Liberals hate gays

[Scylla]

Richard Parker:

[quoteOk, then let me translate your unreasonable post into a reasonable one, and then respond to it.[/quote]

“Unreasonable,” doesn’t appear to be the right word for your complaint with my post. Your translation (which pleasantly seems to be a good faith restatement,) seems to contain my reasoning, unchanged. What you seem to have done is removed the wit, the bite, the sarcasm from my points, not the reason. Therefore, your complaint seems more like I was being an asshole than that I was being unreasonable. I so concede. I responded thusly because I felt you were demonstrating assholery in your previous post.

Looks like it’s time to move part that (although I’m thinking it might be fun to translate you’re replies into Assholese, and then so respond, but we always have Hentor for that, so no.)

If a chief executive decides to only defend the laws he likes from district court decisions, then he eviscerates our whole system of courts which rely on an appellate process up to the Supreme Court. In other words, laws he likes would get the full due process, but laws he doesn’t would not. That kind of political bias in the enforcement of constitutional law is a bad thing.

That said, I think a good middle ground would have been to appeal but not seek a stay. Which is why I wasn’t really pressing the point.

Ok. If the first part is a reasonable statement of the President’s position and obligation than the course you suggest of simply appealing without a stay seems to be the natural and appropriate response, and a reasonable one. He didn’t do that though. Since he didn’t, it’s hard to assert that was his motivation. Being President, I don’t think he’s going to be able to say “I never thought of that.” Clearly, if you can come up with that idea, either he or one of his advisors could. Logically, it makes sense that they thought of it, and then decided against it. They decided to go for the stay. Why? Why would you do that? The most charitable possible explanation that I can think of is that a change now would cause unfavorable fallout before the election. Waiting a month will be a disapoint for some, but will hardly matter in the end. Therefore, throwing gays under the bus for a month or two isn’t really all that terrible.

Maybe that’s it. I don’t think so, though. I don’t think he really wants it repealled. Jumping ahead to your quote from the Prez from today, it reads to me like he is setting up his excuses. He keeps saying he needs the 60 votes. When he doesn’t get them he’s built in a plausible excuse for why the law is still standing.

Why would he want the law to still stand? I think he thinks that repealing it completely would cause him to much fallout and he’s already dealing with enough.

Well, you’re half-right. LCR got their injunction first, but the ACLU had actually won a district court case finding the application of DADT unconstitutional before that happened. Which is neither here nor there, since the larger point is that LCR didn’t do anything substantially different from any of the “liberal” advocacy groups

Except win the injunction. All pro football teams throw, pass, run, block and kick. None of them do anything substantially different. Some win though. It seems odd though that the pee-wee league of of the LCR could succeed where so many other more formidable entities have failed.

The constitutional argument isn’t complicated. If you really don’t believe me, I can download the pdf versions of the briefs from PACER and compare them side-by-side for you, but that would be a lot of work unless you seriously doubt the point that the ACLU was making substantially the same arguments in the WA case and others.

As a tangent it’s not particularly important. How about I take your word for it now, and if it turns out the LCR used some brand new magical mumbo jumbo that nobody else used then I rub your nose in it later?

I wasn’t really saying he did. My point was that LCR didn’t do anything differently from what the liberal groups you so deride did. What changed is the country, for the most part. And it matters to district judges that the top brass was recognizing the injustice of DADT.

Yeah, but they won an injunction, and the other guys didn’t. Nothing succeeds like success. The LCR did it well where other more notables failed. (We seem at an impasse on this point. I’m not impressed with your “they did the same thing” argument and you’re not impressed with my “they won, therefore they did it better” reply.)

Also, the Judge was a Clinton appointee and Berkeley law grad.

Foxnews said the judge was conservative. Hmmm. Maybe they meant the judge was conservative the way some posters say that Obama is further to the right than Reagan.

Because they must meet their institutional obligations, and nothing more. Their obligation is to defend the statute on its terms, not to find additional evidence to support it, or do anything more than offer the arguments of its legislative supporters.

You’ve previously argued that they could have just appealed.

That wasn’t my point. Obviously some individual Republicans won a great victory in CA, and Obama’s DOJ stayed the decision. I’m not arguing otherwise. What I was trying to correct was your misapprehension that ACLU, GLAD, etc. were just sitting on their thumbs and that LCR came along and got shit done.

The LCR did get the shit done, regardless of what those other guys were doing. I think that’s what counts. You’ve done a good showing that the the LCRs achievement is built upon the work of other, largely liberally groups, which I recognize.

[Scylla]

@Leaper

Just to be clear, Scylla: if you could advise homosexual voters who are specifically concerned about maintaining and gaining rights as citizens, would you advise them to vote Republican? Why or why not?

No. I would advise them not to simply vote Democratic “because everybody knows the Democrats are friendlier to gays.” I think it’s counterproductive. I think the individual candidates need to earn the votes. You shouldn’t vote for somebody because you are gay and they are democrat. You shouldn’t vote against somebody because you are gay and they are Republican.

I think that sort of mindset is something politicians count on, and ultimately it sets you up be let down.

I’m pretty conservative, and I voted for Obama. I hated the healthcare thing. I was afraid of him economically and from a foreign policy standpoint, but I agreed with him socially. Oddly, the only thing that hit my expectations was the healthcare. Other than that he’s George Bush without the speech impediment. He’s running the war exactly the way Bush did, same for the economy, and socially he hasn’t actually done anything.

Are you arguing in this thread that having Republicans in national power is better for gay rights in general than having Democrats in the same positions? Either way, why?

No.

Also, what do you think the average Republican voter thinks about gay people?

The ones I know don’t really care all that much

The average high-ranking Republican politico? The most well-respected pundits, professional or otherwise? How do you think their attitudes are reflected in their actions?

I don’t know what they think. Overall, I think there actions on the issue of gay rights is reprehensible, which is pretty much what I think about the Democrats. They are a little less reprehensible on the actions, a little more on the hypocrisy.

Since you are kind of asking what advice I’d offer to a gay voter (surprisingly, there aren’t a lot of gay voters asking me what they should do. Go figure.) What I’d say is:

Vote for people not parties.

[Scylla]

@Hamlet

Thanks for catching that.

They’re from Jason Mazzone, a law prof at Brooklyn Law School. The article is here on one of the law blogs I check out in my law geekness.

Thanks. That looks steep to me. Let me get back to you.

[crowmanyclouds]

@Scylla

… Why would he want the law to still stand? I think he thinks that repealing it completely would cause him to much fallout …

And just who would the overwhelming amount of that fallout be coming from? :rolleyes:

CMC fnord!

[Scylla]

@Miller

I don’t have a plan. Gays are in a no-win situation, politically. Our options are to stick with mealy-mouthed, backstabbing, hypocritical sonsofbitches like yourself. Or switch to the Republicans. And as loathsome as you may be, you’re still a better bet than the GOP. So, my plan right now is to stick with the status quo. I’ll keep voting Democrat, on the offhand chance that sooner or later, I’ll end up pulling the lever for someone who really means what he says. And I’ll keep being utterly unsurprised when they double back on their word, just like all their predecessors.

Here’s my plan. Someday soon, a real bible thumper with serious religious and conservative cred is going to figure out that he can get himself in the history books, and steal all the Liberal thunder by saying something like:

"I think gay sex is wrong. My religion tells me so. This country though was founded by our ancestors who fled because they were not able to practice there religion freely. Those same forefathers wisely put freedom first. We are not a country founded on religion, but one founded on freedom. I believe our forefathers chose wisely and with divine inspiration. God gave us the right to chose our individual courses, right or wrong. We have no right to take away from another what God has given us. A wise man once said “I despise what you say, but I will defend, to the death, your right to say it.” Similarly, it is the shame of this country that we deny basic rights to people simply because we abhor how they exercise them.

I believe we are acting against God’s will by denying these rights to citizens, and we are denying our heritage and the cornerstone of strength of our country which is freedom.

Therefore, I believe that is the duty of every American to recognize the right of homosexuals to enjoy the same legal privileges of marriage as heterosexuals, and also that they have the same responsibility and right to fight and die for the freedoms this country stands for as every other citizen."

[Scylla]

@crowmanyclouds

And just who would the overwhelming amount of that fallout be coming from? :rolleyes:

CMC fnord!

Everybody religious ain’t on the right.

Some minorities that tend to vote Democratic don’t necessarily like gay people. I’m thinking Latinos, a large subset of blacks.
:rolleyes: back at ya.

[Miller]

That’s… not really a plan.

[Scylla]

@Miller

That’s… not really a plan.

Sure it is. That’s my plan for making gay rights palatable to religious christian Republican voters. For the record, those are not my personal sentiments. I have no religious objection to homosexuality.

Ok, not a plan. An idea.

A bill that’s beneficial to big business can get forced through if a liberal democrat is onboard. Gay rights needs somebody on board with religious right cred.

The right politician might see the chance to thread the needle, and try to steal the civil rights thunder from the liberals without ostracizing the social conservatives by expressing such a sentiment.

Ok, not a plan. Wishful thinking.

Good night.

[elucidator]

Will ACORN ensure that the monkeys that fly out of my ass can register to vote?

[elucidator]

@Miller

…What I find interesting is that, if I had gone the other way, if I had said I would sell out the gays to help the Latinos, you would not be berating me as some sort of quisling to the Republicans. I find that discrepency endlessly fascinating…

That is often the case with such delusions, the victim finds them fascinating. Its hard to change the mind of someone who is sure of something that just isn’t so.

The point is the leader of a coalition like this, whether its you, me, or Obama would be taking an enormous risk by favoring, or even seeming to favor, one stakeholder over another. The only possible exception: if everyone agrees that the plight of the Elbonians is so dire, so immediate, so extreme…that all other stakeholders agree to allow the collective effort to be shifted in their favor. And sometimes humans do behave like that, God bless us every one. But not often, not often enough so you can count on it.

In every coalition, there are separatists. There are figures who counsel their own group that they are being misused, they are under-appreciated, they would be better off breaking free of the coalition and standing on their own.

In the cold light of realpolitik, this is utterly impractical for the gay equality movement.

Keep in mind, the coalition is not the Democratic Party, We do our best to influence that party on our befalf, with varying degree of success. And so it goes.

But if your cause is worth the pain and humiliation of coalition politics, then you accept that as fact and behave accordingly. And if you are Elbonian, and know in your heart of hearts that, yes, indeed, you put your cause above the others without a moment’s hesitation…you would be wise to keep that to yourself. Or, failing that, you aren’t really committed, are you?

Its like ham and eggs, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.

And its a thing you see in the various progressive movements: we piss and moan, bitch and perform, and trudge our weary, hopeless way to eventual victory.

[waterj2]

@Scylla

Everybody religious ain’t on the right.

Some minorities that tend to vote Democratic don’t necessarily like gay people. I’m thinking Latinos, a large subset of blacks.
:rolleyes: back at ya.

I really think black and hispanic animosity towards gays is overstated. Washington, DC is majority black and its City Council legalized same-sex marriage, and I don’t recall the voters rising up against them. Yeah, it might not have passed in a referendum, but a lot of politicians representing heavily black constituencies seem to be fully in favor of gay rights. As for hispanics, the polls I’ve seen show greater support for same-sex marriage among hispanic Catholics than among non-hispanic white Catholics, by a tiny amount. Among mainline Protestants, the reverse is true, and the disparity is actually pretty huge, though.

Incidentally, I think variations on the quote you imagine a hypothetical bible-thumper saying have been used by Catholic Democrats (especially at the local level). If there’s one thing I love about the Catholic Church, it’s its irrelevance to most Catholics on political issues. I’d love to see prominent Republicans have the courage that the Dems did when they “lost the South for 50 years” and be willing to kiss the evangelical vote goodbye. But, looking at this year’s crop of Republican candidates, that’s not the direction the party is moving.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

MLK was often accused by more impatient types as being a gradualist and a compromiser too.

As President Obama said on The Daily Show Tonight, “Yes we can, but…”

[elucidator]

Google already has a page full of “Yes, we can, but…”.

The Fox slime will have a field day.

[Miller]

@elucidator

The point is the leader of a coalition like this, whether its you, me, or Obama would be taking an enormous risk by favoring, or even seeming to favor, one stakeholder over another.

I’m not asking to be favored over anyone else. I’m asking that Democratic politicians honor their word when they say they’ll fight for our rights. You’re the one who insists on casting this as some sort of competition between different factions of the party. Like there’s only so much equality to go around, and if someone gets more, it requires someone else get less. Of course, equality doesn’t work like that. If it did, it wouldn’t be equality.

In every coalition, there are separatists. There are figures who counsel their own group that they are being misused, they are under-appreciated, they would be better off breaking free of the coalition and standing on their own.

In the cold light of realpolitik, this is utterly impractical for the gay equality movement.

Which is why I have said, repeatedly, including in the post to which you are responding, that I’m not going to break from the Democratic party, that there are no better options out there, and that for better or worse, that’s the horse our wagon is hitched to for the forseeable future. But if we don’t have any more honorable allies to turn to, at the very least, we can hold the ones we do have to the fire for their failures to honor their ends of their bargains, in the hopes that at some point, we might waken some kernal of shame in them and they’ll finally start to do right by us.

Keep in mind, the coalition is not the Democratic Party, We do our best to influence that party on our befalf, with varying degree of success. And so it goes.

I’m not entirely clear why you think I need to be reminded of this, given that in every single one of my posts in this thread, I have specified that it’s the actions of the Democratic party that I’m taking issue with.

Its like ham and eggs, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.

You know, if someone came to me and said, “You can have total and complete equality for gays across all levels of society, but you’ll have to spend the rest of your life listening to elucidator’s endlessly repetitive, bullshit folksy homilies,” not only would I turn him down, I’d run right out and sign up for Rick Santorum’s re-election campaign.

I mean, I’m all in favor of gay rights, but there are limits.

[elucidator]

Go for it. Set the timer so you will know exactly how long before anybody gives a rats.

You and me, were done now, right? All that belligerence and bile, and turns out you didn’t have much to say, just real nasty about saying it.

Kumbaya, shit for brains.

[Richard_Parker]

@Scylla

“Unreasonable,” doesn’t appear to be the right word for your complaint with my post. Your translation (which pleasantly seems to be a good faith restatement,) seems to contain my reasoning, unchanged. What you seem to have done is removed the wit, the bite, the sarcasm from my points, not the reason.

It is sometimes difficult to distinguish hyperbole and sarcasm from mischaracterization. What I thought was unreasonable was your characterization of my arguments.

@Scylla

Ok. If the first part is a reasonable statement of the President’s position and obligation than the course you suggest of simply appealing without a stay seems to be the natural and appropriate response, and a reasonable one. He didn’t do that though. Since he didn’t, it’s hard to assert that was his motivation.

It is the sort of thing about which reasonable people disagree. Failing to enter a stay might mean that lots of servicemembers come out, or are hired as openly gay; what to do then if the district court is reversed? I think Obama had a little more wiggle room than he used, but I don’t think that is evidence of his malice.

I think the argument that he did it for politics is also just unlikely, even not knowing anything about Obama, because the vast majority of Americans support repeal. Repealing DADT would probably help Democrats in the mid-terms, given the enthusiasm gap.

Also note, whether he was obligated to appeal, and if so, seek a stay, is a separate question from what kind of defense the DOJ is obligated to put on. There too, there is wiggle room, but I think there the DOJ obviously chose the least they could do satisfy their obligation to defend the law.

@Scylla

Except win the injunction. All pro football teams throw, pass, run, block and kick. None of them do anything substantially different. Some win though. It seems odd though that the pee-wee league of of the LCR could succeed where so many other more formidable entities have failed.

It just isn’t that odd. As you say, if you find out that LCR made some new argument (presumably relating to them not being wussy liberals), I’ll eat crow. Then you’ll have the beginnings of a point that they went where the ACLU refused or failed to go. But resting your point on the mere fact that they got a Judge to issue their requested relief first is like pointing to the first jackpot winner at the slot machines as evidence that granny there likes money more than the rest of the clientele. And, to complete the analogy to your argument, that granny’s political party is therefore especially interested in money.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Miller

I think you missed the first half of my analogy, which specified that the three horses are not being kept on par with each other: one horse is visibly mistreated by the driver. Does that clear things up at all?

No, I did catch that part. Since it was something that you specifically added to twist the point around, I chose not to follow you on that path. However, if I did, I would have had to argue strongly against that point, because it is completely self-centered, petulant bullshit. Do you really think that relative to other groups, homosexuals are the only ones who are not being treated equally, fairly and justly? “Yeah, these sure are halcyon days for everyone else, it’s only homosexuals that anyone has it out for!” That kind of myopic self-centeredness is precisely why I think you come across as implying that “If you don’t prefer us, you are against us.”

On the whole, Democrats have not been forceful advocates of gay rights. They’ve not been particularly forceful advocates against Mulsim bigotry either. Hell, they’ve hardly been forceful advocates for their own fiscal policies. Some Democrats are running campaign ads touting their record voting against Nancy Pelosi and Democratic positions. Jason Altmeyer is touting his efforts to use steel in constructing a US border fence. In this issue of Guts Magazine - “Hentor rates the Democrats: They’re pussies!”

If you think that the horse representing gay rights is the only one being neglected by Democrats, you’re crazy.

[Hamlet]

@Scylla

Thanks. That looks steep to me. Let me get back to you.

You don’t even have to. I’m not sure I agree with Mazzone, I was simply offering it to try and make you understand that there is a certain level of nuance and detail, as expressed by Richard Parker and Bricker, to Obama’s decision beyond your “Look!! He hates gays too!!” conclusion.

I’d much rather you get back to me about why you think liberal groups that have been challenging DADT for decades have been trying not to win, and it was because it was the LCR that DADT got decided. Or you could get back to me how, as furious as you get over DADT, you don’t seem to give any import to the fact that repealling DADT passed the House because of Democrats and despite Republicans, and would have passed the Senate, but for Republican’s voting not to overrule their own filibuster. Seems to me that that flies right in the face of your arguments that somehow the Republicans are better on DADT than Democrats.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Scylla

It’s not the contractor or the deck that is usually the cause for the failure.

It’s the confidence that the deck won’t fail that is usually to blame.

I LOVE this post as a perfect reflection of conservative thinking. The actual plans, construction or structure don’t have anything to do with a deck falling down. It’s how confident you are about the deck itself.

Don’t forget this classic line: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”

Clap harder if you believe! I do believe! I do believe!

Looks like it’s time to move part that (although I’m thinking it might be fun to translate you’re replies into Assholese, and then so respond, but we always have Hentor for that, so no.)

Why would I translate Richard Parker’s quotes into Assholese? He’s being very intelligent and thoughtful as he systematically schools you. I wouldn’t want to mess with the process one bit. (I also wanted to quote you on this to highlight your (you’re) typo. Doesn’t that just always happen when you’re being a douchebag?)

[Hamlet]

@Richard_Parker

But resting your point on the mere fact that they got a Judge to issue their requested relief first is like pointing to the first jackpot winner at the slot machines as evidence that granny there likes money more than the rest of the clientele. And, to complete the analogy to your argument, that granny’s political party is therefore especially interested in money.

It’s an 86 page decision, so I didn’t read the whole thing, but it seemed pretty clear that Judge Phillips’ decision rested heavily on the Witt case. The Witt case is the one that the ACLU kinda sorta won in the 9th circuit when they asked DADT be overruled. The standard of review, as well as the test Judge Phillips applied, relied very heavily on the appellate ruling in the Witt case. So the ACLU files a case challenging DADT, they win, it gets appealled, they kinda win, but it gets sent back to the trial level. Before the judge issues his ruling in the trial level in Witt, Phillips issues hers, relying heavily on the Witt decision in the appellate court. And then the trial level on Witt finds the same thing.

Kudos to the LCR for challenging DADT and winning. But ignoring all the work that came before (and during) it and giving all the credit to the LCR is just silly. But still, it’s not quite the level of stupid to believe the ACLU and others weren’t really trying to win.