Obama and Gay Marriage
Offline I thought this was an interesting article. Many are upset with Rick Warren; yet, Obama has expressed support to not redefine marriage as well without the same outrage. What do you all think?
SCOTTSDALE, Arizona (CNN) -- Proponents of redefining marriage couldn't wait for the new president to be sworn in before demanding that he erase from the inauguration ceremony a prominent American who disagrees with them.
The target of their rhetorical bombardment is Rick Warren, the popular Christian pastor from Southern California.
President-elect Barack Obama has asked Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. Not so fast, cries Kathryn Kolbert, head of People for the American Way, an organization that claims to advance equality and freedom of speech and religion (but not for Rick Warren and those who agree with his marriage views) in a piece published on CNN.com.
Warren's grave sin? Along with 52 percent of California voters, he supported California's Proposition 8, which affirmed the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. What a radical!
Though Warren will only be praying for the country's future (not giving a speech about marriage), Kolbert and others are pressuring Obama to set a precedent for his administration of publicly shunning someone who supports the traditional definition of marriage.
They want people like Warren silenced and ostracized for their "hate speech," defined today as disagreeing with their agenda to impose a redefinition of marriage on an unwilling America. Obama, to his credit, has resisted their strident demands.
The attacks on Warren are the latest in a series of coercive, intimidating attacks on supporters of traditional marriage.
Now, activists have ramped up their strong-arm tactics by pushing the president-elect to ban Warren from appearing at the inauguration.
This is amazingly audacious, in light of the fact that on marriage, the overwhelming majority of Americans and, indeed, humanity, agrees with Warren. Americans have voted to preserve marriage in all 30 states where it has been on the ballot by an average vote of more than 65 percent.
The collective experience and wisdom of every major civilization from the dawn of time agrees that societies function best and children are best protected when marriage is defined as between one man and one woman. Warren and those who agree with him want all nations to experience these benefits of marriage when it is rightly defined and consistently practiced.
Ironically, Obama has repeatedly stated that he agrees "that marriage is the union between a man and a woman." Does Kolbert question his fitness to serve as president in light of his allegedly "bigoted" views on marriage?
Kolbert brazenly denies that she and other activists desire to silence pastors like Warren because of their marriage views. She is indignant that Warren and others spread the "big lie" that redefining marriage would threaten the freedom of speech and religious liberties of those who hold the view shared by the vast majority of Americans.
Her argument is disarming in its pure duplicity. Part of Kolbert's case against Warren, who she thinks should not be speaking at such an important public ceremony, is that he believes that folks like her are working to ban people like him from speaking at public ceremonies. Thus, the "big lie" becomes an obvious truth.
This is really all about ideological purity -- and purging. Are the activists proposing that no one should be permitted to speak at the inauguration if they hold beliefs on marriage contrary to hers and her ideological bedfellows? How can publicly snubbing the influential and respected Warren advance what Kolbert calls "the values of unity and respect ... on which President-elect Obama campaigned?"
It won't. But it will surely send a message to those who believe in marriage, that they will be viciously attacked for expressing, or merely believing, that marriage is defined as between one man and one woman. Ms. Kolbert provides just the latest example of how the forces of "tolerance" and "diversity" quickly abandon their principles of "live and let live" when somebody disagrees with them.
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Patently and absurdly false. The vast majority of human civilizations on record have practiced polygamy to one degree or another.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
I myself don't get why gays support the democrats. I remember Obama and Hillary stating that they do not support gay marriage. If gays care about marriage they should support third parties that support gay marriage rather than support the main two anti-gay marriage parties. I suspect that the democrats will use gays the same way that the republicans use the religious right. They will spout off a lot of pro-gay rhetoric and give gays a few very minor token increases in gay rights, but they will not give gays equality to straights. Gays need to face it: both parties are against gay equality and supporting the one that is not as hostile to them does not actually advance their cause.
Also Warren is bad in many more ways than just his anti-gay equality stance. It is just by coincidence that his hostility toward gay equality is shared by the democrat party in general and Obama in particular.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
The framing in that article deserves an award! I mean, 'attack'?
If I read 'right-makes-right' again, I might set out to prove whoever suggested it correct. The political climte in Canada seriously has me sick of people who think that's how these democracies are supposed to function. Indeed, it would seem as though the welfare of minorities is a non-existant or fringe issue so long as a majority (or a perceived majority) believes they're correct, or that they've won or whatever.
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.
Most Americans are probably lucky if they know that the Earth is round. What the majority of Americans happen to vote on does not necessarily reflect reality.
Marriage is not an 'institute', and it certainly is not something that somehow arbitrarily requires 'protection' from progress.
*Bashes dumbfuck Republican with a stick*
No, you stupid fucker! NO!
What do you mean by 'functions best'? Or that children are 'best protected'? Don't just throw-out terms; substantiate your Goddamn rhetoric.
This is really what passes as a 'news' article in North America these days, isn't it?
*Sigh*
Children are happiest when (go figure) they have happy parents. Happy children are more likely to develop into productive and happy adults (again, go figure). Note that 'marriage' and 'gender' never even enters into this equation at all - it only comes into the fold when you drag your dogma overtop of established principles of science.
If history has apparently 'taught us' that gay marriage leads to the doom of civilization, you need to actally provide an example of when and where this has occurred.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Discussing gay marriage? Still? Yikes...
Can we please not introduce anymore threads about homosexuals, lesbians, drag queens, transvestites, transgenders or gay marriage? We have more pressing matters to delve into.
Compromise: We continue to introduce threads about homosexuality, but they must start including far more pictures of girls making out with other girls.
This is a board of skeptics, dammit! We can't take this sort of alleged activity as occurring on faith and hearsay alone.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Well, this whole topic gets under my skin in a huge way.
First, let me say some basic information. We simply do not have a decent body of statistical data about stable gay families. I do think that it is reasonable to presume that stable families with two gay partners have probably always existed. However, because they have not really been able to be open about the matter, we just don't have a lot of information to know what they might be like.
Second, I find the argument that only straight couples can raise healthy children is suspect. If that is true, then what does that tell us about families where one parent dies tragically, leaving a couple of rug rats behind? Seriously, if the widowed are automatically incapable of raising healthy children and there is a compelling societal interest in forcing a specific family structure, then we need to address this grave social injustice.
Since “Just think of the children” is a rallying cry for some of these nut jobs, then there is a clear societal interest in forcing the widowed to remarry within weeks after the death of a spouse. This is, after all, all about the children. And no, having a replacement mommy that daddy hates is clearly not going to fuck up the kids anywhere nearly as badly as not having a mommy around. Nor will the kids be affected by daddy having an obvious girl friend on the side that he really does like.
Mind you, no straight couple has ever raised a fucked up kid before. Apart from all the fucked up adults who were raised in households where the parents would not divorce “for the sake of the kids”.
Also, what about all the fairly productive members of the upper class who spend way too much time in therapy which is targeted to those who can afford it? Or who go to astrologers or new age gurus? If they had a regular mommy and daddy, then by extension, they can't possibly need any of that.
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Now none of the above really addresses gay marriage. It only shows how fucked up the argument against it is.
As I said above, we don't have a whole lot of data on gay families. But here too I have questions.
First off, who is saying that gay couple want children in the first place? Sure, some do but then there are some straight couples who choose not to have kids. The argument for gay marriage is not automatically an argument for gays raising kids.
Even so, straight couples can raise kids who are fucked up or well adjusted. Also, I have known a few people who were raised by gay couples and neither their successes nor their problems are especially easily attributed to daddy's boyfriend or mommy's girlfriend.
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What really get to me though is the one issue that does not get brought up anywhere nearly as much as it should be. It gets some coverage but just not enough.
There are rights and privileges granted to married couples that unmarried people do not get. Linking health care, transferring assets on death and the like are the ones that do get covered. However, there are others.
For example, I used to work with a guy who was really effeminate and had a boyfriend of ten years standing. His whole “real family” had fully disowned him. Then he was brutally beaten. He spent a few months in intensive care and it took him over two years to learn to walk again.
Once he got into rehab, he could visit with his boyfriend. However, while he was in the ICU, there was nobody to sit by his bedside and possibly provide him with some hope that things might get better.
Where is the compelling societal interest in that?
Edit:
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BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
Ah, Gene. Glad you got the message.
The first tidbits of evidence begin to trickle-in. But remember, kids:
When it comes to evidence, more is always better.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
.....your wish is my command !!!
So it seems that the Obama team has invited an openly gay priest to deliver the invocation Read here
excerpt from CNN:
"The Rev. Gene Robinson, Episcopal bishop in New Hampshire, has accepted an invitation issued by the Obama team prior to the announcement of the Rev. Rick Warren’s selection to deliver the invocation at the president-elect’s swearing-in, Politico reported Monday"
Slowly building a blog at ~
http://obsidianwords.wordpress.com/
Well, CNN links never work for me for some reason. Even so, google news is giving me a different story. From a few articles, I am given to understand that Rick Warren will still be providing the invocation on Monday. Gene Robinson is being tapped to bless the rock concert that Obama has scheduled on Sunday.
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OK, speaking as a conservative republican and a Dawkins level 7 atheist, I have to wonder what is going on here.
I still have family and friends who are active in the conservative Anglican movement and I can tell you that any mention of Gene Robinson gets their panties in a bunch. Mind you, nobody really expected that Obama was going to do much for conservatives but we get a chance to fix that in four years. However, I can tell you that Gene Robinson is pretty much a deliberate slap in the face to that crowd.
On the liberal side, Obama rode the liberal vote to the office of POTUS. Then he decided that he wanted to court the churchly type people and specifically the mega-church crowd. So he picked the one guy who did not have any obvious lunacy on any of his web sites.
Then he got called on the matter by the very people who elected him. Yet he still wants to play games, so he picked Gene Robinson (I guess so that he could be seen by the easily deluded to be not a bad guy after all).
The problem here is that he still has Rick Warren in for the original role that he picked the guy for.
If he wants to be seen as a middle of the road kind of guy, then he might find some wisdom in finding middle of the road preachers to fill the roles that he has in mind. Had he picked a couple of guys from that crowd he would not have really slapped anyone around. Sure, he would have done no favors to the more extreme crowd but then those people will never be pleased.
However, I can't see how keeping Rick Warren in is not a slap on the face to the very people who voted for him.
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