Dell: You know we don’t live in a democracy. WE live in a Constitutional Republic. Therefore, the will of the people is protected against itself in a sense.

Roderick: Wow how did you keep a straight face when you typed that?
All of you conservatives whine and bitch about being punished for succeeding ( i.e. being ambitious and earning more money and having taxes taken out but you’re ok with the government rewarding people for their most personal choices (marriage, children) and you want to limit those rewards to a certain group?
Is that what you are saying?

Cobb: So this is the basic understanding about the premises about the legal standing and benefits of married couples. A tax break or a healthcare benefit are not rights, and no amount of screaming or begging can make them so. We would have to rearrange our entire society to change such things.

Roderick: ROFTLMAO!!
Talk about hyperbole. So how would extending health benefits to same-sex couples as some major corporations and the federal government already do require a major rearrangement of society?

Cobb: Dell, we are not a theocracy, but a nation of democratic laws. It is that very specific separation which brings my most serious concerns.

Roderick: and that’s where the hypocrisy in the debate lies.
The people who say they oppose gay marriage on moral grounds and because it undermines ‘traditional marriage’ never say a word about banning divorce or criminalizing adultery or fornication. Of course such proposals would not get 20% support from the electorate because 90% of the population isn’t going to vote for something that restricts their rights only the rights of others.

Cobb: Think about it this way. America already has world class gay-friendly community standards. Down in Southern California, West Hollywood is the gay capital. Obviously neighborhoods in San Francisco like the Castro are as gay-friendly as humanly possible. When activists attempt to change the law of the State of California using the rhetoric of rights, they are attempting to use the law to force every community to be as gay-friendly as whatever standard they deem appropriate. That’s a gank move – a hostile takeover.

Roderick: As usual you go off on some tangent that isn’t relevant to the discussion just to muddy the issues. BTW are you related to Cultural Strategist?
The entire discussion is how can you deny some citizens rights and marriage is a right because there are no qualifications except age and in most states that can be waived with the parent(s)’ permission.
As for your ‘why can’t gays be satisfied with their gay-friendly cities?’ argument what if whites had offered MLK and other civil rights leaders a compromise where blacks were only allowed to have full rights as citizens but only in certain locations (Watts, Detroit, NYC, and Los Angeles) and blacks were prohibited in every other location in America would you be so flippant?

Cobb: So it came as no surprise that when 8 passed, there were attacks on the Mormon church. The activist aim is too high, too radical and too harsh as well as being fundamentally wrong on the question of rights. They are trying to deny you’re the right to say that homosexuality is a sin, because they will use the law to constrain religious activity.

Roderick: No one is trying to silence anyone from expressing their opinion but the Mormons raised money which was used to advocate a particular political position which is a direct violation of the separation of church and state and they should lose their tax exempt status ASAP.

So is a Chinese girl adopted by a white family white?

In many places, yes, for all practical intents and purposes. “White” has proven itself to be an elastic category that can assimilate many previously excluded ethnicities, such as Irish, Greek, Italian and Jewish.

Yes, there is a cultural element and a gray area, but to say that someone who is phenotypcally white, without a trace of any black ancestry would be accepted as “black” (a African American) in the U.S. in 2008 you are kidding yourself.

Deciding who is “phenotypically white” is an entirely arbitrary determination. People can and do cross the boundary in both directions all the time.

So is a Chinese girl adopted by a white family white?

Will she mark White on the census? Really?

Yes, there is a cultural element and a gray area, but to say that someone who is phenotypcally white, without a trace of any black ancestry would be accepted as “black” (a African American) in the U.S. in 2008 you are kidding yourself.

You would have a point if you said, Prince or Beyonce would not be black if their last name was Moreno or Salazar…that’s a different situation though.

So if a swede was born in the black community he would be “black”?

If he was born in Black America, he wouldn’t be a Swede. And in my neck of the woods, there are more than a few folks with white skin who were raised by Black families. They think, walk, talk and identify as Black. How they should be classified is a discussion for another day.

“This is a recapitulation of argument #1 in legal form. First, race isn’t an “immutable characteristic”. It is a product of the social and historical context in which it was created. Second, protected classes were created to prevent discrimination against social groups based solely on secondary characteristics like ethnicity or religion in circumstances where those characteristics are irrelevant to the application of law or the determination of qualifications. Using “immutability” as a criterion for defining which secondary characteristics are protected is a post civil-rights legal innovation which is inconsistently applied. There is nothing “immutable” about religion for example. Moreover, whether or not sexual orientation is immutable remains an open question. In any case, the intent of anti-discrimination laws is to protect against unjustified discrimination.”

So if a swede was born in the black community he would be “black”?

lol

BTW..here is where the scientific research is on “gayness”…

http://www.slate.com/id/2159262

I have a gay friend. He insist he was born gay and so gay rights are like civil rights for minorities. Many disagree and there is no affirmative proof either way (yet). What if gay people are born gay…due to a group of genes (I’m going to guess something that complex involves more than one gene). If we can test for that. In Middle America… Read More…typical moderate folks…will most of them bring a gay child to term when confronted with a 70-80% chance of having a gay child, in the privacy of their doctor’s office? I doubt it.

Sounds like the movie Gattica is inevitable.

That’s another topic in a way…but in the end it is the “Final Solution”…you reduce the gay population pre-nataly and gay marriage is not an issue.

So to say marriage is between one man and one woman and do change that will go against history and radically change society is a lame argument. We have done that many times and actually if we want to be true to history we would have polygamy be legal.

Agreed.

What you are doing is taking today’s moral values of 2008 and trying to retroactively analyze history and say “those things are not equal”. According to who? You? What you think in this way does not matter. What matters is what happened and what people at the time thought (the majority).

That’s not an argument that I made. I just posed a question.

I’m not pro-gay, but I think that they are born that way. I don’t believe this is a choice.

If they are born this way it is like being born black or born a woman or born crippled. You can not deny people equal rights due to how they are born if that innate behavior does not harm others.

I recently addressed that argument at length. An essential point from that argument:

I wasn’t “born Black”. I was born human. I’m Black by virtue of the fact that I was born into the Black community, and received my identity from it. There isn’t some “Black gene” that created my identity. My Blackness is part of my cultural and spiritual inheritance.

The point is that slavery and polygamy were historically normal for most of human history in the vast majority of human societies and not considered immoral. It was common knowledge from Africa to Japan at various times that some people “deserved to be slaves” or “were just born to be enslaved or a de facto slave class”. It was common knowledge throughout most of the world that a wealthy man should be able to have many wives.

In fact these things have been illegal in most of the world for a very short time, if you take into account human history…you have 12 thousand years of recorded history to about 200 years of the opposite.

The point is that they are equal in that they all represent radical change in society.

So to say marriage is between one man and one woman and do change that will go against history and radically change society is a lame argument. We have done that many times and actually if we want to be true to history we would have polygamy be legal.

What you are doing is taking today’s moral values of 2008 and trying to retroactively analyze history and say “those things are not equal”. According to who? You? What you think in this way does not matter. What matters is what happened and what people at the time thought (the majority).

I also have to agree with Cobb that from a libertarian perspective and from a founding father perspective (Jefferson who I quoted above) denying gay people equal protection under the law in the realm of marriage (which also denies their children equal protection) I feel is quite wrong.

I’m not pro-gay, but I think that they are born that way. I don’t believe this is a choice.

If they are born this way it is like being born black or born a woman or born crippled. You can not deny people equal rights due to how they are born if that innate behavior does not harm others.

If they are born “crazy” or handicapped in a way they can not drive without hurting others…that is one thing.

Gays in being gay don’t hurt people as long as their sexuality is consensual, but the same applies to heterosexuals.

Cobb:

“Dell, we are not a theocracy, but a nation of democratic laws. It is that very specific separation which brings my most serious concerns. Think about it this way. America already has world class gay-friendly community standards. Down in Southern California, West Hollywood is the gay capital. Obviously neighborhoods in San Francisco like the Castro are as gay-friendly as humanly possible. When activists attempt to change the law of the State of California using the rhetoric of rights, they are attempting to use the law to force every community to be as gay-friendly as whatever standard they deem appropriate. That’s a gank move – a hostile takeover.”

I’m sure some white folks thought the same way about the Civil Rights Act, many Libertarians would like it repealed, I’m sure you know that.

My argument against that is the first duty of the government is to do things collectively we can’t do for ourselves, like protection. The state had a duty to protect black citizens from oppression, often protection from local and state governments which were given power by the vote of the majority.

I apply the same standard to everyone, not just people who do sex acts that I agree with.

I know that as a single man I pay way more taxes than I do as a married man with children. But do I have a right to my tax money as a single man? The answer is no.

What about as a wealthy man? Do I have a right to my money as much as a poor man in a lower tax bracket? The answer is also no.

Our society, being what it is has decided that the state has an interest in my money depending upon how much I make and whether or not I’m raising children. There’s nothing I can do about it – I don’t have a right to keep tax money. I am discriminated against because of my choices.

So this is the basic understanding about the premises about the legal standing and benefits of married couples. A tax break or a healthcare benefit are not rights, and no amount of screaming or begging can make them so. We would have to rearrange our entire society to change such things. I’m not saying that it can’t or won’t happen, I’m talking about political reality and what it takes to change some very fundamental premises of our society.

California joins 30 other states who have explicitly denied gay marriage. It shouldn’t be surprising, especially given the way the situation came about.

Dell, we are not a theocracy, but a nation of democratic laws. It is that very specific separation which brings my most serious concerns. Think about it this way. America already has world class gay-friendly community standards. Down in Southern California, West Hollywood is the gay capital. Obviously neighborhoods in San Francisco like the Castro are as gay-friendly as humanly possible. When activists attempt to change the law of the State of California using the rhetoric of rights, they are attempting to use the law to force every community to be as gay-friendly as whatever standard they deem appropriate. That’s a gank move – a hostile takeover.

So it came as no surprise that when 8 passed, there were attacks on the Mormon church. The activist aim is too high, too radical and too harsh as well as being fundamentally wrong on the question of rights. They are trying to deny your the right to say that homosexuality is a sin, because they will use the law to constrain religious activity. But now that momentum has been arrested, which is a good thing for all concerned.

I hope our gay-friendly communities continue to flourish and that our society changes at its own pace. When those who advocate for gays are able to make sense, we’ll all know it and respond accordingly.