Is it just me or does anyone else find that Gilbert and Sullivan look Rhenquist affects a little gay?Originally Posted by shanbaum
Is it just me or does anyone else find that Gilbert and Sullivan look Rhenquist affects a little gay?
Such bastions of south such as Texas, Alabama and Georgia have legallized 1st cousin marriages. Guess you're right, why date when you can marry? Incidentally more states allow some form of 1st cousin marriage than dissalow it, that would be a mandate. I suppose for the record I should state that I'm not dating or married to my cousin, nor have I been nor do I have an interest in doing so.
There's a difference between advocating and allowing. As far as I'm concerned any two (or more) consenting adults can do whatever they please so long as:
1) they don't force their beliefs or activities on anyone else
2) they don't harm life, limb or property
3) they don't cause the production of a new life with a statistically significant great chance of congenital defects than the population as a whole
Rep-I strongly suspect it would affect the insurance rates of companies forced by the federal government to cover the spouse of same sex marriages. In half of those instances those couples would be engaging in risky aids related sexual activity. In those cases the rates for those companies would be passed on to everyone. There were news reports today that companies that now were covering domestic partnerships were paying higher premiums because of the additional cost of treating aids related diseases.
You are obviously ill-informed about AIDS. AIDS affects alot more than just the gay community! Before you post inflammatory posts regarding aids or homosexuality, please...do your homework!
Here's a good place to start: www.aids.org
I still cannot believe in this day that we have so many people STILL so ignorant about aids..... it's beyond me!
Jana Lewis
ABOC , NCLE
A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.
Joseph Roux
There's a difference between hate speech and hate crimes. One can still speak against integration, interracial marriages, 'evil' religions, etc. in this country. I'd be surprised if there really was any significant movement agitatingfor a law restricting any pastor's ability to speak out against gay marriage. Even if one were adopted it would certainly be ruled unconstitutional. I'd be curious where you've seen or heard reports of such potentially pending legislation.
Making gay marriage legal wouldn't disallow you or your pastor from speaking out against it anymore than it's illegal for me to speak out against those godless heathens the Catholics (joke!).
No court, including the Supreme (which is on the third highest court) should be writting laws, even if segements of the public feel these things should be law.\
Chip
That is correct. That is why it is the Supreme Court's job to interpret laws, not write them. And their interpretation of the Constitution is that “the First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable.”
Karen, what "legal attempts" are you talking about? I'll help you oppose them - unless they're actually intended (and properly designed) to prevent preachers or anyone else, not from characterizing gays as sinners, or from criticising their lifestyle, but from creating conditions in which the dimmer bulbs among us might take such characterizations as a license to harm them. There's obviously a fine line there, but the gays aren't strapping straights to fenceposts and beating them to death because they're straight. Does a compassionate society do nothing about that - better yet, let's leave compassion out of it - should we do nothing about it? And if not, is that a tacit "serves them right"?
Though, it's possible that the whole issue is just so 20th century...
I don't think that it's "intolerant" to believe that homosexuality is a "sin". I'm pretty sure many, if not most, Americans do think that. But whether it's a sin is between individuals, or groups of individuals, and their respective Gods, is it not? And is it not reasonable, in a country which places such a high value on individual liberty (doesn't it?), to leave the issue of what's a "sin" up to the religions? And isn't it true that I'm only as free as the people who successfully push the limits on freedom?
I think that the question that was asked at the outset of this thread was a bit off the mark. Because the political issue has raised by the President's proposed Constitutional Amendment (as well as a number of activist groups seeking to "protect marriage"), the question to ask would be, how would "gay marriage" harm "marriage"?
The only extent to which that question has been sort-of answered here is in rep's assertion that to allow gay marriage must lead to the legalization of rape, incest, beastiality, polygamy, adultery, bigamy, child pornography, and prostitution.
'Course, even were one to accept the assertion as all true, one might ask, "ok, but exactly how does all that affect marriage?"
As I think has been noted here, rape, incest, and child pornography are simply not in the some class as the others - they are not acts of private, consensual behavior. If there's logic by which one can start at "allow gay marriage" and end at "allow rape", I'd like to hear it.
As one who believes that the government's intrusion into our lives should be minimized, I believe that adultery, polygamy, and prostitution should not be crimes. That's already effectively the case for adultery; while there appear to be some laws against adultery on the books out there (though none in Connecticut), I doubt that any such criminal statutes are enforced any longer, at least outside the military. Certainly, adultery remains a factor in divorce, as it should - most marriage "contracts" specify sexual exclusivity.
Polygamy is a curious topic, in that it inverts our historical march towards broader and deeper liberties. After all, it goes back a looooong way. The ancient Israelites practiced it up until the return from the Babylonian Exile, when Ezra decided that Yahweh had apparently changed his mind. Of course, it's still an accepted practice today - just not here. I don't think I've heard a really compelling argument against it (other than my wife's very simple, one word comment: "no"). Admittedly, the people you hear about who do practice it here (out in that particular western state that shall remain nameless) seem a little weird generally.
Were we to allow polygamy, I think bigamy would become largely moot.
Legal prostitution? Well, Holland hasn't gone to hell in a handbasket, at least, not yet. I was there last year. All the awful stuff that's legal there, and illegal here, didn't seem to really have an obvious impact, unless it was responsible for the demonstrably better architecture, or public transportation.
That leaves beastiality, which reminds me of one of my favorite jokes. There was this cowboy who went out west and was working on this ranch. He hadn't been there too long when he saw one of the other cowboys having sex with a sheep. This young cowboy had never heard of such a thing, and when he asked some of the older cowboys about it, they told him, "now son, ya' gotta understand. Out here, there ain't no women, and well, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do... you'll find out."
Well, sure enough, after some time out on the plains, those sheep started looking pretty good to this young fella, and so, one day, he decides to give it a try. So, he goes and picks out a particularly fine looking sheep, and proceeds to have his way with her. The next thing he knows, he's surrounded by all these other cowboys, who had looks of absolute disbelief on their faces.
"What's the matter with you guys?" he asked, "you've all been doin' the same thing!"
After a moment, one of the other cowboys replied, "well, yeah, but - but that's Big John's girl!"
But I digress.
The fact is, the enumeration of evils which rep believes will result from gay marriage originates with Scalia's dissenting opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, a decision rendered in 2003, which struck down Texas' anti-sodomy laws. Scalia wrote, "State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of Bowers' validation of laws based on moral choices. Every single one of these laws is called into question by today's decision; the Court makes no effort to cabin the scope of its decision to exclude them from its holding."
Now, Scalia's list is a bit different from rep's (it's better, in that at least these are all - with the exception of beastiality - consensual acts) but the main problem with it is that Scalia assumes that all of these items are equally deprave and on a par with homosexual acts. I'm particularly glad that he included masturbation, because its inclusion provides the most ludicrous examples: if you can't prohibit masturbation, you can't prohibit prostitution. If you can't prohibit masturbation, you can't prohibit beastiality. If you can't prohibit masturbation, you can't prohibit fornication. How many of you think that masturbation should be against the law? For that matter, how many of you think that fornication should be against the law?
In fact, it's of course possible to distinguish amongst these nasty bits. The reason that Lawrence came to pass was that society has reached a point at which we're no longer willing to say that homosexual acts should be criminalized, any more than we think that ****ing without a license (fornication) or ****ing without a partner (masturbation) should be. We no longer think that the state - that is, we - have a compelling interest in making it against the law. If we ever come to feel that way about beastiality, well, we'll slay that dragon (or just **** it to death) when it arises.
In any case, since Lawrence was decided the way it was, Scalia's demons are already out of the box. I suppose if you want to argue that the gay marriage "movement" is an effect of that, that's one thing. But, if you believe Scalia, it's no longer reasonable to argue that it's the cause.
Though really, I think Scalia made it clear that the whole problem stems from our failure to criminalize masturbation.
The Constitution says: "Congress shall not establish a state religion." Reguardless of what the "Supreme Court" says this means exactly what it says: The state may not establish a manditory religion. This does not bar religions from entering into the business of the state or politics.
It does in fact guarantee that the state may not say what can or cannot be said from the pulpit. Only that cannot mandate anything to be said from the pulpit or any other religious service, or group.
If all the Christians or Buddist or Moslems want to band together in some sort of consortium to promote legislation, they are free to do so. Whether they can do so in a tax exempt situation is at present questionable.
Chip
You might as well know what the text of the First Amendment actually is, since you're so convinced of what it says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
As for what this means with regard to religion, I suggest you read this:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/c...t01/01.html#f5
Read closely, and you'll notice the author of the phrase "wall of separation".
At the risk of sounding inflammatory...
Specifically you said "AIDS affects alot more than just the gay community"
Actually it doesn't. AIDS is primarily found among Gay men. Period.
Secondly, it is found in women who sleep with bisexual men (men who engage in homosexual contact). And finally it is found among interveinous drug users.
This is in direct reference to % infected in the population.
I think your stement would be closer tot he truth if it said "Aids effects a few more than the Gay community"
As far as Rep's inflamatory ignorance, you obviously aren't interested in changing it, or getting educated if you are inflamed! Face it Jana, you just like to get mad.
Why is it when libs disagree it is inflammatory, but wen cons disagree they just lauph?
Perhaps you are thinking only of the United States. Or, maybe just Callleeforneea.
The vast majority of persons infected with HIV are Africans, where more than half are women, and the primary mode of transmission is heterosexual contact.
Read about it here:
http://www.unaids.org/wac/2000/wad00...mic_report.htm
SB 1234. Now, to be fair, I have not read it in it's entirety, just saved it so I could and then perhaps you and I can discuss it. My 12 year old has his last football game which I am on my way to so I will read it later. Look forward to your point of view! Go Cougars!
Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others. -H. Jackson Brown Jr.
If the only tool you have is a hammer you will approach every problem as though it were a nail
1. Yes I am talking about the United States.
2. If you consider rape heterosexual contact, then you are correct with respect to Africa.
Rinsel Tinsel found me some more Ammo against the "Everybody gets AIDS myth"
Of the 298,248 men (13 years or older) who were living with AIDS,
* 58% were men who had sex with men (MSM)
* 23% were injection drug users (IDU)
* 10% were exposed through heterosexual contact
* 8% were both MSM and IDU.
Of the 82,764 adult and adolescent women with AIDS,
* 61% were exposed through heterosexual contact
* 36% were exposed through injection drug use.
http://www.avert.org/statsum.htm
With respect to Rape in Africa spreading AIDS:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5437708/
Let's get back to the subject. Assume that you are right with these facts - unless YOU have sex with a man, or use intravenous drugs, aids is not an issue in this discussion. Now, how does same gender marriage hurt you????
Well if it hasn't already been said, and then poo poo'ed on this thread I don't know what more you want.
Same sex marraige increases the number of insured in a higher risk group, for expensive medical issues. Hence everybody pays.
Educate me JANA
Point out EXACTLY what I have posted that is inaccurate about AIDS !
I AGREE with you! - AIDS effects EVERYONE and SSM would give approval to a lifestyle that has the potential to cause great harm to many more than it does now. You have further strengthened MY position. Thank You
Rep
As Jana's post states; AIDS effect everyone and blanket approval of a lifestyle that promotes the spread of AIDS should be enough reason for ANYONE.
The majority has spoken pretty loud and it's liberal's and their wacky ideas that took the hit and will take the hits in the near future - not conservatives.
That is a typical liberal response regarding insurance companies having to pay more for aids related diseases. Wake up - Increase the cost of a product or service and the companies have no choice to pass it on to you and I. They won't take the hit - WE WILL.
I am fully aware that marrying cousins is legal in the South. It has been a point of embarassment for quite some time as we are constantly reminded by our northern bretheren who have decided to retire here.
Sorry about the strong response, but I think it was warranted. I wanted to point out that there are prices to be paid for moving to eliminate all laws regarding deviate sexual acts. The typical agenda of those supporting SSM is that it affects no on else therefore it must be OK. In reality it affects everyone else either directly or indirectly.
Rep
While I cannot agree with you regarding prostitution in particular (degrading to women and all that) you are the only one who took the time to research and see that the liberal court has already overtuned laws regarding homosexual acts that had been on the books for years. (Anticipating the comments to come, I would remind all that R v W is a relatively new ruling).
I was responding to Spexvet's comments regarding the trends in the law. I simply pointed out that a least three SCJ's feel we are aready traveling down a slippery slope and in matters of the law I would accept their legal opinions a lot faster than Spexvet's
I think SSM is a continuation down that slope into the gutter.
Rep
Prove it - Show me one (objective) study here that supports your "theory" regarding Gay's are better educated and higher earners than the population in general. You have been seeing too many reruns of the movie "Bird Cage" and its warped your brain.
Can't you READ!!!!!!
I have NO BIBLE QUOTES!!!!!!! ANYWHERE - Genius.
Is this the best you can do in posting a response? Make false statements about what is clearly in black and white.
Rep
Evidently you haven't been keeping up with the papers recently. The Catholic church is having to deal with one heck of a problem with homosexual priest molesting tens of thousands of boys.
Consider these points regarding this:
Pedophiles are invariably males: A report by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children states: "In both clinical and non-clinical samples, the vast majority of offenders are male." The book "Sexual Offending Against Children" reports that only 12 of 3,000 incarcerated pedophiles in England were women.
* Significant numbers of victims are males: A study of 457 male sex offenders against children in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy found that "approximately one-third of these sexual offenders directed their sexual activity against males."
* Homosexuals comprise less than 3 percent of the population, not "8 to 10 percent" as many articles report. A recent study in Demography estimates the number of exclusive male homosexuals in the general population at 2.5 percent, and the number of exclusive lesbians at 1.4
percent.
* Homosexuals are over-represented in child sex offenses: Individuals from the 1 to 3 percent of the population that is sexually attracted to the same sex are committing up to one-third of the sex crimes against children. A study in the Journal of Sex Research found that although heterosexuals outnumber homosexuals by a ratio of at least 20 to 1, homosexual pedophiles commit about one-third of the total number of child sex offenses.
The evidence shows a direct correlation between homosexuality and pedophilia.
Have a nice day! Better luck next post!
Rep
I believe the APSAC has ties to the Family Research Council. That's a little too far to the "right" even for me.
First of all, the Constitution does NOT say: “Congress shall not establish a state religion”. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”.
Secondly, it doesn’t matter what you or I think it means. For all intents and purposes where the law is concerned, it is the Supreme Court that decides what it means. (And again, their interpretation of the Constitution is that “the First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable.”) To imply that it doesn’t matter what the Supreme Court has to say about the Constitution is akin to negating the importance of the Judicial Branch in our system of checks and balances.
This is taken from an article in Discover magazine (1997), tracing the "Gay Gene":
In a preliminary study, Hamer found that some male homosexuality is passed through the maternal side. So he began his search on the X chromosome, which males get only from their mothers. From each subject he isolated and identified the same set of 22 markers—short, easily distinguished stretches of DNA that vary from person to person and that geneticists use to flag a particular spot on a chromosome. If two brothers shared a marker, chances were pretty good that they shared the genes in the neighborhood of that marker as well. Thirty-three of the 40 pairs of brothers, Hamer found, shared the same set of five markers in a region of the chromosome called Xq28, far too many to be a coincidence. Somewhere in that region, he concluded, was a gene or genes contributing to the homosexuality of these men.
When he published his results in 1993, he landed in an often uncomfortable spotlight. Groups opposed to homosexual rights lambasted the finding, fearing that it might make society more accepting of homosexuality. The scientific community was cautious for another reason. Several times before, researchers thought they had traced a behavior—usually an aberrant one, such as schizophrenia, manic-depression, or alcoholism—to one chromosome or another, but each time the findings were contradicted by later analyses. The gay gene has stood up well, however. Hamer has replicated his findings, and no studies have yet contradicted them.
Still, the gene itself remains at large, its function unknown. It might, Hamer suggests, be involved in the development of the hypothalamus, a part of the brain that has been shown to differ between homosexual and heterosexual men. "Or it might do something totally unexpected," he says. "Who knows?"
Hamer then began looking for a comparable X-linked marker for sexual orientation in lesbians. Here he had no luck. "Female homosexuality does run in families," he says, "but there's no clear indication that it is genetic." Studies of lesbian twins have been inconclusive, and when Hamer rounded up DNA from 36 pairs of lesbian sisters and their family members, he found no evidence of an X-linked genetic marker for female homosexuality. He suspects that women's sexual preferences may be less genetically programmed than men's. "Some of it is partly social and some is genuinely biological."
Chimperial Optical-what a great place to work!
And evidently you never picked up on the phrase in Statistics 101: “Correlation does not equal causation”. We can parse the stats as much as you like, but the fact remains that pedophilia is no more a “gay disease” than incest is a “straight disease”. According to a US Department of Health and Human Services report [ http://nccanch.acf.hhs.gov/pubs/statsinfo/nis3.cfm]: “Girls were sexually abused three times more often than boys.” and “The prevalence of male perpetrators was strongest in the category of sexual abuse, where 89 percent of the children were abused by a male compared to only 12 percent by a female.”
Finally, don’t copy a page from some holier-than-thou Internet site [ http://www.earstohear.net/pedophilia.html ] and pass it off as your own writings.
Better luck coming up with an original reply in your next post.
When the judicial branch origionates legislation or adds to the meaning of The Contstiution as written. The judicial branch becomes unimportant.
Next comes the question, should one obey an unjust law because "It's the Law".
No.
Chip
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