Thursday, January 19, 2012
Straights have destroyed the institution of marriage
& over time gays will too. You want leaner and meaner government? that'll be when the gov't finally says we are no longer going to recognize failing institutions like marriage. I was thinking about this the other day, polygamy is technically illegal but that's a religious issue isn't it? Why not have the gov't simply say have at it, we're not gonna recognize it but you won't go to jail over it? Word now that ABC News is gonna give one of Newt's ex-wives two hours to dish and it's gonna air on the Monday after the SC primary. Apparently there was some big internal discussion over there about when to air it, personally I wouldn't air it at all but what's with the two full hours? American Idol season premieres get two hours but this is what journalism has turned into. Newt must pose some sort of threat or something. I once had a workable theory that gays have gay sex because straight sex often leads to feticide and well maybe it's some sort of protest act over the destructive power of women but there's holes if you'll pardon the expression in the theory as gays are often the most pro-choice. Ah my meandering mind! Funny though both gays and straights, even those who are for and against the gay marriage have one thing in common, they both seem to feel that marriage is still some type of viable institution or something. One final question though and it's been nagging at me of late: how come many of the same people who are for the so-called woman's 'right to choose' want to take away your right as a consumer to purchase an incandescent light bulb? Liberals are only libertarian on the social issues but not much else and listening to people like Shaw and Saty wax poetic about the golden right to abortion I'm, I'm just getting into a mood here and I might accidentally delete something:)
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There's no such thing as gay marriage any more than there is gay parking, gay running, gay swimming, gay driving, gay flying...
ReplyDeleteI think you get the idea.
When you park your car you park it. You don't straight park it and gays don't gay park it.
Z-man, point out, please, where I "wax poetic" about "the golden right to abortion."
ReplyDeleteYou're playing that out-of-tune violin again. I haven't written what you claim I did.
The problems is, Z-man, you get angry when someone defends a woman's right to make her own decisions about her body.
There's nothing like a temper tantrum to snuff out debate. Your threat to delete our comments if Saty and I continue to give our opinion on this subject is no different from a mewling collywobbler who refuses to listen to anything other than his own opinion.
Good luck with that.
PS. What soapster said.
The problem with your comment Shaw is that the woman has the right to do to her body what she wants, but killing the body of the unborn child within her, that is NOT her body she is making decisions about. How come pro aborts can't understand that simple biological fact?
ReplyDeleteAs for gays, as long as it's their own bodies they are making decisions about, they can do whatever they want with them. Don't need a marriage certificate for that.
BETH wrote: "The problem with your comment Shaw is that the woman has the right to do to her body what she wants, but killing the body of the unborn child within her, that is NOT her body she is making decisions about. How come pro aborts can't understand that simple biological fact?"
ReplyDeleteWhen two rights are in conflict, as they are in this dilemma, whose right prevails? There are just too many possible conditions that may require a woman to make the very difficult decision to abort the fetus. Neither you nor I, nor the government, should be involved in a decision as complicated and difficult as this. This decision should properly be between a woman and her doctor.
I've said this before: In a perfect world, there would be no need for abortion. But we don't live in a perfect world, never have, never will. To pass a law that compels a woman to carry a pregnancy that would endanger her life, physically or mentally, is unacceptable. A government that forces a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy is a government that can also force a woman to abort a wanted pregnancy.
No more discussion. I know you will never agree with my position, as I will never agree with yours.
BETH wrote: "As for gays, as long as it's their own bodies they are making decisions about, they can do whatever they want with them. Don't need a marriage certificate for that."
That's not what marriage is about. It is about making a commitment to each other and also enjoying the financial benefits that government confers on married people. You are under the sadly wrong impression that marriage is only about having sex, as your dismissive comment indicates.
Same sex couples deserve to be treated equally under the law, and that means they deserve all the rights and benefits government confers on married people.
This, of course, will eventually happen, and the arguments against marriage for everyone will dry up and wither away.
Z: did you also pitch a fit when the government took away your right to buy leaded gasoline?
ReplyDeleteAnd if you didn't, why not?
I feel like we've done this before.
ReplyDeleteWe have.
ReplyDeleteSaty and Soapie, why say anything if you prefer not to discuss? Seriously! Just move along.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you think married couples get benefits from the government Shaw? Let me give you a hint, gay couples do not need the same benefits.
ReplyDelete"Saty and Soapie, why say anything if you prefer not to discuss? Seriously! Just move along."
ReplyDeleteI think you said it best.
"Who died and made you boss over when the discussion ends?"
Seriously.
As for marriage and benefits for heterosexual couples, it is wrong that government categorizes individuals and then provides benefits, perks, etc. accordingly.
I no more wish to subsidize a professional sports stadium or an agricultural subsidy than I wish to subsidize the public education of my neighbor's children.
Why do you think married couples get benefits from the government Shaw?
ReplyDeleteWhy DO married couples get benefits from the government, Beth?
Let me give you a hint, gay couples do not need the same benefits.
Why don't gay couples need the same benefits as every other couple, Beth?
Because they cannot have children!
ReplyDeleteThey can adopt them.
ReplyDeleteBut more importantly, explain why it is that money should be taken from some and given to others in this regard?
I have no problem with tax credits. Returning more money to its rightful owner is virtuous and just.
Taking money from one who earned it and giving it to another who didn't? Hmm...not so much.
"Because they cannot have children!"
ReplyDeleteHave you told Mary Cheney this bit of misinformation?
"Mary Cheney, the vice president's lesbian daughter, had her first child, a boy, this morning at Sibley Hospital in Washington, D.C.
Mary Cheney gave birth to a baby girl named Sarah Lynne Cheney on Wednesday morning in Washington, D.C.
This is the second child for Cheney and her longtime partner, who are raising her son, Samuel David Cheney, together. Cheney has never publicly disclosed the paternity of either of her children."
If having children were the only requisite for marriage benefits, then childless couples, or couples who marry when a woman is post-menopausal should not enjoy any tax benefits? Your argument holds not merit. BTW, I know of heterosexual married couples whose wives have been impregnated exactly the same way as Mary Cheney was. And I know of gay men who contribute their sperm to a woman surrogate willing to carry their baby, and thus allow them to become parents. Heteros engage in this as well, if the wife in the marriage is unable to physically bear a pregnancy.
Gay and lesbian married couples DO have children. Heterosexual couples often choose NOT to have children.
Gay, Straight, I don't care. If you want to have children then by all means have at it.
ReplyDeleteIt is however immoral to expect someone else to, by force, pay for caring for them.
Plenty of straight folks can't either.
ReplyDeleteBut both gay folks and straight folks can and do adopt children. So with that in mind, once again, why don't gay couples need government benefits?
Gee, sorry my comment was late. I got beaten to the (figurative but enjoyable even figuratively) punch.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I respond straight to comments straight out of my inbox and in this case all the comments hadn't made it there yet.
Nevertheless Shaw and Soap have more or less covered it.
Shaw: "You get angry when someone defends a woman's right to make her own decisions about her body."
ReplyDeleteOh you so don't get me. It's not anger, defend it all you want to your heart's content but I have a problem with same-old same old. How 'bout some fresh argumentation from your side Shaw that's all I want. If my standard was to delete talking points, same-old same-old and held you and Saty to a fresher standard I'd be deleting left and right.
Saty: "Z: did you also pitch a fit when the government took away your right to buy leaded gasoline?"
ReplyDeleteMiss Saty in fairness to me I wasn't even blogging back then. There probably weren't even blogs back then but you betcha! that's wrong too and I would have said something. So how can you defend a woman's right to kill a fetus but take away MY right as a consumer to purchase an incandescent light bulb? That's not pro-choice, you're not pro-choice and another thing. How can you be against killing animals but for abortion?
Most times the abortion debate takes the form of should it be legal or illegal but I propose going beyond this to where even a pro-choicer can begin to see some negative social repercussions. A birth rate declines who's gonna pay into Social Security? who's gonna enlist in the military and defend the nation? who's consuming the things young people consume if all those young people aren't here? etc. etc. I also think abortion makes us more insensitive as a society, the way we interact with each other, the way we treat each other at work and at play, in our day-to-day. I don't care what you say it all started with abortion, it's one of them root causes. You know I was one in a traffic jam on Jackson Ave. once in Yonkers coming off Central and there was a big traffic tieup because there was some injured raccoon in the middle of the road and folks were trying to get it off to the side. I've no judgement on this, I was patient and thought it was laudable but the same thought occured to me this is the same Society that aborts and aborts and aborts on a daily basis many times as a form of birth control. Makes no sense to me.
ReplyDeleteI can not ever, in any way, shape or form, ever deny the woman the right to take control of her own body and do with it what she deems right and proper for her.
ReplyDeleteESPECIALLY since there are few more personal, more wrenching and more life changing decisions a woman can make. and ESPECIALLY since so often the reasons behind her decision are based in traumatic experiences.
I have said it a thousand times and somehow you choose to either misunderstand me or claim I'm full of shit but the fact is that my own personal feelings on abortion can not and will not influence how I feel about all women having this right to choose.
In the same way while I do not eat dead animals and I do not support the carrion based industry, I don't try to bring in legislation to make it illegal for you to eat meat. That's your choice and regardless of how I personally feel about your choice, you still have that choice and that's protected by law.
It's still the individual's own karma that's created by their choices.
And I'm sorry if buying fluorescents is traumatic for you. I know lots of parents were really pissed when the government banned lead-based paints, and their kids didn't have the opportunity to get lead poisoning that way. Like asbestos. It's a damn shame we can't get mesothelioma as easily as we used to.
If you'll remember I once did a blog about all the negative health effects of your beloved fluorescents, go google it. I absolutely hate working under them for eight hours a day and many people say it gives them headaches and that's the least of the worries but your last paragraph clearly illustrates why you're not really pro-choice across-the-board just the right of the woman to engage in feticide. What is wrong with discussing your personal feelings about abortion anyway, why is it so verboten? It's an interesting part of any discussion to state how one feels and I daresay Beth and I are more pro-choice than you because we're more pro-choice about so many other items than you are. You're just pro-choice about this.
ReplyDeleteForgot to ask what dreaded health ailments are caused by the incandescent besides the occasional fire caused by human stupidity? Did you know if you have a CFL in your house and it somehow breaks you have to treat it as a potential HAZMAT incident because of potential mercury poisoning to pets and people?
ReplyDeleteAnd did you know that you need certified lead abatement people (my husband is one) just like you need asbestos abatement? They're also hazmat issues. Just like the old mercury glass thermometers that your mom and my mom had, which contained far more mercury than the CFLs everyone wants to twist their pannies over and which broke with irritating regularity, because they were made of glass.
ReplyDeleteBefore too long CFLs will be replaced with LEDs, which are an even smarter option, and you can bitch about that then.
I'm not sure why it makes you so insane that I can separate my own personal feelings about what's best for me in any given situation and not feel compelled to make what's best for me mandatory for everyone.
ReplyDeleteIt's like any personal decision I make. It's my decision. Not yours, not for you, you're free to make whatever decision you think is best for you.
I choose to not eat meat. But I don't attempt to make it illegal for you to choose to eat meat.
Why is this such an issue for you, that I can have a personal opinion that has no bearing on my political opinion of a topic?
My personal feelings are no basis for legislation that affects other people. On any topic.
Because we aren't all the same, we don't all follow the same belief systems (if any), we don't have the same preferences, we don't have the same experiences. How I personally feel about abortion gives me no right to attempt to legislate away anyone else's right to make decisions based on their own belief system, preference, experiences.
I don't know how many times we've been down this road and every time you get stuck at this point, that you just don't understand that in matters of abortion legislation I refuse to let my own personal feelings on the topic dictate my political stance on it.
So what are you saying you don't want to use the power of the state to impose your will? Why thatz...thatz...thatz....libertarian.
ReplyDelete"I also think abortion makes us more insensitive as a society, the way we interact with each other, the way we treat each other at work and at play, in our day-to-day. I don't care what you say it all started with abortion, it's one of them root causes."
ReplyDeleteOf course you're entitled to your opinion, but what you've written is backed up by absolutely no evidence. I could say that we're insensitive as a society, the way we interact with each other, the way we treat each other at work and at play, in our day-to-day because the first hand-held cellular phone call was made in New York City in 1973, or that burglar James W. McCord Jr. admited that he and other defendants were pressured to remain silent about the Watergate break-in. McCord named former Attorney General John Mitchell as 'overall boss' of the operation.
In fact, one could say all our political backbiting began with Watergate because many GOPers never believed Nixon should have resigned, and that the Democrats set the whole thing up to disgrace Tricky Dick.
So not only was Roe v. Wade passed, but those two events mentioned above occured, and could just as well have been responsible for the malaise you believe has spread across America.
As for the terrible way you think Americans treat each other because of the legalization of abortion, let me point this out: When abortion was ILLEGAL, many Americans treated other Americans with dark skin insensitively. So I would say that it's a good bet that there are a host of other reasons that make people mistreat each other.
PS. I looked into the light bulb complaint, and you seem to have incorrect information.
Copy and paste this url in your browser to see:
http://tinyurl.com/7zshqf5
I'm gonna have to break this down again but about your url Shaw that's in the eye of the beholder of course. For every pro-fluorescent link you can provide I can provide an anti- so what does it all prove 'cept why not let the consumer decide? I don't for the life of me understand how you can be for the right of the doctor and woman to destroy a healthy fetus and yet on the lighter matters like consumer choice be against a free market. Note I didn't say how I couldn't understand how you could be pro-choice, honestly I do but in tandem with taking away our choices on so many other matters (transfats, salt intake, cigs etc.) I just looks very selectively libertarian to me. I'd even go so far as to say you and Saty are pro-abortion rights and soap is pro-choice.
ReplyDeleteSat perhaps you missed my comment above about moving the abortion debate beyond the simple matter of legislation or not. You know you folks the choicers are always talking about common ground and how you can't find it with the lifers but how 'bout the Charles Krauthammer model? He's pro-choice but feels there should be a negative social stigma attached to abortion, that maybe a negative reinforced social message about the act itself might reduce its very commonness so what I'm proposing is why don't you choicers let your personal feelings get in the way a little and say look people the way we're aborting as a nation at 1 million or so a year ain't healthy, it's a negative social pathology? Geez man how can you be so non-opinionated? that preternatural compartmentalization again. So how can voicing an opinion, say a mild anti-abortion twist be violating your political stance on the issue which is very much pro-choice? Seems you and Shaw are misunderstanding me it's just that imo pro-choicers do very little if anything to try to reduce our abortion rates. Going on and on about Choice is not going to reduce those tragic numbers.
ReplyDelete& the best for last. Shaw now what does the first cell phone call or Watergate have to do with the societal insensitivity we're seeing on a daily basis? I would submit your other example of past racism is a much better theory and to your host of reasons why we are such a negative society I would simply add our abortion mentality. Sure it's a theory and how do you prove it but it's more relevant than the first cell phone in Manhattan or Tricky Dick. Destroying perfectly healthy fetuses on a daily basis desensitizes us as a society, again my opinion, my view which we're all entitled to have. I've long held that if we legalize all drugs tomorrow you'd see even more drug abuse than we currently have so I think the moral message behind legalizing something is that it's ok.
ReplyDeleteI think what has just as equal deletariousness with respect to desensitizing society is to bring children into the world without much care or concern for the life they might live.
ReplyDeleteI do not believe I have ever intimated in any way that abortion is in any way a positive.
ReplyDeleteWant to reduce the number of abortions? Make birth control available.
Don't approve of abortions? Don't have one.
What I CAN tell you unequivocally is that making abortion illegal will not stop abortion. It will only mean more women die from them. (Whether that part counts for anything with the anti-abortion crowd is debatable.) Those women will be disproportionately poor and of minorities, which may actually make the entire idea more attractive to many in the anti-abortion crowd. I don't know. I'm guessing on that part.
Prohibition was also 'moral' legislation designed to stop the evils of alcohol consumption.
Did it work? No. It drove drinking underground (my grandmother was a regular at the speakeasies in the Bowery and elsewhere). It caused many thousands of deaths from people drinking homemade brews that included such things as gasoline and turpentine. It kept the cops very busy and gave gangsters a very lucrative business. It also, incidentally, was the basis of what became NASCAR.
Prohibition was an enormous failure. Why?
Because it was the work of a group of people who decided that their personal moral convictions needed to be imposed on the rest of the nation.
This is no different. It won't stop abortion. It will just drive it underground.
You can't legislate morality.
Besides the meat-eating example (which as far as I am concerned is the ROOT cause of any insensitivity and lack of compassion you see in humans anywhere), I have a few others.
ReplyDeleteI don't drink. Haven't had one since 1990. I don't go to bars and I don't generally hang out even with people who drink. I don't find it necessary to re-enact Prohibition on that basis.
I also don't smoke. I quit in 2000 (after almost 22 years). We live in one of the prime tobacco producing areas of the nation and fully 75% of the local economy depends on it. I have no issues with smokers with the single exception of I do not like people smoking while I eat, and I was the same way when I smoked. However, I don't believe any legislation against smoking is necessary simply because I don't do it.
Morality is a personal issue.
Sat you are very selectively libertarian. Change the subject to CFL's and it's the other way around but
ReplyDelete"Want to reduce the number of abortions? Make birth control available."
What, birth control is illegal in this country? didn't know.
and "Don't approve of abortions? Don't have one."
I guess you'd also agree with the sentiment that if I'm against it I shouldn't have to pay for it.
Selectively libertarian? Funny, Soap and I were discussing yesterday that Libertarians and Socialists have a lot of the same goals... just different ideas on how to get to them.
ReplyDeleteNeat, huh?
What's wrong with stating my personal feelings?
ReplyDeleteYou are obsessed with my personal feelings about abortion.
What do they matter, actually? They're irrelevant. They don't factor in. They have absolutely no bearing on my political stance on the matter.
I know, you don't get it. Please let me reiterate once again that how I feel personally has never had any bearing and actually has never been a part of my absolute conviction that every woman needs to have the right to make her own decisions. I believe very strongly that morality cannot be legislated and therefore I would never consider my own personal opinions about a given topic in terms of legislation.
We have been over this a thousand and one times and you never get it. I don't understand why.
It's not that I think being pro-choice means you can't say anything negative. I just don't feel that my personal opinions are really relevant in the matter, because they have no bearing whatsoever on my stance in the matter.
Just like with meat eating, drinking and smoking. My personal opinions are irrelevant in the context of my political stance.
"Before too long CFLs will be replaced with LEDs, which are an even smarter option, and you can bitch about that then."
ReplyDeleteLEDs are too concentrated at present. They make for great under the kitchen cabinets lighting, concert lighting, and great flashlights but that's about it.
Why does Pro-Choice have to be a Non-Opinion?
ReplyDeleteWhich part of this doesn't sound like an opinion:
ReplyDeleteI can not ever, in any way, shape or form, ever deny the woman the right to take control of her own body and do with it what she deems right and proper for her.
I'm just curious.
Sat why not keep every opinion to ourselves, become a Blank Slate? So you don't agree with moral suasion, ok. I could see someone, say a liberal blogging about porn let's say to pull a subject out of a hat, 1st Paragraph defends the rights, the free speech of pornographers, 2nd Paragraph says how disgusting it is. Even that parallel is inexact as in porn you generally don't take a human life. Say you want to legalize drugs but also say drugs are bad for you, that sort of thing. A personal opinion is nothing to be ashamed of, shouldn't offend your liberal friends.
ReplyDeleteAs to my comment about marriage benefits, I may just make it into a posting on my blog, rather than comment 52+ here.
ReplyDeleteI myself wanted to get back to the marriage thing but Sat seemed to get offended because I thought expressing her personal opinion of abortion might be interesting. A political stance may be easy to express, a personal one not so much. Back to the marriage bennies then......
ReplyDelete