California Voters Approve Gay-Marriage Ban

It's just another example of Obsessive Compulsion Disorder when they have run out of things to tinker with in order to be noticed. What are they going to shout about next?

It's as if hundreds of years of legislation on this matter had no point and suddenly in 2011 the great and the good realised how foolish we had been in all that time. They had a forced epiphany.

And it's another maritime state. Hello sailor.

Just another social control mechanism. A new office, a new bureaucracy and a new list to make and keep up to date. Jobs for the 'ologists on the demand side.

You're a cramped, crabby old man, spendius. And you get more irrelevant everyday. We had these discussions seven years ago in Massachusetts, and we accepted equality as a state. The Commonwealth hasn't fallen. Marriage hasn't been destroyed, as all those shrill nay-sayers said would happen. We had the lowest divorce rate in the country before same-sex marriage. We still do. We're the true family-values state, and we say, "Glad to have you with us, New York."

Im always interested in how the religious had always been supporters of the Civil rights movement when it invilved only race. When it involves those whose definitions of such things a s"marriage" counters the Judeo Christian playbook, they all seem to disappear.
Civil rights is civil rights and the financial and social descrimination employed against gay couples is shameful (but believable when it comes to the massive clout that religious institutions have on our daily lives)

Farmer, I don't think it's all Christians--it's mostly just the shrill ones. Who're becoming more marginalized. The Catholic hierarchy oppose gay marriage, but it seems to be another of the many cases where Catholic laypeople just ignore what the bishops say when it contradicts what they themselves believe. MA is a very Catholic state, and the hierarchy has spken against same-sex marriage here for years, but there has been no public support for their position. And the religious right seems to be mainly talking to itself. Mainstream Protestant churches often support gay rights.

Yeah--and you lot have arranged things so that we can't answer back to that regarding what you're like. You've fixed the megaphone. If we do it's called hate speech whereas what you say is all sweetness and light.

Do you really think that the tectonic social forces manifest their functions in seven measly years. Do you really think anybody expected the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to have "fallen"? When you feel the need to invent your own caricatures so they are easily knocked over it's sitting ducks you are in to.

Nobody expected marriage to have been destroyed.

There will be a number of reasons why you had, and have, the lowest divorce rate. Some state has to be lowest anyway. If you weren't from the state with the LDR you just wouldn't be mentioning it. Somebody else might if he was from the state with the LDR. If he is daft enough to think it's an argument thereby insulting everybody's intelligence. Massachusettians are probably still a little nervous about Salem and they are all as sober as a gatepost all life long. So you would expect them to have the LDR. No gossip and no booze would tend in the married bliss direction I should think. Where do they rate on tranquilliser use?

A married man under the cosh is called "hen-pecked" or "pussy whipped". What's a nagged at homosexual going to be? What happens to "honey"moon. Where the bee sucks. Romance dies the death of a billion cuts of the PC knife. Goodbye John Clare and Lord Byron. You're going to have to ban all those books about gallant knights rescuing damsels in distress because they don't give equal time to blokes being rescued from towers where their fathers have them locked up by gallant knights. Would you ask the father of a prospective male "wife" for his hand in marriage"? Will there be engagements?

A lady has a good excuse for seeking to fix herself up with a handyman/meal ticket. I can't imagine any intelligent woman getting married for any other reason. Half a dozen of the devious little darlings made a move on my freedom because I was thought a good prospect. I used to have to go to the Gents when a Ladies' Choice was coming up.

In 30 years will one be a matron of a certain age and the other a silly old twat?

And what may I ask are "family values"? Is that just an expression you use to put yourself on the right side of viewers here who also feel of glow of superiority on hearing such syrupy slosh. Most parents I see today should be locked up for child abuse. I cringe when I see a bloke playing football on a park with his little lad. I feel a sadness for the lad. Huck Finn a fading echo.

You're right though Jack. I do get more irrelevent every day. I'm glad I'm not ******* relevent. I might have to vote in Britain's Got Talent and sit on the edge of my sofa, which is designed for lying down on, to see which talent imitator won. It's like the lowest divorce ratings. If you have such things somebody has to win or be top or come bottom.

The GOP still uses religion to push their agenda, because they know it still works. In another generation, they'll be the laughing stock of politics.

I think that you are on to something, I'm just not sure that the time frame is correct!

Just look at what happened during my generation. Most minorities suffered from racial discrimination even as this country was declared a christian one going into the 17th century and into the 21st. I was born 75 years ago, and most of us seniors lived through the WWII years and after. The US government put us into concentration camps even though the majority of us were American citizens - all with the blessings of bigots and newspaper moguls. Even immediately after the great war, we did not socialize with whites or the Chinese. Dan Inouye became a US Senator since 1963, and many more Asians followed his footsteps into the US congress. Today, many whites and Chinese are in our family. The same also happened to blacks. Yup; one generation, and we're still considered a christian nation.

I hope that I am wrong but I think that it will take a few more generations to rid the majority of religious people of their hatefulness toward gay people, I think it has something to do with religious moderation.
I think that some things should be spoken out against if there is no science to back up the claims being made.


This speaks about religious moderation!
Sam Harris at Idea CIty '05

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3YOIImOoYM

I don't know any religious people who express hatefulness towards homosexuals for being homosexuals. The most militant atheist I know is the one who regularly does that.

But when they start messing with the language and getting us all to use words in a way that defies the traditions of literature I am going to have something to say.

You've got two strawmen in one effort there rl. Which is beginning to make me suspect some sort of inferiority complex.

A few religious people are not the same as religious people generally and the few you are using to make your thrumming and indignant point you will have diligently searched out for that very purpose. And the objection to homosexuals is not always because of their homosexuality but because of other aspects of their behaviour. It's as if homosexuals can behave any way they want and if somebody objects they are accused of being hateful.

You are very touchy. Do you go out looking for people who you can accuse of being hateful towards homosexuals so you can play the victim more readily?

Married heterosexuals have more grounds for accusing me of disparaging their activities than homosexuals have. Much more.

Are you carrying the world on your little, downtrodden shoulders?

You make the mistake of thinking that people's motives are the ones they say they are. You're asking for discrimination when you raise your profile and get into everybody's face.

Spendius is the only person I've ever come across who thinks it's all right to deny people human rights because he doesn't feel he can use one word, ONE WORD, the same way he could fifty years ago. That is probably the weakest argument I've ever heard, but it is SO Spendius.

spendi, That you would use such as word as "inferiority complex" made me laugh out loud, because you have a "superiority complex" by trying to deny other humans the same rights as everybody else. Who are you to deny others the same rights and privileges just because they belong to "another" group religious folks believe are "sinners?"

You are confused! Get off your high horse and start treating all humans equally. Why would you want to deny people you don't even know or care about the same rights that you have?

There's a vast complex of words, meanings, phrases etc surrounding the formal relationship between men and women as I hinted earlier. A large part of history and almost the whole of literature is concerned with the matter. The one word symbolises all that and only an unintelligent person would not recognise the fact. Very few people spend their lives reading bus timetables and instructions on microwave dinner sachets. And it's SO Monterey Jack to try to get everybody down into the hole he's in. You're not getting young A2Kers down into it while I'm around. I'm up for calling polygamy marriage. I'm up for calling "over the brush" relationships marriage. If they are between men and women.

Marriage isn't a word. It's a concept. A chemical reaction is not a phrase. Neither is a football game. It looks a bit like homosexuals want to pretend they are not homosexuals except in circumstances where they can't avoid it being obvious.

You've completely buggered one very famous word already and rendered a lot of literature ridiculous by doing so. There's nothing gay about homosexuals. Gay means lighthearted, not being serious, and homosexuals are neither.

The language used on here on your side is bullying and simply because you have frightened everybody else off you're bullying me with numbers.

oh, all right, I thought you were just bitching about "gay". I see you're in fact bitching about "gay", yes, but also bitching about "marriage". It's a losing game, Spendius. Words take on new connotations and meanings and change old ones all the time. And there's not a damned thing you can do to stop it. The words change as the situations in which they're used change. An example that springs to mind is "prove", which used to mean "test" as in "Proving grounds" where the military tests the performance of new eapons systems. Hence the expression "The exception proves the rule" used to mean "An exception tests whether or not the rule is valid", but now people torture the expression into meaning something like "If there's an exception, then the rule is true", which is of course clear nonsense. Which basically means you have to use language with a little bit of common sense. As with marriage. You could get someone like Setanta to give you a cnetury by century recap of how its meaning has changed over the centuries--and it has. Think dynastic marriage as just one example of how it differs. Economic marriages have been with us for millenia. Love marriages are a relatively new phenomenon. Heterosexual marriages are certainly not goiing to disappear or become anything other than the vast majority. None of that changes. There's just a new subclause in the definition. No cause for alarm. Just drink an extra pint tonight and take a downer, and all will be all right in the morning. Do you antedeluvians still say, "Don't get your knickers in a twist"? Don't get your knickers in a twist.

I think that Spendius may have the right stuff!

http://www.ocdonline.com/articlephillipson6.php

Look Jack--the dynamics of the relationship between men a women has absolutely **** all to do with testing weapons systems. Have you any idea how misogynistic that comparison is. **** it and see instead of suck it and see.

And Setanta knows nothing about history. To teach him something about the subject would require him to go through a five year long brain emptying process to get him back to the beginning. All he knows is what he's read and that isn't much. Do you know how little is the amount you need to know about a subject to get a major in it? 1% at best. Parlaying that into seeming expertise is a rhetorical skill and in Setanta's case it relies on bombast, bluff and bluster. He's a poseur.

Marriage is a ball and chain and the first sight of that would send any self-respecting homosexual into running shoes. I can't understand why any of them would want to be associated with anything as humiliating as marriage. Watch Oliver Hardy walk down a street with a "wife". Watch the Dick van Dyke show.

Taking another bloke on is like fishing in your garden pond in preference to fishing for shark out of sight of land.

Slow down Spendius We do not need you to have a heart attack!

Could you be getting a little worked up about this? A little emotional? Keep in mind that there is no one asking you to engage in gay sex!
I hope that this is not the problem, That is that no one has offered you gay sex?
I have heard so much about the catholic faith that I just do not know if the believer is being sincere or not! Please do not take this the wrong way.

How can anybody take you the wrong way rl? You're an open book.

I'm defending English literature. I don't give a shite what homosexuals do.

They can't write a sentence like--"She let free sudden in rebound her nipped elastic garter smackwarm against her smackable woman's warmhosed thigh."

Make up your mind Spendius How does defending English literature have any thing to do with whether gays should be able to marry or not?