Do you seriously believe that? People like Knight would have people like me locked up in camps tomorrow if they thought they could get away with it- these are the same people who fought tooth and nail to keep same sex relations illegal and punishable by jail time.
I’m pretty sure that Newsom’s point is that he was defending the state’s Constitution from the illegal law passed by the legislature. In this case, Bricker would rather he defend the law than the Constitution it violates. It’s interesting to see which politicians and which laws he and Dewey choose to defend.
You are very sweet to offer to help even though I don’t need it. I will remember your kindness. And I do understand the frustration of being an oppressed person. I understand it firsthand and endured it in my childhood when my father, an Indian, was the brunt of bigotry. But let me give you another perspective to consider. What bothers me here is not the celebration of the passing of an oppressor, but the notion that by his opposition to gay marriage, he deserved what he got — karma at work. If this position were to be held consistently, as a matter of principle, then the person would also be expected to celebrate the torture of Iraqi prisoners who, down to their very bones, not only oppose but abhor the notion of not only gay marriage but homosexuality altogether. How can a man celebrate the one and condemn the other? As to my posts and their tone, a simple search will show that my only hostility has been toward the carelessness of liberals in picking battles during this very critical election and, of course, crap like this. The rest of my posts have been in Cafe Society, Humble Opinion, Great Debates, and General Questions. I have also been supportive of some OPs here in the Pit. This one, for instance. I don’t know why you perceive what you perceive, but maybe you should reevalute.
Methinks you exaggerate. I’m not trying to minimize the wrongness of the antigay positions held by Thurmond, Knight, et al, but to suggest that what they really wanted to accomplish was death camps for homosexuals is more than a wee bit over the top. The evidence just isn’t there to support that kind of proposition. Based solely on a a politician’s favoring the recriminlization of sodomy (which was the law in all fifty states but a few scant decades ago), you simply can’t jump to the conclusion that that same politician must therefore also support a gay Final Solution. That is fallacious.
Knight was a terrible guy who held some pretty ugly views on gays, but that mean he thought ethnic cleansing was also a good idea. Equating him to Hitler or Pol Pot or Milosevic or Hussein shows a fairly breathtaking lack of perspective.
I’m impressed by your ability to post a technically accurate yet nonetheless incredibly distorted description of the facts. You make it sound like the limitation of marriage to heterosexuals was a recent act of the California legislature, when it fact it was not – it was, and is, a longstanding facet of California law, one that no one until recently had considered incompatible with the California constitution.
More to the point, you assume the conclusion you wish to prove – that the law in fact does contravene the California constitution. That question will not be decided definitively for some time – hearings on Newdow’s authority to issue licenses to gays are scheduled for May 25, but that hearing will not address the applicability of the California constitution to gay marriage generally, and it isn’t expected that that issue will wind its way to the state high court for at least a year or more. That question simply is not as settled as you seem to think.
I’m quite sick of your accusations-by-innuendo. Is this really the best you have to offer?
Neither Bricker nor myself have “defended” Knight, nor have we “defended” laws against gay marriage or sodomy laws or any other anti-gay measure. We have opposed certain methods of changing those laws, but that is not the same as defending the laws themselves.
My second para in the above should read “…but that doesn’t mean…”
Actually, Jewish tradition teaches that Hitler’s death, in itself, is not cause to celebrate. That the prisoners in the went free is worth celebrating. That a war ended is worth celebrating. But tradition (and IIRC the Talmud. But, you’ll have to ask Zev if you want an exact cite) teaches that it is wrong to take joy in the death of another human being.
I am glad that there is one less antigay bigot in office. I am sad that this due not a change of heart that led him to finally accept his son and brother, nor due to being voted out of office, but because a human being has died.
Pete Knight is dead? Best news I’ve heard all day. If anyone would care to direct me to his final resting place, I’d be more than happy to dance on it. If this makes me classless, tacky, or even immoral… meh. I’ve still got happy feet.
For your sake I’m praying Knight will not be buried at sea.
Thank you. Perhaps I’ve been looking at that part from the wrong standpoint.
I happen to live in the district that Pete Knight (may he burn in Hell) represented.
Am I glad he’s dead? Hell, yes. Am I classless? Certainly no more than he was.
Any man that fought so desperately, so single-mindedly against a group of people cannot have been a fair or service-minded individual – in short, should never have been in public office.
Yeah, I hear he did some things that may have been celebrated. So fucking what? The man vituperatively and ceaselessly tried to deny basic civil rights to a group of people. Can he compare to Hitler? Not on the basis of body count. But ideologically, yes.
I’m fucking glad he’s dead.
S’okay. I’ve got a snorkle.
Yes, we have, and in more than one form, too. It doesn’t appear to have been resolved, except that there’s a lot of agreeing to disagree. I expect this one will turn out similarly.
Well said.
Anyone who wishes to extrapolate my position on this matter to opposition to SSM or to equal rights for the GLBT, or to support for the late Mr. Knight’s insane causes and positions, can save their breath.
The California Constitution itself instructs officials that they may not use their own interpretation if they believe a law is unconstitutional, but must wait for the courts to rule. So Newsom could not possibly “uphold the constitution against an illegal act of the legislature” by his actions – since the very document he would be purporting to defend explictly tells him he may not take that action in the abscence of judicial determination.
- Rick
The death of an evil person, or one who fights to extend, protect and support that which is evil, is always something worth celebrating. A terrible person has left the earth; that his death was almost as terrible to him as he was to those whom he loathed, hated and oppressed is so much the better.
May all who agree with him come to the same end.
Having watched my father die of brain cancer, I wouldn’t wish that pain on someone, nor would I wish the grief we went through on a family.
But I can’t quite bring myself to be upset that an influential person won’t be trying to deny me and my brothers and sisters our civil rights anymore. I would feel the same if he had abruptly quit public life and moved to Tahiti.
But YOU agree with him. In fact, you’re just like your caricature of him — intolerant, abusive, derisive, and inhumane. You are exactly like you presume him to be. You have done to him exactly what you complain he does to you. He, in your view, summed up the whole existence of gays by the singular attribute of their gayness, what he likely called their “lifestyle”. In the same manner, you are painting his whole life with the single brush of “homophobe”, despite his heroic and accomplished career. A gay person is much more than his sexual orientation, and this man was much more than his views on gay marriage. If you would show here half the class that you demand of him, your might just win over people who agreed with him. But as it is, all you are doing with this display of classless inhumanity is demonstrating to others that perhaps his homophobia was not so phobic after all.
Nope. There’s a world of difference in vilifying a single individual based on his own actions and demonizing a whole group of people based on a common inherent characteristic.
[quote=Bricker]
The California Constitution itself instructs officials that they may not use their own interpretation if they believe a law is unconstitutional, but must wait for the courts to rule.**If that is truly the case, then you have a good argument against Newsom’s actions. I’m not saying it’s a slam dunk, but it strengthens your position.
I reckon that one man’s “actions” is another man’s “inherent characteristic”. You might think that faith is a choice, but it wasn’t for me. And frankly, it isn’t for you either. As I’ve heard atheists here say, they cannot just choose to believe in God a la Pascal. Believe it or not, there are people who oppose gay marriage who are not monsters and do not hate gays. I know this because I know some of them. This man most likely was operating from a strongly held conviction in the depths of his heart. You have an opportunity now to show that you can rise above accusation and the inhumane celebration of death. And that IS a choice.
No, I don’t. I think everyone should be equal under the law. He wants me and mine routed out and destroyed, stripped of our humanity and forced to live lives of second-class citizenry from which there is no escape.
If there’s a Hell, I hope he’s roasting in it. I never chose to be gay.
Anyone who would so much as consider voting against equality is an abusive, worthless crypto-fascist undeserving of the slightest shred of compassion.
If hating those who hate me and seek to destroy the lives of innocent people like me, I’ll gladly be all those things. Because at least I support equality, and that alone makes me good, and my opponents evil.
One vote against equality for gays outweighs and makes irrelevant any other votes he may ever have cast in his entire career. It is the determinative issue.
Being in the military does not automatically make one respectable or good. Plenty of the people in our military are racist, idiotic, homophobic trash. Putting one’s life on the line does not mitigate the evil one does in other parts of their life.
A gay person is fundamentally defined by their orientation, just as he is fundamentally defined by the immeasurable evil of his anti-equality position.
Not to get too deeply into this quagmire, but no. Supporting equality does not “alone” make you good. Just like you were saying about this guy’s military record not making him good—the same applies to you. You can support equality and still be a raging asshole in so many other ways that the raging assholishness outweighs the “supporting equality” part. (And by “you” I mean the collective “you,” as in “any of us.”)