to do within the boundaries of the Constitution.
Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way.
Finally, to the person who mentioned that we are a republic and not a democracy, you are only half right and inconsequentially at that. We are indeed a republic, but a democratic republic, and I don't see how the matter of representation in government at all detracts from the idea that this is a democratic country and that citizens have the right to vote their consciences, regardless of how those consciences are formed (religious, a-religious).
Marriage itself my not be specifically defined as a constitutional right, but treating people unequally is NOT Constitutional. Big difference.
And you just hit the nail on the head with your analogy. It's the STATE'S decision to make that call, not the federal government, yet you have some Republican frontrunners who proclaim sweeping federal legislation to control things like this. And isn't that antithetical to Republican ideals of limited government involvement? This is why it keeps becoming a contentious issue, even within the party itself. You've got fiscal conservatives/social moderates mixed in with these extremely opinionated far-right whackjobs. And if a Republican candidate doesn't storm through the door proclaiming they're going to put the concept of abortion into a cannon and launch it into the sun, they immediately lose that base.
Almost all courts in the U.S. have found marriage to be a fundamental human right.
On October 20 2011 09:00 Penitent wrote:
Gay marriage, abortion, functionally atheist schools and civic bodies - none of that crap is in, or logically mandated by, the Constitution or its history. That these have come to be accepted as Constitutional rights is the work of activist Supreme Court justices, who have robbed us all of our collective right to decide for ourselves how we should or should not live. I don't know about you, but I would rather lose a straight up vote on every issue dear to my heart than have five men and women in black robes telling everyone that I'm right. America is a democracy, and by God, it ought to stay that way.
How ironic.
Regardless so much of your post just makes me cringe, realizing there are some educated people out that try to impose their own religious beliefs on others. And no matter how much you say you aren't, which I've seen you post, you are.
If I am trying to impose my religious beliefs on you by, say, voting against gay marriage, are you not also trying to impose your religious (or a-religious) beliefs on me by voting for gay marriage? Or is it only imposing beliefs if I disagree with you?
And there's no irony at all in stating that democratic governance means we all have a collective right to decide how to live as a society. You get to vote for gay marriage because you are a part of our democratic society. I get to vote against gay marriage because I too am a part of our democratic society. Only one of us can win. But whoever wins, the point is that someone's view gets to prevail, and the losing side shouldn't bm the other by saying that their point of view is illegitimate for one dumbass reason or another (e.g., "they're just voting based on their religious views, which are totally unacceptable and wrong and bad, unlike my atheist views, which are perfect and right and just").
If you think I am wrong, by all means scream it from the rooftops and convince more voters to vote your way. But don't bust out with lame non-arguments like "you're imposing your religion on everyone" because you generate and perpetuate the logically false idea that religious values are somehow inferior to atheist values. Considering that religious values have guided human civilizational development for the entirety of recorded human history, I'd say they've been doing a decent job.
No, I'm not trying to impose any religious beliefs on you. I'm not even making you accept gay marriage by voting for it. That's the difference. I'm voting for freedom, individuality, and choice. You're voting for oppression, intolerance, and bigotry. I'm not forcing anything upon you when I vote for freedom. You're forcing things on others when you vote for intolerance. See the difference?
Signet wrote: It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster.
The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is.
First time poster and you're already putting people into boxes and calling them "hippocritical"/stupid? (protip: it's spelled "hypocritical." This is a) an ironic example of emblematic stupidity b) causing me to envision a critical hippopotamus.)
Now nevermind that I've voted for more Republicans than Democrats for federal offices... more Libertarians than Democrats as well... but yeah, I'm a total partisan hack. You got me.
Gah, I repeatedly make that mistake. So my spelling is periodically bad, sue me =/.
I stand by my position, however, that the political left is often guilty of hypocrisy and that those spouting it are often too stupid to recognize it. Based on your detailed reply you're clearly not a stupid person, but it is nonetheless hypocritical to claim that conservatives want to legislate "religious" issues because the implication is that liberals do not. Nothing could be further from the truth.
That someone accepts a religion, including its attendant moral value system, and votes according to that system, does not somehow make them inferior to others who reject religion, have a moral value system, and vote according to that system. It's all the same. To say that it is impermissible for a religious person to vote according to her beliefs and the values that stem from them is no different than saying that it is impermissible for a black person to vote according to his beliefs and the values that stem from them.
Everyone can vote one way or another on any given issue. Everyone does so based on their values. Everyone's values are drawn from or based on beliefs - first principles which are accepted without proof or reason. My position is that it is hypocritical for political leftists to denigrate religious beliefs and values while praising non-religious beliefs and values because all it comes down to is a cheap and logically unsupportable effort to de-legitimize viewpoints with which they do not agree.
Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy.
America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city.
If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante.
If you'd read a little more of my post, you'd see that I actually said I think that conservative opposition to abortion has logical secular arguments to support it (even though I disagree with the assertion that life begins at conception, their stance a valid conclusion for people who agree with said assertion).
I did read the entirety of your post and I did notice that you said as much. It is irrelevant. Let us assume for the sake of argument that there is no logical reason whatsoever to oppose abortion. Let us assume further that for religious reasons many people do not like abortion anyway. In a democracy, such as ours, where the government is not bound by its own laws (i.e., the Constitution) from prohibiting or allowing abortion, the people have the right to decide, as a collective political whole, that they don't want abortion to happen in their land. There is nothing in the Constitution that requires every law promulgated by every branch of government to have some secular - i.e., atheist - purpose.
As Bibdy said, if marriage is supposed to be a sacred religious tradition then get it out of the hands of the government. I think many people would support simply allowing the government to grant "civil unions" to all adult couples who want one, while leaving "marriage" as a religious/cultural event that is separate from the government.
Beyond that, I do accept that some people want to define "marriage" in the Christian tradition while still allowing equal rights for gays... I disagree with these people for a few reasons, but I don't think they're being awful. But what we've repeatedly seen are laws being passed that not only define marriage as between a man and a woman, but also deny gays the right to legal equality through a civil union. That's simple hate, and I won't respect it.
Have you considered the possibility that religious conservatives don't hate homosexuals? Has it occurred to you that we may vote the way that we do because we wish to protect the stability and strength of an institution which forms the foundation of all human civilization? Did you consider that Christians, for example, may oppose gay marriage because we believe that resisting the broader cultural acceptance of homosexual sex will redound to homosexuals' eternal spiritual benefit? Declaring that religious conservatives are motivated by hate is nothing more than you setting up a straw man. It is also you being a hypocrit (hypo, hypo, hypo ...). Do conservatives declaim that leftists hate Christians because leftists reject Christian political wishes (like, say, a Nativity scene in front of City Hall during Christmas)? Some, probably, but not near as many as those claiming religious conservatives are a hate-filled mob frothing at the mouth to destroy all that is good in the world for the sake of their imaginary god.
In short, unless you're willing to admit to a deep, abiding hatred for Christians and other religious conservatives as the reason for your political preferences, don't suggest that we hate homosexuals / atheists / liberals / puppies / kittens as the reason for ours.
If by "numerous" you mean a handful over the course of hundreds of millions (billions?) of marriages over the course of human history, and if by "recognized" you mean not legally or generally acknowledged as being the same thing as a heterosexual marriage, then yes, your interpretation of the wikipedia page you cite would be correct.
Just because there have been isolated instances of homosexual relationships being acknowledged and accepted to one limited degree or another does not change the fact that the institution of marriage has been of a heterosexual nature for millennia. The ancient Greeks, accepting as they were of homosexuality, did not acknowledge homosexual marriages. I believe I stand vindicated on this point.
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
Having been a conservative for the first 20+ years of my life, at no time did I ever feel like the teaching of evolution as the accepted scientific theory was anything resembling an attempt to impose liberal or whatever beliefs on me, not any more than the theory of gravity (which has way more gaps in it than evolution does but isn't subject to anything resembling the same political attacks) or integration by parts. The good Lord gave us a brain and the five senses so that we could use them... closing our eyes does nothing to achieve that.
In science, the emphasis is on the "provable" (or more accurately, falsifiable). Darwinian evolution makes specific predictions that can be tested - such as the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria or changes in the color of moths in response to soot produced by early industrial factories. Nobody is saying that the theory is totally complete and will never change. In fact significant changes have been made to the theory of evolution, such as the replacement of gradualism with punctuated equilibrium.
Chromosome numbers and speciation are addressed here: http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom.html Note the discussion of predictions made by the theory. Again this is the critical part. If evidence emerges that contradicts something this theory implies, then the theory must be revised or replaced. If another testable hypothesis is able to better explain the known data, it will become the accepted theory.
Intelligent Design cannot be tested because it doesn't make these kind of predictions, and it rests on the existence of God (which for all practical purposes cannot be scientifically observed or falsified). It's basically arguing that unless you can explain every evolutionary step that every species ever took from primoridal ooze to modern-day humans, then God has to have been directly involved along the way. It's a terrible argument, and more relevantly to the discussion of scientific curricula, it's totally non-scientific. The reason ID shouldn't be taught alongside evolution isn't that ID is incorrect (we'll never know that until we die). It's that ID isn't a scientific theory.
on the other hand, it might be appropriate for a survey of religions or Christian philosophy course. Although I think there are many more interesting debates in apologetics than an attempt to explain away evolution.
I've been referred to the same link you provided before. I've read it numerous times. It fails to answer one of the most basic questions that science (good science anyway) always asks: how? Yes, yes, you have falsifiable theories and such. But still: how? Nowhere in the link you provide (or anywhere else for that matter) is there a concrete explanation of how one species transforms into another, higher species with more chromosomes that miraculously work to produce new structures and functions in that new species. Micro-evolution - the evolutionary change of species to different forms of that same species - is a provable fact. It is demonstrable in the field; no one disputes this. But macro-evolution is as much an article of faith as is creationism. In essence, macro-evolution can be summarized thus:
1. Functioning species with X number of chromosomes. 2. ?????? [insert theory here] 3. Different functioning species with X+Y number of chromosomes. 4. Profit.
If your position then is that something ought not to be taught because it is not a scientific theory, then I would suggest that macro-evolution should be kept out of schools (I don't actually think this - I'd prefer it to be taught alongside ID).
On this I will note finally that I don't actually have a problem with the theory of evolution. To my mind evolution and creation are not mutually exclusive things (who, after all, is to say that God did not fashion the creatures of the world through the processes of the nature He set in motion in the first place?). The only problem I have is, again, with the hypocrisy of ridiculing religious belief when "scientific belief" is itself alive and kicking.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
Again, it's a matter of degree. Someone wanting to impose affirmative action (which I diasgree with, but understand the arguments for redressing lingering inequality) isn't really the same as someone wanting to impose a ban on interracial marriage or to impose slavery (which not only do I disagree with, but any decent human being should as well).
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
There's a gulf between not respecting anyone's beliefs if they don't think like you and treating all beliefs as equal. I damn sure won't accept a totalitarian system of government or something like Sharia law and I see no reason to afford those beliefs any respect. On the other hand, I'm generally respectful of libertarian beliefs even though I no longer feel that this is the best/proper way to run an economy... hell, I'm respectful of Rothbardian-style anarchists and I think that's doomed to failure.
In fact I may have a broader range of respect/acceptance than I gave myself credit for, because I'm even willing to tolerate some amounts of social conservatism if I feel like it's coming from a good place. Ireland is run as a heavily Christian country, but they don't throw it out the window when the Bible says to do something that might be considered "left of center." Hence they've outlawed all non-life threatening abortions... and have universal healthcare. (in fact it's the religious Fine Gael party that's pushing for full nationalized healthcare) For that matter the FG opposes gay marriage but at least supports civil unions... so while I disagree with them on that, I don't feel like they're just being a bunch of assholes.
So what if they are just being a bunch of assholes? Democracy means you get a say. Democracy does NOT mean you only get a say if you're a nice guy about it. Democracy does NOT mean you only get a say if you agree with everyone else. Democracy does NOT mean you only get a say if you think the right thoughts or express the right opinions. Democracy means you get a say.
But this ideology of cherry-picking the conservative parts of the Bible and saying "we have to legislate this" while at the same time taking the progressive parts of the same book and saying "oh, that's not really the government's job" is, in my opinion, just an excuse to bully people while hiding behind religion. And I don't respect that.
Funny, because religious conservatives often feel bullied by those who preach tolerance (except for conservatives), free speech (except for conservative ideas), equality (except for white people and the rich), freedom (except when it comes to things like school choice, health care, etc.), and all manner of other nice-sounding things. I too cannot respect such hypocrisy.
And yes, I think people who refuse to allow their beliefs and opinions to be swayed by evidence are being a little dense. Hence the mention of somebody believing the earth is 10,000 years old, when there are mountians of evidence to the contrary. Now whether someone personally believes this was all created by a micromanaging God, a watchmaker God, or no god at all isn't something that would cause me to question their ability to think.
If somebody steadfastly believed that America was founded in the 1930s by Russian Communists and refused to change their mind no matter what evidence they were shown, would you really say that their beliefs are equally valid? There's little difference between that and Young Earth creationism.
I see what you are saying, but I wasn't defending the insane or the ludicrous. The examples you cite here are provably false. The same cannot be said for the existence of God. The point of my post was that rejecting a political viewpoint because it is based on someone's religious beliefs and the values stemming therefrom is hypocritical because all it amounts to is making the logically unsupportable claim that my unprovable beliefs are inferior to your unprovable beliefs.
Signet wrote: It's not being religious that ticks people off, unless somebody's a real fundamentalist. It's the legislating of religious issues.
Long time reader, first time poster.
The quote above is emblematic of the hippocritical stupidity so often displayed by the political left, and I feel compelled to say something to expose it for what it is.
First time poster and you're already putting people into boxes and calling them "hippocritical"/stupid? (protip: it's spelled "hypocritical." This is a) an ironic example of emblematic stupidity b) causing me to envision a critical hippopotamus.)
Now nevermind that I've voted for more Republicans than Democrats for federal offices... more Libertarians than Democrats as well... but yeah, I'm a total partisan hack. You got me.
Gah, I repeatedly make that mistake. So my spelling is periodically bad, sue me =/.
I stand by my position, however, that the political left is often guilty of hypocrisy and that those spouting it are often too stupid to recognize it. Based on your detailed reply you're clearly not a stupid person, but it is nonetheless hypocritical to claim that conservatives want to legislate "religious" issues because the implication is that liberals do not. Nothing could be further from the truth.
That someone accepts a religion, including its attendant moral value system, and votes according to that system, does not somehow make them inferior to others who reject religion, have a moral value system, and vote according to that system. It's all the same. To say that it is impermissible for a religious person to vote according to her beliefs and the values that stem from them is no different than saying that it is impermissible for a black person to vote according to his beliefs and the values that stem from them.
Everyone can vote one way or another on any given issue. Everyone does so based on their values. Everyone's values are drawn from or based on beliefs - first principles which are accepted without proof or reason. My position is that it is hypocritical for political leftists to denigrate religious beliefs and values while praising non-religious beliefs and values because all it comes down to is a cheap and logically unsupportable effort to de-legitimize viewpoints with which they do not agree.
Why should it be reprehensible for a religious person to vote for his preferences but "courageous" for an a-religious person to do the same? No serious conservative (myself included) has ever suggested that we pass laws to compel belief in anything, yet to hear tell from the media and other leftists you'd swear there was a conspiracy to turn America into an Iranian-style theocracy.
America is a democracy. This means that we all have the right to vote our consciences when deciding, as a collective whole, how we are to live and what we are to do as a nation, as a state, and as a city.
If you like abortion because you don't think the thing inside a pregnant woman's womb is a human being, then vote your conscience. But don't presume to invalidate the opinion of someone who disagrees with you and believes that abortion is wrong because it involves the cold-blooded murder of a child. If you like gay marriage because you think that marriage does little more than confer titles, tax benefits, and specific legal rights, then vote to support it. But don't sneer at others who believe that marriage is a holy institution pre-dating government, and who believe that an institution which has never accepted homosexual unions across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history should not be tampered with by the equivalent of a civilizational diletante.
If you'd read a little more of my post, you'd see that I actually said I think that conservative opposition to abortion has logical secular arguments to support it (even though I disagree with the assertion that life begins at conception, their stance a valid conclusion for people who agree with said assertion).
I did read the entirety of your post and I did notice that you said as much. It is irrelevant. Let us assume for the sake of argument that there is no logical reason whatsoever to oppose abortion. Let us assume further that for religious reasons many people do not like abortion anyway. In a democracy, such as ours, where the government is not bound by its own laws (i.e., the Constitution) from prohibiting or allowing abortion, the people have the right to decide, as a collective political whole, that they don't want abortion to happen in their land. There is nothing in the Constitution that requires every law promulgated by every branch of government to have some secular - i.e., atheist - purpose.
As Bibdy said, if marriage is supposed to be a sacred religious tradition then get it out of the hands of the government. I think many people would support simply allowing the government to grant "civil unions" to all adult couples who want one, while leaving "marriage" as a religious/cultural event that is separate from the government.
Beyond that, I do accept that some people want to define "marriage" in the Christian tradition while still allowing equal rights for gays... I disagree with these people for a few reasons, but I don't think they're being awful. But what we've repeatedly seen are laws being passed that not only define marriage as between a man and a woman, but also deny gays the right to legal equality through a civil union. That's simple hate, and I won't respect it.
Have you considered the possibility that religious conservatives don't hate homosexuals? Has it occurred to you that we may vote the way that we do because we wish to protect the stability and strength of an institution which forms the foundation of all human civilization? Did you consider that Christians, for example, may oppose gay marriage because we believe that resisting the broader cultural acceptance of homosexual sex will redound to homosexuals' eternal spiritual benefit? Declaring that religious conservatives are motivated by hate is nothing more than you setting up a straw man. It is also you being a hypocrit (hypo, hypo, hypo ...). Do conservatives declaim that leftists hate Christians because leftists reject Christian political wishes (like, say, a Nativity scene in front of City Hall during Christmas)? Some, probably, but not near as many as those claiming religious conservatives are a hate-filled mob frothing at the mouth to destroy all that is good in the world for the sake of their imaginary god.
In short, unless you're willing to admit to a deep, abiding hatred for Christians and other religious conservatives as the reason for your political preferences, don't suggest that we hate homosexuals / atheists / liberals / puppies / kittens as the reason for ours.
If by "numerous" you mean a handful over the course of hundreds of millions (billions?) of marriages over the course of human history, and if by "recognized" you mean not legally or generally acknowledged as being the same thing as a heterosexual marriage, then yes, your interpretation of the wikipedia page you cite would be correct.
Just because there have been isolated instances of homosexual relationships being acknowledged and accepted to one limited degree or another does not change the fact that the institution of marriage has been of a heterosexual nature for millennia. The ancient Greeks, accepting as they were of homosexuality, did not acknowledge homosexual marriages. I believe I stand vindicated on this point.
When someone votes for traditional marriage, or pro-life laws, or voluntary prayer in schools, or the teaching of intelligent design as a possible alternative to evolution (which to date STILL has no provable model for the macro-evolutionary change of a species with x number chromosomes into a new species with x+y number of chromosomes), do you rage because you feel like someone is trying to impose his beliefs on you?
Guess what, it feels the EXACT same way for conservatives when you vote for gay marriage, abortion on demand, the exile of faith from all public discourse, or the acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a provable fact.
Having been a conservative for the first 20+ years of my life, at no time did I ever feel like the teaching of evolution as the accepted scientific theory was anything resembling an attempt to impose liberal or whatever beliefs on me, not any more than the theory of gravity (which has way more gaps in it than evolution does but isn't subject to anything resembling the same political attacks) or integration by parts. The good Lord gave us a brain and the five senses so that we could use them... closing our eyes does nothing to achieve that.
In science, the emphasis is on the "provable" (or more accurately, falsifiable). Darwinian evolution makes specific predictions that can be tested - such as the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria or changes in the color of moths in response to soot produced by early industrial factories. Nobody is saying that the theory is totally complete and will never change. In fact significant changes have been made to the theory of evolution, such as the replacement of gradualism with punctuated equilibrium.
Chromosome numbers and speciation are addressed here: http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom.html Note the discussion of predictions made by the theory. Again this is the critical part. If evidence emerges that contradicts something this theory implies, then the theory must be revised or replaced. If another testable hypothesis is able to better explain the known data, it will become the accepted theory.
Intelligent Design cannot be tested because it doesn't make these kind of predictions, and it rests on the existence of God (which for all practical purposes cannot be scientifically observed or falsified). It's basically arguing that unless you can explain every evolutionary step that every species ever took from primoridal ooze to modern-day humans, then God has to have been directly involved along the way. It's a terrible argument, and more relevantly to the discussion of scientific curricula, it's totally non-scientific. The reason ID shouldn't be taught alongside evolution isn't that ID is incorrect (we'll never know that until we die). It's that ID isn't a scientific theory.
on the other hand, it might be appropriate for a survey of religions or Christian philosophy course. Although I think there are many more interesting debates in apologetics than an attempt to explain away evolution.
I've been referred to the same link you provided before. I've read it numerous times. It fails to answer one of the most basic questions that science (good science anyway) always asks: how? Yes, yes, you have falsifiable theories and such. But still: how? Nowhere in the link you provide (or anywhere else for that matter) is there a concrete explanation of how one species transforms into another, higher species with more chromosomes that miraculously work to produce new structures and functions in that new species. Micro-evolution - the evolutionary change of species to different forms of that same species - is a provable fact. It is demonstrable in the field; no one disputes this. But macro-evolution is as much an article of faith as is creationism. In essence, macro-evolution can be summarized thus:
1. Functioning species with X number of chromosomes. 2. ?????? [insert theory here] 3. Different functioning species with X+Y number of chromosomes. 4. Profit.
If your position then is that something ought not to be taught because it is not a scientific theory, then I would suggest that macro-evolution should be kept out of schools (I don't actually think this - I'd prefer it to be taught alongside ID).
On this I will note finally that I don't actually have a problem with the theory of evolution. To my mind evolution and creation are not mutually exclusive things (who, after all, is to say that God did not fashion the creatures of the world through the processes of the nature He set in motion in the first place?). The only problem I have is, again, with the hypocrisy of ridiculing religious belief when "scientific belief" is itself alive and kicking.
This is the nature of democratic politics. Every single time you vote one way or another on an issue, you are voting to impose your thoughts, your preferences, your views, and your beliefs on other people. This is okay; this is how democracy is supposed to work. Living in a democracy means everyone gets a say. It doesn't mean you always get your way, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by a monarch or a dictator or a politburo or a central committee who decide what to do and don't give a fuck if you and everyone else disagree with them. And if you lose? Go out and convince your fellow citizens that yours is the righteous cause, and next time maybe the votes will swing in your favor.
Again, it's a matter of degree. Someone wanting to impose affirmative action (which I diasgree with, but understand the arguments for redressing lingering inequality) isn't really the same as someone wanting to impose a ban on interracial marriage or to impose slavery (which not only do I disagree with, but any decent human being should as well).
Don't for a second believe the bullshit notion that your values or beliefs or views are any better or more important than someone else's and should therefore be accorded greater weight or respect, to the point where people who don't think like you do ought to be mocked and ridiculed as "fundamentalists" or "neanderthals" or "mindless sheep". I'm a devout Catholic and a political conservative because I think for myself, I understand my values, and I know who and what I support. I'm no more a mindless peon than an atheist liberal who takes the exact opposite stand on every issue.
There's a gulf between not respecting anyone's beliefs if they don't think like you and treating all beliefs as equal. I damn sure won't accept a totalitarian system of government or something like Sharia law and I see no reason to afford those beliefs any respect. On the other hand, I'm generally respectful of libertarian beliefs even though I no longer feel that this is the best/proper way to run an economy... hell, I'm respectful of Rothbardian-style anarchists and I think that's doomed to failure.
In fact I may have a broader range of respect/acceptance than I gave myself credit for, because I'm even willing to tolerate some amounts of social conservatism if I feel like it's coming from a good place. Ireland is run as a heavily Christian country, but they don't throw it out the window when the Bible says to do something that might be considered "left of center." Hence they've outlawed all non-life threatening abortions... and have universal healthcare. (in fact it's the religious Fine Gael party that's pushing for full nationalized healthcare) For that matter the FG opposes gay marriage but at least supports civil unions... so while I disagree with them on that, I don't feel like they're just being a bunch of assholes.
So what if they are just being a bunch of assholes? Democracy means you get a say. Democracy does NOT mean you only get a say if you're a nice guy about it. Democracy does NOT mean you only get a say if you agree with everyone else. Democracy does NOT mean you only get a say if you think the right thoughts or express the right opinions. Democracy means you get a say.
But this ideology of cherry-picking the conservative parts of the Bible and saying "we have to legislate this" while at the same time taking the progressive parts of the same book and saying "oh, that's not really the government's job" is, in my opinion, just an excuse to bully people while hiding behind religion. And I don't respect that.
Funny, because religious conservatives often feel bullied by those who preach tolerance (except for conservatives), free speech (except for conservative ideas), equality (except for white people and the rich), freedom (except when it comes to things like school choice, health care, etc.), and all manner of other nice-sounding things. I too cannot respect such hypocrisy.
And yes, I think people who refuse to allow their beliefs and opinions to be swayed by evidence are being a little dense. Hence the mention of somebody believing the earth is 10,000 years old, when there are mountians of evidence to the contrary. Now whether someone personally believes this was all created by a micromanaging God, a watchmaker God, or no god at all isn't something that would cause me to question their ability to think.
If somebody steadfastly believed that America was founded in the 1930s by Russian Communists and refused to change their mind no matter what evidence they were shown, would you really say that their beliefs are equally valid? There's little difference between that and Young Earth creationism.
I see what you are saying, but I wasn't defending the insane or the ludicrous. The examples you cite here are provably false. The same cannot be said for the existence of God. The point of my post was that rejecting a political viewpoint because it is based on someone's religious beliefs and the values stemming therefrom is hypocritical because all it amounts to is making the logically unsupportable claim that my unprovable beliefs are inferior to your unprovable beliefs.
That is a magnificently large post that fails to explain why exactly the politicians should be voting on marriage in the first place.
As has been said many times in this thread, over and over again, why does the government have to legislate on what is effectively a traditional ceremony?
There are extremists of both sides of the political spectrum, and they tend to shout at their opposing extremists. But so say that ID is somehow comparable to evolution is just plain non-sense.
Macro-evolution cannot be proven simply because of the time scale, however there are vast amounts of evidence supporting the theory. Not least of course, similarities between animals in similar habitats. Common body types, niche specification. The list goes on. ID as a theory basically states that anything that is not proven by science is done by god. Well how to disprove that?
Can you give me a reason why God would choose to use similar techniques across genetically related animals? Surely a most magnificant being would show his magnificence by creating completely unique versions each time.
Evolution as a principle provides an explanation that is plausible. ID provides nothing but fairy tales.
EPT
