You mean the Homexicans? And I feel the need to ask…just because he won’t get the votes here, are we SURE he won’t when the vote really counts?
I mean, I’ve seen that the SD is pretty pro-gay marriage, as I am. But are we so sure that the rest of the country is leaning that way, as posters here have indicated?
D’oh Guin…great minds, eh?
And yet his meaning was plain enough in his first post. How so many people misread it is beyond me.
If memory serves, 40 states have already passed anti-SSM laws, almost twenty of those states have anti-SSM amendments to their own constitutions and several more (including to my own shame, Wisconsin) will have amendment measures on this year’s ballot. Even Massachusetts, the only state where SSM is legal, has seen constant pushes to invalidate hundreds of legal marriages by passing a constitutional amendment. I’m genuinely curious as to where you see this pro-SSM trend in the United States.
Whatever his meaning, I was responding to the suggestion that I lied about his second post being in the thread when I started my response to his first.
Perhaps it will never happen, but here’s a hypothetical: Would it be OK for Congress to start taking votes on an amendment to eliminate the voting rights of women, or an amendment to make oral sex between consenting adults illegal, even if it would never pass?
Your rights are not safe as long as Congress is engaging in the political equivalent of wanking, your rights are safe when Congress is too effing scared of the voters to talk openly about restricting actions between consenting, sane adults that harm no one.
Where do I see it? 10 years ago this would be a ridiculous conversation. Now it’s legal in some states and there is a big push to make it happen nationally. Despite what I think about “activist judges” there is a case to be made that the denial of rights violates equal protection, so there is the potential for the whole thing to blow up very quickly given the right circumstances.
Yeah, I think I’ll see it in my lifetime. I also think that a proposed ban will never make it out of Congress, particularly if the Democrats get the backlash vote in the next election and get a majority, which has (in my opinion) a very good chance of happening.
If there is the potential for this to actually pass one day, I’ll be protesting right beside you (for all the good a protest will do), but right now I’m not seeing it happen.
Frist is doing this for two reasons.
One, it helps in Republican fund raising. They can send out fund raising letters letting people know they were “courageous” enough to stand up to the gay agenda. They’d rather the voters focus again on gay marriage rather than Republican failures.
Two, it will force some Democrats to take postions they don’t want to. Some Dems will probably have to vote yes on this if they’re in a red state. Also, it will force Hillary Clinton to vote one way or another. Hopefully, Clinton will not try the “Voted for it until I voted against it…”
I"m only hoping this will backfire like Schiavo did. Hopefully, it will be “one flag factory too many…” In some places, gay marriage has already been banned twice.
What was that meme during the '04 election? Oh yeah, God, Guns and Gays. Of course Frist isn’t going to win this one, but it is a cynical ploy to solidify their far-right base in what is going to be a tough election. The only people it’ll hurt are those of us who yet again get reminded that our long-term relationships are considered worse than reeking piles of shit by the majority party in DC.
>The dreaded homosexual Mexicans.
Mi esposa es asustadizo! She’ll be so proud.
Yes, it would. And it might even make it out of committee. But anyone voting yes to such inanity would be committing political suicide. That, of course, is the point.
Really? After 230 years we have had exactly 27 Amendments, 10 of which were passed all at once, one that was a stupid decision, and one that demonstrated how stupid the decision was by repealing it. I firmly believe that such ridiculousness will never happen again, and just as that was seen as an unwarranted intrusion into peoples’ lives I believe that when it comes down to the bottom line this issue will be seen in the same way, especially when people realize that it amounts to a repeal of the 14th Amendment and is totally antithetical to the “American way of life”, as it were.
If it gets out of Congress it actually has a better chance of becoming an amendment.
You’re actually wrong on the legitimazation thing. A few states have made those steps, many more states passed reactionary “defense of marriage” acts or even amendments to their State constitutions after the gay marriage issue rose up in Mass, for example.
I still tend to think it’s a moot point because it obviously won’t get out of Congress.
Frist is playing politics, and politics isn’t a nice game. I don’t view what he’s doing as good, but I don’t really get the questioning-outrage. This should be business as usual to anyone who has watched the political system for any amount of time.
This is a collosally stupid thing to do, both ethically and politically.
I don’t need to go over the ethical part, as I think most of here are at least sympathetic with letting the states decide about marriage. And, it’s not like we just had some pinko lefties added to the SCOTUS so that there is some fear of “legislating from the bench” on this issue.
Politically… well, most people are not in favor of amending the constitution, even if they don’t like SSM. Many Republicans will not vote for this bill, and it just isn’t going to play well with the swing vote. I suspect this will be neutral at best (ie, best politically for the Pubs) and backfire at worst.
This is one time I would hope that a filibuster could be arranged. The feds have no business messing around with how the states define marriage.
Doctor Frist, you have been one big disappointment. As I highly eductated mad of sciecen, you should’ve been able to bring some sensible policy leadership to the Senate, and instead you pandered to the worst segment of the Republican base with the Terri Schaivo case, and now with this.
I wish I had your faith in the system, but I do not.
I think there’s a bigger problem here: Frist wouldn’t even think of introducing this thing unless he knew there were just enough people who agree with it to give it some legitimacy.
THAT, IMHO, is the issue that should be attacked first. Not that politicos help it any, I know, but I still feel it’s just a symptom of a larger disease.
I wish I had his faith in the American voting (and political fundraising) public.
That’s how I took it, and I am pro-gay (obvious isn’t it?). The tone was “if they want to shoot their own foot off and lose the vote anyway, let 'em do it”.
Here’s a reality check… the only way the issue can ‘ever’ go away politically is for it to be voted on.
If (and that’s a big IF) Frist feels he is following his consistuancy’s (the will of the people that voted him into office) desire, then it his job as thier representative to bring this to a vote… that’s democracy. For him to not bring new things to the front and get them voted on is a gross dereliction of duty. I hope he has some support (poll numbers, letters, whatever) that would back up his claim that the area he represents actually wants such an amendment.
I also hope we will eventually have a government that again realizes it’s role is to protect and serve the interests of the people… all the people, not just some of the people. Our fore-fathers were able to seperate their religous beliefs from their legislation/governing beliefs… this is what I hope for again.
Now… 40 states ‘enacting’ anti SSM laws has absolutely nothing to do with those same laws passing constitutional muster, or them being upheld. Again, it is assumed that in the majority of those cases those were not ‘public’ votes, so I think that has very little to do the reality of a Constitutional Amendment being passed… and as history has shown… bad amendments can be overturned.
Perhaps what this country needs is another ‘prohibition’ for those that do not vote or speak out politically to realize that if they do not fight for thier freedoms, they will not keep them.
FTR, I am pro-choice, pro-marriage, and I could care less what you do in your bedroom or who you choose to dedicate your life to… your choice, your freedom… MY choice MY freedom as well. I respect your choices, I ask that you respect mine, wether you agree with them or not.
Ridiculous. You think a member of Congress should propose harmful legislation simply because some portion of his constituency thinks it’s a good idea? I’m sure a significant portion of Frist’s constituency would like to, say, make Christianity the official national religion, outlaw birth control and I’ll bet there’s even still a few of them who would like to bring back the ban on miscegenation. Should Frist be duty-bound to bring amendments on these topics to the floor of the Senate? Or should a function of Congress be to put the brakes on crackpot notions? Besides, there’s already been a vote on this amendment. If Frist actually were duty-bound to give the crackpots a vote, then that duty has been fulfilled.
In those states which passed constitutional amendments (over a dozen to date) the amendments were indeed ratified by popular vote. That is, however, irrelevant to the passage of a federal constitutional amendment because federal constitutional amendments are ratified by the state legislatures. 40 state legislatures are on record as supporting a ban on same-sex marriage and there is no reason to believe they would change their opinion if a federal constitutional amendment were put before them. repealing an anti-marriage amendment would never happen as quickly as the repeal of the 18th Amendment. Repeal, if it ever happened, would take decades if not a century or more.
Great, now I’m going to be forced to read your posts as if a teenaged dramaqueen valleygirl wrote them.
That’s what some of us like to call “before, and after.”
So, instead of apologizing for kneejerking and not previewing, you whine about how when you first hit ‘reply’ there wasn’t another post there. Check.
What I do think is that instead of saying “whoops, I’m sorry, I was wrong.” you’re behaving like a rotten cunt. It’s clear as day that Doors’ second post was there before you posted yours. So it was there when you posted, you just didn’t preview, and then instead of having the balls to apologize, you’re acting like a fucking prima donna.
Buy me dinner and take me to a movie first, sweetcheeks.
Anyways, I think I can safely drop this hijack. Continue to whine if you must.
As if you could read well enough to understand a teenaged valley girl.
And this is what I like to call “makes absolutely no fucking sense.”
First of all, jackass, any whining you hear is solely in your own imagination, which you’ve shown to be both over-active and extremely limited in scope all in the same post. Secondly, fuck you and your accusation of “kneejerking.” And finally, show me the requirement that I preview before posting, on the off-chance it happens that the person I’m responding to might have coincidentally posted something further at roughly the same time. I preview, should I happen to think about it, if a post is complex with a lot of coding, to double-check that the coding is correct. Stuff your snide little “ah ha, didn’t preview” shit right up your skanky ass.
Oh please. As if you think.
Not having to my knowledge met any of your female relatives or any of the women unfortunate to have dated you, I have no basis of comparison to how a rotten cunt might behave. Luckily your conduct in this thread has given everyone an illustration of how a chickenshit pussy acts.
Gee, you busted me. I guess that was you standing directly over my shoulder while I was typing up my response. Oh wait, you weren’t here, you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about, and what this all comes down to is that you’re such a pathetic little coozebag that you’re (almost, but not quite because you’re a wussy little bitch) calling me a liar because I typed “wasn’t there when I posted” as opposed to, say, “wasn’t there when I started posting.”
Fine. I hereby retract any implication I may have made that Doors’ second post did not exist at the second I hit the “submit reply” button. Which doesn’t change at all the fact that it was not in the thread when I started creating the post. You don’t have the balls to flat-out call me a liar so you come up with this candyass semi-accusation.
No reason at all for you to have picked it up in the first place, except to stir some shit for absolutely no reason. But I do hope you’re telling the truth when you say you’re dropping it, because that will spare all of us the agony of reading another of your pisant pisspot piles of bullshit.
What’s ridiculas is that folks like Frist don’t have the cahonas to stand up and tell the voting public that this is a crackpot idea and violates every tenant/idea that our country is founded upon. But the reality is that many of our politicians /elected officials no longer have a clue as to what our founders intended, and worse off… niether does the ‘voting’ public (atleast not those that would vote to give ‘rights’ to a select few)
It is his job to fully represent the people that voted him into office… and also to represent those that voted against him. Unfortunately, many politicians are only in office for the "power’ and not for the ‘service’ aspect.
I never said that I agreed with it… just that he was duty bound to bring things to the floor, to a vote, that his constituants wanted brought.
So unfortunately, since they will not ‘stand up’ and say ‘this is a crackpot idea’, We are forced to hope for a vote that does not allow these crackpot ideas to pass. Or if they do, that they get overturned.