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#21
01-28-2007, 06:23 PM
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#22
01-28-2007, 06:28 PM
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Wasn't there a television "Dream" episode where Wilbur actually married Mr ED?
I say, if they want to get married, let them get married. It's not as if hetero marraiges all work great; what 50+% wind up in divorce? So, chances are they'll wind up miserable anyway. All this gay marriage stuff is just nonsense brought to you by evil political strategists and religious zealots in order to get people to not focus on real issues. I do wish the Republicans would stop the political religious pandering angle. I don't think it's going to work any longer but it sure looks like Huckabee is gonna give it a try. When Bush eulogized Gerald Ford as a "good man who put his hand on the Ford family Bible and swore an oath..." it was pure Christian Republican politics at it's worst.
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#23
01-29-2007, 10:16 AM
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If Cheney drops dead at any time before November 2008,then I am handing out free $100 gift certificates.
"There's a party goin on right here, A celebration, to last throughout the years, So bring your good times, and your laughter too, We gonna celebrate your party with you, come on now Celebration...Let's all celebrate and have a good time. Celebration...We gonna celebrate and have a good time." Last edited by SCUDSBROTHER : 01-29-2007 at 10:31 AM.
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#24
01-29-2007, 02:16 PM
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[quote=Bababooyee]Ahh, you disappoint me...
Oh, my heart bleeds. I've disappointed Bababooyee! How WILL I sleep at night?  Yeah, yeah, yeah, "but the income is what is taxed"...whose income and who is actually responsible for payment of the tax? A person. Then why do corporations pay tax? They aren't people; they're corporations. And yet they're recognized as entities for the purpose of taxation. B, the money is still being taxed equally. Yes, a wealthy person will pay more in tax. They'll also have earned more. If given the choice, which would you take? Earn 30,000 that you pay 15 percent on, or win $1,000,000 which you'll pay 45 percent on, as winnings? I know which I'd take, and I'm happy to pay the tax on it. I'm paying more, and I'm getting more. Honestly, to be fully fair, all rights that married couples enjoy should be abolished. No sharing health benefits, no inheritence rights (and, though it does vary state to state, it's untrue that a married person can lose all monies left by a spouse, and I think very untrue that they can be denied a spouse's pension, or Social Security death benefits. Look how many times the courts found for Terri Schiavo's husband over her parents for an example of how courts favor the spouse. The legal spouse.) So truthfully, even as a legally married woman, I would see abolishing all spousal benefits as fair, and require people to make out all their bequests, etc. in writing. And then I'd support an increase in income tax to cover the non-working spouses who would be thrown into poverty when they could not collect on a deceased spouse's pension and Social Security. Maybe different treatment is ok...as long as it is not against common liberal sensibilities. The thing I find amusing with conservatives is their intense need to see everything in black and white. Black and white, there should be no benefits to being married because it discriminates against single people. Black and white, you shouldn't be allowed to get married if you can't have kids, if kids are the reason for marriage. But we live in this extraordinary place called the real world, and what conservatives often accuse of being moral relativism is, in fact, I think an understanding that society and people are not fixed; we evolve and learn, and as our understanding of human nature increases, we have to be willing to reexamine our "standards." And some will stand the test of time, and some will no longer be deemed appropriate (slavery, child labor and forced sexual encounters come to mind). And then it becomes the job of those who truly feel that a universal truth has been uncovered (slavery bad) to attempt to move society at a whole to believe that. The anti-slavery movement was once considered a bunch of leftist religious lunatics, you know.  And so, we live in a society where the majority people pair off two-by-two, not for procreation, or even preserving stuff, but because they want to be together. And our society, recognizing marriage as a stabilizing and wealth-building state (married people tend to be better off, economically and emotionally speaking, than single people). And a sizeable enough proportion of those people are gay that I feel it's unfair to not permit them to join with someone they want to be with. The main thing was procreation. Assets, land, etc. flowed through progeny. Was a man who was likely impotent due to smallpox or whatever considered a suitable mate? No. Why don't you find me some specific accounts of a landowner being turned down for marriage on account of sterility? Elizabeth I was still rejecting marriage proposals at age 54. You really think King Philip thought he'd be getting a kid out of her at that point? Fine. For the second time: What about the consenting incestuous brother-sister? What about the straight man-man couple who want to marry for the legal benefits? Please answer. I won't let you avoid them! Rather rude of you to demand, seeing as how you never bothered to go back and answer my questions about Israel, the Religious Right and the Second Coming on the other thread. As you've said beefore, gander, goose? Though I will answer your questions, even though I think I can assume your laptop has a new battery by now (wasn't that your reason?). Truthfully, I myself don't really care if a consenting, adult brother and sister marry each other. I personally find it really, really weird and kinda gross, but you know, it was common among the Egyptian pharoahs, and the Egyptian Empire had a pretty good run. And I really, really don't care if two straight people marry for the benefits. I know people who married for green cards, for health benefits, for all kinds of reasons having nothing to do with love, or kids. What I care about is whether I think a portion of the US population is being denied legal privileges with genuine advantages that is being made available to another group for no reason other than a sexual preference, most likely determined before birth, that has been deemed normal since the early 1970's. So, as I struggle to find the point I can live with in this nation, I think it's fair and just to permit gay men and women to marry, and I can live with a nation that chooses to not permit siblings to marry, because I think the number of siblings that would choose to marry is very small. The gay marriage movement has been going on for a while now, and I don't see a comparably strong First-Cousin marriage movement (though that is legal in New York and some other states). I think, as one sorts out what should and should not be in society that one can't help but look at the number of people who would be affected. Inter-racial marriages were once considered wrong and immoral, you know. Would you be opposed to them being made illegal again? After all, a person could just find someone else of their own race to marry, right? And who cares if they want to marry them, or love them, right? It's just about having kids, right? After all, that's the way things have always been, just like slavery and child labor and beating your wife to save her soul. Why change? OK fine, just for fun. As you said, denying someone a right (or privilege...doesn't matter for this part) that they want really, really bad is a denial of the pursuit of happiness...think about it. I want to be viewed by the state as an otter. I mean really, really bad. If they won't view or treat me as an otter, my pursuit of happiness is being denied! I fail to see the comparison- as otters have no rights under human law, I don't think the government would object to you trotting out to a river and living off raw fish and mussels for the rest of your life. Unless you are a nuisance, in which case they could treat you like an otter and shoot you or remove you to a location where you could live in captivity for the rest of your life. (They might call it an asylum, not a zoo, but I bet if you yelled enough, they'd even call it a zoo in your presence) That can and does happen to straight folks who are legally married. So, it is hardly a problem that legally recognizing gay marriages will solve. Not often and they have legal recourses. Gay couples have NONE. By defining marriage more broadly to simply include "committed couples" as a taxpayer, employer and employee, I am being forced to accept this view - and by being forced to accept such I will have to pay greater taxes, insurance premiums, etc. by the additional burdens on the courts and economy. And I'm fine with that, just as I'm fine with paying Social Security taxes though I'm not retired and school taxes, even though I don't have kids. Because I think I have an obligation to the rest of society and because these things are good- they keep the elderly from dropping dead of starvation in front of me on the street and seriously bumming out my walk to work and they (hopefully) give the kids some skills so that they don't grow up to be hooligans stealing my purse. And I'm fine with any additional costs gay marriage would put on me- married people experience better health and are generally more financially secure than single people. Which translates to lower Medicare costs and fewer people on Medicaid. And, I'm hopeful, a larger group of people looking to adopt, which means less of my money going to support foster care. Not to mention, by making it a socially acceptable state, gay bashing will also become less socially acceptable. Which will save money in court costs for hate crimes. In all fairness, I don't pay school taxes now, because I'm not a homeowner (and that's something I find discriminatory and inherently unfair because it means kids in poor areas will always have crappier schools, but that's a rant for a different thread). But I wouldn't object to it. Oh my God, I've gone over 10000 characters. I'll finish this in one more post.
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Gentlemen! We're burning daylight! Riders up! -Bill Murray
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#25
01-29-2007, 02:18 PM
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As I've said on other threads, we all have our lines in the sand. I know lots of Christians who are divorced for reasons other than the wife cheating on the husband (which, technically, is the only reason Jesus saw as acceptable). And I know a miserably married Christian couple who won't ever split up because they have both been faithful and believe what Jesus said about marriage. Same religion, different lines in the sand. Where marriage is concerned, mine is consenting adults. And if we're living in a society that chooses to reward marriage, we can't withhold that reward based on sexual preferences. It's discriminatory. And, like those early leftist, religious lunatics who got it in their craw that slavery was bad, even though they themselves were not slaves, I'll passionately continue to advocate for gay marriage, even though I'm not gay. In the end, as society evolves, I believe if an idea is right on a universal scale, you will eventually convince society of it's rightness. Not an instant process, because many people fear change, but if it's right, it'll happen.
And to finish, I apologize for the stupid light blue lettering I put your quotes in. For all that I can install memory chips and replace lithium batteries and edit video on computers and blah blah blah, I CANNOT figure out how to break up someone else's quotes so they stay in those nice shaded boxes while I type new stuff in between. Help?
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Gentlemen! We're burning daylight! Riders up! -Bill Murray
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