Well, if the alternative is that you find another Coleman, I’ll take a pencil neck liberal weenie. And in truth, he is a wrestler and not afraid to challenge people to a fight, so he makes for an odd pencil neck weenie. (Although you guys might not like this wrestler as opposed to your general penchant for electing wrestlers, because his wrestling didn’t involve hitting others with folding chairs.)
Speaking of Al Franken, he had a recent post on Huffington’s blog about the missing $8.8 billion in Iraqi reconstruction money, and how many people who should know about it apparently do not.
:smack: I should have said “catsix, I can not agree with you here,” for when catsix said:
he was blaming the wrong group. The concept know as marriage is already a civil union, and redefining it would do nothing, for while the non-religious term for marriage is: marriage, we are not going to get those who dislike the concept of gay marriage to admit to that fact any sooner. Really, I believe that catsix already know this, but it is not clear, judging from the quote above.
Well, they don’t see it that way, but you are correct. However, it is not that simple. I believe they are unable to stand the fact that a term they love is used for a government ceremony. Of course, they realize the gov. can define it any way it wants to, but they sincerely believe that it shouldn’t, for their own ass-backwards reasons.
Well, in all fairness, the fact that religion is currently defined as between a man and a woman, rather then between two people who love each other, is hardly a religious reason, despite the claims of the opposition, but a simple inability of the founding fathers (at least those who spoke up)to conceive of it any other way, as was the culture back then
My statement comes in, with my trying to state the following: I was trying to correct catsix, but posted the wrong name, stating it is possible to point out that marriage is a civil issue, and that it is advisable to write a letter to the editor when someone claims otherwise in a newspaper, and saying that despite my best wishes for gay marriage, catsix and your prediction that marriage will come into existence under a different name is most likely true.
P.S.
Sadly, I still see women being paid less then men. Remember the ERA? Perhaps if such a thing were too exist, the public would have a better idea of equality, and the case for discrimination based on biological sex would be weaker. If only…
How many millions are there of us who feel totally unrepresented by both parties because of this? Easily enough to swing an election. I wonder when it will happen.
I agree about the need for a fiscally conservative, socially liberal party. Despite Clinton’s conservatism – balancing the budget, shrinking the size of government – he wasn’t socially liberal enough (welfare reform, backpedaling on gays in the military, etc). I guess we can’t have everything.
I’ve also read refutations of that statistic that have controlled for things like experience, education, hours on the job, etc and found that the ‘wage gap’ is almost non-existant when you’re not comparing say, an engineer to a clerk at Wal-Mart.
a) AFAIK, catsix is female.
b) AFA the side discussion wrt: “marriage/civil unions”, it’s not like there hasn’t been (or couldn’t again be) an entire thread or twenty on that very specific topic. May I respectfully point out that for those of you who want to debate that never before mentioned topic there are alternatives to having two seperate discussions going on in this thread? Of course, I know, IANAM, and I’m not the boss of you, either, jus’ sayin’ is all.
She. And I know you’re newish and don’t recognize everyone’s face. I’m sure she’s not offended - yet it seems so very, very strange for catsix to be mistaken for a man . . . at any rate, I believe she perhaps meant “rename” rather than “redefine” - rename the civil institution “civil union”, allow the term “marriage” to be a term defined and applied by religious groups and individual couples.
In the case of the Religious Right, I believe you’re quite wrong. I think it would upset them to no end to lose official government recognition of their religious ceremony, much as they scream so loudly and drool so profusely in their campaigns to have the Ten Commandments posted on courtroom walls.
Actually, I believe definitions of marriage as between a man and a woman are largely quite recent, as it was implicitly understood until the last couple decades.
You keep saying that “marriage is a civil issue” and I’m not sure what that statement even means.
Marriage refers to both a civil contract (recognized by the state, with special rights attached to it) and a religious ritual - it is, I believe, one of the sacraments of the Catholic Church, for example, and it certainly is to Latter Day Saints. It is traditionally performed by ministers, when the couple is not in Las Vegas, and is most assuredly rich with religious significance.
Honestly, I really can’t understand your claim at all - I’m not sure at all what you mean by it. I just can’t tell what you’re trying to express.
Oh no! Don’t do it, Scott Plaid!
Too late. It begins!
j/k, catsix, sweetie. You know I love you
Why, whatever do you mean? Are you suggesting we should take this back to Scott Plaid’s existing thread on the subject?
If that is true, and I doubt that it is, “almost non-existent” is not close enough, in terms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of feeling like just as much of a human being as the next guy.
P.S.wring,
a)since I can not go back into each posters past threads, each and every time to look for gender references, I find it more practical to use terms like “he”, and “him”, as if they were somehow genetic terms. Would you prefer I sling the term “She/he/it” all over the place?
b)How did this topic come up in the first place? Oh yeah, in the OP, that’s how.
So, it really is not off-topic, in the sense of commenting on what the OPer says in the first post, even if it not on the main topic, and even if it was, threads wander all over the place. If discussions went by Robert’s Rules , then we would never get anything done.
Excalibre, we are (mostly) on the same side. So I believe the religious right feels one way, while you feel they have different reasons why they do what they do. We both seem to fell they are asking for the most ridiculous things. In any case, we are almost on the same side, so let’s not fight, OK?
My epiphany came, if you will, after reading Arianna Huffington’s * Fanatics and Fools: The Game Plan for Winning Back America*. I woul dnot call myself a Democrat, but the Republicans have lost me. Far too conving, dishonest, full of religious ideolgisity for my taste, led by the contemptible Goerge Bush.
Scott Plaid - the gender information was for informational purposes only. I tend to refer to folks by name, and if I know their gender, then the correct pronoun, if I don’t know I continue to use the name or “they”. That’s my own take on it. Assigning automatic male pronouns is likely to be incorrect (statistically) more often than not, and while I don’t get my bra all a-twisted when some one does a written gender reassingment for me, I can tell you that folks who automatically address stuff to “Mr” or “Sir” at my business won’t likely get my business. If you’re offended that I clarified it, :: shrug ::
I understand (having read the OP) that, one of the many changes in opinion that Airman mentioned was about civil unions/SSM. I did not accuse you of “hijacking” per se, since, yes indeed the subject was one of many changes in opinion he referenced. Just pointed out that gosh, there were a couple of folks having a very narrowly focused discussion in the middle of this other conversation, and perhaps, maybe, just maybe there existed another thread in which those couple of folks could hammer out their differences on that very narrow subject in an otherwise general thread. There really does seem to be two specific ‘conversations’ going on here which can get disjointed. You don’t wanna do that, well, :: shrug :: again. as some one else pointed out you specifically seem to have an entire thread devoted to that very topic.
Yes, great … the first 8 seem to be ok, though two of them refer to the same issue, and 1 of them is also admitted by Al himself to the author as a mistake. From there on, the website host ruins it for himself by starting to become a little more partisan than fact-finding.
Even then, I’d like to remind you that nobody was assuming that Al Franken spoke the truth in all of his half-satirical book. In fact, by the words of the OP:
Airman– as a big ol’ liberal I should just have a knee-jerk reaction and be happly that you are venturing a bit over to “our side”. But I’m really more concerned with honesty, integrity and “doing the right thing.”
I’m just happy when anyone approaches politics with the above mentioned virtues and a healthy dose of curiousity and intelligence. If one can do all that and then still honestly remain conservative, that’s fine. It’s the brainless, knuckle-dragging, sheep that have hijacked the GOP that really have me bothered.
This is the pit however, so I will approach a hot-button topic just a bit: Has anyone ever 1) gained empathy, 2) increased critical thinking, 3) opened their mind up to new and different ideas, and then become more Conservative?
It seems to me it’s always the other way around: when people really calm down and start thinking beyond their wallets and beyond their frightened selfishness and petty desires (which all humans have to some degree), they inevitably move to the Left.
::BAM!::
::BAM!::
::BAM!::
That is the sound of me banging my head against the wall.
I am not “offended”, I was just defending myself.
I would love to hammer out the issues on the thread I started. However, as far as I can tell, people discussing one issue, in another thread is part and partial of discussing things, now, it might annoy you, but the fact of it is, that is how the cookie crumbles.
P.S. This may be no big deal to you, and you are in fact not really annoyed, but that is how I view your posts, a consequence of a text only medium.
P.S.S. In the very faq of the Anti-al franken page, the writter says
