I can’t say that i agree with very much (b)Libertarian(/b) says most of the time, but this time I gotta go with him.
I am not a Christain, but I do believe that celabrating another human beings death diminishes me. Every time he breathed he still had the chance to make choices to better the world. He didn’t make those choices, and now he is dead. He leaves behind a son and a brother who were damaged by his bigotry. I can’t think of anything sadder.
Fuck that. I don’t see any mentions of Otto cracking open a few beers and heading down to the burial site with a full bladder. All I see is a quiet admission of satisfaction that a man who seemed to have dedicated his life to ensuring Otto remained a second class citizen can’t tread on him anymore.
Exactly what I meant to say, thanks griffen2. 
There’s a difference between inclusion and exclusion. GLBT equality is inclusive of hetero rights. No one is demanding that marriage be exclusive to homosexuals, other than a few insignificant crackpots here and there. The “family values” people wish to exclude. The equality movement people wish to include.
In other words, the difference between the two is one is pushing for freedom while the other is pushing for oppression. Whose side are you on?
And once again you’re proving yourself to be a stupid dumbfuck. Venting anger and expressing relief on a damned internet message board is so far removed from protesting someone’s funeral or working to pass legislation to oppress that only a fucking simpleton couldn’t see the difference. Asswipe.
I’ve seen people flamed to death for celebrating a child molester’s death. But celebrate a guy who hates gays’ death, and everyone agrees with you.
Is being homophobic on this board really considered a worse crime than molesting children?
If so, something is terribly wrong here.
Don’t worry, people who flamed others celebrating the death of a child molester are stupid too.
I agree with this. I also think that it would have been better for him to live and have a change of heart (not unlike Saul becoming Paul in the Bible). That would have been much better.
I’m a little uneasy celebrating deaths like this, to be honest. This guy wasn’t Hitler. He’s not Osama Bin Laden. He was a big jerk who obviously had some scary “issues” (crap! A brother and a son who were gay?). But it would have been better that he lived and made peace with those he hurt. It would have been better to resolve his “issues” in this world, rather than the next.
Well, they might have been a different group of people. Until you find one person who did both, there might not be any hypocracy there.
A lessening of evil in the world is always a good thing, I just wish that lessening had come through a moral awakening rather than the death of an evil man.
For those attacking Otto, what would you have him do? Especially from those like Bricker who actually defend the evil views of this sick fuck, would you be able to turn the other cheek in his situation?
Be honest with yourself. Otto*'s rage may be ugly, but it is fully justified and none of you would be squ8ealing in outrage if this fucker had gone out of his way to piss on your rights, your basic humanity, for his entire wasted life.
That’s not what Bricker is doing. Blanketly equating upholding a curent law - in-force as part of a sworn duty - with defending evil, is a morally and intellectually bankrupt argument.
Sure, that would be swell. but second best would be the the hateful bastards swho lobby for laws like Virginia’s Marriage Affirmation Act which forbids same-sex couples entering into "any partnership contract or other arrangements that purport to provide the benefits of marriage. IOW, under Virginia law, I cannot buy a house with my boyfriend, can;t make him chief beneficiary of my will, can’t give him power of attorney in case of incapacitation or any other contract that would give us the benefits hetero married people get automatically. Pete Knight’s organization gave aid to the folks who passed the Virginia law and who are seeking to pass similarly draconian laws targeting gay people in other states.
I’m sorry for his son and brother who will never get to have a chance to reconcile with Knight, but for me I’m glad the ratfuck is dead.
Sorry, that first line should read "Sure, that would be swell, but second best would be the deaths of the hateful bastards who lobby for laws like Virginia’s Marriage Affirmation Act which forbids same-sex couples entering into "any partnership contract or other arrangements that purport to provide the benefits of marriage.
Una Persson, do you think that upholding the Marriage Affirmation Act or DOMA isn’t defending evil?
I’m not interested in weighing in on the main point of this thread, but i did want to say that the second sentence quoted above constitutes a complete non-sequitur
Surely, Lib, someone as familiar with logic and rhetoric as you are can see that a person’s military record is hardly germane to the issue of whether or not he demonized gays. As gobear suggests, adopting the position that a good military record absolves one of responsibility for other poor decisions leads you down a road you’d probably rather not take.
Are you going to give John Kerry a pass on the things you don’t like about him, just because he’s a decorated veteran? I didn’t think so, and nor should you. But a good military record and anti-gay political record are by no means mutually exclusive, nor does one mitigate or offset the other.
The man died from cancer. It’s not like it was a sudden surprise passing. He had plenty of time to make peace with his son, time to think about his life and what he had done and how it adversely affected his son and his brother and thousands of others. Staring Death in the face he chose not to.
gobear, do you think allowing, as Bricker said, “persons charged with upholding and defending the constitution of California” to just run around deciding which laws to enforce or not is an effective form of representational government?
Let’s re-read what I actually wrote.
So what point are you making in opposition to my point - that one can blanketly eqate upholding a law with defending evil? If so, there is no logic behind that argument.
I’m not even going to get into the DOMA or the other atrocities specifically on this Board, as it’s been shown in innumerable threads that there is no possibility for sane and rational debate in this forum without the usual ad hominems, slurs, off-topic “Bush is evil” drive bys, etc.
So let’s just stick to my point and only my point: I contend that upholding the law, if such is one’s sworn duty, is not blanketly “defending evil”. I also contend that the laws either have or will have their day in court, and if the SC rules in favour of the laws, then I guess your choices are willful civil disobedience or changing the Constitution. I advise choice (B).
Libertarian, I guess that my take on it is this: Like it or not, we live in a society with at least one oppressed underclass. We have codified in to law inequity, and I see this as immoral.
While we may wish for members of this oppressed underclass to behave in a pristine and perfectly moral way (you know, better than the rest of us), I will again say that I pass no judgment when a member of that group feels some happiness at the passing of an oppressor. This is natural and simply a part of the human heart. More to the point, I do not believe that we should pretend to feel one thing publicly, and secretly feel things privately. When we do this, things start to go really wrong.
Rather than being judgmental in these cases, we should be supportive or keep quiet. I have had occasion to feel glad when someone has died, and it is a very strange and mixed feeling. There are better things that we can do then condemn each other (and I have been less than perfect on this front to be sure). It saddens me when we start to see blood in the water in these sorts of threads, and take that as license to attack each other.
Look at it like this, presumably (based on the tone of your posts) you know some better way for people to think and feel. Ponder the nature of the way that you are presenting this message, and its productivity.
I knew that I was not saying what I was trying to say well in my earlier post. What I am trying to say is that you, specifically, have seemed judgmental and just plain off of late. Many of your posts seem to be either deliberately confrontational or provocative in non-constructive ways, or to be these weird random drive-by swipes. Your post to this thread is just one of many.
So, I know that I have not been around long enough to be called an old-timer, as it were. Perhaps you don’t even know who I am, and do not recognize my posts enough to have formed an opinion of me one way or another. But, the offer stands. My email is in my profile, and if you want to talk about something “off line” I am here.
Bricker, being of a somewhat libertarian bent myself, I usually applaud your steadfast and determined defense of the actual law as it’s written and not as people would like to interpret it for their own ends, but I have to ask: Did the California Constitution specifically say that marriage is only between a man and a woman? If not, then I guess that maybe it’s not as cut and dried as you say, is it?
Not to Goodwinize the point, I’m just using him as an example of another evil man, but wasn’t Hitler’s death a cause for celebration? Pol Pot’s? Stalin’s? When a man who lived his life prophegating evil upon others dies, I, for one, am going to smile grimly and say “good”. I might even dance a little jig. If that makes me a bad man, so be it.
Although I take no joy in any death, I do take comfort knowing that people like Pete Knight are going the way of the Dodo Bird. Soon they will be as rare as people who advocate bringing back slavery.
Thank you for proving my point so nicely.
Please do point out where I compared the OP to Phelpsian funeral protests or promoting anitygay legislation. Do you own shares in a straw company?
All I said was that the OP’s expressing glee at the death of an opponent demonstrated a distinct lack of class and dignity. I did not say that such expressions of glee were morally equivelant to the far worse acts of disrupting funeral services of gay decedents or promoting antigay legislation.
Weirddave: I went into this more fully in the Thurmond thread I linked to, but I think comparing genocidal monsters to a bigoted state assemblyman is invalid. The difference between the two is one not of mere degree, but of kind.
I’d be interested to see some evidence that Knight’s oath of office required him to file lawsuits as a private citizen to prevent state law from going into effect (the DP law) or to intervene in the issuance of marriage licenses.
For a straight boy, sometimes you’re a big ol’ drama queen.