Prop 8?

This is one discussion that invariably goes back to semantics and it's because too many people don't know what the words they are reading or writing actually mean and they also don't know the etymology of the word nor bother to look it up. The word for marriage existed before the Christian religion and was a word used by secular governments, tribes, and other non-religious groups. The homosexual relationship was still the love that few dared to speak its' name or even acknowledge existed. This is the only reason that there are now laws being passed which attempt to change the definition of a word that was previously secular as well as religious -- it follow religious dogma and narrows the meaning of the word down to something that the word isn't confined to in the dictionary. There's a reason why the words isn't confined to that one definition -- it's because all those definitions exist, including if two corporations being married. We've definitely got to stop that!

What incisive commentary and biting wit!

Perhaps you could instead spend your time attempting to answer the same questions that others on your side have refused to answer. But I doubt it, because it's too shameful to write the specifics of your fear.

Cycloptichorn

I think that Lightwizard is correct. We are Stalinists in this country. In the country where Freedom is the highest value, we meddle in the sexual practices of free peoples. I have been trying to impress people for years that what is called beastiality( that is a pejoritive, of course) is merely true love between a person and their pet.

No one who has seen the magnificent play, The Goat or Who is Sylvia( written by one of our greatest playwrites, Edward Albee) can fail to recognize that there are people whose sexual needs are unmet because of bigotry.

The story is simple. A man is completely in love with his pet goat. His wife, insanely jealous that he would prefer carnal love with a goat than with her, murders the goat and at the end of the play, drags the body into the living room. The poor husband's incredible anguish brought tears to my eyes.

Lightwizard is correct. My correspondence with the members of NAMBLA and the Animal Lovers reveal that bigotry against those who want NOTHING else but to LOVE, is still alive in America.

Spendius-- Your anecdote about your explanation in a pub regarding lesbians and what they do was quite good. I had a similar experience last year when we were talking about movies in the local tavern. One person mentioned that there was going to be a remake of "Bang the Drum Slowly" --a very sad movie about Baseball and the imminent death of one of the heroes--the pitcher. His best friend was the catcher.

We learned that the remake might use characters from the Academy Award Winning--Brokeback Mountian but we could not decide who would be the pitcher and who the catcher!

Cyclops wrote:

Gays are most specifically not treated like everyone else, and once again, it's highly insulting that you would even claim that. Gays are not allowed to marry the people they are in love with. Surely you can agree with me that marriage is supposed to be a relationship based upon love, not on the base needs of biology.
***********************************************

I agree with Cyclops. The Roman Catholic Church agrees with Cyclops. If homosexuals do love each other and if, AS CYCLOPS SAYS, marriage is based on love, NOT ON THE BASE NEEDS OF BIOLOGY, the Catholic church says that there is absolutely nothing wrong with two homosexuals living together as LONG AS THEY ARE CELIBATE IN THEIR MARRIAGE AND REMAIN CELIBATE.

Cyclops said--based onlove and not the base needs of biology!!!

McGentrix- I think that Lightwizard and Cyclops are hypocrites.

Lightwizard apparently does not wish to give the rights of the pursuit of happiness to anyone who wishes to have carnal intercourse with their beloved animal. Why not?

There is precedent for that going back to the Ancient Greeks.

Cyclops does not wish to give the right of the pursuit of happiness to any man who wishes to have carnal intercourse with a boy. Why not?

There is precedent for that going back to the Ancient Greeks and others.

McGentrix--Cyclops said --"based on LOVE and not the base needs of biology"

I agree and the Catholic Church as well as many other religious denominations would have no problem at all--no problem at all--with two men or two women who love each other PLATONICALLY living together as long as they remained celebate in that relationship.

C yclops is right--based on LOVE and not base biological needs.

"Alas! our frailty is the cause, not we !
For such as we are made of, such we be."

Shakespeare. Twelfth Night.

It's all very well going with the dogmas of PC but those dogmas may not be valid.

And it's all very well going with the Constitution but that was a vain composition written by men who were about as aware of the modern condition in which we live as the missing link was of pull-top beer cans. One presumes that the vagueness of the terms, most of the gentlemen involved having a familiarity with Rabelais, was designed to promote the interests of the profession, professional talker, to which they either belonged or had aspirations to belong.

And its validity for us has been questioned by many eminent men.

Indeed it has even been scoffed at. It is no intellectual benchmark.

Both lines of thought can be ruled out in a debate of this nature.

But media do love it so I expect it to run and run as a sort of drain on a suppurating wound.

It's a stunt with marathon gold medal legs.

Frasier's David Hyde Pierce was atypically vocal on The View yesterday when he revealed he married his companion of 25 years, Brian Hargrove, last fall in"where else?"California.

"Brian and I always kept a low profile. We didn't hide our lives," he said. "We got married very quietly last Oct. 24 and thought that was fine, and then suddenly the state of California said, 'No, it's not.' What we thought was sort of a private, personal decision turned out not to be."

Needless to say, the actor is outraged. He's recently been more active in gay-rights rallies and shared his frustrations with Barbara Walters and the gang.

"I've been going because I had the experience of having this private thing suddenly dragged out into the public, and have people I don't know take a vote," he said. "It was a very angry-making feeling both in November when it was taken away from me and also this past Tuesday when I was sitting in front of my television wondering, 'Gee, I hope it's OK the Supreme Court thinks I'm married.' Excuse me, it's none of your business."

As it turns out, the recent Proposition 8 verdict upholds Pierce and Hargrove's union because it occurred in the brief period of time while same-sex marriages were legal. Needless to say, the actor is still conflicted about it.

"We now find out that, legally, we are still married. That's a mixed thing too," he admitted. "It's like, 'Oh great, we made the cut.' "

A lover of Shakespeare--good man-Spendius. Of course, you are aware that the left wing morons who fell in love with deconstruction aver that Shakespeare is invalid since he wrote subject to the "dubious"culture and morality of his melieu.

Most of these poseurs who ooh and aah at Kandinsky( to mention only one of the modernists) and have never really looked closely at Michaelanglo's Moses, or the avant-garde who really actually believe that Toni Morrison deserves to be anywhere in the same listing with the sublime Shakespeare, are completely engulfed by the dangerous disease called presentism.

If, of course, all the old shibboleths can be negated by deconstruction, we can do anything we want--even fck dogs, goats, young boys, horses, etc, without fear of societal censure.

Long live Shakespeare!!!

John Aloysius Farrell
From USA Today

How Far Will Mormons Go to Fight Gay Marriage?
May 29, 2009 03:49 PM ET

By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

If a gay marriage question is put on the California ballot in 2010, it will put the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at a seriously interesting crossroads.

It has been three or four decades since the Mormon Church chose a low profile in American politics, after its opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, and theological hostility to black Americans, spurred an anti-Mormon backlash. The Mormons are among the most persecuted of American sects, and highly sensitive to criticism.

The church's low-key strategy seemed to work. There are still some Mormon-haters in evangelical Christian circles, but for the most part the Mormons are accepted and admired, and church membership has soared. Mormon politicians like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman are regarded by mainstream America as legitimate presidential timber.

Mormon watchers were surprised, then, when the church hierarchy took such an active role in the passage of Proposition 8 in California, limiting marriage to a man and a woman. Gay Americans were surprised as well. They didn't expect the church to embrace gay marriage, but neither did they predict that the Mormon Church would emerge as a resolute and politically-active foe, whose support for Prop 8 was perhaps determinative. Some of the resultant anti-Mormon rhetoric has been vicious.

Now that Prop 8 has been upheld by the California Supreme Court, gay rights groups say they will put gay marriage on the ballot in California again, and mount a full scale effort to win public approval, perhaps as soon as 2010.

That will put the ball back in the church's court. The family is at the center of Mormon theology. But the national political trends are running against the church. Younger Americans"even young evangelicals"are more than willing to see their gay friends get married.

Opposing gay marriage in Utah (as the church did in 2004) is one thing, but taking a lead public role in a national campaign to deprive a persecuted minority of a right shared by all other Americans is another. It would be seen as a sign that the days of low-key tactics are over, and that the current Mormon leaders are prepared to give, and get, the political bruising that occurs when religion mixes with politics in America.

Lightwizard wrote:

"Brian and I always kept a low profile. We didn't hide our lives," he said. "We got married very quietly last Oct. 24 and thought that was fine, and then suddenly the state of California said, 'No, it's not.' What we thought was sort of a private, personal decision turned out not to be."

****************************************************

But WHO is the pitcher and who the catcher?

I think that Lightwizard is correct. We are Stalinists in this country. In the country where Freedom is the highest value, we meddle in the sexual practices of free peoples. I have been trying to impress people for years that what is called beastiality( that is a pejoritive, of course) is merely true love between a person and their pet.

No one who has seen the magnificent play, The Goat or Who is Sylvia( written by one of our greatest playwrites, Edward Albee) can fail to recognize that there are people whose sexual needs are unmet because of bigotry.

The story is simple. A man is completely in love with his pet goat. His wife, insanely jealous that he would prefer carnal love with a goat than with her, murders the goat and at the end of the play, drags the body into the living room. The poor husband's incredible anguish brought tears to my eyes.

Lightwizard is correct. My correspondence with the members of NAMBLA and the Animal Lovers reveal that bigotry against those who want NOTHING else but to LOVE, is still alive in America.

From the LA Times:

New Prop. 8 court challenge brings former legal rivals together
11:06 AM | May 27, 2009

The California Supreme Court failed to protect gay couples' fundamental right to marry when it upheld Proposition 8, forcing same-sex couples to appeal to the federal courts to remedy the injustice, two prominent lawyers said today in announcing a lawsuit on behalf of two gay couples.

Me1_kkbemjnc Former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson, a renowned conservative, and David Boies, who opposed Olson in Bush v. Gore in the 2000 fight over the presidential election, cast their collaborative effort to restore the right of gays to marry in California as a moral imperative to correct an injustice. Their suit seeks an immediate injunction on Prop. 8's ban, thereby allowing same-sex marriages to resume while the case makes its way through the federal court system.

But Olson's role in the gay rights mission prompted much speculation about his motives. The former Bush administration official, who lost his wife in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, conceded that the federal courts might not be ready to recognize sexual orientation as a class in need of protection from discrimination, but he said he hoped "that people don't suspect my motives," vowing to demonstrate his commitment to equal rights by winning the challenge.

Boies vouched for Olson as "committed in heart and soul to equality and committed in heart and soul to the Constitution."

Both lawyers, flanked by the two gay couples they represent in the lawsuit, compared the fight for same-sex marriage rights to previous civil rights campaigns and said it was wrong to urge their clients to wait for their fundamental rights for another decade or longer because of the current conservative domination of the federal bench.

--Carol J. Williams

They even have one size fits all trolls:

Here's the video clip:
LINK

Unfortunately "close-minded" people like CoastalRat like to butt into other people's personal lives and believe it's their business to tell Mr. Pierce that he can't be married to his partner of 25 years.

I'm still awaiting one of the Conservatives here to answer the question, as to what harm specifically it will do to society to allow gay marriage; and to what motivates them to want to deny that right to gays.

Cycloptichorn

Sorry, forgot to provide the link (they haven't sold any of the fits all sizes of troll product so they're offering them as pet wear).

http://www.letcaliforniaring.org/site/c.ltJTJ6MQIuE/b.3793463/k.BE14/Home.htm

I think that Lightwizard is correct. We are Stalinists in this country. In the country where Freedom is the highest value, we meddle in the sexual practices of free peoples. I have been trying to impress people for years that what is called beastiality( that is a pejoritive, of course) is merely true love between a person and their pet.

No one who has seen the magnificent play, The Goat or Who is Sylvia( written by one of our greatest playwrites, Edward Albee) can fail to recognize that there are people whose sexual needs are unmet because of bigotry.

The story is simple. A man is completely in love with his pet goat. His wife, insanely jealous that he would prefer carnal love with a goat than with her, murders the goat and at the end of the play, drags the body into the living room. The poor husband's incredible anguish brought tears to my eyes.

Lightwizard is correct. My correspondence with the members of NAMBLA and the Animal Lovers reveal that bigotry against those who want NOTHING else but to LOVE, is still alive in America.