Leave it to Vanity Fair to exploit Jenner’s mental issues.
What is obvious from this photo is the pose is one in which to hide Jenner’s hands and legs (no amount of artificial hormones or surgery will hide the male origin) plus the photoshopping.
This is just sad. And once the Leftist advocates of obliterating biological sex lose interest in Jenner and his/her moment as its darling fades, this will not end well.
Michael Jackson should have went transgender, he would have got more sympathy.
It wasn’t the going after people with the same genitalia that got Michael in so much trouble, it was that he was going after them while their ages were still measured in single digits.
That’s a lot of photoshopping.
I mean that’s like a bad Conan O’Brien what if Bruce Jenner and Rene Russo and mated, and the Bruce Jenner and Mary McDonnell mated, and then the two Jenner half-sibblings mated photoshop
I didn’t mean the child abuse allegations. I meant the body transformation (mutilation) issues he had.
Well, the bombshell is that s/he is Conservative. Everything the Left was getting ready to shower him/her with is now going to be a bucket of slop….
He needed medication and therapy, not surgery. To me it’s no different than any other form of body dysmorphic disorder. They won’t cut off your arm, but they will cut off your hoo-hah.
Insane.
In the spirit of first things first, annihilate Bashar Al Assad’s air force, then pay attention to Caitlyn (why the y?) Jenner.
I’d actually agree with sdferr….although my daughter, who is NOT into all things culture, asked me if I saw the interview….go figure what catches people’s attention….
Frankly, I’d kill …..who do I have to kill?…..to look like that at 65….
It’s called color sampling and the smooth brush.
It’s like the new air brushing without any need for compressed air.
Ironic that it was the Left that forced the Sideshows out of business fifty years ago and now they promote a ‘new and improved’ version.
Also: At least the Sideshow provided employment for those who could not obtain it in Society. This new version is pure exploitation.
The upside is that once they have squeezed every drop of usefulness out of him, they will drop Bruce like the overripe fruit he has now shown himself to be.
Anyone seen Cindy Sheehan or that chick what wants taxpayers to pay for her BC pills recently? QED.
On a related note, Mary Cheney informs us it is time for the GOP to embrace SSM. Because a majority now support it. And her kids are just fine.
Sure, why not? Sliding left has been a real winner for the party and the nation so far, right?
he looks like jessica lange
Not really caring about Cheney’s opinion; SSM is right because it is ‘right’. I know everyone here disagrees, but individual rights are not trumped because a majority says so – even if brutal suppression has made the issue moot until now…
> SSM is right because it is ‘right’>
keep being oxymoronic or just change that definition too.
SSM is right because it is ‘right’
The First Rule of Tautology Club is the First Rule of Tautology Club.
but individual rights are not trumped because a majority says so
So my rights to beat the crap out of people who annoy me shouldn’t be trumped, just because a majority says so? How about my rights to marry my car? Or the threesome marriage, between two guys and that goat? What about that junkie’s rights to inject himself with heroin? Or people to speed at triple-digit speeds down the freeway? Suddenly, it seems as though small groups of people have their “rights” trumped by majority opinion all the time.
Look, if a same sex couple wants to call themselves married, they can hire a hall, an officiant, a caterer and a band, invite guests, and have a party, and no one will care. It’s when they want the State to ignore its own self-interests, grant them official recognition and redefine its statutes to suit an extreme minority that you have a problem.
Because civil unions aren’t acceptable, even though they grant all the same rights, privileges and protections granted by a marriage license, but that wasn’t good enough. It was the destruction of the traditional family and church, and the punishment of dissenters that is the goal, and they are really close to getting it.
Right in the back of the neck, when the backlash comes. You will forgive me if I don’t weep a single tear when that happens.
Why is it a “right” to change what marriage is after several millennia of being to accommodate a tiny minority of malcontents?
Never mind, it’s all been said and you’ll never accept the rights of children to have a mom and dad over your right to elevate your desires above the needs of a healthy society.
Also, I can see why you don’t care about Cheney, since her whole argument is now the majority supports homo partnerships regarded as marriages.
Her argument and yours are kinda at odds, huh?
tracy
Like all SSM advocates, you are begging the question … “the right” … to what? Marriage? Based on what? Who you love? What if the one you love is married to someone else? Or you love more than one? Or you love someone within a certain consanguinity?
Yes, the same arguments I’ve offered before and never ever addressed by SSM advocates except to yell
SQUIRRELHOMOPHOBE!As if I’m a polyamoryphobe or a singlephobe because I don’t believe the state should privilege those relationships. I don’t want to outlaw them, and if the people involved wish to make just about any private contract they’d like for medical care, inheritance, etc. – knock yourselves out.
But your right to SSM ends that the tip of the nose of the conscientious objectors who should have the right to bow out of celebrating.
We can change definitions all day long. Guess what, YOU will continue to be married (an assumption that you are), no legal, cultural or mud-slinging effort on the part of anyone will change that. 98% of the population is straight and will continue to be so and continue to marry straights….definition be damned. Really, no one is going to NOT get married because some gay couple 1000 miles away can do the same thing…and IF that happens, well, the ‘institution’ has much much more wrong with it than gays.
Darleen: individual right to live their life according to what makes them happy as long as it doesn’t interfere in the rights of others. I get to make the same choices other people make about who I will live with – and if the government is going to sanction that, then it will do it by treating us equally before the law.
I have never called anyone here (or anywhere) homophobe….or any other derogatory name.
If I marry more than one, we have laws against that – there are reasons for that (deals with inheritance/offspring). Those things, issues, still exist in polygamy. I do not want those that have a problem with my marriage attending it. It is supposed to be a celebration. My oldest nephew got married on Saturday (couldn’t be there), at the reception they announced she was pregnant. My parents 8th great grandchild. Having someone stomping on that would have been beyond….I’d have stomped them. So, please, don’t attend same sex weddings.
As to making legal agreements…why do I have to do what you don’t have to for the same effect under the law? That is the heart of inequality before the law.
LBascom: I don’t want laws based on popularity. I want laws that protect rights. If she can’t make the argument on that basis, then what value does it have to the debate? Which is kinda interesting given that opposition to it was often based on a majority being opposed to it….same argument, different side. I find both not helpful. She has a big microphone and is not using it to be helpful.
Children have the right to have both parents, and a stable family to grow up in. Well, the straight community said f*k you to kids and instituted no-fault divorce and destroyed millions of families and the kids in them. Tens of thousands of kids are in foster care because straight parents abandoned, abused, and abdicated. You have a few thousand gay couples willing to step in and want to create that stable family and you find it destructive?
Sorry. SSM has come. Want to make a big difference in children’s lives, reduce divorce, love and cherish the children first. Fighting less than 1% of the problem while ignoring the remaining 99% is a waste of effort and resources.
a tiny minority of malcontents
No kidding. Less than 2.5% (1-in-40) would actually marry a same-sex partner (1.6% identified as gay or lesbian, and 0.7% identified as bisexual), and a minority of those are at all interested in getting married.
Talk about the tyranny of the 1%…
If I marry more than one, we have laws against that – See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=56940#comment-1245141
Just like we had laws against men marrying men or women marrying women, but you are a hypocrite for not denying those polygamists the same “rights” you have. Isn’t that how it works?
You do NOT get to override any of the qualifications set for State licensing without being ready to argue to remove all of the others with equal fervor, just because it’s no longer your particular ox being gored. The State gets to set conditions or it doesn’t, it’s as simple as that. And of it does, you don’t get to gripe, just because you are excluded by one of those conditions.
Well, the straight community said f*k you to kids and instituted no-fault divorce and destroyed millions of families and the kids in them.
No, that was the Progressive community who thought that the government would do better as a dad, and told all those “unhappy” women that they could have all the kids out of wedlock they wanted, without any sense of shame. How’s that working out for you?
And tolerate the intolerance of the objectors!?! The state won’t stand for it!
>We can change definitions all day long. Guess what, YOU will continue to be married <
oxymoronic 2+2 = -i^2
Drumwaster: was not the Progressive community mostly (99%) straight?
Amazing in a country of 320 million, the liberty of a few, or the one, can change the direction of society.
For 99% of the population, nothing changes. For that 1%, everything does.
That is the heart of inequality before the law.
Tracy, look at any marriage law prior to SSM and tell me what right to you was denied while being granted to me.
Go on. Link the marriage statute that makes the declaration of sexual orientation a condition of the contract. I can wait … but I’ll give you a hint.
It is not there. All people wanting to contract for marriage had to all meet the same conditions regardless of their sexual orientation. One partner, unmarried, adult, consent, opposite sex, outside a certain consanguinity.
That’s it. One standard for everyone who wanted to partake.
Kind of like the military. Here are standards “1-10″… you meet them, you’re in. If you don’t, well, then it is disappointing and there are certain benefits to go along with the obligations you won’t get, but there you have it.
btw Tracy if you think nothing changes for the 99% with making SSM indistiguishable from natural marriage, then you haven’t been paying attention.
COs are being punished by law and by mob. And that’s just the start.
I have supported the argument that polygamy might be the next step on the slope and that I had no particular issue with it…..that was a slow change from being generally opposed before but I had no ‘reason’ to be against it and so moved towards support. Over the last month I have been reading why we have, had, adultery laws and why women couldn’t be charged with it. It has to do with offspring and claims of inheritance. When a man couldn’t know that the child his wife was carrying was his, his estate might pass out of his family to another’s offspring. His issue was adulterated. I think there are ways to deal with the issue, but polygamy (which by the way despite almost all of those that support it not thinking this way, women could have multiple husbands – it is not just about ‘sister wives’.), opens that problem up and I see more issues….so I have been moving back in the direction of NOT supporting polygamy…..it is an ongoing thing…
was not the Progressive community mostly (99%) straight?
So? Tearing down the family unit is a feature, not bug, of Progressives. Their religion is that the most significant relationship an individual should have is with The Government. Once that happens, Progressives will always remain in power.
>For 99% of the population, nothing changes. For that 1%, everything does. <
baltimore betty
I have been moving back in the direction of NOT supporting polygamy
But if you preface marriage as a “right becuz LOVE” then you have no logical basis to oppose it. Period.
the proggtarded ain’t into “liberty” but lawlessness.
Tracy, your arums t that no fault divorce has weakened marriage strengthens my argument, not yours.
Yeah. 60 years of progressive social experimentation has all but destroyed our society, from welfare to abortion to no fault and now the final nail on the coffin, pretending two men are the same as husband and wife, suuuure it has no affect on my family.
Next you’ll be telling me minimum wage and tax policy have no effect on employment. Rigghht…
Darleen: I might have the right to eat a peanut, but if I have a severe allergy to it, I can’t, even if I have the right. Just because a gay person can marry a straight person doesn’t make the law ‘equal’.
Yea, a gay person could walk up to any courthouse and get married to any opposite sex person. And. ? Now, you can walk up to any courthouse and get married to any same sex person. And. ? It worked that way for …ever, and if someone came up to the court 50 years ago wanting a license to marry a same sex person, they MIGHT get out of the courthouse without a beating, or being arrested. And at the end of the year people would say – see, no gay marrieds here…..and so, gay marriage doesn’t exist for another year….decade…century.
As to what the Left is doing to heretics, (their thinking, not mine) we can either let them, or we can fight back. I personally would fight back. There are more than a few reasons I don’t get along well with the Left. But if all people do is complain online….
WTF?! Claims, not whatever spell check came up with!
Darleen: “But if you preface marriage as a “right becuz LOVE” then you have no logical basis to oppose it. Period.”
Have I? I don’t think I have. It might appear that way….but I don’t think so. I might be wrong, maybe I did say that at some point. I’d be willing to accede the point if you can find that I did.
The battlefield of the family was lost as much by the Right as the Left. How many voices on the Right have been found to be corrupt in the most vile of ways? The Left has won many battles because the Right abandoned the field. Even today…getting Conservatives out and working on issues is herding cats at best, pushing string mostly.
Or a better analogy would be, yeah minimum wage, tax policy, and over regulation have weakened employment, illegal immigration couldn’t hurt me anymore, right?
Theodore Dalrymple nailed the present state of confusion waaay back in the innocent days of 2000:
LBascom: I can’t wait for the gay divorce court. I’ve seen gay couples come together and fly apart. It is not pretty…and getting the courts involved…you think some of the feminist lesbians are crazy…you should see them go after their ex’s. Blood on the street running deep.
I don’t use no-fault to strengthen my argument. It doesn’t. I support marriage and ‘no fault’ will do as much damage to gay marriages as it has to straights. But the lament that gay marriage is the ‘final nail’ is to ignore the millions of nails pounded into the marriage coffin already. Marriage was NOT all fine before 1998. People WANTING to get married…well, we can’t have that.
Tell me what affect it has on your marriage (my ‘marriage to V), tell me how it weakens your marriage. Tell me how my getting married shows your children that marriage is bad. Tell me how gay marriage, all 50 thousand of them, is going to destroy the other 60 million, rip them apart…?
I am dense. Tell me how. Because my ‘marriage’ to V didn’t stop my brother from getting divorced, 10 grand kids from getting married, didn’t cause my parents 56 year marriage to disintegrate. And we were right there, all the time. How does it affect your 1000 mile away marriage?
yo tracy faggots lesbians and bruce jenner don’t make babies. quit being an anti darwin loser like the early earth baptists
Darleen: sorry, I didn’t know you had an arranged marriage…
Ignoring the solipsism, I’d say just wait another <a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/opinion/sunday/ross-douthat-the-prospects-for-polygamy.html?rref=collection/column/ross-douthat&_r=1. Or are you with Keynes on the long term?
well, at least the address is there
>How does it affect your 1000 mile away marriage<
i won't let you clowns determine the meaning of words
Well. You have a point. You ARE dense.
Marriage has been degraded, to the great detriment of children. I’m not worried about MY marriage, I’m talking about the society my grandchildren will face. When marriage has been rendered meaningless by your progressive ideals and ideas. We are following in the footsteps of Europe, where progressivism is about to regress to pre enlightenment times.
But hey, at least for a time you’ll get to call your girlfriend your husband (or wife, whatever) before our confused society succumbs to unconfused barbarians. Big whoopsie for you.
Come on Ernst, try again. I’m struggling with a phone here!
Anyway, I’m assuming it has to do with polygamy, which I have problems with, but not as much as SSM. At least there’s still a mother and father in the mix.
Just wait another twenty-five, thirty years
Of course you’re correct that the polygamists have a better “rational basis” claim plural marriage than homosexuals. I’d also expect pedophiles and especially ephebophiles to make significant headway under the new regime.
I am an Austrian.
newrouter: Society does not need each individual to reproduce. And given the existence of gays throughout history, the lack of procreation doesn’t seem to reduce their numbers…
Ernst: I’m willing to learn.
LBascom: the fact that my positions have an apparent coincidence with Progressives is an illusion. Again, if your children can not see the value, benefit and joy of your marriage and carry that into their own, then your grandchildren will suffer regardless of what society says about marriage. I am as strong as my parents, my daughter is as strong as I am. I was not weakened by a culture (60’s and 70’s) that ‘degraded’ solemn institutions because my parents were not. My daughter is not weakened by a culture that trivializes everything because I do not. If you need culture to build strong children then you ascribe to Hillary’s ‘it takes a village’. I do not.
>newrouter: Society does not need each individual to reproduce. <
you be decider of society? god bless you
tracycole
the “minority in society” can go eff themselves starting with baracky and the choom gang
Thanks!
Hate to say it, but I really don’t believe we have another twenty five, thirty years. I’m thinking we’ll be lucky to have ten before the world goes medieval. Or worse, nuclear winter.
Let’s just say I don’t see global warming as our pressing national security issue
There we go with the solipsism again.
Tracy, if you don’t see how America has regressed in the last 30 years, I can’t help you. There is none so blind and all that. As I implied way up thread, if you believe sliding further left has been good for the nation, then I’m not surprised you think SSM will be a positive for us. Good luck with all that.
Honestly Lee, I don’t know how the Supreme Court rules against the states that currently prohibit gay marriage without also overturning the ban on polygamy.
How many voices on the Right have been found to be corrupt in the most vile of ways?
Funny how you never mention any of those on the Left who have done just as bad, if not worse. (John Edwards, anyone?) Political hack much?
And as far as your feeble argument goes: It is possible to believe in something and propose it as a societal good, and yet fail to personally live up to that standard. That does not invalidate the standard, merely the moral standing of the individual. And that moral standing can be rehabilitated. (Why, just look at how the serial rapist who used to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is suddenly a “respected elder statesman”. And all sorts of women are defending his wife – who called all those victims all sorts of names – as the “best candidate”, ready to cast their votes for her by the millions.)
the fact that my positions have an apparent coincidence with Progressives is an illusion
A one-to-one correlation is not an “illusion”. Denying it only exposes your own hypocrisy.
If the supremes rule for SSM, I can’t see what basis there is for defining marriage at all. Love? Hell, I love a cherry on my banana split. Sex? Let’s not even get into what gets some peoples rocks off. Seriously. What will the definition be?
I’d be willing to accede the point if you can find that I did
I’m pretty sure marriage will be limited to just people. Maybe to people AND chimpanzees, depending on how far that nonsense in New York goes.
I’m telling my daughter that marriage is important, valuable and worth fighting for.
You are telling your child it is dead as an institution, worthless and you are abandoning it.
Tell me which child thinks marriage is important and will seek it out for themselves?
Drumwaster: that is not saying marriage is a right because people love each other. It is a right because they get to choose what ‘in pursuit of happiness’ means for them. Sorry if the ‘nuance’ is missing…
tracy
with all due respect, this isn’t about “my” marriage nor yours. It is about children and their rights. When a child is told it is hateful to prefer to be in a family with their bio mom & dad married to each other, then it certainly does affect marriage in way even no-fault divorce can.
We can’t even say any more that the ideal of mom/dad/child is the ideal least the howling PC mob burn down our homes and lively hood.
Again, this is not about denying same-sex couples the right to live their lives and set up their housekeeping and affairs however they wish. I don’t even want to interfere with those who wish to reenact the Harrad Experiment.
But if the sexes are not fungible (and they are not) then same-sex couples are not the same as opposite sex.
#science
I would rather see Government stop issuing ALL marriage licenses (IIRC what Arkansas is trying to do) then have the fiction of legal same-sex marriage and the attendant totalitarian harassment & legal bullying of COs.
I want people who are gay to have happy, joyfilled lives. But that doesn’t include having The Leviathan State punish each and every person who disagrees with joining in celebrating their status.
There’s no rights for the yet-to-be-born-(if they’re lucky)! Those kids will get their sexplay and their orgy-porgy, and they’ll like it!
If only because they’ll have no frame of reference for conceiving of any possible alternative.
Drumwaster: I am not the accusing Progressives of single handlely destroying marriage. THEY are corrupt by definition. People on the Right are supposed to be the better people, the principled people, the people standing up for values. THEIR corruption is more vile than the snakes already swimming in the muck…
It is a right because they get to choose what ‘in pursuit of happiness’ means for them.
What law has stopped any same sex couple from living together?
I’ve heard a lot of SSM advocates say it hinges on consent.
So what’s to say a golden lab wagging his tail isn’t consent? I mean, people have been known to leave their estate to their pet, why not cut out the complicated contracts and lawyers and just let them marry, or are you some kinda bigot?
Darleen: no law has done so. And? no law prevents heterosexual couples from living together.
Umm, we are defending marriage, not abandoning it.
Dense as lead, this one.
Tracy,
Let me be clear … I have gay family & friends. I’ve even been the official photographer at a same-sex ceremony and was happy to produce some awesome photos. And I’d do it again.
But that doesn’t negate the fact that these relationships are fundamentally different from opposite sex couples and that marriage is, always has been, a blending of the complimentary sexes and a foundational institution for raising of children. And I certainly respect the rights of other people who disagree with same-sex “marriage” enough to decline to participate in the celebration.
> It is a right because they get to choose what ‘in pursuit of
happiness’property means for them.<"marriage" ain't property
Darleen: no law has done so
Exactly. So having the right to “pursue happiness” has not been legally denied.
Marriage is an institution analogous to the military. You have the right to “pursue” entering both institutions as long as you meet the criteria.
So far none of the women who have tried out for the Army Rangers have been able to meet the standards. Would you have the Army change those standards so they can? What happens to the mission & effectiveness of the Rangers if you do?
Honestly, if someone wants to marry their hamster, that doesn’t affect YOUR marriage, am I right?
Not sure who that was directed at, but the way I see it you’re telling us a sow’s ear is a silk purse, and shame on us for not wanting a sow’s ear.
Marriage is worth fighting for. But homosexual “marriage” isn’t marriage. And the state saying that it is, whether by referendum or by legislative and/or judicial fiat, won’t make it marriage.
That’s worked out brilliantly of late, hasn’t it?
>THEY are corrupt by definition. People on the Right are supposed to be the better people, the principled people, the people standing up for values. THEIR corruption is more vile than the snakes already swimming in the muck… <
eff u clown. see:
Relationship Expert: The GOP Is Doomed As a Party, Should Seek Divorce
Not everybody who claims to be on the Right is actually on the Right.
this blog needs more jeff g. occasionally!
>People on the Right are supposed to be the better people, <
the tracycole society by tracycole
Seriously Tracy, what is your definition of marriage?
More Dalrymple
Subjective, whatever it is.
It is a right because they get to choose what ‘in pursuit of happiness’ means for them.
So you are, in fact, advocating for polygamy, bestiality, pedophilia, and all the rest, whether you wish to admit it or not, because that definition doesn’t stop where YOU want it to. After all, doesn’t their “pursuit of happiness” require those things, whether society approves or not?
And since when does “pursuit of happiness” require State licensing? If same-sex couples want to marry and show a public commitment to friends and family, let them. It’s when they want the State license that problems start cropping up.
Let me ask you this: do States get to decide what minimum standards are required for the issuance of driver’s licenses? Or hunting/fishing licenses? What about the right to carry a concealed weapon? If the State is willing to issue that license to anyone who meets their requirements, why should the people who cannot meet those requirements get to demand that they be changed merely to suit their whims?
And why is the issuance of marriage licenses at all different?
If only match.com could pair up the suicidal with the homicidal. No one would get hurt who hadn’t consented to it. Sure, we’d need a yes means yes law to make sure consent was affirmative consent, but wouldn’t it be worth the extra inconvenience to bring utopia that much closer?
Dry waster, you make it sound like marriage is what government says it is. That isn’t quite true. Marriage is what it is, regardless the whims of government.
Grrrr. Stupid phone!
Ernst, that’s brilliant! Someone should make an app for that!
The state has a legitimate interest in marriage because society has a right to know who is married to whom, and whom (usually women and/or dependent childern) has recourse to the state to see that the rights deriving from the marriage are enforced.
These days, that’s mostly about wealth transfer, since sexual exclusivity and alienation of affection are laughingstocks, legalwise.
Because consent.
Also marriage is what it is regardless of the whims of the persons married.
I agree with all that, I’m just not sure a marriage license is analogous to a hunting license. The requirements are much more subjective.
“Dear Gay Community: Your kids are hurting”
Bah. Lysenko cares not. Politics will inevitably birth a new reality and no one will ever read the old crop reports once they have been burned and the famine blamed on saboteurs hoarders and free riders. The dialectic will not be denied. History is on our side. Especially once we rewrite it and it is the only thing taught. In the meantime: paradise or gulag?
Worst thing about this thread:
Every time I hit refresh; I’m confronted by the Bride of Frankenstein.
Sorry, had to go pick up CJ and it is getting late.
Darleen: I know your presence at gay marriages, and general support thereof. I am not advocating that government force be used to MAKE people participate in a gay marriage – there are however some laws currently on the books – laws I’d like to see repealed, but nonetheless there that should be followed. We can have the RFRA argument again, another time.
Recall that I have been married to a man and I have had a committed relationship to a woman. Fundamentally they are not different. Yes, one can produce a child – my marriage did not. The other can raise a child, our’s did, of a child unwanted by her biological parents – a child abandoned in an abandoned building. All of the aspects of what I would call a marriage, in both cases, yes, Ernst, it is ‘subjective’ because I think that ‘one man one woman’ demeans and diminishes the institution. Marriage is the commitment of one to another to love, cherish, care for, trust, be friends with and for. It is the entirety of one’s self given to another. And it isn’t just about sex and reproduction. Dismiss it, my description, but I have been there and when two people make that commitment to each other and work at it day in and day out, year after year, the bond is practically unbreakable. They, we, become as one. If you can’t understand that it is possible for two same sex people to get to that place for and with each other, then, well, you can’t.
Not every marriage can or will produce children. They don’t have to.
As to the children, the Liberal parents I see are destroying any chance their children can succeed in life. It doesn’t have to be gay parents doing it, liberalism is the destructive mechanism. And lots of gays are liberal…maybe most of them…driven there by lots of hate spewed their way over the decades. I watched CJ’s peers in Madison Wisconsin turned into mush puppies and kittens unable to face the real world. I’ve seen her co-worker peers all but incapable of holding a job. I see the destruction daily. Gays aren’t killing this society, they aren’t enough to cause any more than an itch…but liberals, using whatever means and tools (human and media) available are doing the job in their name. And yes, lots of gays are liberals jumping on the bandwagon.
I can’t and won’t defend current liberalism (though I stand as a classical liberal). It is all about breaking down ONE thing – personal responsibility. Get rid of that, everything else falls apart. Get people to believe they are not at fault, that they are not responsible, that someone else is holding them down, denying them. Get them to assign the blame and then be the ‘victim’. All the rest of society breaks down from there. No fault divorce – it is not anyone’s fault, they just have irreconcilable differences – it’s the other one’s fault but we won’t hold it against them, just let both off the hook. Kill personal responsibility and personal liberty goes with it.
No one wants the CJ’s of the world to die or be left in an orphanage. No one wants people to live and die alone. No one wants bad to happen to others (ISIS excluded, I’m happy for plagues and hell to descend upon them…). But
personal liberty requires personal responsibility. Individual rights have individual responsibilities.
Marriage as an institution has been breaking down and people think SSM is just the last straw. I don’t think so, but I’ve seen redlining before. White flight.
So “Dear Liberal Community: Your kids are hurting” Dear Progressives, your ideas don’t work. I’m neither liberal nor progressive. I managed a committed relationship that I honored and respected, worked and gave to. We rescued and raised a heterosexual intelligent outgoing productive conservative child from China.
In the end, gay marriage didn’t and won’t end marriage. Marriage is more than ‘one man one woman’ institution unchanging and unchanged over millennia. I can and have done all the ‘criteria’ to be part of the institution. BTW, from the day I met him to this day, my ex is a devout born-again Christian. His relationship with Christ was/is the most important thing in his life, 100% of his energy, into THAT relationship….the one man one woman thing was about the full extent of his ‘objective definition of marriage’.
Blame liberalism, blame me, blame gays. If you want traditional marriage to survive, have good ones. Want to contribute to it’s downfall, have bad ones.
As far as I know the requirements, broadly speaking are one male, one female, of the legal age, outside the legal degree of consanguinity (can’t marry your sister, even in Arkansas), and in some states, std free (e.g. syphilis) –also resident of the liscense issuing jurisdiction for proscribed period. Which one those is more subjective than the requirements for a huntin’ liscense?
gulag paradise:
So what Tracy’s argument distills down to is we shouldn’t worry, that everything will be okay, because she says it will be.
How pikachu of her.
i trust her
So does that make pet owners bigamists (polygamists?) Also, you can (and do) do, say, 90% plus) of that “commitment of one to another to love, cherish, care for, trust, be friends with and for” stuff for your kids, so does that make our pet dependents our children or our spouses? Since, as you say, ” it isn’t just about sex and reproduction[.]” Maye it’s both and I’m my own
gran’pagolden retreiver!The categories. They are confused.
And I don’t say this to be a jerk, but it is literally impossible for you to give the entirety of yourself to another woman.
I was thinking along the lines that hunting (or driving) licenses are considered a privilaige not a right, and so there is different classifications of issuence , length of time they are valid, and most importantly, can be yanked or denied if their limits have been abused (DUI, too many fish or birds, whatever). A marriage license is basically just a recording fee, and a check, as you said, of minimum age and that they aren’t close relatives (damn bigots!).
[…] Darleen Click, a real girl, has both the photograph and her comments over at Protein Wisdom. […]
I see what you’re saying now.
Tracy. That’s very romantical, and a wonderful ideal for how marriage should be, but none of those things is what marriage is. It IS about reproduction, sorry.
And no, you don’t have to have kids to be married, and you don’t have to get married to have kids, but that is, nevertheless, the whole purpose of marriage. Marriage isn’t for to give you prestige in the community, it is to give humans family. And this at its core is why SSM is being pushed so hard, progressives want to destroy traditional family and replace it with the state, and they are real close to success.
You are helping them.
Somewhere I picked up from someone, maybe law school and maybe being glib, that family law was only about protecting children and fertile women.
According to the historical sociologists it’s about protecting social reproduction, which necessarily involves guarding children and fertile women.
Which is why pretty much the only sexual activity criminalized in Roman law was seducing noble matrons and well-born boys.
As I said, not everybody who claims to be on the Right is actually on the Right.
Back to the subject of Bruce (never going to call him Caitlin, or she, for that matter): Check out the phenomenon of transability. Compare and contrast with transsexuality.
you can’t stop the music nobody can stop the music
It’s long past time we admitted the truth – that pandering to the psychoses of the mentally ill does not help them one bit.
Bruce Jenner doesn’t need hormone therapy or surgery. He needs a padded room.
edrobotguy: for your benefit or his? He seems content with the choice.
LBascom: if it is all about the reproduction then I don’t see much difference between that and suggesting we are no more than rutting animals. I’d like to think we are more than our biology – which of course is at the heart of the matter.
Ernst: I was actually thinking of the ‘relationship’ we have with pets and how for some people it replaces relationships with other humans. People talk about their pets as their ‘children’. And the amount of grief they experience when the pet dies. I think it mimics parts – we use the some of the same emotional ties.
I’d think assigning a legal age for marriage is subjective.
Ernst: No actually, I think if we want things to work out we are going to need to work on it. But change, for large segments of society, will happen whether you think it is good or not – so you can either bunker in or segregate yourself or adapt. You can argue that society is devolving, and I won’t argue the point, but I think the causes are different than you. Progressives can’t break down strong walls, they need to find the weak spots to work on. If marriage was the strong institution suggested (and not so often here), then there wouldn’t have been much desire to change it. From the rape in marriage, to the wife not owning property, things were not all peachy in the past. But the desire to not take responsibility is a strong one that seems to be at the root of a lot of progressive inroads.
I don’t things will all be ok. I think we are going to barely recognize society in 25 years. Part of that will be good, lots will be bad. Those that can adapt will…
Finkel is Einhorn. Einhorn is Finkel.
Nice “tuck” there, Caitlyn.
Tracy, you have it exactly backwards. Marriage is what seperates us from “rutting animals”.
SSM changes marriage from being about reproduction to being about sex.
Exactly how LBascom? Because of exclusivity? A legal status?
“SSM changes marriage from being about reproduction to being about sex.”
From your point of view….not from the reality.
[…] are some highlights and I encourage you to read both posts [here and here] and their Comments […]
chimps make terrible pets cause of they eat you face
Because marriage creates a family structure, and continuity through the multiple generations.
Y’all have spilled quite a lot of ink, well, electrons, rehashing the same arguments. As usual, neither side is going to change the minds of the other.
Tracy, you seem to be a nice person. That you are homosexual matters not a whit to me. If you were a moonbat, I would not hesitate to invoke my new “Don’t try to rationally argue points with lefties/idiots/SJWs, etc., just mock them” rule. I will just do you the courtesy of telling you that you are wrong. An apple is not an orange just by changing its definition. As I told happy feet years ago, you can have the word “garriage” or whatever else you want, but you can’t have the word “marriage”. Because it ain’t.
What was it Ric Locke said?
Paraphrasing, “Declare hamburgers as vegetables so vegetarians can eat them.”
Godspeed, RL.
Yeah, it’s like vegetarians petitioning congress to classify hamburger as a vegetable so they can enjoy a tasty quarter pounder with cheese.
I miss Ric.
Yea, I can see the analogy of hamburgers and vegetarians…
LBascom: have you ever noted pack/family structures amongst animals? Pretty well documented.
RI Red: thanks….I guess. Except, if I describe a day in the life of a couple, offer no names/genders and exclude only the most intimate of details in the bedroom, you’d never know if I were discussing a gay couple or a straight couple. So, those red things might be apples or they might be cherries….but humans are not fruits and relationships are not hamburgers….
If you don’t want folks confusing oranges for apples, grow strong apples. If you don’t want vegetarians calling hamburger a vegetable, grow strong steers.
Because progressives can’t break down strong apples and strong beeves, don’chya know!
I’m still waiting for the Nat’l Geographic Channel very special episode about the wolf pack with the homosexual alphas and all their pups.
Animals have pack structures, just like how you animals want us all to belong to the collective under the rule of a dominate tyrant.
You’re getting more ridiculous by the comment.
Unless of course you have a cite describing how great grand animal takes resposibity for caring for its aging weak and crippled family member above and beyond the rest of the pack.
Dunce.
“If I describe a day in the life of a couple, offer no names/genders and exclude only the most intimate of details in the bedroom, you’d never know if I were discussing a gay couple or a straight couple.”
Except for the children they created calling them mom and dad.
If I described a gay couples life without the sex, I could be alking about brothers.
LBascom: “Because marriage creates a family structure, and continuity through the multiple generations.”
Gay couples form family structures – parents and children, multiple generations even. My parents consider CJ their grandchild, CJ calls them grandma and grandpa. It looks like a family, acts like a family, talks and walks like a family. CJ called V mom, she calls me Tracy. Her father and mother abandoned her like trash so one example doesn’t make a family or not make responsible human parents. Well, obviously you’ve never met a lesbian couple…
Ernst, the snark is touching….really…..
LBascom: except your your own prejudice at this point, you haven’t told me how marriage separates us from rutting animals….given that sex, sorry, reproduction, is the only purpose of marriage. Humans reproduce without marriage all the time – not a prerequisite. Nor do all marriages produce offspring – many don’t, can’t.
woulda, coulda, shoulda doesn’t make a family. and obviously having children doesn’t make a marriage or a family. Do parents that have raised children stop having a marriage when they grow up and move away?
You guys introduce analogies and get all apples and oranges when I do it.
ernst please to stop touching tracy with your snark
>Gay couples form family structures<
nah communes with the language of "family". complete lies mostly.
Your deranged Narcissism, Tracy, is becoming boring.
It’s not snark, it’s demonstrating absurdity by being absurd.
And also sarcasm.
Because I don’t see any point in trying to explain why the quality of a thing is not the thing in itself. You can have the best margarine in the world and I can have the most rancid butter, but the fact remains margarine isn’t butter.
that’s rude
no shake shack for you mister
yes yes margarine is NOT butter
margarine is an anachronism
If we’re going to be at the mercy of the changing fashions of social convention, we either need to stop apologizing for slavery and start apologizing to the slave holders, or we need to really start arming up, since nobody has any rights anybody else is bound to respect except upon pain of death.
Somebody link living in a ganster’s paradise for me.
Happyfeet on the other hand; he’s like the explosive diarrhea of snark.
>It looks like a family, acts like a family, talks and walks like a family. <
discrimination is intellectual acumen
Actually you tried to analogize away Lee’s telos.
Not that that matters to you. Because you had a natural marriage that didn’t produce children and an unnatural “marriage” in which you raised a child so telos schmelos and marriage has nothing to do with children except when it does. Also, rotten apples taste like oranges.
(Okay, now I’m getting snarky)
>It looks like a family, acts like a family, talks and walks like a family. <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Manson_Family
Actually, margarine is a simulation of butter; and margarine supporters are demanding that you take “oil” off the ingredients and replace it with “milk” because anything less would be discriminatory –especially because all you butter lovers let the milk get rancid so you have no right to complain when we margarine lovers declare “made with real milk.”. That would be the analogy here.
Marriage doesn’t exist without reproduction but that is not the definition of marriage which is one man one woman and if you changed the definition then it wouldn’t be about reproduction but we have marriage that does not require reproduction to be called a marriage and reproduction without marriage that is called…reproduction.
I think marriage is all the ‘subjective’ aspects that make a relationship more than a hook-up, more than shacking-up. It doesn’t require reproduction to be real and NO ONE here suggests that we limit marriage only to fertile couples intending to reproduce. So, culturally, marriage is not about reproduction. As a society we want children, we want those children to grow up in functioning stable families because that gives them the best chance of gaining productive adulthood. But vast numbers of children are born to nonfunctioning dangerous parents and in many cases, we do nothing but argue no one has the authority to step in and remove children from their parents (the power that CPS has is out of control…so efforts to mitigate at least some of the damage has run afoul of corrupt-nonfunctioning GOVERNMENT….).
We can’t change the definition, but the definition ‘it is all about reproduction’ is on it’s face stillborn.
BTW, doesn’t matter what you put between two pieces of bread: ground beef and cheese, BLT, peanut butter and jelly, lettuce avocado and cucumber, we still call it a sandwich.
newrouter: because a gang that is called ‘family’ is of course exactly what we are talking about…
Ernst: “If we’re going to be at the mercy of the changing fashions of social convention”
We’ve had gays for all of recorded human history. They have mostly been marginalized or beaten into oblivion. Now society has reached a point where ‘pursuit of happiness’ has gotten closer to the ideal of individual liberty and they are asserting that liberty. People don’t like it. A couple (NONE here) want to beat them back into oblivion. Some just want to continue killing them (other countries, NOT here). They kill Christians too…
Bob Belvedere: Gee, my mirror is broken, I need the attention from somewhere…
If all marriage is about is reproduction then all it is about is the sex. I don’t see how that makes us more than the animals. I think it is a whole lot more than sex…including taking care of the elderly and infirm….but my definition of marriage is obviously a whole lot different than yours.
>I think marriage is all the ‘subjective’ aspects that make a relationship more than a hook-up, more than shacking-up. It doesn’t require reproduction to be real and NO ONE here suggests that we limit marriage only to fertile couples intending to reproduce. So, culturally, marriage is not about reproduction. <
culturally judeo-christian marriage is a man and a woman, if you want to worship baal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal
do so. your 2% of the population doesn't warrant wholesale changes to the majority culture just because you act like 2 year olds. in essences fuck you.
>but my definition of marriage is obviously a whole lot different than yours.<
it is called communism
newrouter: is anyone suggesting that heterosexuals have to stop being heterosexual? or that heterosexuals can’t marry? or that 98% of the culture will continue on down the road it is on regardless of same sex marriage?
The majority of culture is and will remain, heterosexual. And after the media tires of it, ‘gay marriages’ will fade into the local community.
so, thanks for your essences, but no thanks.
>Obviously the greengrocer . . . does not put the slogan in his window from any personal desire to acquaint the public with the ideal it expresses. This, of course, does not mean that his action has no motive or significance at all, or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: “I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.” This message, of course, has an addressee: it is directed above, to the greengrocer’s superior, and at the same time it is a shield that protects the greengrocer from potential informers. The slogan’s real meaning, therefore, is rooted firmly in the greengrocer’s existence. It reflects his vital interests. But what are those vital interests?
{7}Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan “I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient;’ <
havel '78
> is anyone suggesting that heterosexuals have to stop being heterosexual? <
yes they are. see the fags and the queers on hollyweird blvd. the megaphone of the idiocracy.
newrouter: https://youtu.be/_77EvoXGDB8
>newrouter: https://youtu.be/_77EvoXGDB8<
nexium sales peep? you communists suck at debate.
tracycole proggtarded or libtarded. statists nevertheless.
so tracycole,
what gives you any say in how my state, in existence on the north american continent for 400 years, how they define marriage ? you go grrl!
I leave the comment, and the link on the table. I happened across the Cole Ford video a couple days ago and liked it. Not sure about your link newrouter….it went to 404 land. As a show of dueling links, I think you lost. But apparently my thinking is suspect.
I’m not progressive, I’m not liberal – unless you mean in a classical liberal way. As Thomas Jefferson said:
“”The Gothic idea that we were to look backwards instead of forwards for the improvement of the human mind, and to recur to the annals of our ancestors for what is most perfect in government, in religion and in learning, is worthy of those bigots in religion and government by whom it has been recommended, and whose purposes it would answer. But it is not an idea which this country will endure.”
–Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, 1800. ME 10:148
New knowledge demands new approaches
“Ignorance is of a peculiar nature: and once dispelled, it is impossible to reestablish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.” Rights of Man, Thomas Paine, 1791
newrouter: your state can define it any way the citizens of it want to. However, if my state defines it differently, recognition thereof, from a legal stand point, is subject to a legal process. We are about to find out if that is the process this country will follow. YOU personally don’t have to do anything different….I doubt an anvil of information would change your opinion.
>.I doubt an anvil of information would change your opinion.<
being a darwin guy your effed up notions of human sexuality are amusing.
newrouter: given I don’t think I have espoused any particular notions of human sexuality, I don’t know what you would be referring to…..maybe you are confusing me with LBascom’s marriage is about sex….
>maybe you are confusing me with LBascom’s marriage is about sex…. <
hetero sex is darwinian. queer sex is baal. choose your end game.
You know, it occured to me earlier tonight that individual liberty has been pushed to the point where it has become anti-social. We’re all that fat kid, Cartman, wearing drag and doin’ what we want because nobody’s the boss of us.
I think that’s called antinomianism
the tracycoles of the world want an anarchy to their liking. libtarded folk if you will.
Tracy I’m done with you now that you are totally changing what I said. For someone claiming to be s classical liberal, you sure do have progressive practices with language.
I suggest you go back and re-read what I wrote with the focus on comprehension, not deconstruction.
Coupla three things:
First, It’s not about the sex, it’s about the children. The only reason it’s possible to believe that marriage isn’t primarily (as in intrinsically) about reproduction, biological as well as social is because we’ve already divorced sex from reproduction. This happened yesterday in terms of human history.* One of the consequences of that is all those lovely secondary aspects and characteristics of the marital relationship have come to be seen as paramount.
Second in a heterosexual union, infertility is incidental to the complementary union of male and female. In a homosexual union, infertility is fundamental owing to the lack of a complementary partner. Philosophically speaking, the former is sufficient, the latter deficient. This extends from the biological sphere into the social children reared without a parent of one sex are raised in a deficient environment. Again philosophically speaking.
Finally, sure, you can point out all the examples of kids who turned out okay raised by single mothers or by two moms or two dads. And I can point to all the social statistics showing the contrary. But what we’re really talking about is the problem of the margins or marginal case. When we divorced sex from reproduction, we divorced sex from marriage. People have sex, “safely”, one presumes, but when the protection fails and pregnancy results, there’s no necessary trip to the altar anymore. I could go on, but suffice it to say that the result has been social breakdown. The movement for gay marriage has come about in this environment of social breakdown and moral confusion (the early gay movement, recall explicitly rejected marriage –to0 straight for queers). So which is more likely, that gay marriage will make marriage as an institution of social reproduction stronger, or further weaken it? My guess is that the end result of gay marriage will either be first the return of polygamous marriage, and then the end of marriage (hello Brave New World, or it will be the revenge of Teh Patriarchy (hello Mad Max).
What I’m trying to say is that you can either have equality (no marriage) or marriage, but you can’t have marriage equality. Not in the long run.
The stuff about GOVERNMENT and kids from bad homes is a Look Squirrel, so I’m going to ignore it.
*Historical Irony Addendum: Romantic love, if you look at the medieval literature was almost never about sex –because sex meant property acquisition and transfer, which in turn meant babies (gotta have somebody to pass on to all those huge tracts of land you spent your whole life acquiring so you could get out of the swamp) and babies meant marriage. First we (“we” being western civilization) reversed that –no marriage necessary, we’ll seal the deal on our love with a romp in the hay– then we went and divorced love from sex by embracing the various iterations of low commitment sex –from friend’s with benefits to drunken semi anonymous hook-ups. There’s probably an argument to be made that our current sexual mores, such as they are, are themselves a legacy of the mainstreaming of homosexual behavior. That would be another arguement against gay marriage, but I won’t pursue it in this already tldr comment.
One more thing. The corallary development contributing to social breakdown is the rise of the social welfare state, which is another example of the marginal case becoming part of the social mainstream. We’ve got a vicious feedback loop of the state breaking down the family by way of subsidizing cadishness, sluttery and bastardy (might as well call it what it is), and a culture that encourages the same by promoting the pursuit of a selfish if it feels good to let your freak flag fly just do it ethic.
The end result is atomized individuals at the mercy of an ever growing state that must of necessity become more coercive if it’s going to keep disorder in some semblence of an orderly fashion.
LBascom: “what marriage is. It IS about reproduction, sorry.”
So, using Ernst’s comments, ‘reproduction’ per LBascom should read children? Or have I mistaken the idea that it is the effort towards procreation with the consequence?
SKIP TO ************* if you don’t really care
If marriage is about ‘the children’, the process of procreation and furthering society, then Ernst is right that we have divorced that from sexual relations, ie the man and woman joining. We can have procreation without the sexual relations (yes, we still need sperm and egg, but the old ways have been supplemented). This is not a gay thing, this is within the heterosexual community.
I get ‘we’ want to try and maintain the structure: marriage, procreation, child raising. That this is the optimum. I don’t disagree. I think that people should get to be adults, become established as productive citizens, then find a mate, marry. Get reestablished as a productive couple. Have children. Raise the children, preferrably without nannies, day care and shipping them off to prep school for months at a time. Generally speaking, kids should do better in this environment and they do.
Great. Except it is not happening in a majority segment of our culture. We have divorced couples, we have never married couples, we have single mothers coming out of our urban areas like a plague of roaches. And again, none of that has to do with gays. It might have all been the result of liberalism run amok. I think it is the abdication of personal responsibility – the DEVIL made me do it writ large.
What started as a trickle has turned into a flood. Sorry if I see the opposition to ssm as people facing a tsunami drawing a line in the sand and saying, this and no further. We are not even talking about closing the barn doors, the horses left, the barn burned down, the farm was foreclosed.
Ok. What is the answer? I think letting some people that want to participate in marriage, raise kids in a ‘two parent family setting’ would be good. Optimum? No, but we can’t make people do that. Forcing the marriage structure to remain as it was hasn’t worked with the vast majority of people. Ok, lament the loss. Weep for us. What is your next suggestion?
Gays didn’t bring this on. Liberals did. They had lots of ‘joiners’ because lots of conservatives/traditionalists got divorced, remarried and divorced again. GG (Gingrich and Guiloni ) were not exactly paragons of virtue on the Right. And as has been noted, those on the Right are not always conservative.
*****************
Ernst. Thank you. Yep.
“So which is more likely, that gay marriage will make marriage as an institution of social reproduction stronger, or further weaken it? My guess is that the end result of gay marriage will either be first the return of polygamous marriage, and then the end of marriage (hello Brave New World, or it will be the revenge of Teh Patriarchy (hello Mad Max). ”
Stopping ssm does not seem to prevent the end game: end of marriage. People living to 100 will have as big an impact when people think getting married at 25 means 75 years with the same spouse and 50 of those will be post raising children. You see it as the last straw. Ok. I see it as maybe the last piece of straw on a 100 bale pyramid on an ants back. No one, NO.ONE is doing anything to lighten the load. I’d be willing to bet that a majority of kids of people opposed to ssm actually support ssm. Getting someone to support marriage has got to be better than kicking even marginal supporters to the curb because they aren’t the right kind of supporter. I don’t see it as the last straw, I see it as taking ONE straw off the load.
You done, I done…again. this time around. Unless you have a theory on how to reverse the last 50 years of liberal and turncoat ‘conservatives’ systematic dismantling of individual responsibility….
So. Because a group of despicables already jumped off a cliff, you say why not follow right after? Dysfunctional behavior following dysfunctional behaviors doesn’t repair and won’t improve our society’s roach-plagued marriage culture.
I don’t see where gay marriage is helping. it will only further harm an already horrible situation.
Which is the intent of it, I’m thinking.
Ernst wrote: … There’s probably an argument to be made that our current sexual mores, such as they are, are themselves a legacy of the mainstreaming of homosexual behavior….
Fellatio as a standard, acceptable sexual practice is a rather recent phenomenon. According to a historical essay on the subject I read a few years ago [and cannot find the link to], it was not until around the 1950’s that it began to be accepted as a ‘normal’ part of sex. Before then it was seen as degrading to women and also something Homosexuals did – and they were seen as Perverts [quite rightly so because they are].
Bob, if you read through that Dalrymple essay I linked above, the good Doctor notes that the ideologists of the sexual revolution, the folks arguing more sex, less inhibitions, there’s an inordinate number of deviants, Havelock Ellis, Alfred Kinsey, etc. Paul Johnson made a similiar point in Intellectuals.
And the essay you’re trying to remember was by Christopher Hitchens.
Benjamin A. Kleinerman (Liberty Law Blog): Hobbes, Locke, RFRAs, and Wedding Photographers
Except you (along with those kids you’re talking about) aren’t a supporter of marriage. You’re a supporter of pretend marriage. Moreover, you want the rest of society to acknowledge your pretense.
You asked what besides banning ssm I’d do to turn the tide? For starters, end no fault divorce in cases involving minor children. Also, stop paying poor women to have babies.
I should point out here that standards and laws are written for the majority, not the marginal or outlier cases. A massive majority are willing to have their freedom to murder limited if, at the same time, the freedom of those actually eager to murder are likewise limited.
Standards for State licensing of ANYTHING are written for the benefit of the majority, and those that cannot meet the basic standards set by Society simply don’t receive the State license. There is no mention of sexual attraction in any State standards for marriage licensing that I have ever found or ever heard, and so the claims of “the heart wants what it wants” is insufficient to overturn those standards. Same with “pursuit of happiness”. There is no law anywhere which says that a couple in a marriage have to be happy.
And while children are the goal of marriage (since Society has the same right to endure as any other living thing, and children are the only way that happens), those rare couples that are mutually infertile do not suddenly make it okay to rewrite the basic standards set for the issuance of a marriage license. And let’s face it, one man + one woman makes it INFINITELY more likely that a baby will result than will two men or two women, modern natal technology notwithstanding. Even with that technology, you need sperm + egg.
Banning ssm was an infelicitous way to put it. There’s nothing to ban.
you’re so ethereal
“And the pika chus go…”
Calling the sexual relationship between two people of the same sex ‘marraige’ is like like calling Jenner a woman. He might look like a woman, act like a woman, be treated like a woman, but no matter how much people pretend, the dude ain’t a woman.
Plus, like the Jenner spectacle, SSM isn’t about helping any perceived dis function or problem, it’s about furthering a social agenda that is ultimitltly destructive personally and societally.
How about this, normalizing perversion doesn’t
lessen the perversion, it expands it.
Thank you, Ernst.
Found it:
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2006/07/hitchens200607
but no matter how much people pretend, the dude ain’t a woman
“You can glue udders on a bull, but that don’t make him a cow.”
-As for your ‘Pursuit of Happiness’ argument, Tracy: The Declaration Of Independence’s words mean that you have the right to pursue, chase after, hunt for, quest for, search for, seek Happiness not be guaranteed Happiness. So, your premise is an Epic Fail and, therefore, the arguments that use that premise as their root FAIL.
-Drumwaster wrote, in part: I should point out here that standards and laws are written for the majority, not the marginal or outlier cases….
One Quibble: The word ‘massive’ should also be put before the word ‘majority’ here, as it is in your second sentence.
Laws are written for the Society that makes up the nation or state or county or municipality. The Society in each case is the massive majority acting for the particular Commonwealth it exists within. Laws and Standards are an expression of The Moral Sense of the Society, and, also, a method for preserving it against the Forces Of Despotism.
-Lee wrote:
Indeed. A is always A. A thing is what it is and can never be something else because, once that occurs, Annihilation is the result.
Call it a license to have children and both mother and father have to be named.
So, again Scripture written 3000+ years ago defines reproduction as ‘sperm+egg=one child’ via this:
Gen 2:24 “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh”
rather than the illogical and impossible man+woman = a single unit that pumps out mashup copies.
Yea.
Ernst, good ideas – no more divorce for couples with kids (I’d argue that their age doesn’t matter, divorce when there are teenagers seems to do as much damage), no ‘welfare based on the number of kids’. You could add adultery back as a crime – given the number of paternity issues that pop up in courts. Hospitals have the ability to determine genetics in very short order after birth. Enforce child support, jail those that can’t pay. Ban mothers from working outside the home.
Drumwaster: individual rights are not a matter of majority approval.
serrd8r: no….we were talking how lots of people were abandoning marriage and a small group wanted to embrace it. Not how Christians are being caught with their pants down around children…
Ernst: “Except you (along with those kids you’re talking about) aren’t a supporter of marriage. You’re a supporter of pretend marriage”
No, I think it is real marriage – the thing that goes on between two people. Not just the things that happen in bed. Anyone can have sex, almost anyone can make babies, and none of that makes a ‘marriage’. Just my opinion. And since we implored government to sanction such, and we demand government treat people equally, then it will have to do so.
Darlene: John can marry Jane. Paul can marry Jane. Jane can choose to marry Paul or John. But John can’t marry Paul. Therefore, because Jane can marry Paul or John and John can’t marry Paul, John is given less freedom, less choice than Jane. They don’t all have the same ‘freedom’.
For me, marriage is about the relationship between the couple, not about having sex and making babies. If the relationship is good and children become part of it (by adoption, by birth), then the children stand a good chance of becoming whole adults. If someone hooks up one night and the woman becomes pregnant, no amount of glue or imagination or doctrine will make that a marriage.
“we were talking how lots of people were abandoning marriage and a small group wanted to embrace it. Not how Christians are being caught with their pants down around children”
See, that’s why classical liberals shouldn’t use Alinsly tactics. Makes people think you’re a Progg.
“Call it a license to have children and both mother and father have to be named.”
I vote we stay with calling that marriage. You can have a child without the license, or marriage as we call it, or get the license (marriage license as it’s known) and never use it, but the purpose of the license is to address the massive obligations involved in creating another self sufficient, productive human being, known as prodigy right there at the top of the constitution.
“No, I think it is real marriage – the thing that goes on between two people. Not just the things that happen in bed. Anyone can have sex, almost anyone can make babies, and none of that makes a ‘marriage’.”
Almost anyONE cannot make babies, it takes two, and they have to be male and female. Without both sexes involved, marriage has no purpose. It just becomes a synonym for hooking up.
you are very doctrinaire
like a pickle
How is that not a colloquial description of what happens in sexual reproduction?
You have the same right to marry a person of the opposite sex that Drumwaster has. That you’re not interested in exercising that right doesn’t mean that your right has been circumscribed.
The so-called marriage equality movement is a product of the collapse of marriage, not a reaction against it. This is also known as being part of the problem.
You sure do insist upon yourself, don’t you?
What’s the difference between marriage and friendship in your definition? People can be close friends with anybody. People can fornicate with anybody. What’s intrinsic or extrinsic? Are we on a path to a place where everybody is married (and thus nobody is)? Huxley says yes.
Also, you’ve mistaken secondary goods (a meaningful and satisfying relationship) for primary goods (begetting, bearing and rearing offspring). In this, you are not alone, hence all those weak marriages and broken families, as well as rampant abuse and misuse of sexuality.
stick a batch of cucumbers in a vat of pepper and cornsyrup and see what you get
i shudder to think
How is a pickle doctrinaire?
Anyway, I’m not trying to impose doctrine, just explain and defend the doctrine from those that selfishly want to fundentally transform it.
stick a batch of cucumbers in a barrel full of pepper and cornsyrup and see what you get
Unfortunately I have no cucumbers, corn syrup or time to invest in such an enlightening (I trust) project.
I will remain woefully ignorant I fear…
The point was damn right pickles are doctrinaire.
Drumwaster: individual rights are not a matter of majority approval.
State licensing IS. And if it takes a third party to make it happen, it is NOT a right.
You have the right to free speech, as an example. Does that mean you have the right to have your opinion published in the local newspaper, or is that subject to someone else’s decision? Do you have the right to a hall and audience at taxpayer expense?
Same thing with freedom of religion. Does that mean you can force a builder to construct you a church/synagogue/mosque/sacred circle?
Health care is the same way. You can care for your own health to the best of your skills and abilities, but the moment you need a real doctor/nurse/operating room, it becomes a commodity, subject to the laws of supply and demand.
Marriage is the same way. If you require someone else to make it happen, it is NOT a right, it is a commodity. If you desire State recognition of your freedoms, you are under the obligation to meet the State’s requirements, and your wishes that they would change them are subject to the legislative processes involved (such as Constitutional amendments thereof). Since the Federal Constitution is designed to empower the Federal Government for very specific things, and leaves everything else to the States, licensing of various activities is a State function – hunting, driving, getting married, etc. – and the various states have ALWAYS treated them differently, with different age requirements, different allowed levels of consanguinity, waiting periods, etc., as was their right and privilege.
Then along comes the “we don’t care what the rules say” crowd, and suddenly judges are rewriting the law to suit themselves for a minority of an extreme minority. And again, laws and standards are written for the benefit of the majority, not the outliers. If you cannot meet the minimum requirements for the issuance of a State license, then you don’t get one, and you don’t get to complain because the standards don’t let you. And all the whines of “I’m SPECIAL” don’t matter one whit.
“When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.” — Thomas Sowell
who the heck pickles with corn syrup other than adm and michelleo!?
Ernst: “You sure do insist upon yourself, don’t you?” See, you agree with LBascom, narcissist to the core I guess. Yea, I do rely on me…I’m a fully fledged adult capable of rational and logical thought. Though some here would dispute any or all of that… I have to live in this society, I want to have some say in how it operates. I’d prefer it be based on some foundation of individual rights. So, I am going to have a set of principles based on that concept, individual rights, and then work to help have such a society. You are free to have a set of principles based on some concept you consider relevant – based on YOUR analysis of all the info out there – and you are free to help work on forming a society that works that way. Between the some 120 million or so of us that vote and are active in some way politically, we will meet somewhere in the middle. Hopefully. No one will get everything they want, but… It hasn’t worked that well in the last 100 years, but at least people are arguing about it. I tend to think for myself. I assume you have also done so. I don’t think it narcissistic to do so.
Tracy: “man+woman = a single unit that pumps out mashup copies.”
Ernst: “How is that not a colloquial description of what happens in sexual reproduction?
because Gen 2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
I assume this was not a literal statement, which is kinda what I implied. They don’t actually become ONE flesh….but if it is fact the child that is the ONE flesh, then it makes sense. I never considered it that way before.
And if everyone here goes, yea, well duh, then so be it. In the context, it was not about reproduction or offspring but a joining of a man and woman as husband and wife….
LBascom: I do get a little tired being lumped in with dysfunctional people by people espousing solutions predicated upon ‘non-dysfunctional people’ doing it correctly while having their own house in disorder. The Left wants to destroy society is the complaint – they don’t see it that way – but they can’t do it without help or at least abdication by the Right….which people ‘on the Right’ seem to repeatedly do or give them. Gays didn’t f*k up marriage. Straights did it and blaming the Left as if it were entirely their fault runs away from the Right’s contribution to its destruction.
I don’t care if EVERY SINGLE gay person gets married – marriage will not fail unless straight people let it. And the Right is gearing up to ‘let it burn, let them have it, it’ll be worthless’.
Drumwaster: Because NO republican, NO conservative with the ability to propose it, will introduce legislation to end no-fault divorce. People complain about judges. They are part of the government we vote for.
And if the State criteria is changed, then it is violating history… No matter how much things change, they have to stay the same so that 20(00) years from now we can say, see, it didn’t change so we can keep it that way for another 20(00) years….
Courts have had to drag society kicking and screaming into the future in the past, apparently they still have to do it because society doesn’t care about the outliers. Are we talking about nature or legalisms? State licensing can be changed ‘at the whim of the current culture’ so, not sure how that works to your arguments advantage. We will change the ‘legal minimum requirements’ so that we do meet them. Then what? You whine about activist judges?
Ernst: peanut butter argument again. I though I had that covered with Darlene. Drumwaster gets to marry who he wants to, I don’t get to marry who I want to. You say he can marry any woman he wants. I say I don’t get to marry any woman I want to. You say see, we are equal. Drumwaster notes that the state requires one man one woman. I say that is arbitrary. You say it’s needed for the children. I say I am not planning on having any children. But that is what marriage is for, reproduction. But people that will not reproduce are allowed to get married, so while it might have BEEN the intention, it is no longer. As long as people who can not reproduce can get married, those that can’t reproduce should be able to get married – if some who can’t are allowed and some who can’t are not allowed, that is arbitrary. If 98% of society abandons marriage, it seems to me to be a little presumptuous to blame it on the 2% that wanted it. Even if the letting the 2% have marriage is evidence of marriage failing, that is not a reason to ban them.
I don’t get to marry who I want to.
Sure, you do! As long as the two of you meet the requirements set forth in law, then there is no problem. If you are trying to claim a “sexual preference” exemption to those requirements, then you would have to show where the requirement regarding sexual desire exists, and work to eliminate it.
Otherwise, it’s nothing more than “I want”, and that isn’t good enough to override the State unless and until you get a majority of your State to agree with you, as opposed to having one unelected jackass in a black robe overriding the legislative process. Because there is then no reason to not grant licenses to any three (or more) people who wish to “marry”. Or that girl and her great Dane. Or the lady who married the dead veteran in order to claim his benefits (true story in France). Or the old pervert who wants to marry that little girl in the pinafore.
You cannot eliminate one requirement on a whim then deny the other people who have whims.
Drumwaster notes that the state requires one man one woman. I say that is arbitrary.
Yet you seem to be arguing that the limit on two men one woman isn’t arbitrary? Or the one man one dog? Or one woman one prepubescent boy? None of those are arbitrary? Where does it stop? And why must it stop just after YOU get what YOU want, rather than before?
I’ve never seen such a rank pile of horseshit before, and I was around for monkyboy.
I was going to respond, but the more I read the more daunting the job of setting facts straight got. Then I decided it all was part and parcel of my original starting point, which perfectly illustrates the pack wolf progg disguising themselfe in a sheep’s victimhood, namely:
“The Left wants to destroy society is the complaint”
No, you jack ass, the left wants to fundamentally transform society, and like you, will misquote, misrepresent, and outright lie to impose solutions to problems of their own making designed to advance the agenda of changing the relationship between citizen and state from one of freemen and civil servant to one of soveigrn and subject.
Sorry, in the interest of consistency, that should have been subject and sovereign.
> the left wants to fundamentally transform society, <
the "trans stupid"
Talking Heads – Talking Heads: 77
> And it is a message that is clear and understandable for everyone. Anyone can come here, look at this image of the merciful Jesus, His Heart radiating grace, and hear in the depths of his own soul what Blessed Faustina heard: “Fear nothing. I am with you always” (Diary, 586).
And if this person responds with a sincere heart: “Jesus, I trust in You,” he will find comfort in all his anxieties and fears. In this “dialogue of abandonment,” there is established between man and Christ a special bond that sets love free. And “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 Jn 4:18).
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link
Goodness, gracious, folks. It’s much easier than y’all are making it out to be. The definition of marriage is ” the union of one man and one woman (with various conditions re consanguinity, age, etc,”). Anything else just ain’t.
Tracy, it doesn’t matter about the intimate details. And I’m sure we’d have a great discussion over a beer or three.
I could be wrong in my assertion that Tracy is a closet progg, maybe she is just another useful idiot.
My one reason for thinking the Supreme Court will rule in favor of the states that have “banned” (q.v.) gay marriage is the fact that I can’t figure out how they do it without overturning the Court’s own ruling against polygamy.
But then I think about a case (naturally I can’t remember which one) from the Warren Court era (or maybe the Burger Court) where some dissenting opinion pointed out aa similiar conflict with an existing precedent, so the majority decided to overturn that, as well as ruling on the case in front of them. So maybe Warren Jeff’s people have somthing to look forward to as well.
Like I said, I don’t remember the case. But it seems like there was a majority opinion in which almost nobody joined, because everybody was too busy writing their own concurring opinions about all the ancillary stuff. Maybe I’m misremembering. Con. Law was a lifetime ago for me.
hubristic too.
And I haven’t called you a narcissist. But I do think your argument is solipsistic. In fact, the whole thing is premised on You. Youhaving a good, high functioning relationship, you and your partner raisinga child you adopted to be a good, high functioning member of society. That’s a bit like me saying alcoholism isn’t a real problem because I can drink a six pack a night (twice that on weekends) and still hold down a 60 hr/wk job –those drunks just need to be stronger.
And what happens when husband and wife join? That’s the context. Anyway, I’m glad to have provided you with a different perspective.
Lee
I don’t think for a minute Tracy is a “useful” idiot. What is happening is she, IMHO, is focusing exclusively on the micro with little regard for the macro.
I have nothing but a great deal of compassion for gay people who fall in love and want to spend their lives with who they love. Indeed, I’d like to make their private contracts legally enforceable (which I believe already are)
But at the same time, I am cognizant of the macro and know KNOW that same-sex “marriage” where it extinguishes natural marriage and the foundations of natural marriage, is deeply wrong.
In her arguments where she challenges people like me “tell me how it would affect YOUR marriage” is the tell that she focuses on the micro.
I am not worried about MY marriage. And it isn’t about HER domestic arrangement.
Until she or other SSM advocates honestly face that this about the macro, about the institution and its vast importance to a functional & free society, we are all talking past each other.
I’m unclear on who the “useful idiot” is in the linked Paul Kengor (one of the good guys, btw)
Is it the folks Kengor identifies as
Or is it Kengor himself who disagrees with
relinking the Kengor piece Lee linked. Because it’s worth calling to everyone’s attention.
The second half of the essay is particularly good at illustrating what Darleen is talking about.
LBascom: “Yeah. 60 years of progressive social experimentation has all but destroyed our society, from welfare to abortion to no fault and now the final nail on the coffin”
Tracy “the left wants to destroy society is the complaint.” Finish the quote: “they don’t see it that way”
The fundamental transformation the Left claims to desire is seen as destroying our society by lots of people here. As it appears to be so obvious to people that the goals of the Left to transform is to result in destruction of society, what was incorrect about my statement?
I make no effort to misquote – I often quote directly – and try hard not to assume a point but ask for clarification. It seems to me that when I directly address one aspect of an argument is pivots to a different one rather than responding to my point.
The traditional, ‘natural’ state of marriage, the one man shall leave his parents and join with the one woman, still exists. Nothing that the State, or ssm can do – short of segregating the sexes by force – will change that. So, as it can’t change, won’t change, I assume this is not the issue people have with ssm. 98% of people will continue to have one man, one woman sex for recreation and procreation and 7 billion people will become 8, and 9 and so forth billion.
Whatever the original purpose of the legal institution of marriage, it has changed. It didn’t happen for or by gays. It happened by straights. Complain it was solely the responsibility of the Left that did it, but I argue it did not happen without either the tacit approval or indifferent abdication by the Right. And it’s demise is greatly exaggerated. Lots of people, on the Left and the Right get married with the intention of fulfilling the traditional vows even if they don’t explicitly use them. My nephew and his new wife (as of 5/30) are expecting (Leftists though they are) and the vows were practically Catholic.
As to the ‘useful idiot’ and ‘whatever my purpose I am helping them destroy marriage’, I disagree. You accuse me of being unable to see it. I disagree that what is being ‘seen’ isn’t.
‘Marriage is about reproduction’. Not anymore. The definition changed. That has been acknowledged so either make a specific case for putting the genie back in the bottle and how to do it or quit whining about the good old days. It isn’t anymore.
If you want to argue ‘its for the children’ then say that children raised in marriages do better than those are not. I’d agree. And that is an argument for ssm for those couples raising children (or wanting to). Not having ssm will not stop those children from being raised anyway. And if you think that I am suggesting that you should throw in the towel because ‘you lost’, wrong.
Argue that children do better with biological mothers and fathers, and they do, but if we are not doing anything to stop biological parents from dissolving or not even bothering with marriages, then so what? If we have 70% of black children being born out of wedlock and without both parents around, then complaining ssm is just another piece of straw and it isn’t making an argument, it’s ignoring the problem. And then complaining the Left’s goals made the problem again, isn’t making an argument.
SSM isn’t YOUR definition of marriage. Gay marriage may be an illusion, a pretend definition TO YOU. Marriage has moved on from your definition – it did it a long time ago. Complaining about it to me won’t bring it back. YOU are not doing anything about it anyway. Unless you have a good marriage and are living up to the vows you made. Then you are part of the reason society ISN’T being destroyed.
Darleen: “Until she or other SSM advocates honestly face that this about the macro, about the institution and its vast importance to a functional & free society, we are all talking past each other. ”
I AM! Marriage is important. Marriage is good. Marriage helps build strong families, which are VITAL to raising healthy kids. I want MORE marriage. I don’t care if someONE gets married, or someONE gets divorced. We have made marriage something people avoid…who did that? It wasn’t just the Left no matter how much people want to avoid any part of the blame. And it wasn’t gays (certainly old gays don’t want marriage but they didn’t want kids either…)
CJ was raised by two people without benefit of ‘a marriage license’. She is great. Obviously it can be done, but just because one couple succeeds doesn’t mean that it is a good thing? Just because a hetero couple doesn’t get married and raises kids well, doesn’t mean it is not important to have marriage!
CJ thinks SSM is important, but SHE doesn’t think she’ll get married because, well, her parents didn’t need it. THAT is what is wrong. THAT is YOUR argument. That people succeeding outside of marriage will think marriage is irrelevant. And all they are thinking is that it’s a stupid piece of paper. Keeping people from getting the stupid piece of paper and them being successful ‘proves’ that it is unnecessary….what a terrible example that sets for marriage.
Tracy
Even the occassional Clarence Thomas doesn’t allow us to look at the 73% of unwed births in the black community and say it makes no difference.
Tracy, you change words around to hide your progressive streak. The complaint is that the left IS destroying society, what they WANT is to create Utopia.
Now you’re saying marriage is already transformed (a lie) and we need to just relax and take it (SSM), it will be a good thing.
I have an icky feeling I’m being groomed…
Also, you have great trouble keeping terms straight. Definition is one man, one woman, purpose is reproduction. Both are still true. However, if the definition is changed to what you want, the purpose will also change, and marriage will become a synonym instead of a standard.
…full of long and windedness,
Signifying Red.
And no, not you RI.
Nor you, LB.
“CJ thinks SSM is important, but SHE doesn’t think she’ll get married because, well, her parents didn’t need it. THAT is what is wrong. THAT is YOUR argument.”
Wrong again. The argument is, the agenda won’t be satisfied with what you want. Do you really think if SSM is forced on the country the battle will end there? If so you are a fool.
“There’s no fundamental right to marry”; to cite the 14th Amendment as basis for SSM is fundamentally flawed.
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/06/14960/
Darleen: “Until she or other SSM advocates honestly face….”
Doesn’t actually mean, me?, because I am no one, with no ability to actually change things? At least acknowledge that I do recognize the ‘macro’ issue and am not supporting SSM out of ignorance or lack of any semblance of principle that could even remotely be conservative/classical liberal. Or is that purpose of the Clarence Thomas reference?
LBascom: Oh, now we change the argument again. Your goal posts have wheels. Each point argued doesn’t get any closer to a common ground, now the argument is the slippery slope. Why do we ban brother and sisters from marrying? one man, one woman. Why do we ban father and daughter, mother and son from marrying? one man, one woman. Why do we ban (in some instances) an immigrant and a citizen from marrying? one man, one woman. There are lots of bans involved in marriage, most of them rooted in antiquity. We banned polygamy for the same reason we criminalized adultery. Now, we can ascertain the issue that criminal adultery addressed with genetics. There are at least SOME arguments to be made ‘here and no further’ but all I get is ‘it changes the definition’ or ‘millions of years of history’. Those aren’t arguments, they’re excuses. We change definitions all the time and millions of years of history is full of savage barbarianism. Opposite sex ‘marriage’ is the default setting, it is not a conscious choice for 98% of the people. YOU didn’t choose, you didn’t THINK, to be attracted to the opposite sex, it’s the default setting. Millions of years of human history! on autopilot….as if it is a great moral accomplishment.
SSM isn’t being FORCED ON THE COUNTRY. YOU will never be required to marry a same sex partner. YOU will never be required to divorce a heterosexual partner and marry a same sex partner. YOU will never be prevented from getting a license to marry an opposite sex partner. YOU will not be dragged off the street and forced to sit at a ssm ceremony. Governments are being forced to recognize the status of citizens equally.
LBascom: “Tracy, you change words around to hide your progressive streak. The complaint is that the left IS destroying society, what they WANT is to create Utopia. ”
Materially differs from “Left wants to destroy society is the complaint – they don’t see it that way – “, how?
The battle will never end as long as two people differ in what they think is a free society and work to make it happen. And given the nature of nature – ever changing and evolving – society will do so also, with or without people trying to stop it. IF marriage has been destroyed, straights did it. There are not enough gay people to do it – even all but a few judges are straight. So, like I said, either with the tacit approval or casual indifference, ssm was put in place by heterosexual people.
Serr8d: Ah gee….
“Fourteen times since 1888, the United States Supreme Court has stated that marriage is a fundamental right of all individuals. In these cases, the Court has reaffirmed that “freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage” is “one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause,” “essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men,” and “sheltered by the Fourteenth Amendment against the State’s unwarranted usurpation, disregard, or disrespect. Here is a list of the fourteen cases, with links to the opinions and citations to the Court’s discussion of the right to marry.” http://www.afer.org/blog/14-supreme-court-cases-marriage-is-a-fundamental-right/
Which despite thoughts to the contrary, suggest that the SCOTUS will rule in favor of SSM and do so without contradiction.
I just read this at AoS about the Jenner spectacle, and think it’s very compatible to the garriage issue:
“But the progressive left has promulgated all these new rules about how we must speak (and even think about) Bruce ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner [SSM]even to the point of setting up [outrage mobs to shut down your bakery]Twitter bots that correct you in real-time. Because they love telling other people how to behave. But even more than that because they love changing the rules about how you should behave. This keeps everyone else on the defensive and makes it so easy to find people guilty of newly created thought and speech-crimes. And the left surely loves that sweet, sweet feeling of moral superiority they get when shaming others for their social crimes.”
[my additiond]
“Materially differs from “Left wants to destroy society is the complaint – they don’t see it that way – “, how?”
Goes to intent. It would be pretty dumb of me to say they want to destroy society. No, no. They, like you, claim to be improving society by replacing all those outdated ideas with new and better ones. They have been doing it at least since the Cold War, while people like me have been saying stop sMe as I am still. So what have we got for all this progressive compassion? Weak marriages and massive government dependence, with our kids demanding trigger warnings for hearing different opinions.
I’m not saying they WANT to destroy society, I’m saying they ARE destroying society. You very well know the difference. They are killing us with their good intentions and outsized sense of authority.
“Same” as I am…
LBascom: I say they don’t see it that way, you say it goes to intent. WHERE is the daylight between them?
So, when I say ‘they don’t see it that way’, I am acknowledging their intent, but suggesting that people are complaining the fact their goals realized is destructive is me twisting the meaning. Ok, my attempt at nuance doesn’t seem to have any effect. Maybe I can’t understand YOUR nuance…. So, your point is that they are hapless? Their intent is honorable, but the result is destruction. They just don’t know better?
CHANGE is the inevitable pattern of society. I like to push change in the direction my principles support. Don’t you? or is it only “STOP” that you implore? Don’t change! You see progressives as dandelions?
Good lord. Do you smoke a lot of pot Tracy?
Anybody…am I really that hard to understand?
I think maybe we’ve answered the liberal/progressive question.
I change is inevitable, why does it need a push from you or anybody else?
Change is enviable? You should write for fortune cookies.
Confucius say, man who want to be bride kidding self
Can’t wait til my computer is fixed. Enviable? What hell does that even mean?!
in-EVIT-able: not to be stopped or prevented.
I know what you mean about computers. All that damn cheez dibble powder gunking up the keyboard!
Yeah, was stupid Stella check…ha! See?! SPELL check you stupid phone!!
Doesn’t help when I got fat fingers and have trouble seeing those teeny tiny letters either…
If there’s a crux of the issue at which we can get, it’s here. Private definitions of public goods/institutions are destructive of society. Take Obama for example. I’m sure he thinks he’s executed his office faithfully because being taken down a notch, fundamentally transformed as it were is what’s good for the country.
Or to give another example, take, well me. Me? I’m a Tacitean Pacifist. I believe in peace through desertification. Middle East Peace Process? I say we process ’em until we have peace.
Now, where’s my peace prize haterz? I demand you recognize my commitment to world peace.
Apropos of everything and nothing: I for one am looking forward to hearing how Caitlyn Jenner became the first woman to win the men’s decathalon.
I’m afraid to look up desertification. Does that word demand a trigger warning, maybe a safe room with a coloring book where I could recover?
I used to be pretty stoic, but hey, CHANGE! Am I right?
Confucius say*:the weather changes, truth is eternal.
*source-the musings of lee-2015
Confucius say*: proggress not made by disgarding wisdom of ages, but by heeding it
Ernst: because maybe government is not self-adapting? Laws that made sense (or were popular) 50 years ago are still on the books and shouldn’t be anymore? V and I were raising a child and our community of neighbors, friends and businesses recognized us personally as a family even if the larger society and government didn’t. That change happened over the last 20 years and is happening in thousands of communities. Lots of communities are still homogenized.
LBascom: I’ve never smoked pot, don’t drink, Maybe in your head you sound clearer than you actually are? Blaming spell check? ;)
Ernst: I recognize your commitment to world pieces. :)
Confucius say, woman who dance wearing jock strap, have make believe ballroom
I can tell Ernst gets me. Thanks for watching my back, man. Telos? Perfect!
Thank bh. He’s the one who, many threads ago, reminded me that Aquinas worked all this outseven centuries ago.
Here’s the thing though, you make mariage sound like beanie babies or hummels or some other collectables fad. It’s desired beause it’s desireable. Until it’s not. Used to be we understood that changing according to changing fashions was no way to build a society.
Can anybody even make the case for gay marriage from first principles?
I do thank bh. Except I’m kinda mad at him for not coming round regulae like anymore. Like RL is all that and shit.
Hurumph!
Can anybody even make the case for gay marriage from first principles?
Unless you consider “I want” to be “first principles”, because that is all it boils down to. That is the sum total, start middle and end of it, once you boil away all the rhetoric. No “good of society”, no “for the children”, not even “tyranny of the majority”.
Is it a tyranny of the majority to not give out driving licenses to six-year-olds? Is it a tyranny to not give them to blind people? How about to those who suffer unpredictable seizures? Of course not. Society has set minimum standards, and no matter how effective those people may be in other parts of life, work or family, they simply don’t meet the minimum standard set in State Law. Period.
Is it a tyranny of the majority to limit voting to citizens? Of course not. No one is going to arrest illegals for grocery shopping, or for going to the library or the parks, but voting is an important enough institution for the survival of society that it has set minimum limits on it, including age, legal residence, and proof of place of birth to qualify for registering as a voter.
Likewise, marriage is an important enough institution that the State wishes to set minimum standards, so as to provide both for the conservation of family assets and the protection of children. The elimination of any of those standards is the equivalent of a blind person driving, and weakens the argument against maintaining the remaining standards, such as limiting the number of participants, their ages, consanguinity, species or even willingness. You cannot say “well, people get to marry whoever they want” while denying that right to people marrying their own parents/siblings, marrying underage children, or even forced marriages (as happens in some cultures even today). Sauce for the goose.
You cannot legitimately argue for the removal of one without being willing to argue for the removal of all of those restrictions, just because now you have what YOU want, while simultaneously refusing all of those others what THEY want. Otherwise it is nothing less than the tyranny of the (slightly larger) majority. And religion doesn’t have anything to do with any of those arguments.
Ernst: “Here’s the thing though, you make mariage sound like beanie babies or hummels or some other collectables fad. It’s desired beause it’s desireable.”
Really? That is what you get from all of what I said? Awww come on guys….its CUTE!! Give me a break. And being gay is a fad…..they’ll get over it? Could you please add just a dash more condescendence..to get me over the weekend…. You would have thought we learned after the 18th Amendment.
Ernst: “Can anybody even make the case for gay marriage from first principles? ”
Can you make the case for marriage from first principles? God knows I’m going to get crucified for this….
Tracy (narcissist that I am): First Principle. The individual is sovereign.
Over themselves they have absolute authority. The responsibility to preserve one self engages the need to join with others in self defense, to form groups and communities, later states with the purpose of expanding the scope of protection that is first the responsibility of the individual. This need to join with others requires a limitation on the scope of behavior, a limit on the reach and consequence of acts of the individual so as to establish a similar limit upon the reach and consequences of the acts of others. These limits, codified across large communities are generally, laws.
As long as the limit on one individual is no less and no greater than on any other, it is the individual’s benefit to participate in a larger community and a set of laws establishing the limit of each’s actions. (roughly, Rouseau’s Social Contract). The participation, first as a means of extending self defense, then as a means to obtain access to other requirements to maintain life and liberty, of necessity, must benefit all individuals equitably and the actions of each individual must benefit the larger community. Equality before the law.
The individual’s choices, acts of sovereign will, are not subject to the will of others except as to the preservation of the community which is the liberty of other individuals to make the same choices and the defense of those liberties. The choice to find a mate/partner is part of that liberty. As long as the prospective mate/partner makes a similar choice, the greater community has no say in the choice except as to mutually agreed limits the entire community makes on all members – such as preserving choice to sovereign individuals (minors are not sovereign individuals, nor are some others with no capacity to make choices – the infirm).
That is my attempt to at least begin the process. If you don’t accept that First Principle, well, then the rest is just gibberish to you. But I’d like to see what others offer. I’ve tried to stay away from the writings of others except the original articulation of ‘the individual is sovereign’ was made by Mills. Jefferson echoed Rouseau in the DOI: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”
As to individual sovereignty, Locke pointed out that in the end, even a slave had ultimate authority over themselves, by refusing the orders of the master and bringing terminal retribution upon himself. I can’t be made to do anything with my body I don’t allow – though the day may come with devices can be implanted that control the physical body in defiance of the mind and soul within it. We are not there…yet.
The State is an extension of the sovereign individual, when the State becomes a power unto itself that limits the liberty of the sovereign individual it violates it’s own foundation, even if that violation is at the behest of other sovereign individuals. If you have the ‘right’ to marry, so do I. If we have given the authority to the State to issue licenses, then it must do so to us without prejudice. Because a license to a gay couple does not infringe upon a license to a straight couple, there is no foundation to preclude it.
Maintaining Traditional Marriage.
Initially, the court considered the County’s argument the same-sex marriage ban promotes the “integrity of traditional marriage” by “maintaining the historical and traditional marriage norm ([as] one between a man and a woman).” The court noted that, when tradition is offered as a justification for preserving a statutory scheme challenged on equal protection grounds, the court must determine whether the reasons underlying the tradition are sufficient to satisfy constitutional requirements. These reasons, the court found, must be something other than the preservation of tradition by itself.
“When a certain tradition is used as both the governmental objective and the classification to further that objective, the equal protection analysis is transformed into the circular question of whether the classification accomplishes the governmental objective, which objective is to maintain the classification.” Here, the County offered no governmental reason underlying the tradition of limiting marriage to heterosexual couples, so the court proceeded to consider the other reasons advanced by the County for the legislative classification.
Promotion of Optimal Environment to Raise Children.
The second of the County’s proffered governmental objectives involves promoting child rearing by a father and a mother in a marital relationship, the optimal milieu according to some social scientists. Although the court found support for the proposition that the interests of children are served equally by same-sex parents and opposite sex parents, it acknowledged the existence of reasoned opinions that dual gender parenting is the optimal environment for children. Nonetheless, the court concluded the classification employed to further that goal—sexual orientation—did not pass intermediate scrutiny because it is significantly under-inclusive and over-inclusive.
The statute, the court found, is under-inclusive because it does not exclude from marriage other groups of parents—such as child abusers, sexual predators, parents neglecting to provide child support, and violent felons—that are undeniably less than optimal parents. If the marriage statute was truly focused on optimal parenting, many classifications of people would be excluded, not merely gay and lesbian people. The statute is also under-inclusive because it does not prohibit same-sex couples from raising children in Iowa. The statute is over-inclusive because not all same-sex couples choose to raise children. The court further noted that the County failed to show how the best interests of children of gay and lesbian parents, who are denied an environment supported by the benefits of marriage under the statute, are served by the ban, or how the ban benefits the interests of children of heterosexual parents. Thus, the court concluded a classification that limits civil marriage to opposite-sex couples is simply not substantially related to the objective of promoting the optimal environment to raise children.
Promotion of Procreation.
Next, the court addressed the County’s argument that endorsement of traditional civil marriage will result in more procreation. The court concluded the County’s argument is flawed because it fails to address the required analysis of the objective: whether exclusion of gay and lesbian individuals from the institution of civil marriage will result in more procreation.
The court found no argument to support the conclusion that a goal of additional procreation would be substantially furthered by the exclusion of gays and lesbians from civil marriage.
Promoting Stability in Opposite-Sex Relationships.
The County also asserted that the statute promoted stability in opposite-sex relationships. The court acknowledged that, while the institution of civil marriage likely encourages stability in opposite-sex relationships, there was no evidence to support that excluding gay and lesbian people from civil marriage makes opposite-sex marriage more stable.
Those are the summary of the findings….the detail is considerably longerMaintaining Traditional Marriage.
Initially, the court considered the County’s argument the same-sex marriage ban promotes the “integrity of traditional marriage” by “maintaining the historical and traditional marriage norm ([as] one between a man and a woman).” The court noted that, when tradition is offered as a justification for preserving a statutory scheme challenged on equal protection grounds, the court must determine whether the reasons underlying the tradition are sufficient to satisfy constitutional requirements. These reasons, the court found, must be something other than the preservation of tradition by itself.
“When a certain tradition is used as both the governmental objective and the classification to further that objective, the equal protection analysis is transformed into the circular question of whether the classification accomplishes the governmental objective, which objective is to maintain the classification.” Here, the County offered no governmental reason underlying the tradition of limiting marriage to heterosexual couples, so the court proceeded to consider the other reasons advanced by the County for the legislative classification.
Promotion of Optimal Environment to Raise Children.
The second of the County’s proffered governmental objectives involves promoting child rearing by a father and a mother in a marital relationship, the optimal milieu according to some social scientists. Although the court found support for the proposition that the interests of children are served equally by same-sex parents and opposite sex parents, it acknowledged the existence of reasoned opinions that dual gender parenting is the optimal environment for children. Nonetheless, the court concluded the classification employed to further that goal—sexual orientation—did not pass intermediate scrutiny because it is significantly under-inclusive and over-inclusive.
The statute, the court found, is under-inclusive because it does not exclude from marriage other groups of parents—such as child abusers, sexual predators, parents neglecting to provide child support, and violent felons—that are undeniably less than optimal parents. If the marriage statute was truly focused on optimal parenting, many classifications of people would be excluded, not merely gay and lesbian people. The statute is also under-inclusive because it does not prohibit same-sex couples from raising children in Iowa. The statute is over-inclusive because not all same-sex couples choose to raise children. The court further noted that the County failed to show how the best interests of children of gay and lesbian parents, who are denied an environment supported by the benefits of marriage under the statute, are served by the ban, or how the ban benefits the interests of children of heterosexual parents. Thus, the court concluded a classification that limits civil marriage to opposite-sex couples is simply not substantially related to the objective of promoting the optimal environment to raise children.
Promotion of Procreation.
Next, the court addressed the County’s argument that endorsement of traditional civil marriage will result in more procreation. The court concluded the County’s argument is flawed because it fails to address the required analysis of the objective: whether exclusion of gay and lesbian individuals from the institution of civil marriage will result in more procreation.
The court found no argument to support the conclusion that a goal of additional procreation would be substantially furthered by the exclusion of gays and lesbians from civil marriage.
Promoting Stability in Opposite-Sex Relationships.
The County also asserted that the statute promoted stability in opposite-sex relationships. The court acknowledged that, while the institution of civil marriage likely encourages stability in opposite-sex relationships, there was no evidence to support that excluding gay and lesbian people from civil marriage makes opposite-sex marriage more stable.
Drumwaster: “Unless you consider “I want” to be “first principles”, because that is all it boils down to. ”
What is YOUR first principle? Hell, I’ll take the ‘first principle’ of anyone here. If you want to go and find someone else who has articulated ‘first principles’ and claim they speak for you, fine. Actually, the individual is sovereign is more “I need”……to breathe, eat, drink, sleep…to continue to live.
What is YOUR first principle?
Do unto others. (None of that “As you would have them do unto you”, either. Just “do unto others”. But I’m a solipsist, and not trying to impose my whims on the majority of society, while excluding others who have just as good a claim to whimhoods, which is what you and the other SSM-proponents are doing.)
I appreciate you answering my question.
Two things before we can move on: 1) If I have absolute authority over myself, why do I have a responsibility to preserve myself? If I have a responsibility to preserve myself, then my authority over myself is not absolute. 2) If I have to join with others, I’ve already limited my authority over myself. Presumeably those others get some say in how I exercise my authority over myself, and I’m obliged to assent to their, well, authority in the way I exercise my authority if I’m to have any claim on them to support my responsibility to preserve myself. So again, my authority over myself is not absolute.
So where does that leave the principle of individual sovereignty vis-a-vis marriage?
a link or reference here would help
The first principle of marriage is perpetuation, by the way.
Once more, if a same-sex couple wants to go get married, they are entitled to do so. Go hire a hall, an officiant, invite friends and family that are willing to show up, hire a DJ, and all the rest, and go have themselves one hell of a honeymoon. But that isn’t good enough, they demand that the State change its neutral requirements to suit their whims, and give them all the benefits, too. But not even JUST the benefits, since civil union would have taken care of each and every one of the “gimmes” that gays claimed they were being denied (automatic inheritance, health care preference, legal adoption, et alia), because it is a different word.
It is just the next step in destroying the nuclear family and then come the churches, because the State WILL force churches to violate their principles, just as they are now forcing bakers, photographers, and wedding chapels to do. Churches will not be allowed to hold sacred beliefs, and those that dare to support traditional marriage will have their property invaded and vandalized, their congregation hunted down and punished where they work, and lawsuits filed in as many venues as possible until a precedent sticks, which will then be used as a club against the others.
Because rights come from the government and the courts, and right and wrong comes from a majority vote (except when that vote goes against the celebrity cause du jour), not from some old dude in a robe who lives in the clouds, right, tracy?
Proponents of same-sex marriage regularly label opponents “radical” and “extremist.” However, given that no society in thousands of years has allowed same-sex marriage, it is, by definition, the proponents of same-sex marriage whose position is radical and extreme. You cannot re-define marriage in a more radical way than allowing members of the same sex to marry. You can argue that is the moral thing to do. But you cannot argue that is it not radical.
All these judges have a hubris that is simply breathtaking. They not only know that they read the Constitution more accurately than the vast majority of the residents of many of America’s states, but they are also entirely comfortable with forcing great majorities of Americans to accept this new definition of marriage.
That it is conceit rather than legal reasoning is easily shown when one peruses the opinions of these judges.
I will cite only Judge Vaughn Walker as an example:
Walker: “Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license.”
“No rational basis”? This is hubris. What he is stating is that for all of Western history — and contemporaneous non-Western history — there has not been a rational basis for defining marriage as the union of a man a woman. Vaughn Walker is convinced that he thinks more rationally than every moral leader and thinker in history, not one of whom advocated same-sex marriage. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, the Enlightenment — all were irrational regarding same-sex marriage, according to Judge Walker.
In Judge Walker’s mind, it is irrational, just to cite one example, to prefer that men and women form families in order to provide children with a mother and a father.
Walker: “Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same-sex couples.”
Yes, without in any way reducing the worth or the decency of any gay human being or dismissing the depth of same-sex love, California, like the rest of the world, has indeed believed in the superiority of man-woman unions. Not in the superiority of straight men and women as people: The gay human being is created in God’s image every bit as much as the straight human being, and there are gays who have led vastly more moral lives than many straights. But regarding how the family — the building block of society — should be constituted, the civilized world has always believed that it should be based on a married mother and father.
Society has also believed in the superiority of mother-father families to single-parent families. And that, too, never meant that every married person is inherently superior to every single person.
Walker: “Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis.”
This is another example of the lack of serious thought — as opposed to serious passion — that underlies the movement to redefine marriage. If American society has a “constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis,” then there is no plausible argument for denying polygamous relationships, or brothers and sisters, or parents and adult children, the right to marry.
On the matter of same-sex marriage, mass passions and coercive judges are winning. Above all, hubris is winning. That is why proponents always assert that they are “on the right side of history.”
But history is very long. Our grandchildren, or their grandchildren, will judge whether this is true. The Left since Marx has asserted that every one of their radical positions — such as the demise of capitalism — is on the right side of history. Virtually none turned out to be.
Dennis Prager
Among the Germans, this is known as besserwissen. In the Illustrierte Deutsche Woerterbuch you will find under the definition of besserwissen a picture of Erich von Daniken.
Ernst: with regard to the request for a link, it is from the Iowa Supreme Court decision on gay marriage.
http://www.iowacourts.gov/wfData/files/Varnum/40209Varnumsummary.pdf
As to the ‘responsibility to preserve’. Some discussion on that is built on the premise that we are a creation and we have a duty to the Creator to preserve what He created. I am less inclined to that and leave it, for me, that if I desire NOT to preserve, then like the slave I can withhold my efforts to preserve myself. The choice remains mine – personally, I think ‘self preservation’ is hardwired into us, it is the default setting.
Yes, once you enter a community you give up some liberty – not over oneself, but over the range of actions available. Alone on an island I can throw rocks, shoot guns, in any direction at any time, when I join a community, those actions are limited IF I want to continue to be in the community – that is a choice that remains with me regardless, so the sovereignty remains, the liberty to choose, but I have to consider the consequences of those acts upon others.
“the first principle of marriage is perpetuation”, I assume you mean procreation, but if not, once the effort of establishing a relationship is made, continuing it would seem to be a goal. If you mean procreation, I am don’t think so. If the first principle is procreation what is the purpose of marriage? Procreation does not require marriage, only a willing partner.
“If I have to join with others, I’ve already limited my authority over myself”
You have limited your choice of actions, that is your free choice. You have not lost any authority over yourself to make those choices, and you can choose to ‘unjoin’ at any time. Unlike Rouseau who suggests once you have joined yourself to community, the restriction on your liberty is permanently lost. Jefferson clearly didn’t agree with that as the DOI clearly states that if government – a tool of society/individuals – becomes abusive, we have the liberty to destroy it and start again. Our participation in society – while for the most part a default setting, an autopilot path – is still under our control.
A lengthy excerpt from the Kengor essay Lee linked last night illustrates Drumwaster’s point (bold emphases are mine):
Drumwaster: your first principle is to ‘do unto others’? What exactly do you DO unto others? Purpose?
Ernst: “So where does that leave the principle of individual sovereignty vis-a-vis marriage?”
Marriage is a free choice between two individuals. It remains so until one or both either choose to end it or they die. It is a joining of intent, a merging of goals/purpose. Procreation may be a step, a choice, or not. It does not require procreation to continue (unless one or both make it a condition of continuing).
Once two sovereigns join, they function as one to the outside world. We have lots of examples, good and bad.
Thank you for the reference Tracy.
How is circumscribing the range of actions available to you NOT a surrender of liberty over oneself? If I’m not free to act, then I’m not truly free, am I?
So what you’re really saying is that an individual only gets one choice: to be an individual who acts individually, or to be part of a community and act in accordance with the dictates of the community, yes?
Also, you’ve forgotten your Hobbes. The decision to surrender your sovereignty is not only irrevocable, but heritable. Which means the decision was made for you long before you were ever born. If you don’t believe me, look at prison; it’s full of people who decided to “unjoin” the community.
As for Jefferson, as I recall it, he appealed to “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.” What does nature show us with regard to homosexual union? What do the world’s religions have to say about homosexuality?
Darleen: the Constitution is a document on how government is to operate, not on how government dictates to citizens how to operate. It is not governments responsibility to fix whatever some group thinks is wrong with society. It is not even governments responsibility to maintain some aspect of society people think is important to maintain. Read the Constitution, understanding it is a government limiting document. It is not hubris to bring the entirety of a judges experience and knowledge to an issue and for them to state their best judgment on the matter before them. WE pick judges on the basis (at least I try to) of their experience and to the extent possible, their interpretation of founding (be they federal or state) documents. I’ve sat in many a courtroom and been both amazed and disappointed.
““No rational basis”?
Do you think that in all that human history you referred to there was a judge and courtroom full of opponents and proponents for gay marriage before the last 10 years? Or was it more likely that a gay person was beaten to death, beaten and exiled, threatened, expelled by every society that found a gay person in their midst long before there was a chance to debate the subject? Or was it just a gut reaction to attack the ‘pervert, deviant, “other”, filthy dog”? I truly am not impressed that we have had thousands of years of violence upon gays as an example that gays have not had any standing in society. Slavery existed in western civilization until the 1800s. As an example of morality, history is much more full of immorality by heterosexuals.
“Society has also believed in the superiority of mother-father families to single-parent families. And that, too, never meant that every married person is inherently superior to every single person. ”
And 98% of society will still, can still, have mother/father families. And many heterosexuals will have sex and marriage and reproduction regardless of what happens to homosexuals. That is the point of the Court’s opinion, nothing granted to gays (in regard to ssm) precludes heterosexuals from continuing to do what they have always done. And because there is no reasonable argument that if gays get ssm, heterosexuals, in masse, will stop getting married, or procreating in male/female, mother/father ways.
If you can find me a couple thousand couples in any state now with ssm, that got divorced because of ssm, or despite a history of being heterosexual, chose to same sex marry, I’ll reconsider ‘the rational basis’ that ssm does not cause heterosexuals to ssm. Until then, everyone here seems perfectly content to remain on the default setting of being in heterosexual marriages…
Ernst: as to the American Thinker article, which I went and read, I thought his point was well made (the author’s) given his choice of subject – Masha Gessen. I had never heard of her, and if you read any of the comments made on the story, most every other gay commenting said the same thing, “who?”. One commentor made the point, if we used Fred Phelps as an example of Christians or Conservatives to argue that Christians are trying to establish a theocracy, it would be ‘the example that proves the premise’ but it wouldn’t be very representative of the issue.
As I put in one of my comments there: just because a good thing can be used in bad ways doesn’t preclude having the good thing for the majority of people that will use it well and responsibly.
Ernst: “How is circumscribing the range of actions available to you NOT a surrender of liberty over oneself? If I’m not free to act, then I’m not truly free, am I? ”
A very libertarian comment! Because you can continue to choose your actions. If you volunteer to be part of the community, you agree to the limits the community establishes – you can work within the community to change those limits and to the extent it doesn’t cause the loss of liberty of others, you’d probably prevail. But if not, you still have the choice to act and deal with the consequences, or leave the community. You have not lost the ability to choose for yourself. It is a voluntary act to limit your actions to attain the benefits of community. A rational person balances the limits and the benefits of being a part of community. You expect that other participants are making the same choices/analysis. At least I consider other members to be rational, until they prove otherwise.
Ernst: “So what you’re really saying is that an individual only gets one choice: to be an individual who acts individually, or to be part of a community and act in accordance with the dictates of the community, yes?”
That is what Rouseau said, once in, its permanent. Jefferson, at least as far as government was concerned, disagreed. I agree with Jefferson in the particular and disagree with Rouseau in the general. Your choice to be part of the community is one of an ongoing analysis, a constant balancing of benefit/cost. (I am an economist by education!) And the community is not a singular entity, though often local government becomes a prominent central actor (rather than a servant, it aspires to be considered a co-equal, and in too many cases a superior/master). As each member weighs their choices and their limits within the community, each will try to gain more liberty for themselves (the Leftist) or restrict the liberty of others (the nannybot).
So, no. I believe it is an ongoing choice. In this country people say if you don’t like the way things are run, move. Vote with your feet. Or find a like-minded community. Those are all choices that remain regardless of the specific community/time/place someone finds themselves near or in.
Ernst: and a community that is constantly in turmoil is not a benefit. Generally we want people that have agreed to equally applied limits on all participants. When new things appear – like drones – then we hope we are in a community that can come to some agreement about those issues and we have a tool to help enforce those agreed to limits….government. It serves a valuable purpose if it remains the servant, the tool. Obama is not in charge of the United States. The United States Government doesn’t run the country (despite Elizabeth Warren’s assertion).
If you really believe that, then you’ve come half way around to Darleen’s, Drumwaster’s, et. al. position on marriage. More importantly, from my perspective, you’ve demonstrated why the judicial imposition of ssm is inherently unjust. After all, a rational community balances the limits and benefits of individual expression.
As for rationality itself, I supsect Lenin was probably the most purely rational man to ever lead a nation.
Also, that wasn’t a libertarian comment. I’m interested in circumscribing the limits of freedom as regards marriage here.
Marriage is a free choice between two individuals.
Why do you think you have the power to limit it to only two? And why “individuals”? You have something against multiple personalities? What are you, a species-ist? Quit being such a H8R…
Once two sovereigns join, they function as one to the outside world.
And yet you seem to be arguing that those two are the only sovereign beings, and society isn’t equally (or even more so, under “the good of the many outweigh the good of the few, or the one” ) sovereign. If those two wish to live together for the rest of their lives, more power to them (as I have repeatedly pointed out), but if they want the acceptance and approval of the larger society, it is up to them to meet society’s standards, not the other way around.
You are also ignoring the fact that it isn’t a case of “live and let live” by SSM-proponents, but “run the bums out of town” to anyone who even wishes to politely bow out. People who merely want to exercise their muse, or run a small business, have been hounded by the pack, threatened with physical harm and financial ruin for merely not wanting to attend or further a cause they might not believe in. (And we all know how those gays in Indiana love pizza at their weddings!) People have been forced to resign their jobs merely for donating money to a cause, even though they had done NOTHING even remotely anti-gay in their professional capacity. Even gays are being boycotted for merely speaking politely to those who support traditional marriage.
That is the cause you support, every time you defend your “but I just want to spend my life with the person I love” claim. You are responsible for every one of those fascistic actions, even if indirectly, and it’s time you owned up.
Or shut up.
Ernst: “Also, you’ve forgotten your Hobbes. The decision to surrender your sovereignty is not only irrevocable, but heritable. Which means the decision was made for you long before you were ever born. If you don’t believe me, look at prison; it’s full of people who decided to “unjoin” the community.”
Actually, no, I didn’t forget Hobbes: “Nature hath made man so equal in the faculties of body and mind as that, though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind that another, yet when all is reckoned together the difference between man and man is not so considerable…”
“…that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of war which is necessarily consequent, as has been shown, to the natural passions of men when there is no visable power to keep them in awe, and tie them by fear of punishment to the performance of their covenants”
We are of course an example of ‘unjoining’ society. Our first settlers were ‘unjoining’ and for the following centuries, we have had a continuous flow of people unjoining their birth societies. Including my parents specifically for the enhanced prospects for themselves and their children.
As to prisons, that is not unjoining, that is violating the limits of others liberties.
Generally we want people that have agreed to equally applied limits on all participants.
You mean like one man being allowed to marry one woman? Nah, that’s just CRAZYTALK…
“When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.” — Thomas Sowell
Ernst: “What does nature show us with regard to homosexual union? ”
From the general to the specific huh? Nature doesn’t require that each member of a species procreate, only that sufficient of them exist to maintain a balance in the environments they occupy. We find homosexual behavior in animal species. Specific examples included the range of violence to casual indifference. If the homosexual does not procreate, then theoretically, homosexuality would die out. Except, it remains and has in all societies and cultures throughout human history. With no exceptions, homosexuals are the product of a heterosexual union. Given it’s consistent existence, it is within the ‘normal’ range of human offspring. Kinda like gingers.
” The bonobo, an African ape closely related to humans, has an even bigger sexual appetite. Studies suggest 75 percent of bonobo sex is nonreproductive and that nearly all bonobos are bisexual. Frans de Waal, author of Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape, calls the species a “make love, not war” primate. He believes bonobos use sex to resolve conflicts between individuals. Other animals appear to go through a homosexual phase before they become fully mature. For instance, male dolphin calves often form temporary sexual partnerships, which scientists believe help to establish lifelong bonds. Such sexual behavior has been documented only relatively recently. Zoologists have been accused of skirting round the subject for fear of stepping into a political minefield. ” http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/07/0722_040722_gayanimal_2.html
Except that gay marriage is inherently irresponsible and an abuse.
Good point. I think the gay lobby should stop roiling it up.
You and all the other sessessionists. Since, what you’re really saying is that you’ll only assent to the social contract subject to your whims. Presumably you grant to the rest of us the same right. That to me sounds like a recipe for a community in constant turmoil.
So we’re kind of back to Drumwaster’s point. You want what you want because y0u want it, and because it’s what you want, it’s good. Everybody else is either less rational than you or motivated by malice.
Ernst: if you want a general roundup of what religions think…I’m sure you have it at hand. The polytheistic didn’t seem to have a problem with it. The monotheistic generally opposed it, but in practice used it for rape/power. Given my agnostic point of view, as I said before, heterosexuality is the default setting, there is no great moral achievement in autopilot. Or in violence against other humans because they don’t conform. I’m not impressed with the moral history of our religions in general. Though some friends have on occasion said I’d make a good Buddhist. I haven’t given it any thought.
Ernst: finish my sentence, “you can work within the community to change those limits and to the extent it doesn’t cause the loss of liberty of others, you’d probably prevail.”
If the community is that rigid, I’d probably forgo joining it. When V and I were just starting out, CJ was just from China, V wanted to move to Montana and start attending church – in part for CJ, but she was not agnostic, but a ‘wandering Christian’. I said if she could find a church in rural Montana that accepted two women raising a Chinese baby, I’d go to church. She did, so I did too. The community LOVED CJ, we were accepted.
In the larger community that is the United States, I have never felt the need or urge to leave. I think even when we fail miserably, the ideals and principles we stand for are very well suited for me.
Ernst: “you’ve demonstrated why the judicial imposition of ssm is inherently unjust. After all, a rational community balances the limits and benefits of individual expression.”
No, not a rational community, rational individuals continue to make those choices and the community has a constant tension as people adjust to changes in their lives and in the community. The community is an ever changing ongoing creation. The problem is that laws are a concrete foundation set at a point in time by the then members of the community. Change in the community becomes bound to, and over time increasingly limited by that foundation – but changing it is difficult. Because IT is unchanging doesn’t mean the community has not been.
Judicial interpretation is specifically their job duty. That they are trying to interpret and decide an issue is clearly an indication that the community, or at least the case participants have been unable to reach a settlement of the issue. There is no way that ANY decision is likely to be applauded by both sides. But the courts are there to arbitrate, mediate a dispute between sovereigns that couldn’t be resolved elsewhere. I think they get it right more often than not, and I don’t always like the result.
Why Bonobos Make Bad Role Models
By union, I mean union, not copulation. Find me another animal that pair bonds homosexually. Granted, we find homosexuals and homosexual behavior all throughout human history, but what we don’t find is homosexual marriage. So why is it that?
Ernst: “I’m interested in circumscribing the limits of freedom as regards marriage here. ”
The State, a tool of the community, has no business in the choices of two sovereigns (we have established that sovereigns are capable adults – I’d rather not argue the merits of specific age, or even familia relationships though if your goal is establish what limits a community can put on sovereigns, the answer is, “anything it or those attempting to abuse government, think they can get away with”.) Once a community gives government the power to do something, the community either builds in controls, or the structure of government is such that the controls are inherent in it’s charter. We have a Federal Government bound by a Constitution and the case law surrounding it. States have similar situations. Back in the 60’s we, the community, decided that ‘separate but equal’ was not in keeping with the ‘social compact’. I agree with that. However, it went further stating that we could no longer be completely free in our choices of association. In the public sphere, we were required to associate with people we might not have freely choose to do so. I think in the first, government was told it could not create separate but equal legal structures – we all were to function under ONE set of rules. In the second, it was a violation of our liberty. Any voices that were loud enough to be heard that articulated that were pretty well slammed. The most recent was Ron Paul. (but he i….well, intent …nevermind).
Ernst: “Except that gay marriage is inherently irresponsible and an abuse.”
I disagree.
a community that is constantly in turmoil is not a benefit.
“Good point. I think the gay lobby should stop roiling it up.”
Who says it is [just]the gay lobby? Isn’t there as much effort on the opposing side?
I believe it [i.e. the choice to belong to a community] is an ongoing choice.
“You and all the other sessessionists. Since, what you’re really saying is that you’ll only assent to the social contract subject to your whims. Presumably you grant to the rest of us the same right. That to me sounds like a recipe for a community in constant turmoil.”
Of course you have the same right(although I have specifically avoided that word), the same liberty/freedom that I do, as a sovereign. There is a difference between turmoil and tension. I think we ALWAYS are in a state where, even within a marriage, there is a constant evaluation and discussion and give and take, a state of tension. I think that it is a good thing if people in a community are always evaluating and giving and taking. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing. And when change is happening, there is always a need for that tension. You and your spouse don’t agree exactly on everything. I am not saying that the tension has to be piano wire tight, more like power line hanging between two points swaying in the breeze.
inish my sentence,
What do you think the ellipsis at the end was for? And it’s not solely about liberty (Mill’s greatest good), it’s also about the well-being of the community (Mill’s greatest number). The fundamental building block of our community is the traditional family. Gay marriage is intended as a retrovirus to obliterate that building block.
also: The Court system is not the community.
Which is why everybody who arrived in the New World struck off into the wilderness on their own, and nobody anywhere ever in anyway marks, commemorates or celebrates their ancestral community.
My God, that was a dumb thing to say. The logical outcome of that position is that society(community) is nothing more than a loose assembly people weakly held together and liable to stray off. Lee I think said you were a Progressive. I’m strating to wonder if you’re not a Radical.
Anyways, congratulations on being able to type faster than I can. But we’re still in search of a first principle for gay marriage to cling to.
Ernst: “By union, I mean union, not copulation. Find me another animal that pair bonds homosexually. Granted, we find homosexuals and homosexual behavior all throughout human history, but what we don’t find is homosexual marriage. So why is it that?”
I wasn’t offering that link as support for homosexual pair bonding, but as an example that homosexuality exists in nature in other species. Many species don’t pair bond for life at all.
We don’t find homosexual marriage in the last 3 thousand years because of the influence of religion – which I suggested probably existed in polytheistic societies before monotheistic religions (founded primarily on Judaism) has specific prohibitions. Maybe in part to establish a difference between religions found in the region. The history of religion is not a hobby of mine, but I’ve come across a fair amount. Nation-states were generally hereditary governments – therefore the need for heirs was paramount – also, private property, such that existed had the same need, heirs….preferably male. Failure or inability or lack of desire to create heirs was a direct threat to most power structures. The societies under those powers reflected the same ethos.
So, like I said, the default setting was generally, forcibly, maintained. You know, my mother was a lefty when she was born. Her school literally BEAT it out of her. She would come home from school with bloody knuckles from being hit repeatedly with sticks by the Nuns. (Ireland, 1930’s) I’ve read similar stories in other places. Conformity was not a result of choice, but often violently enforced.
I disagree.
You’re wrong.
Somebody who has the time try to pin Tracy down on Prop 8. & the subsequent court actions. In light of this “the individual is sovereign except when she’s not” talk, it ought to be interesting.
Again, you’re wrong. The Greeks and Romans were as polytheistic as they come, and you will find no evidence in either Greek or Roman law for homosexual marriage. For that matter, I doubt you can find any evidence in myth or literature either. Zeus raped boys all the time. But he only married Hera.
That really ought to tell us something about the nature and purpose of marriage.
And I have shit-ton of things to get done around the house today, so I can’t keep this up any longer.
Ernst: “Gay marriage is intended as a retrovirus to obliterate that building block.”
Your going to need to have more than one minor person’s rant to establish that. And to establish that would be the result. As to Mills. I like his analysis, I didn’t like what he thought should be done. Social utility is a very subjective place.
“The fundamental building block of our community is the traditional family.”
I agree. We place the family as the nucleus. It is the model of community. Interfere in the family to the detriment of society.
No, the Court system is a tool. It is part of a functioning government. Subservient to the community that created and empowered it. (gov is a tool that has gotten out of control)
“My God, that was a dumb thing to say.”
How nice. People generally like large parts of their communities. Your wife might love you but HATE having to always pick up your socks. If they feel the need to leave and start anew, they are likely to bring large chunks of what they know with them. And that is what happened. I am not really sure what you were referring to…the snark/sarcasm statement was not consistent with anything I said but maybe what you thought…
“But we’re still in search of a first principle for gay marriage to cling to.”
Ok, I mean if you want to ignore what I have typed faster than you, I gave one, you either disagree or ignored it. Your choice…
Generally I agree having already said as much, (and here, also here) except that I think you’ve described a bottom up phenomenon as a top-down one (even a humble goat-herder has property to accumulate and pass on).
So can we at last agree that marriage is about perpetuating the species, socially as well as biologically?
It’s bad form to not extend the same courtesy you ask for when you quote some one, you know.
You say you agree, but your definition of family is so incohate (you’re of necessity obliged to elide “traditional” from family) that you are objectively on the side of those who would abolish it. I guess it’s fortunate for you that we can ignore the “rant” of a minor figure like Kengor. Because it’s not who he quotes that counts, it’s who’s doing the quoting.
I really am done now.
Okay, this time for sure and I mean it. Last comment of the early morning.
What you gave me was a defective first principle. The proof that it’s defective is in
As an example of how we are sovereign individuals with the right to join and unjoin society at our discretion.
If anything, that’s a first principle for divorce, not marriage.
Ernst: “So can we at last agree that marriage is about perpetuating the species, socially as well as biologically? ”
You haven’t made any statements in support of it except to state is as a given. I said that families and procreation are fundamental. Marriage is something else. Families and procreation perpetuate the species, socially as well as biologically. I have supported, agreed and see plenty of logical foundation for that. You haven’t supported your ‘marriage’ contention yet. But I guess I am parsing….you are.
‘traditional family’ has, is, will be, parents and offspring. I don’t say traditional as it seems redundant – I have said and acknowledged families has been the default, the normal. But it is not just parents and offspring, it often includes multiple generations, spouses and even parents and sibs of other families into large ‘families’. That was, is and probably will, continue to happen. If you need me to say it explicitly:
traditional families of parents and offspring have existed throughout human history, family structures often included multiple generations and the parents of both partners (spouses). These extended families existed and continue to be the DOMINANT structure of human civilization. They form the nucleus of society and society generally works to ensure their continued dominance. This has been the nature and will continue to be the nature of society for the foreseeable future. We see examples of this in animal species and certainly to a greater degree in the primates. It is the default, the ‘natural’ state of species, including humans.
Ok. Nothing I have said contradicts that.
As to your last, last comment: You quoted me and suggested that, I assume, that quote failed to completely quote you elsewhere. I made no quote because I wasn’t quoting. I was agreeing with your statement and then adding to my agreement.
You can’t abolish families – isn’t that your point? I can’t abolish heterosexual procreation and the forming of families. We literally have billions of people genetically hardwired to it. So, any suggestion that I or anyone else is attempting to abolish it is hyperbole. and SSM doesn’t do it. Can’t. You can’t abolish homosexual behavior either. We literally have millions of people hardwired to it (yes, you are going to want me to PROVE a genetic hardwire that we haven’t, yet, proven…may never) but given its consistent appearance, I will use that as evidence.
Any evidence that same sex marriage destroys heterosexual marriage hasn’t been produced here. Lots of evidence of heterosexuals destroying heterosexual marriage. But of course FAMILIES continue to exist, procreation continues to exist. Those family structures are being changed because of the interference of government, in many cases at the effort of heterosexuals, with the tactic or casual indifference of other heterosexuals.
You asked me to state a first principle. I did. I defended it. You have not offered one.
Your welcome.
Ernst: As an example of how we are sovereign individuals with the right to join and unjoin society at our discretion. If anything, that’s a first principle for divorce, not marriage.”
Every choice precludes some options. If you only have the choice to join, and not unjoin, then there is no choice except the first, which you suggest is made for us when we are born and therefore never actually a choice. Your right, if that is the reality, there is no sovereignty. But I believe there is a choice.
Given I have avoided philosophy (in college) like the plague, you are free to offer some statement supporting your contention that I have offered an invalid principle….
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Somebody who has the time try to pin Tracy down on Prop 8. & the subsequent court actions. In light of this “the individual is sovereign except when she’s not” talk, it ought to be interesting.
She isn’t listening to facts, because she agrees with the unelected state judge who overrode the State Constitutional Amendment. (Apparently the Ninth Amendment to the US Constitution was repealed without anyone noticing.) She also seems to agree with the howling mobs who drive opposing opinions underground through threat of force and State civil sanctions.
We literally have billions of people genetically hardwired to it.
And if it is a genetic hardwiring, doesn’t that mean that SSM is the genetic aberration? Wouldn’t the traditional point that laws are made for the majority, not the outliers be relevant here? Wouldn’t that also seem to be arguing that homosexuality is, at the genetic level, a lethal mutation (preventing the passing on of the genetic material before death)? And if not, then you seem to be admitting that homosexuality is nothing more than a learned behavior, capable of being overcome with enough willpower, proper effort and training, not so?
You don’t like gays very much, do you? Either that, or you don’t think things through before saying them.
gays are terrific, a lot of them
some of them not so much
what to do what to do
Tracy will never admit marriage is for multiplying. Nothing will ever convince her it is nothing but a “special” relationship between two people. Not three people. Two people.
Gender or potential have nothing to do with marriage, only the number. Which is two. No more, no less. Two is the number, and the number is two. Amen.
the morally bankrupt duggartrash republican party has the moral authority of bruce jenner’s newly-feminized man-butt
they don’t get to define marriage for anybody
they should focus on important stuff like pipelines and the impending collapse of the social security disabilty scam
*disability* scam i mean
they don’t get to define marriage for anybody
no, griefer, you don’t get to radically redefine an institution that pre-dates government for everybody else.
You can pretend, bully, harass, get laws passed, jail & fine dissenters to your new law, but natural marriage will still exist despite your efforts.
too late picklehead i win you lose
Deal.
You know, when I was a kid, back in the dark age known as the Reagan Administration, “traditional family” referred to a multigenerational extended family unit all living together in a hut (long house, etc.) under pre-industrial conditions; tribes of Borneo and all that. Now it’s come to mean what was formerly known as the “nuclear family,” because people like the aforementioned Masha Gessen get all butt hurt if you dare to disagree with her we’re family too schtick.
There’s an analogy involving imitative behavior, the concept of herd immunity and everbody in the American Family living in dormitories with a nurse Ratchet (sp?) type for a house mother. But I’m still working it out.
The Seven Steps of Liberal Activism:
1. It’s a free country, X should not be illegal.
2. The Constitution prohibits X from being made illegal.
3. If the Constitution protects a right to X, how can it be immoral? Anyone who disagrees is a bigot.
4. If X is a Constitutional right, how can we deny it to the poor? Taxpayer money must be given to people to get X. (Or alternatively, money must be taken from those who refuse to give X.)
5. The Constitution requires that taxpayer money be given to people to get X.
6. People who refuse to participate in X are criminals.
7. People who publicly disagree with X are criminals. (Step 8 has been reached by a few over-achieving cultures, such as nationalist, communist Russia or nationalist, communist China or nationalist, socialist Germany. Everyone knows what Step 8 is.)
Gay marriage proponents are currently insisting on Step 3, with wildcatters pushing for Step 4 on an ad hoc basis.
You are absolutely right happy feet, the Republican Party doesn’t get to define marriage. So who does? Not the people, so Californians discovered. Twice. The supporters of SSM think judges should decide, over the will of the people, over law duly passed by congress and signed by the(dem) president, over the constitution (states powers), with zero precedent, to achieve a political goal.
Yeah, that’s not tyrannical at all…
no dear griefer, you deal that natural marriage, even if you beat it into the underground will still exist.
Even the Israeli’s found out their kibbutz system has serious consequences … their children have real issues in being able to bond with others. They have had decades to find this out while the actual science on children of gay parents is being shoved aside for feel-good-political-correctness.
The basic natural family unit – dad/mom/child – is the ideal, for both the child and for the free society into which they mature.
That, of course, presupposes that one wants and supports a free society.
oh please
if gay people wanna get married it doesn’t effect the melodramatic duggartrash of failmerica not one lil bit
and as we all know the duggartrash have way way way bigger problems to worry about
*affect* i mean
kibbutzes are retarded socialistic neo-utopian proto-commie bullshit
but they’re not my problem
The reason for that is I’m not obliged to because I’m not the one trying to redefine marriage to mean something different than what it meant the day before yesterday. You are. And I’m telling you your first principle is insufficient.
Except that we don’t agree because I’m talking about the traditional, nuclear family –the Cleavers, the Nelsons, the Cosbys– and was very specific. And you’re not; because you can’t, and I think you know it and were purposely vague
And here’s where the herd immunity part of the analogy kicks in. You’re free riding My neighbor with the new live-in boyfriend to replace the moved-out baby daddy (there’s a cute and cuddly term for fornication and bastardy) is free riding The stereotypical welfare queen and all her welfare princesses are free riding. The traditional family is the building block of society. But we’re not making traditional family “bricks” like we used to. The bricks we celebrate in pop culture are friable. So the society we’re building for the future is a structurally compromised one. Whether or not we’ll have to redtag it, only time will tell.
(Okay, so herd immunity and building code analogy –still working it out)
Happyfee, you don’t really believe that once the historical concept of marriage (ie, requiring male and female) has been rejected, the adjustments will stop there? I just know you aren’t that stupid or naive.
How can you just dismiss the great jeopardy such a drastic step (for such frivolous ends I might add) places on all of society?
There’s a sensible first world attitude towards first-world problems.
hello?
nobody is rejecting traditional marriage everyone loves it more than beans and fishsticks
gay marriage is a lateral development not a linear one
and it’s a profoundly conservative idea
everybody knows that oh my goodness
this is obvious to anyone that is willing to do the analysis
re: I don’t watch reality tv, never have never will – whether it is Kardashians, Honey boo-boo or the Duggars.
My first and last word on the latter.
From the bits & pieces I couldn’t avoid it appears the eldest son, while a minor, did disturbing behavior NOT constituting rape or actual molestation, against his sisters also minors. His family took steps to stop it, get help for everyone, moved on.
I don’t know if Lena Dunham’s sister who was similarly exploited ever got help. But she has forgiven her sister, just as Josh’s sisters has forgiven him.
Lena still has her show and no one seems to give a rat’s ass about her behavior and certainly let her parents off the hook completely, Josh’s PARENTS are being publicly trashed as worse than Hitler.
The only thing that really concerns me here is how in the world Josh’s juvenile record was released to the public. THAT should concern EVERYONE. Such records are kept confidential for a purpose. The person(s) responsible for it are the ones that should be in jail. Right now.
yeah but you forgot where joshie the child molester became Focus on the Family’s gay marriage point man
and we have to wonder where joshie learned these molesty behaviours
Griefer
So?
No.
i disagree i think if it wasn’t a big deal then Focus on the Family would’ve supported their man Josh but instead they fired him and said go away we do NOT support you
and number two I bet you’re wrong – that wasn’t a family it was a kennel and we can only imagine what was done on poor Joshie to make him think he could just wander around diddling his sisters
There is another aspect of marriage (from here out I will be rejecting adjective-marriage, and SSW will be referred to as”garriage”) that hasn’t been touched on which will be lost if our black robes rulers decree marriage is over. That is, the common binding effect it has on all society. To put it simply, what to parents are in laws, to our children are blood relatives. Multiply that in its millions, and and you can see how it builds cohesion all through the society.
Garriage has, and always will, have the opposite effect.
And Tracy, I’m sick of your Alinsly rule 13 (or whichever it is) about holding them to their own standards. Just because people are failing at marriage, it does not follow that marriage is the failure. We don’t need to change the standard, we need to make it easier to achieve the standard. Ernst had excellent suggestions for how to do that. Anyway, just stop it with the relative moralism.
fuck you griefer you know why FoF had to distance themselves from Josh while Lena is still on her circuit
for the same reason the NYTimes thought Rubio’s 4 traffic tickets in 18 years was disqualifying but the Clinton Foundation’s corruption is nothing to look at.
POLITICS, asshole. Politics.
Again, whoever released the juvenile records should be in jail.
Darleen the point is that this woeful story of Josh Duggar’s depravity is a timely tale of why Team R should avoid getting on its moral high horse this election cycle and focus not on the family but on what might could be done to arrest the sad pitiable decline of this once great country
Garriage has, and always will, have the opposite effect.
Mr. Lee I’m happy to look at the data that supports this assertion but I do not think it exists
“hello?
nobody is rejecting traditional marriage”
Oh yeah, I remember now. You aren’t stupid or naive. You’re a liar.
By the way, I remember how you were so enthusiastic when the Arab spring started with the ouster of our Egyption president friend. How’s that working out?
You are just as wrong about the ouster of opposite sex requirements in marriage. And the consequences will be just as ugly if you get your way.
By the way, I remember how you were so enthusiastic when the Arab spring started with the ouster of our Egyption president friend. How’s that working out?
hello the failmerican cocksucker president is fellating the Muslim Brotherhood – that’s the problem
but no i don’t regret the fall of one of failmerica’s pet dictators
i wish the same would happen to the perverted Saudi royal trash too
torpedoes? damn the torpedoes
no more pet dictators
this woeful story of Josh Duggar’s depravity
Noted that you still haven’t addressed the alarming release of confidential records.
griefer you are morally bankrupt.
Garriage and Christisnity cannot reconcile. There can never be harmony between them.
Ernst: this is vague?
traditional families of parents and offspring have existed throughout human history, family structures often included multiple generations and the parents of both partners (spouses). These extended families existed and continue to be the DOMINANT structure of human civilization. They form the nucleus of society and society generally works to ensure their continued dominance. This has been the nature and will continue to be the nature of society for the foreseeable future. We see examples of this in animal species and certainly to a greater degree in the primates. It is the default, the ‘natural’ state of species, including humans.
Gee, hate to see your definition of specific. Or is this:
Traditional two parent families raising children has been the ‘normal’ family structure for thousands of years and will continue to be for thousands more (unless we change biology….). This structure has been the nucleus for community and society for as long as community and society has existed.
There? I FULLY AGREE with that. I also agree that humans have been violent murderers towards anyone that doesn’t fit in with that normal for as long as the normal has existed.
Lev 20:13 If a man practices homosexuality, having sex with another man as with a woman, both men have committed a detestable act. They must both be put to death, for they are guilty of a capital offense.
Kinda hard to have ‘gay marriage’ when the surrounding community will KILL YOU if you suggest such desire.
Ernst: “But we’re not making traditional family “bricks” like we used to. The bricks we celebrate in pop culture are friable.”
Gee, seems like the problem is heterosexuals. And you are quick to dismiss any example that suggests the Right, conservatives, have or had any culpability. I didn’t really expect anyone to offer their own principle other than “it’s been this way forever” while ignoring human’s propensity for destroying anything ‘abnormal’, meaning ‘them’ not us. BTW, I’m a big fan of the Darwin awards.
Normal: any system or organism that functions in the environment in which it was created without modification or assistance. (Tracy’s narcissism again, my own definition…as I am prone to do) YMMV
Gee happyfeet!
LBascom: “Happyfee, you don’t really believe that once the historical concept of marriage (ie, requiring male and female) has been rejected, the adjustments will stop there? I just know you aren’t that stupid or naive.”
Gay marriage DOES NOT END heterosexual marriage!!! Doesn’t replace it. It adds maybe 20,000 marriages to the million a year heterosexual marriages. Straight marriage isn’t going away. Straight families are not going away – EXCEPT where the heterosexuals are f*king it up. Homosexuality isn’t causing 70% out of wedlock births in the black community – which is still pretty violent towards gays. PIVOT: Progressives..yada yada yada…. you mean straight people you have a political disagreement with….which relates to gay marriage, how? Oh, yea…lots of gays are Leftists. Well yea, you espouse KILLING THEM. Sorry…you are New Testament proponents having gotten over the Old Testament….
1 Samuel 15: Now listen to this message from the Lord! 2 This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies has declared: I have decided to settle accounts with the nation of Amalek for opposing Israel when they came from Egypt. 3 Now go and completely destroy[a] the entire Amalekite nation—men, women, children, babies, cattle, sheep, goats, camels, and donkeys.”
Genocide. Leviticus. BTW, in the past, this has been excused because God ordered it.
Here’s why releasing Josh Duggar’s records was probably not illegal
Garriage and Christisnity cannot reconcile. There can never be harmony between them. \
what if Garriage surprises Christianity after church with a tasty slice of hummingbird cake?
hah didn’t think of that did you
What are you going to replace the strong man rule Arabs seem to prefer with then?
They get to decide their form of government, we can only be their allies, or let Putin be their allies. Unless of course you want another shot at sending the military over to impose something else on them.
we’ll let the for reals super-powers worry about the middle east lee
shitmerica is broke
i have links
at this point in time the sheer epic hyper-expensive strategically risible humiliating fail of the bush/obama faceplant in Iraq Afghanistan Egypt Yemen Libya Syria and the rest of the middle east is still mounting by the day
this is why failshit loser-assed cowardly whorecountries what can’t even create healthcare websites have no business going to war
there’s just no good reason to project failmerican incompetence on a global scale
plus like I said you broke
I note the “probably”
and in California even if a report is taken when the person is an adult, if the incident happened while they were a juvenile, it is handled like any other juvenile report and is NOT handled like an adult report unless the court makes a determination to have the person tried as an adult.
Police reports are NOT public records in the same sense as court records.
you still ducked the question, you amoral fucktard.
then let the Duggars sue sue sue
it’s not like they have anything to lose at this point
and that hurts my feelings when you call me names
you’re a big fat mean picklehead
Gay marriage DOES NOT END heterosexual marriage!!! Doesn’t replace it.
Not quite. It does end the concept that mothers & fathers are relevant since now sex is irrelevant and it further erodes the rights of children. They are just a lifestyle accessory like a cat or dog and are owned by the adults who possess them regardless of the status of the adult.
Indeed, dogs & cats have more rights than unborn human babies.
“Genocide. Leviticus. BTW, in the past, this has been excused because God ordered it.”
You shouldn’t try teaching Christian theology. You suck at it.
Matt 5:18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
God is eternal. Jesus provides a way to forgive our transgressions of the law, He didn’t “excuse” the law.
the first thing we need to do is stop spending so damn much money
LBascom: ok, you accept the Old Testament….let me put that down….you know, some Christians disavow those passages. And…by Law, Jesus was speaking of the Commandments. The passage I gave was not, but rather the history of the Israelites. Further, Samuel wasn’t transgressing the Law. What is interesting is that despite the order for genocide, the Israelites didn’t do as ordered and there were consequences for that. BTW, I gave up teaching it when I gave it up.
Jesus was speaking of the Commandments
#5 & 10
What it does do is change the public perception of what marriage is, ontologically. This is inimicable to marriage, and will negatively effect (affect?) society overall.. Just like no-fault divorce, rampant promiscuity, children born and raised out of wedlock, etc. etc.
But I guess that’s just the price we have to pay when sovereign individuals are free to choose …
…and then change their minds when they don’t like the consequences of the choices they freely made, the burden of responsibility they freely undertook.
y’all just make stuff up without any evidence
it’s not fair
You guys? You guys see the size of that squirrel?
Besides, what makes you think moral decline isn’t upstream from political and economic decline?
And just to add to what Darleen said here:
Men and women are not fungible, despite what the sexuality-is-on-a-spectrum genderists would have you believe.
Ernst: “What it does do is change the public perception of what marriage is, ontologically”
No, what it does is change YOUR perception of what marriage is, just like it does LBascoms, that it is all about the reproduction. That perception was fractional, it was only a part of what other people, LOTS of other people, left, right, lukewarm thought it was. When they let seniors marry, when they let criminals marry, when they let pedophiles marry….it was not about reproduction for THEM or THEN. That is when it changed and it has been like that as far as I can tell, for a very long time. So, the perception of marriage is that a man should leave his parents and join with a woman and become one. That is what the perception of marriage was. It was, is, used for raising children – that might be it’s highest and best purpose, but it wasn’t JUST about that. YOU and LBascom and others are changing it, ontologically. From something wonderful into incubators. People reject that, generally. For the larger perception, letting gays marry is a no-brainer. And I use that because being heterosexual is a no-brainer. You never even thought about it until you found out that there were others not like you and then…well, us vs them.
Yea, that is the price for liberty, people will make bad choices. And the only way to prevent people from making bad choices is the eliminate choice. So, freedom is messy. Liberty is not a nice clean path from A to Z. People have free will. People are sovereign.
And yes, freedom is a bitch. Tracy’s first rule: Always act in your own best interest. Corollary: Every act has consequences and you own them ALL. Consequence is the result of responsibility is the burden of freedom.
There you go again. Faulting me for not taking note of a comment you hadn’t yet made.
Besides, what makes you think moral decline isn’t upstream from political and economic decline?
that’s not the point the point is that Team R is depraved and devoid of any and all moral authority
it can’t play in the moral decline sandbox cause of it’ll get ringworm
Ernst: “Men and women are not fungible, despite what the sexuality-is-on-a-spectrum genderists would have you believe. ”
Yes, because Jenner is a perfect example of manhood….and Hillary a good example of womanhood….
Maybe this won’t make sense….but two lesbians are not two women marrying, nor are gays two men marrying – using, I think, what would be your characterization of women or men. Not that I’m clear on those except on the ‘insert tab A into slot B’ focus you seem to have. The dynamics of those relationships, well, that apparently is irrelevant to you…nevermind.
i’m sick to death of looking at the picture of that tranny whore
So what you’re telling me is my problem with Bruce Jenner is that he’s a woman?
That’s how little sense you’re making to me right now.
Marriage is what it is. Calling something that’s not marriage “marriage” doesn’t make it so.
Kind of like how everyone going along with Bruce Jenner’s pretence that he’s a woman named Caitlyn doesn’t change the fact that he’s a man, and will always be a man, no matter how much surgery, hormone therapy, make-up etc. he employs while he pretends to be a woman.
Ernst: actually, I was probably faulting you for skipping something I had already said in your rush to keep up.
No, I had to be VERY specific because failure to include a word you find vitally important that I think is redundant, to you means that I am not actually agreeing with you, in the general.
Getting me to agree that marriage and family have been fundamental to society for thousands of years (they HAVE) does NOT make your argument against same sex marriage. It is saying we can’t go to the moon because we can’t fly.
yeah they’re not very logical sometimes
Ernst: no, your problem with Jenner is that is he not acting like a MAN.
“Marriage is what it is.” Except we haven’t agreed on that from the start. I assume you agree with LBascom that marriage’s purpose is reproduction. Or all about r…wait, let me go get it….so I can’t be accused of twisting…
LBascom: “Tracy. That’s very romantical, and a wonderful ideal for how marriage should be, but none of those things is what marriage is. It IS about reproduction, sorry.
And no, you don’t have to have kids to be married, and you don’t have to get married to have kids, but that is, nevertheless, the whole purpose of marriage. Marriage isn’t for to give you prestige in the community, it is to give humans family. – See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=56940#comment-1246974
“..the whole purpose of marriage.”
You and LBascom focus on a piece, a BIG piece, but not the only piece and that is my issue. And because that is all you focus on, anything that impinges on that is a violation. You are of course free to argue and fight to for that position – as sovereigns and as participants in the community.
As to the specifics of Jenners transformation and the process, you have made the point clear that he is not acting like a MAN, so he is ‘them’ and to be shunned in toto. Every aspect of that issue is irrelevant to you. Fine. It’s not like he is knocking on your door looking for a cup of sugar…
And I am sure everyone here just sits and waits for their copy of Vanity Fair every month!!!!
Reproduction in the context I was trying to convey , meant the reproduction of mature humans and the species as a whole. From “I do (agree to join our two families together)” to watching your grandchild marry. The time spent in actual animal copulation is really quite insignificant compared to the project as a whole.
I think things got fuzzy when the definition was accepted as “one man one woman”. That is a requirement, not a definition. The definition I see is more like “the uniting of two blood lines into one (extended) family”.
Now again, you don’t have to have a kid to enter into that agreement, But the purpose of marriage is to facilitate reproduction of a very complex species.
Of course you can have kids without marriage, huge numbers are these days. See where that’s getting us?
Nobody cares Jenner wants to be a woman.
It’s like how I’m not a fan of tattoos, but when I’m around someone that has them it doesn’t bother me, I don’t judge ( though I do wonder what makes a person do that to themselves). Jenner is like the person that covers themselves with tattoos so he can join the
circusHollywood freak show and make a spectacle of himself to adoring weird fans.Free to do it, but I do judge that person a little. Sue me.
Oh shit, I shouldn’t give ideas…
I judge people a lot. I don’t care that Jenner is transitioning, I care about HOW s/he is doing it. Like gay pride parades. I have said for years that they do far more damage to the gay community than any one other thing. Gays spend 360 days trying to tell people they are ‘normal’ then we get a weekend of gay pride parades showing everything BUT normal….Hugely damaging…s/he will be no different to that community.
The difference with my judgment is that it doesn’t change how I act: I still respect people. To those that can’t even respect themselves, I leave them to it – that is their choice and the consequences are not my concern. As long as it doesn’t threaten me or my community, I don’t care.
Like I said, you’re obliged to, supporter of non-traditional marriage as you are.
A hot air balloon will fly, but it won’t get you to the moon. (Offered in the spirit of Jeff’s how we get there matters)
That’s more you’re problem than mine since you’re the one arguing for its redefinition.
My problem is he’s acting like a man publically pretending to be a woman. And because of the crisis in clear thinking in the country, people are going to pretend that he is a woman, some because they want to, others because they’re afraid not to, lest they run afoul of the enforcers of the new anti-judgement morality. Pretence and non-judgementalism are no way to run a functional society.
(Neat trick by the way, recasting my words into a negative construction –he’s NOT acting like a man. Elides the whole ssm is a pretence of marriage analogy.)
But Gallup says that only 3.8 percent of the population identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender. This suggests to me that the number of people who identify as “pangender” or “two-spirit” is vanishingly small. Obviously, being a minority doesn’t mean you are unequal in the eyes of the law or don’t have rights. “One with the law on his side is a majority” and all that. But we’re also talking about the culture. And can anyone really dispute that there’s some asymmetry here? Huge, vital, institutions — including the English language — are being assaulted intolerantly in the name of tolerance ostensibly for the benefit of a group of people who’d have a very hard time filling a decent-sized football stadium.*
LBascom: Nature does not require that all members of a species procreate, only that sufficient of them do to maintain the populations in balance with the rest. That is the ‘natural law’. Marriage is an institution, it is not nature. Nature will win out – humans will reproduce. Families will continue to exist – in all the best ways, the Duggars represent that. I respect them a hell of a lot more than the ‘sister wives’ that use state handouts to support themselves (though I don’t know if that continues to be an issue now that they left Utah).
LBascom: “The definition I see is more like “the uniting of two blood lines into one (extended) family”.
Now again, you don’t have to have a kid to enter into that agreement, But the purpose of marriage is to facilitate reproduction of a very complex species. Of course you can have kids without marriage, huge numbers are these days. See where that’s getting us?”
You are still looking at it from one perspective. If the purpose is to raise children well (because the ‘animal copulation part is really quite insignificant part’ – by that I think you mean time wise), then efforts to raise children in a marriage should be supported…even if they are raised Hindu or Moslem?…or with gay parents. Almost 100% of children raised by gays are straight. Darleen notes, better a two parent family than a no or one parent one…even if the two parent isn’t (and most aren’t) perfect.
tranny science says for every tranny you see there’s like dozens laying eggs in the walls
Darleen: one out of 100,000. Five times more rare than albinos. In the interview, they said 45% commit suicide – the number that try is closer to 80%. Jenner will not help…
Ernst: what part of what he is doing is acting like a man?
Ernst: “That’s more you’re problem than mine since you’re the one arguing for its redefinition.”
LBascom: “I think things got fuzzy when the definition was accepted as “one man one woman”. That is a requirement, not a definition. The definition I see is more like “the uniting of two blood lines into one (extended) family”. ”
My definition includes traditional families, even traditional couples without offspring. I’m opening the requirement, not changing the definition.. But, that is my narcissism talking…..
Who the hell called you narcissist? I don’t think anyone still talking to you, so enough with the victomology already.
Also, there is no such thing as “gay parents”. At best you got “a couple of people raising a child together”.
LBascom:
Bob Belvedere says June 3, 2015 at 6:32 pm
Your deranged Narcissism, Tracy, is becoming boring.
– See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=56940#comment-1247009
LBascom: “Also, there is no such thing as “gay parents”. At best you got “a couple of people raising a child together”.
A statement without proof, where the proof to the contrary is legion. (yea…..I know….)
Gee, I get accused of something, embrace it and get accused of victim whining….no winning….or whining.
You know, I think Jeff might have been on to something with his crazy theories on language.
The proggs hyphenated “parents” so they can be that too. Just not like “BIO- parents”, but still parents. Now it’s hyphenated marriage so they can further deconstruct reality.
Learn more!! At the PROTEIN WISDOM archives!!!
Often, but not always, children in gay families have the genetics of at least one of the parents, usually the mother. Kinda like step kids. But adopted kids often don’t share any genetics. So those aren’t ‘real’…sorry, traditional parents, right? Just picking up someone elses screw up….
I used parents but should have said ‘traditional families’, which of course they are not. But we accept them as families without demonization.
Why did you call them adopted kids instead of just kids? Because they are the same? Doesn’t mean they can’t be treated as their own kids. But how any adopted kids want to find their real parents?
That was a rhetorical question.
tracy
adopted kids (speaking generally here) do love and honor their parents while still being curious about their “bio” parents. They want their history, good/bad/indifferent and, if possible, at least get in touch with the bio parents.
This isn’t a slam or a dishonoring of their adoptive parents. It is just part of human nature when wondering “where did I come from?”
A lot of adopted kids, like children of gay parents, will not express this desire least they upset the beloved person(s) who raised them.
This is why you see a lot of open or contact adoptions where the bio-parent may not be taking part in the decision making of their child’s life but does have contact & the kids knows. We’ve had decades of experience that closed/secret adoptions don’t “protect” the child at all, but are more in the interests of the adults involved.
Gay parents don’t have the luxury of secrecy because the fact of reproduction becomes evident at a very early age to kids.
I think I linked above about the child of a lesbian relationship who loves with all her heart her mother’s partner, but yearned desperately to know her dad.
I recall (but can’t find the link) an article by a gay man who actually realized his child was hurting emotionally because mom was not in his life.
Ernst talked about herd immunity above, and that is what state privileging of marriage is. It sets an ideal that then has a multiplier effect on the rest of the community.
You’re right, marriage is not of nature, but an institution. An institution that has been formalized, first by religion then by the state, to strengthen and set standards for the ideal.
The military is an institution that protects and shelters the community. It has standards and an ideal and those that can meet it have a multiplier protection effect that allows the rest of the community to prosper.
What if we banned the formal military, just allowed people to show up at their leisure when a crisis arose? Would they be effective personnel to protect the country? Some would, most wouldn’t.
So why define away an institution as important as marriage?
oh my goodness i have zero desire to meet my bio people oh gosh that is SO not keeping it simple
zero
i knew this one girl back in the day at this internet company i worked for what had really huge breasts and she was kinda awesome and then her bio mom shows up and she’s just so dowdy and common and the breasty chick is carting this simpleton all over the office and I’m like oh god please let this NEVER happen to me ever my whole life
plus my mom and dad were neato mosquito times like a thousand
If this was a classroom setting, I’d have bounced my pen off the desk in frustration.
This is what happens when people can’t think clearly because people can’t organize their knowledge around clear categories.
He IS a man. Objectively. Ontologicaly. XY chromosome-ally. The male sex of the human species. Why would anyone think he’s anything but?
Notice is hereby served that for the remainder of this discussion, when I answer one of Tracy’s questions with a question, that’s me rolling my eyes at her.
Actually that’s her solipsism talking. She thinks she can change the definition because that’s what her (subjective) experience tells her. Presumably the rest of the human race, living, dead or yet to be born can sod off.
LBascom: because they are adopted. CJ is adopted and has known since she could notice. Victoria and I have said to her that if she wants to seek out her biological parents, we would be ok – her response: “they threw me away, why would I want to?” She is curious about her medical and genetic history and we have been asked, unofficially: would you allow the Chinese government access to her genetic profile for purpose of determining medical issues. We have said yes. CJ has said YES! CJ laments not having sibs.
Darleen: “You’re right, marriage is not of nature, but an institution. An institution that has been formalized, first by religion then by the state, to strengthen and set standards for the ideal.”
And without calling the institution into repute, or to set upon it’s destruction, without stating the ideal is fictionalized and no longer relevant, open the door….
But….you can’t without feeling you betrayed it. This isn’t about marriage, it is about homosexuality.
We didn’t have a formal military in the beginning. Every man was expected to have at least one gun and ammunition for it and expected to respond when called. I hope that every man on your side of this fight has responded and served. I don’t hold it against anyone that hasn’t. But, I note it.
It is not defining it away. But nothing I say seems to move anyone from that point. The only movement I got this time is that marriage is about procreation. Even when there is plenty of evidence that it is not….only.
If you fight for the ideal traditional family, and none else can be called or participate in traditional marriage, then all those that don’t fit are relegated to second class status, specifically the bastards. But CURRENT society doesn’t want to marginalize less than the ideal.
Which is better?
It occurs to me that we could also frame it in terms of moral capital. In which case, we’ve happily debased the currency.
Which is better? And your answer is no ideal then?
That will turn out fine I’m sure.
Tell you all what, I will support garriage if adultery becomes a felony punished by 3 years minimum in jail.
hello failmerica is broke you can’t afford to put any more people in jail
cause you broke
you know how much it costs to pay the pension of a tatted-up pig-ignorant union-thug failmerican prison guard?
more than your shitty little country can afford i promise you that
True, but in the long run there will be less adultery resulting in stronger marriages and fewer criminals.
Oh, I forgot, we would also need to bring back slut shaming for unwed mothers and their worthless baby daddies.
slut shaming is thirsty work my friend
I’m guessing you’re unaware that not only is the United States Army older than the Republic, but instituted to bring order to the informal ad hoc arrangements among the various New England militias.
Kind of takes the snide out of your snark at the end there, huh?.
This isn’t about marriage, it is about homosexuality.
BS and you know it. Unworthy of you.
then all those that don’t fit are relegated to second class status, specifically the bastards –
Is everyone that didn’t medal in the Olympics “second class”? People who have never served in the military? Have we completely done away with grades in schools?
Stop being ridiculous, setting standards does not make everyone who can’t meet those standards “second class” therefore lets get rid of standards!
I want my home built by people who meet the standards of “architect” and “master carpenter” and “electrician” and “plumber” … not someone who learned to hammer a nail yesterday. Let that latter guy doing something else he is qualified for, like coding a computer or cooking a gourmet meal.
Our differences do not make us better or worse then the next guy…just DIFFERENT.
the olympics are even gayer than gay marriage
the olympics are ineffably gay
i do not know how to say
blew the html there. sorry. The question at the end shouldn’t be blockquoted.
Also, Darleen is incorrect about marriage not being natural. Marriage is both natural and institutionalized. The institution exists to protect the natural union. The proof that it’s natural is that, to the best of my knowledge, all early forms of social organization are pretend forms of the family writ ever larger (family, extended family (aka kin-group) clan, tribe and so forth).
Now, if marriage was man made, (like say, football) we could change it.
Fortunately for football, we still take that seriously.
Hey, I didn’t say the slut shaming would be easy, but you were the one complaining about full prisons.
We could start easy by doing away with welfare debit cards and replacing them with little stamps they could only used for essentials, a little humility while taking from the public dole is a proper thing in my estimation.
Isn’t that why we need a handicapper in chief?
That could only be used for essentials…
Good grief!
ebt cards are of the devil
i’ve always known this, but i did nothing to stop it
Ernst: If this were a classroom setting I’d have given you a D for comprehension.
You said he was a man acting like a woman. Yea. Got that. I said your problem was he was not acting like a man.
Generally, not acting like a man = acting like a woman. So, your problem is that people are pretending he really is a woman? I don’t think anyone actually THINKS he is a woman. There might be a few morons…but can we exclude them?
Who cares? If he wants to prance and other people want to applaud. I don’t like going to the circus either. I don’t get all out of sorts when it comes to town. If I spent time pointing out stupid, I’d be doing nothing else.
Ernst: “Actually that’s her solipsism talking. She thinks she can change the definition because that’s what her (subjective) experience tells her”
You love making that accusation! I don’t think “I” can change the definition, I note it has been done around you. Traditional families have existed for human history. Now we have humans raising children but they don’t look exactly like traditional families. So, despite having vast quantities……
ok, I got a phone call and lost my train of thought…CJ has been admitted to the Econ program at the University of California Santa Barbara YYYAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
where was I………We don’t just have traditional families, and if it is important to support families, you can either embrace the newer cousins or keep them out of the institution you want to keep. If marriage and family is important, then it should be. Otherwise, you are saying they are already lost and damaged, don’t bring them around here…
The institution exists to protect the natural union.
You’re right, Ernst, I was imprecise. Even the hated “gender roles” arose out of the natural biological functions of the sexes. Doesn’t invalidate them per se because they were ‘manufactured’, they are a logical consequence of biology.
CJ has been admitted to the Econ program at the University of California Santa Barbara
Congrats!
LBascom: I’m happy to promote the ideal! I think traditional families are great! From almost every view, families are less prone to all kinds of bad things, and children of traditional families do better. Except, lots of traditional families are broken, abusive and terrible. But you want to defend them just as well as those that work well. You want to defend the good and bad traditional families, I only want to defend the good non-traditional ones and if I could, get them the same protection you want to offer bad traditional families.
LBascom: “I will support garriage if adultery becomes a felony punished by 3 years minimum in jail.”
Works for me. Can we start retroactively with the supposed GOP leadership? Show we’re serious about it?
Twitter for Bastards. Pedophiles can get life sentences.
I missed this comment from Tracy earlier:
You’re right. It doesn’t. Assuming he’s still married, is “Caitlyn” Jenner in a lesbian marriage now? If “two lesbians are not two women marrying” what are they then? A cat and a dog? two goldfish? a fish and a bicycle? (sorry –couldn’t resist)
Now, I suppose you could have assumed that I was using marriage as a synonym for coitus, but that’s not the case. And I don’t have to characterize men and women. Men and women just are. It’s one of those externalities that you can’t just subjectively wish away because you feel differently.
This again is what I mean when I say we can’t reason logically (“think clearly”) because we don’t have any defined limits to our conceptual categories anymore.
That didn’t happen by accident, by the way.
Happyfeet, I understand. One has to prioritize, and sometimes “change” is inevitable when public unions set their minds to something transformitive*.
*meaning more government involvement required.
Tracy, I said what I said the way I said it because that’s the way I meant it. Don’t put your words in my mouth and then tell me I don’t comprehend what I’m saying.
Assuming you could train a cat to bark, would that make him a dog?
lots of traditional families are broken, abusive and terrible. But you want to defend them just as well as those that work well
Please link anywhere where I said I wanted to defend dysfunctional families. I’ll wait.
Bad drivers isn’t an argument for banning cars.
Ok Tracy, when adultery is a punishable offense, I’ll back your play.
I doubt there will still be interest on the gay community, but I’ll support the idea if you still want to press it.
i just think we’re in a terrible pickle and you people get all hung up on the gay marriage when there’s a whole lot more better things to worry about
but they knew you would
Until the day before yesterday those non-traditional families modelled the traditional family. If Heather has two mommies, she doesn’t have a daddy, does she? Sure, there’s sperm donor out there somewhere….
(Stolen base in bold emphasis)
How do you tell the good from the bad? What criteria do you have that are objective?
Seriously, how do you as an outsider judge the dynamics internal to another’s relationship. If you think Lee and/or I are prejudiced against homosexuals, how are you not prejudiced against pedophiles?
These questions become important when you prioritize the subjective.
“Bad drivers isn’t an argument for
banning carsgiving drivers licenses to horse riders”.Well, they are both being transported, am I right?
Happyfeet, I know huh? It’s almost like the people pushing, pushing, pushing for garriage don’t have the countries best interests at heart.
Ernst: “I’m guessing you’re unaware that not only is the United States Army older than the Republic, but instituted to bring order to the informal ad hoc arrangements among the various New England militias.”
So, in the beginning we didn’t have a formal army, every man was part of various adhoc NE militias….? And by older, you mean months….1775. Interesting use of ‘the Republic’ because we were first a Confederacy. But my comment stands, as supported by your attempt to refute.
I think I gave my ‘concept’ of what marriage was, and two really close friends living under the same roof were called spinsters …..oh, sorry, wrong era. I’d call them roommates. Probably what they would call themselves too.
Darleen: you don’t ‘win’ or work your way into being a woman (despite Jenner’s comments). So, being a gay family isn’t the same as taking second place in a race. We are talking characteristic not accomplishment.
And knowing you, I doubt you will think any less of a Master Carpenter or Architect who happens to be gay.
LBascom: I don’t mind full prisons, I’d like to own one someday.
I want a new sausage.
One that don’t drip grease
One that ain’t full of gristle and grain
One that don’t make me poop like geese
I want a new link
One that tastes like meat!
One that sizzles on a ‘lectric grill
And makes glad its a thing you’d eat
Ernst: Aren’t you the one that said men and women aren’t fungible? Therefore there must be characteristics they don’t share. Obviously there are physical characteristics that are different, ie tab A into slot B, but I got the impression there was more to it than that. Otherwise, I could substitute a woman for a man and a man for a woman and we’d still have the same traditional family. Yea…I’m being just a bit ….
Again, you dismiss a need to provide detail saying only I am required to do so – even when that detail might be useful.
I didn’t assume you were using marriage as a synonym for coitus, I assumed you were using it for reproduction like LBascom.
Darleen: Thank you!!!! VERY EXCITED!!! She has been practically walking around in sack cloth throwing ashes over her head… I’M VERY HAPPY AND PROUD!!!!
i want Tom Petty to write a song for caitlyn
i want Tom Petty to write a song for caitlyn NOW
chop chop Tom
i smell grammy
is he still alive?
Darleen: “Please link anywhere where I said I wanted to defend dysfunctional families. I’ll wait. Bad drivers isn’t an argument for banning cars.”
No, bad drivers are an argument for banning bad drivers. If there are dysfunctional families, do you seek to intervene? Do you ask others or government to do it? I am not talking about the thousands of people jailed for physically abusing (but who sometimes end up back in the same house). We don’t license traditional parents. V and I were licensed/approved. I have never heard you specifically defend, but I certainly don’t recall you ever suggesting removing children from all dysfunctional families. Because even bad biological parents are better than any alternative?
LBascom: if you think adultery is a bad thing, why wait for me….why bother waiting for gay marriage. Just go for it dude!
Ernst: “Seriously, how do you as an outsider judge the dynamics internal to another’s relationship. ”
Hmmm. You do it by looking at the people and say one of them has the wrong sex – this is bad.
The point is, the dynamics inside a gay relationship is no less complex for having two people of the same sex and they both have as much diversity between them as many, maybe most, opposite sex relationships. I’ve been there, seen it. Yes, it is my experience, and the view from watching dozens more across race, ethnic and economic cohorts. I’ve seen couples I wouldn’t let pet sit a dog, let alone try raising a child. Gay and straight. Maybe you don’t know any such, maybe you have never seen a long term same sex relationship up close. I don’t know….I don’t think it has had any impact on you if you have. But, as I said, I don’t know what you think is important in men and women and what range of expectations you have for each of their behaviors. I know a surfer dude married to a biker chick. I wouldn’t let him near electrical outlets while holding a screw driver. But DAMN that man can cook.
if we can but defeat the gay marriage, the republic – we can save it!
lol
failmerican losershit you make me sick to where i bought extra robots for my floors
Ernst: “how are you not prejudiced against pedophiles?”
I am. Against adulterers too. Thieves, rapists, physical abusers, emotional abusers. Most politicians. Moslems. Oligarchs. I don’t like slow drivers either.
If there are dysfunctional families, do you seek to intervene?
If their dysfunction rises to criminality, of course. Physical abuse, criminal neglect – yes yes yes.
Not me, I don’t like full prisons. We have way too big of a prison population because we don’t apply justice, we apply the system.
Prison should be harsh and undesirable to the extreme, that is the best rehabilitation. Death row should be a ghost town. Ten years or three failed reviews, whichever comes first.
An additional felony while in prison (rape for instance) results in immediate transfer to death row.
Plea bargains available to the DA only if all redundant charges are dropped.
Illegal aliens deported on arrest.
Pedophiles get lengthy prison sentences and lifetime parol, repeat offenders go to death row.
Drug dealers get sent to prison, maybe five years. Third offenders go to death row.
users get sent to an actual rehabilitation camp, which feels like a prison to the junkies but isn’t really because it has a different purpose, ie rehabilitation instead of punishment. It may look like a prison, it may feel like a prison, but it’s not a prison.
I got all kinda ideas. I should write a book.
I did provide detail. You dismissed it as “peanut butter.”
Which is ironic since, from what I can tell, marriage, house mates, close friends etc. are all “sandwich spreads,” in your taxonomy (such as it is) and the “good ones” (whatever that means) are pretty much interchangeable. So mayonaisse is nutella I guess.
I am
That’s judgey of you. What happened to the sovereign individual?
Darleen: so does raising ignorant lazy moochers count? Probably not. So, short of criminality, dysfunctional is…?
or is it only when it rises to criminality that we can call them dsyfunctional?
Master Carpenter or Architect who happens to be gay. –
Being gay is just a characteristic like colorblindness or lefthandedness or melanin levels.
The difference between the sexes is fundamental.
fundapickles
Homosexuality is a choice. Like alcoholism, gambling, renting prostitutes. That is, it’s something a person has a choice in practicing.
Ernst: you mean the slippery slope argument. That was your description?
“My guess is that the end result of gay marriage will either be first the return of polygamous marriage, and then the end of marriage (hello Brave New World, or it will be the revenge of Teh Patriarchy (hello Mad Max). ”
or
“How do you tell the good from the bad? What criteria do you have that are objective?
Seriously, how do you as an outsider judge the dynamics internal to another’s relationship.
Peanut butter = ‘you have the right to marry any man, just like any other woman’ argument.
So, I am not sure what you think a marriage is, besides procreation. Raising children. And all the non-children raising marriages are? Marriages because they COULD? See…..sorry, density….
Darleen: I was probably thinking about this: “How about this, normalizing perversion doesn’t
lessen the perversion, it expands it. – See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=56940#comment-1247120“
Ernst: “That’s judgey of you. What happened to the sovereign individual?”
Still there! Making choices, facing consequences. Some of those consequences involve jail time, community shunning, people judging them. Just because we/they have free will does not mean a free pass.
Darleen: “The difference between the sexes is fundamental.” So a Master Carpenter or Architect that is female is…
meaningful or meaningless?
LBascom: “Homosexuality is a choice. Like alcoholism, gambling, renting prostitutes. That is, it’s something a person has a choice in practicing.”
Heterosexuality is a choice. Like alcoholism, gambling, renting prostitutes. That is, it’s something a person has a choice in practicing.
We’re on the same page even if reading different passages…..in different languages…..
> dysfunctional is…?<
trying too reinvent the wheel as a square object.
>Heterosexuality is a choice<
you're so anti darwin. do you do creationism also?
Hetro is a choice! I could choose to not practice it. Like a Catholic priest. Be all asexual and junk. Or maybe just not date, resist sex outside of a marriage like I did before I got remarried. Damn! I forgot. I can’t not be hetro NOW, my wife wouldn’t allow it.
Never mind.
>We’re on the same page even if reading different passages…..in different languages….. <
no you are kind of stupid about biology 101 high school
Except when it comes to you and how you want to live your life. Then we need to redefine marriage because you think you’re married and you want recognition for that.
Slippery slope, declining moral capital, increasing moral hazard, seems to me that’s the context in which the debate over gay marriage is taking place.
Not sure if you’re saying that the objective criteria of (a) man and (a) woman in conjugal union is bad, or if I personally am bad for “looking at people and say[ing] one of them has the wrong sex[.]” Anyways, if I see two guys walking down the street, I think, “two guys.” I don’t waste any thought on whether they’re a couple or not.
Actually the point was that the quality of a thing is not the thing itself, therefor all your protestations about meaningful relationships and doing less to defend bad relationships or doing more to promote good relationships are irrelevant, because your definition of marriage prioritizes the ancillary goods of the conjugal union over the essential ones.
A homosexual couple could have the best relationship and a heterosexual one could have the worst marriage, and the latter are still married while the former are not, however much they (and you) want them to be. Kind of like how no matter how hard Bruce tries to act like a woman, he’ll never be a woman.
Finally, and why all this matters, is that today’s subjective appeal to redefine marriage to include homosexuals (sex of the persons in the marriage is arbitrary and irrelevant) is the basis for tomorrow’s sujective appeal to redefine marriage to include polygamists (number of the persons is arbitrary and irrelevant) and the day after tomorrow’s subjective appeal to include pedophiles (age of the persons is arbitrary and irrelevant). And frankly, by historical criteria as well as your previous appeal to evolving community standards, the case for polygamy and child brides (grooms too in our becoming brave new world, I suppose) is stronger than the case for two homosexuals to marry.
I think that’s (finally) all for me. Thanks for the education in Promethean neo-Pelagianism. I finally get what that means.
>I think that’s (finally) all for me>
arguing with “religious nuts” is tiring. you go proggtard grrl.
oh tracy
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
Ernst: “Except when it comes to you and how you want to live your life.”
I get to make choices, face consequences. It doesn’t mean that I have accept the status quo, even if others are perfectly happy with it. I can work to change it. I have. You can work to stop change. That tension in the community. I WILL live my life the way that I want to and accept the consequences for doing so.
I was married. V, we exchanged rings, said vows. Whether you or the State recognized it was irrelevant. No one was around but us, but I kept and honored those vows til the end and beyond. I didn’t give a shit that others had problems with it. But it is a fight worth having. I’m willing to stand up for my principles and defend them.
Ernst: “Slippery slope, declining moral capital, increasing moral hazard, seems to me that’s the context in which the debate over gay marriage is taking place. ”
The rot and decay set in long before 2000. I’ve been hearing that conservatives outnumber liberals for 10 years. Sounds to me like whining about the Left when large chunks of the Right are perfectly happy with tacit approval or casual indifference.
Ernst: I was saying that you look at a gay couple and note that one is the wrong sex to have a marriage, that there is only one sex involved is bad – that is a judgment that you make about a relationship knowing nothing more than the sex of the people involved. As to walking down a street, most people don’t care about someone walking down the street. You obviously care about those two people seeking a wedding license, you’ve given that some thought. If not, well then…casual indifference…
Ernst: “because your definition of marriage prioritizes the ancillary goods of the conjugal union over the essential ones. ”
Because I think all those ancillary things are necessary before you get to the procreation part, if you want to have a snowball’s chance in hell of raising children well. If all those other interactions between the parents suck, the rest is just disaster getting baked in.
Ernst: “the latter are still married while the former are not, however much they (and you) want them to be. Kind of like how no matter how hard Bruce tries to act like a woman, he’ll never be a woman”
Marriage is not intrinsic to a heterosexual couple. Being a family is not intrinsic to a couple with a child. Marriage is not ‘one man, one woman’. It is not [just] about reproduction. I actually think you know that. I hope so….
That is pretty funny! I think you were better served by the accusation of solipsism. It at least had the benefit of acknowledging that I recognize my experience as valid datum. Your dismissal of anything that suggests I understand the experiences of anyone else suggests that you dismiss my experience as valid datum for yourself. Old saying: experience comes from making mistakes, wisdom comes from learning from others experience. I see the world as it is, rather than as I want it to be, or as I think it should be. I’m sovereign, so are you. Nothing I consider valid for myself is invalid for you. Again, that doesn’t mean I can’t work to change it. There is no perfection here, the community will have tension as long as it contains two people that don’t want exactly the same thing. Unlike the Left, there is no utopia, there is no, if the right people were in charge, that can exist. But change is inevitable
I wonder how long there were Angels before there were humans? They probably though things that had gone on for thousands of years, even tens of thousands meant that they would always go on that way…
Oh, why it is funny. Given that the Pope was speaking to the Priesthood, (yes, the whole thing is to everyone IN the Church), it seems that if you were intending to label me as a proponent, I am outside the Church and specific aspects of Grace are irrelevant to me (from my ….my point of view). Of course, you might have been applying the label to yourself, in which the idea that you adhere to things as old as humanity, or at least as old as the Church as a condemnation….neither made lots of sense. So, while you are gone, I am left to wonder. Do you see me as a gnostic? Which would be interesting and probably consistent with your solipsism accusation. I think I’ve offered sufficient evidence to the contrary, but I doubt there is enough evidence in my life to refute it to your satisfaction. If you don’t, consider me a gnostic, that leaves pelagianist. Works without faith is dead…no, the other way, faith without works is dead….I don’t have faith, so the works part is irrelevant. But I do believe in an afterlife…but I don’t think that has ever come up here before, so that is not it.
Maybe what Pope Francis said later is more appropriate:
“A supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline leads instead to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying.”
While the narcissism might be applicable to me, the rest looks much better for you!
But maybe it wasn’t about labeling either of us and it was just about spending more time doing works rather than devotion. In which case it seems a self accusation. I hope not. I wouldn’t be laughing at that…..
If you don’t give a shit about Jenner, or don’t care to learn anything, ignore the rest. I hate bringing up bad memories, but consider this a teaching moment….second…
Transsexualism is a condition in which a person’s internal self-image is incongruous with their physical body. In most cases the internal confusion is expressed at a very early age, usually before 4. (My experience with anyone suggesting it happened much later have issues unrelated to transsexualism that they are self-misdiagnosing.)
Until the age of 8-10, there may be few apparent behavioral issues except a general preference for perceived opposite sex preferences – boys playing with dolls is the common but not very useful example, girls being more into roughhousing is another. As puberty begins, the incongruity along with the physical changes create extreme emotional and psychological stress. Upwards of 60% attempt self medication via drugs or alcohol after finding no support within family or medical environments. By 18, more than 50% have attempted suicide. Adulthood doesn’t make it any better. Most end up in marginalized segments of society where abuse is rampant and drug and alcohol addiction can hit 80%. By 30, the number that attempt suicide approaches 2/3.
Until the late 1970’s there were few programs and fewer psychologists with experience. Stanford had a program here in California. Most large medical centers with teaching hospitals had some program by 1990. There are criteria, Jenner alluded to them in the interview. In order for someone to have surgery to change their external appearance they are required to have two certifications from clinical psychologists or psychiatrists with experience in the field, one of which has to have had regular therapy sessions for at least a year. In addition, the person must live in the gender of choice 24/7 for at least a year. Many run afoul of the legal system during this time. Going to jail, getting a job, keeping a job, are all issues as few medical insurance policies cover any expenses. Hence the continuing and growing drug, alcohol, marginalization, suicide issues.
Those certifications can’t happen until that year of real life living have occurred – Jenner said he already had them. Further, there is no reason to have them unless surgery is the plan. his suggestion that he hadn’t already made the decision to go for surgery is therefore a lie. Which is why I continue to use the male pronoun.
Surgery is not always the panacea some think it will be. Some regret and try to reverse what is for all practical purposes irreversible. They often commit suicide within a couple years. Many gays think it is a solution for themselves. It usually is a disaster they rebound from shortly after beginning any part of transition.
It is rare, one in 100,000. Surgeons and hospitals are few, they are expensive. The process has lots of pitfalls.
Jenner is going to do more harm than good.
I’ve been hearing that conservatives outnumber liberals for 10 years. Sounds to me like whining about the Left when large chunks of the Right are perfectly happy with tacit approval or casual indifference. –
a “get off my lawn” “leave me alone to live my life” hatred of politics conservatism which has always been the heart of Americanism is neither whining nor at all dominant at levers of government nor media-focused ‘culture’.
The Left has used the last 40-50 years to take over academia and media. Obama singles out by name FoxNews because even that moderately non-left outlet is conspicuous by its rarity and for the totalitarian Left it must be reviled and neutered.
Have you ever heard of a President single out any news media by name for derision? EVER??
With very few exceptions, the Left dominates and controls entertainment media. The Friends of Abe group members are confidential for a reason.
Music industry? Publishing?
The abject dominance is demonstrated by the howling whenever anyone challenges the Left hegemony — see the Hugos/Sad Puppies.
Jenner is just another brick in the wall. SSM is another brick in the wall. Sharpton’s calls to “federalize” local police, Pfleger’s demogaguing outside a gun store in Chicago to blame the NRA for “the murder of our children”, Obama’s push to make nice-nice with Iran while daring call himself the most Jewish of Presidents —
They are all bricks in the wall that is to be collapsed on America in the Left’s march to fundamentally transform it.
bonk bonk bonk go the bricks
right on you stupid failmerican heads
pro-tip: learn Mandarin
It’s a good point that, hf. Along with the language, it may be useful to learn to play Go (weiqi), if only to have a pass-time for the camps, where not for the purpose of understanding Han concepts of strategy. On the other hand, the Chinese have taken up an interest in the works of Leo Strauss, so we might take a cue from them about ourselves.
okey dokey i’m on the case
Possibly better than online, since face to face instruction, boards, playing pieces, etc.
“pro-tip: learn Mandarin”
I wouldn’t bother.
A huge surplus male population. A rapidly dropping population due to aging over the next 50 years. Pissing off asia including India to the point of probably starting a nuclear arms and naval race in the region. A long civil war disguised as a country. No common language. A two pronged monetary system designed to hid economic failure…Russia is getting pissy about their border. Iran is growing noisy about their border. Can’t shut down Baptist or Methodist “insurgency” as thy call it.
China is not heading to a nice place. It’s a bomb just like it was in the 80’s. Stop listening to the press.
ok this is not a fun game
oh that’s very accessible, that club
i bookmarked it
China has shiny buildings and trains that go woosh
pro-tip: learn Mandarin
IIRC the pro-tip was to learn Japanese in the early 80s cuz TAKEOVER
It probably never hurt anyone to learn another language, benefiting most who do. Nevertheless, Americans don’t seem to have that desire, or do they? Wonder whether that phenomenon has anything to do with a decline into retardation in a formerly robust American academy? nah, surely not. Maybe making new languages is the sufficient replacement for learning established languages?
i really believe my efforts will be more better rewarded if i focus on learning english more better
sometimes i feel like I’m thisclose to really grasping it
Some teachers think that learning languages other than one’s own is helpful for the porpoise (so long and thanks for all the fish!) of better grasping one’s own. But then, they’re touting their own book.
yes yes because there are so many englishes to learn
Mandarin is a bitch to learn I hear. The written form worse. I think that’s why Asians do so well in school, after learning to be literate, astrophysics is a breeze
I really should learn Spanish, do those Rosetta Stone thingers really work?
Americans don’t seem to have that desire, or do they?
It has nothing to do with either laziness nor desire, just circumstance.
In order to be bi-lingual (or tri or more) you have to be exposed and practice the language every day. Unless you’re in a place you can do that, or its your job, you just aren’t going to speak more than the language you’re surrounded in.
You can dump all of Europe into the United States with room to spare… if all the eastcoast states (which are small and people cross multiple times in a week for work or vacation) spoke different languages, by necessity people there would speak multiple languages.
A friend suggested watching Telamundo TV.
Americans are lazy fucking moron losers. They can’t help it since that’s what they’ve been taught to be.
if mandarin is anything like this go business we’re doomed
what we need to do is drain these stupid great lake monstrosities to california
they need the water and we could build affordable housings on the reclaimed land and generate more property tax revenue for the ass-jacked failed citystate of chicago
plus it would reduce this ungodly fucking humidity jesus god america
that was definitely one thing i took for grantered about california
would someone please shove a dick in this communist hippie freak’s whore mouth
Darleen: “a “get off my lawn” “leave me alone to live my life” hatred of politics conservatism which has always been the heart of Americanism is neither whining nor at all dominant at levers of government nor media-focused ‘culture’.”
The responsibilities of an educated and informed citizenry do not allow the ‘leave me alone’ hatred of politics – it’s abdication of the responsibilities – one that I am very much guilty of until 2004.
Darleen: “The Left has used the last 40-50 years to take over academia and media ”
Because, again, the right ignored it or didn’t care, or didn’t want to fight, or seem cruel or dare I say stuck in the status quo. Instead of MAKING an argument in defense, it is you make an argument because you want to change it and then say ‘not enough’, except to the people watching, not involved, that only see one side of an argument and dismissal from the other side. Sorry, casual indifference. The take over of institutions happened under the noses of people that said, leave me alone to live my life. “History shows that….” change happens to those that sit by the fire and watch it…
Darleen: No, I watch as his wife complained of a “vast right wing conspiracy” and she was mocked, not refuted, not challenged.
As to the Hugos/Sad Puppies, Vox Day is shredding the Left with Rabid Puppies! Which by the way I cheer! He at least has thrown down the gauntlet and said, HERE, AND NO FURTHER. And he is doing it using their tactics, their rules. How many here have been called racist only to attack it (like Bill Whittle does) or in some other manner that shuts that shit down!? I have.
I can make the case for marriage to people on the Left, I can argue that the damage down by the welfare state is catastrophic to exactly the people it was supposed to help, I can argue that school, job, marriage THEN babies is the best way out of poverty. I can and do make that case. I don’t make it saying “History proves that….” or “it’s always been this way….” “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve….” god (small g intentional) what a pathetic approach.
Jenner is not a brick, Jenner is not even a toothpick. That interview and rollout was Hillary being ‘grilled’ on Benghazi by Stephie… He took no risk, he has all the money needed to live the rest of his life any way he wants, money to cover doctors. The ESPN stupidity…never mind. At least Vox Day is fighting back in his little corner.
Happyfeet. It’s your own fault because you didn’t do enough to defeat the AGW crowd. Now the zeitgeist has made AGM enevitiable change and your just going to have to accept hot and wet.
OWN it, fool!
Godspeed, alfiefoot.
Happyfeet, Thinking on it, you need not worry yourself over anything before 2004. Only your shirking of responsibility after that will be counted. Never mind about a century of Marxist philosophy, and decades of powerful environmental interests and lobbies setting the battle space for the great socialist scam (now) known as climate change. Or is it climate disruption now, hard to know. Anyway, you can take personal responsibility for allowing hot and humid like a good citizen and American, thank you very much…
climate change is not the boss of me
fuck the climate
and also please to fuck the racist texas coptrash
Yeah, and them Texas criminal trash too. Even those sneaky undocumented criminal peices of garbage. Fuck’em all.
Darn! I forgot to say racist. Now nobody will care about the criminal dust bunnies because I forgot to say racist.
Rookie mistake lee, geez!
The responsibilities of an educated and informed citizenry do not allow the ‘leave me alone’ hatred of politics – it’s abdication of the responsibilities
Really? An ACTUAL educated and informed citizenry respects their neighbors’ rights to tend to their own garden.
Mrs. Grundy with police powers is not the pinnacle of responsible government.
>The responsibilities of an educated and informed citizenry do not allow the ‘leave me alone’ hatred of politics – it’s abdication of the responsibilities>
when your fallback label for those who disagree is “hate****” i knows you’re a proggtarded loser.
Because, again, the right ignored it or didn’t care, or didn’t want to fight, or seem cruel or dare I say stuck in the status quo.
Same attitude that The West showed towards rampant Islamism, and for about the same amount of time. Does that make the resulting chaos any less dangerous or the consequent destruction any more pleasant?
Just because YOU want it to happen doesn’t mean that the unintended consequences won’t be unpleasant for all concerned. Including you and all you care for/about. And “But I didn’t mean it!” won’t be a good enough excuse.
I can make the case for marriage to people on the Left, I can argue that the damage down by the welfare state is catastrophic to exactly the people it was supposed to help, I can argue that school, job, marriage THEN babies is the best way out of poverty. I can and do make that case.
And yet all of the arguments made at the time “proving” that redistribution is the best way to accomplish the goals intended, compared with the results you are now railing against don’t faze you when it comes to people “proving” that SSM is the “best way” to accomplish whatever goals are being announced, never mind the slippery slope that is being pointed out by those who are leery of top-down forced solutions onto a society that doesn’t want them, and who were right about the slippery slope of government redistribution programs last time. Your argument seems to be “well, it’ll be DIFFERENT this time, because WE’RE the ones doing it”.
Appeals to authority don’t overcome the reality, and your only response is ““History proves that….” god (small g intentional) what a pathetic approach.”.
Pathetic you may think, but “in keeping with reality” is what counts.
Darleen: “Really? An ACTUAL educated and informed citizenry respects their neighbors’ rights to tend to their own garden.”
Yea, and then gets involved in the process so that their garden isn’t banned for having vegetables in it. Tend your garden. Pay attention to your government – your are its master and ignoring it is at your own peril.
LBascom: I caught that 2004 snark earlier….ignored it…but did see it. !
newrouter: “when your fallback label for those who disagree is “hate****” i knows you’re a proggtarded loser. ”
Hey newrouter, I didn’t use the word hate….just maybe you want to pay attention before running into the road like that….
Drumwaster: “Same attitude that The West showed towards rampant Islamism, and for about the same amount of time. Does that make the resulting chaos any less dangerous or the consequent destruction any more pleasant?”
Nope, doesn’t. Doesn’t change it either. Done is done, now deal. Took me til 2004 to wake up and pay attention. Don’t think anyone should have beat me to it, nor do I denigrate those that took to a different date – glad to have them on board NOW.
“Just because YOU want it to happen doesn’t mean that the unintended consequences won’t be unpleasant for all concerned. ”
I was in the Air Force in 1977-1981. I saw the rise of the Iran nightmare. I watched as our President dithered and rubbed his hands and turned loose upon the world a nightmare that most of us then said would bite us in the ass later. Obama has done no less in not one, not two, but four places and might have single handedly restarted not only the Cold War but sent the metal to rebuild a curtain.
“never mind the slippery slope that is being pointed out by those who are leery of top-down forced solutions onto a society that doesn’t want them ”
Part of a society that doesn’t want them. Part of a society doesn’t want guns in our hands either and they are wrong. You don’t get to stop people from making bad choices unless those choices can hurt YOU. Not some generation in the future, maybe. Otherwise, we should all be jumping up and down to get rid of carbon and slow the rise of the temperature. All the reasons for not having ssm are the reasons we claim society is breaking down….destroying marriage, destroying families. Use the straw to break the camels back or take it and make a brick to put back on the wall holding back the tide of liberalism.
No, my argument is the one YOU make: support families, support marriage. WTH.
I don’t appeal to authority, remember solipsism, narcissism. It’s all about ME!
““History proves that….”” is YOUR approach. Guess what, reality is that ssm will be the law in all but 1 or 2 states in less than 5 years.
And yes, polygamy is next because your non-arguments of ‘history…..’ and ‘examples…’ will be on the wrong side and of no value whatsoever.
Too bad you didn’t come up with something better….
>Hey newrouter, I didn’t use the word hate….just maybe you want to pay attention before running into the road like that…. <
lying liars who what lie/proggtarded
_tracycoyle says June 7, 2015 at 2:31 pm_
"The responsibilities of an educated and informed citizenry do not allow the ‘leave me alone’ hatred of politics – it’s abdication of the responsibilities ”
–
Nope, doesn’t. Doesn’t change it either. Done is done, now deal. – See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=56940#comment-1247403
The “dealing” is the current attempt to “live and let live”, with associated legislation, and when they are told that they will not be allowed to “live and let live”, but they MUST (on pain of loss of income and civil forfeitures, with potential criminal penalties on the horizon) openly and loudly encourage and patronize such things, their personal beliefs to the contrary notwithstanding, because their “constitutional right to marriage” (despite the fact that the word never appears, and the Ninth Amendment hasn’t been repealed) somehow overrides freedom of speech, religion and free association.
newrouter: doubling down!
a “get off my lawn” “leave me alone to live my life” hatred of politics conservatism which has always been the heart of Americanism is neither whining nor at all dominant at levers of government nor media-focused ‘culture’. – See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=56940#comment-1247418
and then I go and screw it up…
https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=56940#comment-1247260
>newrouter: doubling down!<
as a free citizen i don't give 2 shits about your views. it is when you attempt to hijack the levers of state power to enforce YOUR view that the ar 15 comes in handy.
>newrouter: doubling down!<
injun lingo – "you speak with a forked tongue"
And yes, polygamy is next because your non-arguments of ‘history…..’ and ‘examples…’ will be on the wrong side and of no value whatsoever. – See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=56940#comment-1247424
Those cases are already working their way through the district courts, and I have zero doubt that they will be waiting for the ruling later this month, intending to use it as a camel’s nose. Because if the states cannot enforce State law regarding gender, then they have no standing to enforce number of participants.
That may be the hook on which SSM is pushed back to the States to decide (the only Constitutional solution, since people can (in your own words) “vote with their feet” to states where their form of relationship is recognized under that State’s law, following legislative action or a plebescite. And you simply cannot apply “strict scrutiny” at that level of parsing the statutes. To wit, if there is no proof that removing the gender requirement – one of the most identificatory statistics involving the human race – would impact government operation, then there is no logical reason to maintain the limit on number of participants, either, barring clear and convincing evidence regarding child abuse in the home. Or even the consanguinity.
Then comes the willingness of the parties to enter into the contract, via culturally arranged marriages. (After all, why should we argue that letting people make those kind of decisions, rather than their parents, is the best thing for those cultures? Parents know best, after all. Or even governments.)
Drumwaster: two things. I agree with you and many others that the Left’s attempts to impose thought control is just that. I run into a problem with laws that have been passed that make businesses required to deal with customers. Now, I’d like to see those repealed. I think we shouldn’t give up our ability to associate with whomever we want just because we open the door to all comers. But….
I supported Memories Pizza because I think they were victim of hate. Though I oppose ‘hate crime’ legislation. So, there is a line: I think anyone gets to speak their opinion, express their faith without retribution, except other people calling out either. It doesn’t have to be threatening (which I prosecute if possible) or hateful. However, if people want to call for a boycott and they lose their business because of their opinions, faith, isn’t that the marketplace working? Look at the Chick-Fil-A response. I support people supporting Arlene’s Flowers and Sweet Cakes Bakery, though did not support their actions because they ran afoul the law: free will, individual sovereign choice, has consequences.
Freedom of speech religion and association are not absolutes and are subject to consequences. Gone are the days when a minority gets stuffed and no one is around to see, hear or help. Now, there are cameras and microphones everywhere and it takes minutes for millions to be all over anything that gets their attention.
tracy,
who pays better: the putin or tehran or the muslim bros.?
newrouter: ah little pet, you got to find me (hint, Lemon Grove CA) and then hope I don’t see ya coming from a mile away first. I’m not a lefty unarmed little princess…. But you be welcome to visit….
> I think they were victim of hate.<
hate is whatever you disapprove loser. THEY WERE A VICTIM OF MOB RULE IDIOT!!11!!
Drumwaster: “then they have no standing to enforce number of participants.”
Ah but they do! and it is one of the reasons I am changing my mind on polygamy. But you get to go find it yourself, I’m not going to hand it to you.
>(hint, Lemon Grove CA)<
i don't visit states ruled by asshole crime syndicates
tracy gots the passive/aggression to be pure proggtard
tracy really: moscow, tehran or soros?
hmmmmm
The Agency
From a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg, Russia, an army of well-paid “trolls” has tried to wreak havoc all around the Internet — and in real-life American communities.
From the August 1941 issue
Who Goes Nazi?
By Dorothy Thompson
Drumwaster: “To wit, if there is no proof that removing the gender requirement – one of the most identificatory statistics involving the human race – would impact government operation, then there is no logical reason to maintain the limit on number of participants”
That is the problem with the argument, it ignores that GOVERNMENT has to justify it’s position, GOVERNMENT would have to prove that as it stood, the law served a purpose. It couldn’t prove removing the restriction would hurt. On it’s face, heterosexuals will continue to get married, to opposite sex partners and create families that would be protected. The State would still be saying that marriage and families were important but by including other ‘families’ that were raising children. You want ME to prove it won’t hurt, but GOVERNMENT has to prove that it WILL. I quoted and linked the Iowa Supreme Court decision, but every other state court decision that has written an opinion has had exactly the same comments: government can’t proved that adding ssm WILL hurt it’s mandate to protect families and support marriage.
It’s a nice emotional argument you got there, but useless as a legal one…though it has been tried, every time.
newrouter: I know it makes you feel better, but stomping your little feet just doesn’t make much noise or impact… not mob RULE, not even mobs.
This thread still going on? Goodness gracious. The definition still can’t be changed – union of one man, one woman, etc. still doesn’t change when the lights go down.
> Iowa Supreme Court decision, but every other state court decision that has written an opinion has had exactly the same comments: government can’t proved that adding ssm WILL hurt it’s mandate to protect families and support marriage.<
the people be damned: moscow, tehran, soros? fuck unelected folks with law degrees/credentials.
>WILL hurt it’s mandate to protect families and support marriage<
who exactly gave these courts a mandate? soros or putin?
>newrouter: I know it makes you feel better, but stomping your little feet just doesn’t make much noise or impact… not mob RULE, not even mobs.<
who is paying you to spout nonsense: putin, soros or tehran. which nazi are you grrl?
Tracy won’t acknowledge it, can’t concieve of it, but that widely held belief is why
Because feelings trump social utility.
Ernst: if that were true, then we don’t need people trusting faith or basing choices on belief, just what is good for the society. And who gets to make that judgment? Certainly not people relying on faith, belief or feelings…but scientists….because they know exactly what is going to happen. It says so…right there on the printouts.
And yep, can’t imagine why anyone would get married on the advice of a computer program….
In the interests of avoiding the possibility that we’re accidently talking past each other, the reason I say that is that if you’re focused on the procreative (and here I mean not just making a baby, but raising that baby ,and any siblings, to adulthood) part of the union, you stand a better chance of getting the ancillary part right, whereas if you’re focused on feelings, you’re more liable to screw up the procreative part If you’re lucky, you won’t stay together long enough to have kids. And if you’re not, you’ll divorce –with all that consequences that has for any kids you have, particularly after they grow up and try to form a conjugal union of their own.
>. And who gets to make that judgment? Certainly not people relying on faith, belief or feelings…but scientists….because they know exactly what is going to happen. It says so…right there on the printouts.
And yep, can’t imagine why anyone would get married on the advice of a computer program….<
soros or putin troll?
why argue with a troll. the propaganda is what it is:
>Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan “I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient;’ he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome this complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction. It must allow the greengrocer to say, “What’s wrong with the workers of the world uniting?” Thus the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something high. And that something is ideology.
{8}Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. As the repository of something suprapersonal and objective, it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true position and their inglorious modus vivendi, both from the world and from themselves. It is a very pragmatic but, at the same time, an apparently dignified way of legitimizing what is above, below, and on either side. It is directed toward people and toward God. It is a veil behind which human beings can hide their own fallen existence, their trivialization, and their adaptation to the status quo. It is an excuse that everyone can use, from the greengrocer, who conceals his fear of losing his job behind an alleged interest in the unification of the workers of the world, to the highest functionary, whose interest in staying in power can be cloaked in phrases about service to the working class. The primary excusatory function of ideology, therefore, is to provide people, both as victims and pillars of the post-totalitarian system, with the illusion that the system is in harmony with the human order and the order of the universe. . .<
havel '78
Maybe too late to avoid talking past each other.
Maybe they should try relying on commitment and obligation instead?
You want ME to prove it won’t hurt, but GOVERNMENT has to prove that it WILL.
Burden of proof lies with those advocating the change, not the other way around. And “strict scrutiny” simply means that the government has to show that the proposed means are the LEAST restrictive means of achieving a desirable government end, not that the government end wouldn’t harm anyone. EVERY law limits the freedom of some individuals, that’s the whole point. The traditional definition of marriage restricts polygamists, pedophiles, homosexuals, crazy people, ill people, close relatives and unwilling participants from getting married through the various definitions, and just because gays “want” to get married is not sufficient to change the law, because there is no governmental goal in granting it, never mind whether it would be the least restrictive method (civil unions would have done the job without having to overturn laws in almost every State, and at least 2/3 of the State Constitutions).
And if you try to argue that granting homosexuals the right to “marry”, rather than civil unions, is a valid governmental goal, then there is absolutely no way to argue that still prohibiting those other groups who are similarly excluded is just as urgent a goal. I mean, it’s not like polygamists shouldn’t have the “right” to marry who they love, isn’t that how the argument goes? Same with immediate family marrying, after all, they are certain to love each other, and what makes you think it’s YOUR business to tell them “no”, isn’t that right?
There is no legitimate end, using the same “logic” being used by the current crop, and “sexual preference” is a “protected class” in today’s litigious society.
so tracy: putin, soros or tehran?
> And who gets to make that judgment? Certainly not people relying on faith, belief or feelings…but scientists….because they know exactly what is going to happen. It says so…right there on the printouts. <
sharia amore
Ernst: Ok….let me look in detail at your point (and I appreciate making sure we are not saying the same thing, differently)…..
I think I get what you are saying, AND, I think I agree with it. What we might have been doing is …I don’t think ‘feelings’ has much to do with the “aw honey….” that I think some think it is. I think it has to do more with the work that goes into a relationship – the trust, compassion, caring – that the ‘feelings types’ just go ‘ewwwwww’ when it involves cleaning up your partners diapers (actually the spouse, not a kids….) THOSE things, the WORK of relationships, that if not gotten right…hell yea, PLEASE GOD don’t let them have kids….. I don’t give a shit about eros….that is useless in a relationship, great for overnight but DAMN…in the morning??
So. GETTING into a marriage, is less about ‘ewwww and awwwww’ and more about actually, JOINING together.
Yes?
Drumwaster: that might be true out here in the trenches, but in there, in the courtrooms, nope.
>So. GETTING into a marriage, is less about ‘ewwww and awwwww’ and more about actually, JOINING together.
Yes?
<
so tracy which collectivist: putin, soros or tehran? someone is paying for you to say stupid feces. or are you an altruist? slinging the stupid for free?
Ernst:
You agree with this, right? I’m thinking yes.
Ah, no. Ignoring the same sex, we can have a man and a woman, separated within, but still married. So, no.
You can/will, make the argument they started off that way, but ….let me come back to it because another thing you said applies….
I think a couple is intrinsic to a marriage. You (downline) differentiate between a couple and a pair bond. I think there is something to that but I am not quite willing to accept that a gay ‘couple’ can’t be a couple and can only be a pair bond, because we have examples of same sex pairs, not being a couple….spinsters. So, if the only criteria is the possibility – however remote or improbable – that procreation is necessary to designate ‘a couple’, then I am unwilling to accept THAT premise.
Agreed. But, you are going to parse (not a bad thing…though I am accused of it all the time)
Agreed that loser skips leaving our hapless girl in need, stud steps in, becomes family. No biological relationship, step-dad, adopts said kid, bingo, family. Now…why doesn’t a damsel in the dress stepping in not qualify as….because the whole procreation possibility issue? I get we are working on male/female couple aspects. But…
Correct
Correct
Correct
Correct
See, I took that heterosexual out and we are all good.
Now neither of us is likely to change, but….
newrouter: if you have half a brain you be 10 times smarter than you are now…
Don’t know why you haters keep saying “couple”. It takes people to make a marriage. I mean, you get married, adopt a kid, now your three, right? Why not start with three parents who are obviously better than two parents? And there’s no way you can prove it would be bad in the future so why should only you couple people get all those sweet, sweet marriage bennies? Bigots!
LBascom: Gee dude….if one ….never mind… obviously you and newrouter have reached the same page…
Dan Crane and Gerry Studds, on the other hand, reached different pages.
might be true out here in the trenches, but in there, in the courtrooms, nope. – See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=56940#comment-1247555
But that is my point entirely. The Government has no right to litigate whatever goes on behind closed doors. It is when the participants come out from behind those doors and demand acceptance and approval from society that society gets a say. If a State chooses to hold an election and legalize same sex marriage within its own jurisdiction, more power to them, but for those unelected judges to pretend that they know what is best for society and override those repeated expressions of society’s desires that we start to have problems.
“Vote with your feet”, remember? “Laboratories of Democracy”, and see which ways work best. 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.” ) still exists, right? Defining marriage is not a power delegated by the Constitution, and so it is reserved to the States, or the People. (You DO remember the People, right? The ones who get to decide things?)
After all, if we have courts that can write new laws, why bother with legislatures?
Ah, but see drumwaster, we have all branches plus bureaucrats making law in our post constitutional country. One can hardly blame Tracy for jumping on the transformation and getting hers while the getting’s good can one?
This article here: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/06/our_nightmare_of_reason.html
just about sums up my thinking on the left in general and Tracy in particular.
He could have mentioned A Hitchcock’s movie Gaslight too…
We’re not because you don’t get to do that. I can’t stop you from pretending that you can, but I’m under know obligation to go along with your pretense.
well that was embarrassing
know=no
agree with Lee that the article he linked earlier today is a good’un..
Ernst: I get to not accept the premise. You are of course free to assert it and challenge attempts to deny it. Hence despite a significant amount of agreement, the fundamental and traditional difference of one man, one woman, sits on the table. To you, lack of historical evidence to any variation, is sufficient to establish permanence. Even if evidence, anecdotally thousands of such pieces, is inconsequential.
At least you made the effort and I very much appreciate that, snark aside, you at least respected me enough to do that. Thank you.
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2+2=5, Winston.
If we can define that, we can certainly define “marriage” however we want to.