I didn’t see what part of your cite said that Ashcroft had been paid to travel and see all those organizations. It only seemed to say that had given him contributions.
I still completely fail to see what is wrong with the fact tha some Christian organizations contributed money to Ashcroft’s campains in the past.
My understanding of politics, is that you tend to support the politicians you like and agree with, rather than, say, giving money to the ones you dislike and don’t agree with.
Isn’t that exactly how it’s supposed to work?
Is there something wrong with it?
What exactly is wrong with speaking at Bob Jones University?
You do know that liberals have spoken there, don’t you?
And, Ann Coulter went and spoke on Donahue. Does that mean that they agree with each other?
Oh, and aren’t Robertson and the Assemblies of God, as well as Focus on the Family primarily engaged with Promisekeepers?
While not exactly my cup of tea, Promisekeepers holds rallies and helps men be better fathers and parents, promoting such activities as not beating your wife, playing with your kid, not abandoning your family, and things like that.
I got suckered into going to one of these things without knowing what it was (was supposed to be a guy’s weekend with the wife’s family that I had just married into.)
I was all worried, that it was some evil extremist fundamental thing, but it was really quite bland and innocuous. I found nothing whatsoever to get worked up about, and I was looking pretty hard.
“Don’t beat your wife.” “Be a good father.” “Teach your children moral values by example.” These are really dangerous messages. I can see why your so afraid.
No one has answered a basic question: If you agree philosophically with 90% of the Republican Party, why would you not want to stay with it and reform it? Fifty years ago the Democratic Party was a haven of segregationists. Then in 1965 a Southern Democrat named Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, the most significant piece of civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.
“Guess what honey, the gay couple down the block just got married. That got me thinking…I want a divorce”.
What makes conservatives thnik that gays inspire “anti-family” tendancies among heterosexuals? The only thing gays inspire in me is flu-like symptoms. It’s apple and oranges to inspire gay marrriage to divorce or single motherhood. It’s not the opposite of marriage the way these things are. Gays who want to get married want to do the traditional thing, exept in a gay context, which is the only context in which they live. They love each other (how do you define “love”? How do you define “sex”?) and want to make a commitment to stay together permanently and share a household. Not exactly a burgeoning cesspool in iniquity swallowing everything in its path.
I’d be more inclined to believe that a straight couple shacking up would be inpired to exchange vows by a gay couple who did the same.
That’s a very interesting point, squeels, and one I hadn’t thought of before. Your description does actually match the way my wifes’ cousin and his SO lived. You might be right.
OTOH take a look at Lilairen’s post above.
I’m aware that her/his attitude is fairly common. First of all, non-legal have not passed the test of time. Will they lead to lifetime connections for those who use them? Will they serve not only the handfasters, but also their children, neighbors, relatives, etc.? I’m not convinced. It’s not easy to create a powerful, effective social structure. Marriage evolved over thousands of years all over the world. It seems unlikely that a new construct can work nearly as well.
So, what sorts of actions would encourage or discourage the Lilairens of the world to think they can create effective social institutions at will? IMHO any monkeying with an existing social institution encourages more monkeying, to some degree at least. If we can call gay unions, “marriage,” how about group marriage? Temporary marriage? Group marriage with shifting membership? Marriage between siblings or other close relatives? Where do we stop? Whether or not these are good ideas, they sure aren’t traditional marriage.
I still think that official recognition of gay unions, but using a name other than “marriage” would give us the best of both worlds.
No. Like I said. Ole Pat isn’t exactly a firebrand. You have a handful of quotes over 20 years where he’s spoken out against gays.
He thinks homosexuality is wrong. No doubt about that. He’s a Christian Minister. What do you expect?
I hardly think a handful of quotes yanked from 20 years qualifies him as arch enemy #1 of homosexuals.
I don’t think it qualifies as a campaign of hate against gays.
How old is he? 73. What kind of culture and background does he have?
Is it even reasonably possible that he could have the opinion that homosexuality is ok? That it’s not a sin?
Does his ignorance and his circumstances make him evil?
And here we go. In the 2000 election cycle Ashcroft received $8.6 million. $23,500 came from “religious groups.”
OOoooooo.
Using Federal Election Committee data, the Center for Responsive Politics compiled PAC contributions for the 199-2000 election cycle.
Let’s see, Christian coalition $250,000
Pro life groups $482,789
Pro choice groups $1,159,966
The total for all Republican Conservative Pacs was $2,599,663.
The Association of Trial Lawyers on the other hand alone was $2,661,0000
In that same year, the Service Employees International Union gave $2,853,250 to Democrats.
According to a Houston Chronicle article dated 9/18/00, titled “Quest for Soft Money goes Unabated,” for the September 2000 cycle Trial lawyers gave $7,000,000 plus to Democrats and $13,500 to Republicans.
The Rt. Rev. John S. Spong, Bishop of Newark (Ret) was born in 1931, which makes him over 70 also, and he grew up in conservative North Carolina. He’s a Christian. He’s not a bigot. Age and religion is no excuse.
The quotes above are all 10 years old or younger, you are trying to intentionall obfusicate. They are hardly even the tip of the iceberg. God Damn It, Scylla, the man agreed with Falwell that gays, atheists and liberals led to God not protecting us from the Sept. 11 attacks. Falwell has apologized that he said it where others could hear it. Robertson never even did that much.
I’ve come to the conclusion that you argue for arguement’s sake and simply to prove yourself right. This time you’re wrong. I don’t have the time or patience to do all the reading for you.
Pat preaches his hate and bile on his 700 Club show that reaches somewhere around 70 million households. He has considerable influence in the Religious Right. To say he’s not an enemy is absurd. Hell, he’s an enemy to anyone who values SOCAS.
He may or may not be the Arch-Enemy, but he is certainly in the Top Ten. Soulforce certainly considers him important enough to keep an eye on him.
Basic human decency? For him to not lie about gays and lesbians? For him to do the world a favor and not wear a seatbelt? His positions against gays are filthy bigotry and based on lies. Which makes him a filthy bigot and a liar, alongside any who would defend him.
Yes, because they have informed his opinions and actions, which are inherently and indisuptably evil in every way, shape and form. The only good thing Pat Robertson has to contribute to the world is his demise.
Ask my aunt and uncle, high school sweethearts, never legally married, not living in a common law location. I think it’s nearly forty years now, which beats some marriages down.
Well, if you want to ask about that, you could go consult with some of the fifteen or twenty year old triad marriages I know. Perhaps the one where two marriages were held, only one of which included a legal tie, and essentially nobody outside the family and the people who look at official documents knows which one is which. (All three of them wear identical wedding bands and share a surname.)
Beats hell out of repeated divorce upon recognition that the people involved can’t actually manage to live together.
Well, doesn’t that depend on what your tradition is? I believe it’s some part of the Carribean where women are free to take up the man’s social role, including taking wives. (I don’t remember if the men can take up the woman’s social role and be wives. I do know that the “lesbian” couples are known to produce children, often by both parties soliciting a male to provide the requisite sperm to the wife.) Both polygyny and polyandry have been practiced in some areas, despite some efforts on the part of outsiders to stamp the practice out. In some parts of (I believe) the Amazon, the strength and health of an unborn child is thought to depend on how many fathers the child has – in other words, how many partners the mother had – and that tends to be backed up by the fact that all those fathers help provide for the offspring.
Then there are marriages that don’t lead to the production of children, marriages where the parties involved work in different cities and only see each other on weekends, marriages that were arranged through purely legal contract with no religious or even ceremonial component, marriages that are little better than estrangements held together by the children or some property, none of which look overly much like that hypothetical, never-existent ideal of What “Traditional Marriage” Is.
Incidentally, just to correct a preconception, I am legally married.
Just let “marriage” refer to the “traditional” format of man and woman, etc., sanctioned by the church, so on and so forth.
Simply acknowledge or enact property sharing schemes, and mutual inheritance. How much of a problem is that? As to federal recognition for social security benefits, well, probably not anytime soon. Still not worth it.
Discrimination in employment, housing, civil rights, etc. those are fights worth having. The privilege of going to the courthouse for a marriage license isn’t.
I recognise that as a lifelong het, I may lack sympathy, but this is how I see it.
Elucidator, while I don’t care about the term marriage either way, for gays and lesbians to be full-fledged, equal citizens in this nation there MUST be a government-sanctioned formula for “living together” that imbues permanent gay relationships with the EXACT same benefits (and penalties) as heterosexual marriage.
For gays and lesbians, access to equal governmental sanction of our permanent relationships is THE civil rights fight, the core issue, IMO. Those hundreds of legal benefits (and handful of penalties) are the brass ring of the civil rights merry go round. Telling us to stop reaching for it is just plain lousy.
Not suggesting you don’t deserve it, Kirk. Only suggesting you might be better off picking your battles carefully and saving your ammo for the biggies. I only share your struggle in the general sense, as a commited progressive. It’s your call.
Originally posted by I am Sparticus
Do the Republicans in this thread believe that the Republican Party have a better platform for gay rights than the Democratic party from the point of view of a gay person?
Originally posted by Scylla
There’s five or six places in this thread where I directly answer this qestion.
It was a question that is subject to a yes or a no answer. The answer I got took a lot more keystrokes and did not enlighten me on Republican thought on the matter at all.
Actually 2 are more than ten years old. I looked at your cite as well, and conclude that he’s lightened up in recent years.
Personally, all I think all he’s done is engage in some mean rhetoric occasionally over the last 15 years or so. It’s not like Jesse Jackson putting advocates of race murder on the stage for the Rainbow Coalition. You remember Sista Souljah don’t you? She was the one who said it was a good idea for blacks to take a week to kill white people once in a while, and that the race riots were wise, and that white people have a “low-down dirty nature.” He had her deliver her little message of hate. The next day Bill Clinton spoke on the same stage. Now, to Bill’s credit he criticized Sista Souljah (albeit somewhat mildly.)
Does your guilt by association also extend to Bill Clinton?
But, back to Robertson: Ok, so this guy with the occasional anti-gay remark, and his $250,000 campaign war-chest is one of the top ten threats to social justice in the U.S.
Gays need some more formidable enemies.
If you’re worried about Pat Robertson, you scare way too easy.
Let’s see: he supported most favored nation status for China in 1999. In 2000 he came out in favor of a moratorium on the death penalty, came out against Bush’s faith based initiatives, said this of China:
“If every family out there was allowed to have 3 or 4 children, the population would be completely unsustainable… …I think right now they’re doing what they have to do.”
Let’s see, he opposed Clinton’s impeachment publically (or so the New York Times noted.)
Clearly a right wing conspiracy is afoot with Robertson at the center, spiderlike, pulling all the strings.
Yes. I know.
I don’t know why either. I’m not arguing that Pat isn’t bigoted towards gays. He is.
Neither of those statements are true. You have a handful of instances of bigoted statements over a long time period. Pat’s been on the air since I was a tyke.
He’s no friend of gay people, but he hardly spends his interminable hours on the boob tube railing at them. He’s mostly fairly mild.
The point that you seem to miss, is that all Pat Robertson is a Christian Minister and product of the 40s and 50s. To him gays are a boogeyman. He’s ignorant and bigoted because everything he’s been taught about gays suggests that that’s a reasonable and correct stance. Two things in his favor though.
He clearly hates the sin (as he sees it,) and not the sinner. There’s a man who writes a letter to Pat about his gay experience on Pat’s website now in the ask Pat section. While I think he’s wrong in what he says, he treats the man compassionately and humanely. he doesn’t demonize him.
Pat is capable of learning and changing. Look at his stance on China and presumably abortions. That’s quite a step.
He also does a huge amount of charity work, aid to foreign countries, medical supplies and stuff, and his messages to his target audience seems to be a positive one.
Yes. He’s a bigot towards gay. Yes. That’s bad.
I just don’t think that pronouncement, or any such pronouncement is the final sum total of any man.
I also think that is laughably ridiculous to take such a figure as Pat and demonize him as some horrible enemy of humanity.