“Silencing others while you ram your agenda down their throats is fascism. Come up with your own tradition, you goose-stepping Philistines.”

On a point of order, gas chamber are fascist. You may have gone just a tad overboard there.

Further, tradition would require enslaving the black population wouldn’t it? After all segregation and racism are a far more traditional approach in the US than equality. Why shouldn’t we go back to that noble tradition…Oh I get what you mean. The only valid traditions are those that reinforce your financial superiority and sense of moral worth.

Your victim hood is disgusting.

Homosexuals are free to create their own tradition for “permanent” coupling. They can call it whatever they like, except for marriage. That name and tradition are spoken for.

The vast majority of Americans oppose the cooption of marriage by homosexuals, but they support civil unions. This isn’t good enough for the hate mongering activists, of course. Allowing gays to bond legally is secondary to their intolerant desire to destroy an institution practiced by the majority. (Most gay “marriage” activists are heterosexuals.)

Most religions frown on gay “marriage,” but the religious beliefs of anybody who opposes the assault on marriage are ridiculed. The left defends islam’s “right” to misogyny and terrorism, but not its right to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Christianity is wrongly blamed for any defense of marriage.

Silencing others while you ram your agenda down their throats is fascism. Come up with your own tradition, you goose-stepping Philistines.

I go to wingnut sites because I enjoy spirited debate. Goes back to the enlightenment, that the truth is likely to emerge when opposing sides contend. Look it up.

Sometimes I am wrong. I’ve had to eat crow before. With enough salt, it’s not that bad. But you’ll have to show me with data and rationality. I reject your silly version of ethnic cleansing.

Anyhow, on-topic, there’s this:

“In a dramatic reversal of decades of public opinion, California voters agree by a slim majority that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, according to a Field Poll released today,

By 51 to 42%, registered voters said they believed same-sex marriage should be legal in California.”

snip……

“This is a milestone in California,” (Mark DiCamillo-polling director) said. “You can’t downplay the importance of a change in an issue we’ve been tracking for thirty years.”

Well….unless you’re a wingnut neo conservative. Then downplay comes easy.

If the state were completely divorced from the buisness of conferring benefits on citizens based on their church-sanctioned cohabitation rituals, there would be no problem. A problem does arise, however, when one side in the debate demands that the state pretend it isn’t favoring a select, albeit wide, swath of religious traditions, while simultaneously doing exactly that.

The Metropolitan Community Churches (I’m NOT a member) do marry same sex couples, yet their religious ceremonies are not afforded the same legal recognition as the religious ceremonies performed by more mainline faiths.

The argument, that gay marriage somehow threatens straight couples is best responded to with derision and parody: http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/2008/06/two-great-men-stand-up-for-marriage.html

Three problems with this:

1. The most recent polls show the initiative losing.
2. In California, we do vote t confirm or reject our judges.
3. It’s a yes or no vote. “Plurality” (as opposed to “majority”) should not be used when there are only two “candidates”.

Oh, and “purview” is spelled thus, not “pervue”.

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Too delicate to hear opposing views, are we?

Another way to say it could be that Obama’s position is that “state or federal legislatures ought not to pass laws that tell law abiding citizens who they can and can’t marry.”

Courts are not imperial. They are asked to rule on legislation against the principles the society has said they wish to live, as codified in constitutions or human rights legislation. To say that a society values equality and then to not offer the same benefits to discriminate against some relationships is morally bankrupt. And illegal according to the norms of constitutional law as we have been taught.

Same sex relationships do not in any way devalue other relationships. If anything, they strenghten them. Check out the social peace in societies that recognize them and get with the 21st century.

If Obama believes same-sex unions are the right position, let him make his arguments.

Duh, he just did. Banning of same sex marriage IS discriminatory. That IS the argument. Treating a class of people in an inferior way for no good reason IS the very definition of discrimination. “DISCRIMINATION: treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit”. You may not like it, but you don’t get to redefine words as you wish.

You offer absolutely no argument as to why blocking the advantages of marriage from a specific class of people, in this case gay couples, is not discriminatory. You rant that it isn’t, but foaming at the mouth is not a very credible viewpoint. So the question to you is, why is the prevention of gay marriage not discriminatory? Right now all you’ve said is that a lot of people don’t think it is. That’s not much of an answer.

I have not read a sincere, intelligent, secular argument against gay marriage.

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The ballot measure will see which side is infinitesimal. Polls suggest a 60 + % plurality want the California Constitutional amended to make clear that marriage is legitimate only in heterosexual unions. That will pass in November, taking it out of the pervue of the Court.

Gays want total acceptance of a lengthy agenda, of which this issue is a part, Marriage exists not for the parties, but to raise children and impart values to the next generation. This crucial function will not be conferred upon a social experiment of dubious long-term value to the survival of the civilization.

Obama has calculated the voters who share Commentary Magazine’s policy on civil rights is so infinintessimal that he’s going to be just fine if he assumes you do not matter. I agree with him.

great comment. Unfortunately, Wehner and many otherwise rational conservatives were blinded by White Guilt. Here was a presentable “Black” Democrat at last, one who seemed intelligent and honorable–at least in carefully parsed soundbytes. White guilt drove many a pundit to believe the Anointed One wasn’t another Jesse Jackson/Cynthia McKinney/Al Sharpton/Maxine Waters/Marion Berry, etc.

They were wrong, and the ones who now recognize this have trouble recognizing or admitting that Obama was an obvious huckster all along. Obama just pretended that race shouldn’t be an issue, when it was the only issue he ran on the whole time. Someday a real Black presidential candidate will come along who actually does want his race to be irrelevant to the campaign. Someday. I think we’ll both be long dead before that happens, especially when the candidates are Democrats.

Peter, that you even use such meaningless terms calls into question your seriousness about all this. The conceit you note was absurd the first nano-second it was uttered – that’s entirely apart from the fact that it was meaningless anyway. Perhaps you could take the time to explain – in adult terms – what this sophomoric b.s. was supposed to actually signify back when it was “credible”.

I don’t want to be “unified” with people whose understanding of economics is nothing more than ignorant envy, whose idea of national security challenges are AIDs or “climate change,” who support a war until it’s tougher than a TV show and then proceed to slander the leadership and the fighting forces, who shred the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions as a sacrifice on their altar of ignorant moral narcissism, who are de facto champions of tryanny, racism, barbarism, and misogyny and literal opponents of the greatest force for good in human affairs, who think that suing OPEC is an energy policy and helping judicially implemented extortion against telecom companies is protecting “civil rights”. Ideally I want these people to disappear from the planet, or at least go live somewhere else. As that’s not likely, I want them marginalized and kept away from any influence. Humiliated and impoverished would be a “nice-to-have” here.

Unified? No thanks.

And what’s so bad about the “old politics”? Under the “old politics,” Obama would have been dismissed from class after revelation of even one of his idiotic and despicable associations – oh, and his utter lack of experience and demonstrated wisdom would have made his aspirations the subject of derisive laughter and nothing more. Murtha and probably Reid and Durbin and McDermott and others would have had careeris interruptus after their inexcusable behavior. Losers like Clarke and McLellan and a few others whose names are joyously already lost to memory would have been shunned, not published and feted.

I say bring back the “old politics”.

Karl Rove would know how to make this a “wedge issue” to McCain’s advantage. Where is McCain’s karl Rove?

Exactly what skills has Obama displayed that weren’t displayed far more prominently by his opponents in the Democrat primary–particularly Hillary Clinton? The truth is, he’s made it this far on his perceived race, and nothing else. Not only that, but his unethical behaviour and yes, stupidity, are endlessly excused away because of his perceived race.

He turns out to be an exceptionally Blackish and ambitious politician who uses the old playbook even as he pretends to have discarded it. It’s a neat trick if you can get away with it.

I prefer to believe that we’ve been watching the battlefield get prepared, while also waiting for the real structure of the race to be finalized. It doesn’t serve to underestimate the opponent, but Obama really is a terrible candidate in most respects, whose weaknesses have included big ones that at least in the recent past have worked very well for Republicans with key swing constituencies in key swing states. Yet we also hear that McCain should be focused on energy – that energy could win it for him. Or he should focus on taxes and the ramifications of Obama’s health care plan. Or he should drive home the character issue. Or judges. Or even Iraq. Or make the country fear Obama’s inexperience. Or staple Obama to Wright, Ayers, and the rest. Or… Or… Or…

It’s hard to be patient, but you’ve got to conserve your ammo, position your forces, not give away all of your intentions, and be prepared to focus your attack at the right moment and in the right place, and furthermore to exploit your breakthroughs if you’re good or lucky enough to make them. In the meantime, harrying Obama, picking off his skirmishers and denying him advantageous territory, is excellent work, and Obama and his undisciplined troops seem to be willing to help out. I acknowledge that it’s difficult to see him showing such horrible vulnerabilities even while enjoying a lead in the polls, making apparent misstep after misstep but not suffering for it, but there may be no cure for the predicament. The macro factors and popular reflexes learned over decades are dominating now, and fighting them would be a waste of energy that an underdog campaign can’t afford.

Could and should. Will he? That remains to be seen, but this issue can be a big winner for McCain in 08. Obama’s specific, extreme statements on the matter make this debate very easy to frame in a way that is very negative to Obama. McCain should repeatedly use Obama’s words on this subject against him, both in speeches and in targeted ads aimed at those who are not partial to changing the definition of marriage, but may not know Obama’s out-of-the-mainstream stand on the issue.

Again, could and should. But the “will” remains to be seen.

It is possible to be entirely supportive of homosexual without backing gay marriage. Because it gives them nothing substantial, but detracts substantially from the status of marriage and the traditional family, a vital institution already crumbling.

Obama would do a lot better praising the unitary family and deploring fathers who deny their children two married parents. That is the key problem today in 70
% of black births. Obama is himself a victim of that.

Turning marriage into a homosexuals thing, will do little for that institution in the inner city.

But Obama wants to pander to homosexuals and does not worry about the damage he causes the larger society, and not least the black community.

Clearly, we all know the answer: he’s a flip-flopper of epic proportions, willing to say, do and act in whatever direction the wind is blowing, almost literally from day-to-day. Obama is a (the?) stereotypical politician, dredged up from the bowels of the imagination of the most gifted political cartoonist of journalism’s long-gone golden age, a cardboard cut-out that couldn’t stand up in a slight breeze let alone a stiff gale. That nobody seems to care (outside of the right side of the blogosphere) is a pretty damning indictment of the lack of critical thinking on the part of the average American.

I can only hope that, post-Labor Day, the electorate comes out of its drunken summer stupor and realizes what they’re pinning their hopes on is a shadowy and hologram-like figure, comprised of equal parts spin and gross distortion.

Who knows? But he’s got my vote!!!! — “Excitable” Andrew Sullivan

Unlike in many other states, California civil unions are 100% identical to marriages, so Obama (or whatever staffer wrote this) either doesn’t know what he’s talking about, or is assuming that whatever constituency he’s pandering to here doesn’t know the facts, or both.