The smartest gay person I know voted for Bush, and had a perfectly reasonable and dare I say more logical and compelling reasoning behind his vote, even on the issue of SSM, than any “We’ll make the judges force it on America” liberal activist I’ve seen. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to recreeate his arguement, but it did give me pause, and made quite a lot of sense when I thought it through, and I personally voted for Kerry ONLY because of the posibility that the next president will appoint several Supreme Court justices, and I wanted them to be more liberal and thus more favorable to SSM.
Spectrum, I voted for Kerry and agree with Brutus on, well, next to nothing. But you are going over the line. Nor do I think Bricker was gloating ( this time - he has been a bit and I wish he would rise above it as I respect him as a poster, but this was not the case this time ).
There is a Pit rule against wishing death on people and from where I sit you are edging awfully close to it.
- Tamerlane
Never worked in sales, have you? The customer is never wrong because the customer knows what the customer wants. Yes, Americans ought to accept SSM, but lecturing them like stern nannies isn’t working. We have to use persuasion, reason, and appeals to their innate decency to get them to change their minds.
This is simply stating the obvious. What bakes our noodles is the question of how it could not be a cut-and-dried issue. It’s sorta like witnessing this:
[gay pub]
Gee, my house is on fire. I have a choice: I can leave my house, or stay here. There are risks either way: If I leave, I might get cold; if I stay, I’ll be warm, but I’ll probably be burnt to death.
Hmmmm.
Screw the cold, I’m stayin’!
[/gay pub]
Why should someone who’s gay support Kerry just because of same-sex marriage? Sorry, but there were other issues as well, and evidently some gays felt that they were more important or collectively outweighed SSM. That you started this pit thread indicates not only your ignorance but your blind bigotry.
BTW The question of the draft was thoroughly debunked for both sides.
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
The smartest gay person I know voted for Bush, /QUOTE]
Are you saying I’m not the smartest gay person you know?
sigh
Well, we agree on something! See, the reunifier-ness of GW Bush is seeping through you like the warm summer sun!
And gobear, cut it out! How is it going to look if show up for my next shooting match with a big rainbow sticker on my M1A? 
Listen to gobear, for he is wise. I wanted to vote Bush out of office. Kerry/Edwards ran a horrible campaign. They preached to choir and jerked off their core base but did little else to sway independents. According to a pie chart on CNN’s election site, they only got fifty percent of the independent vote. They (read: the Democratic party) should and could have a much larger percentage.
Tell me what I can do to help, please.
Welcome back, Gobear. I’d like to make a truce with you, if you don’t mind. And I have some ideas about possibly workable strategies if you ever care to hear them.
That was odd, it spontatainously posted itself. I wan’t done.
John Kerry was firmly on record as being OPPOSED to gay marriage. He’s a practacing Catholic, a faith that frobids homosexuality. Also, the Mass. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage in that state is the event that triggered the backlash that came so shamefully to fruition in 11 states Tuesday. What makes you believe that he’s such a gung-ho gay rights crusader, other than rose colored glasses?
Conversley, George W. Bush has absolutely no choice but to oppose gay marriage because of the political realities of his base, but he chose to do so primarily by backing the FMA, a piece of legislation that has no chance, absolutely no chance of passing, in other words by doing something that looks big and flashy yet has zero effect on the lives of gay people in America, and Bush damn well knows it. At the same time he came out in support of Civil Unions (a position held by Kerry as well).
Now, I am not making any claims one way or the other as to which candidate would have been better for homosexuals one way or the other (personally, I think Kerry, but not by that much), but what you posted was jingoistic, knee jerk partisan drivel devoid of thought, and as such I don’t think it does anything to advance the cause of gay rights in America.
Kerry considers you second-class citizens that are not worthy of marriage. Kerry demeans a loving, committed relationship because it’s not worthy of the term “marriage.” Kerry is a homophobe and a bigot.
Right?
I remember quite a few gay posters going on about Kerry not treating them like pariahs. Fuck that. If you honestly thought Kerry was going to get in office and do ANYTHING about gay marriage, you were fucking deluding yourself.
“But, but, but…he was nice to us!” Grow up.
You’re the smartest gay man that would like to fuck me, is that good enough? 
Seriously, I suspect you know who I am refering to, and I’m not going to drag him into a pit thread unawares by naming him, but rest asured, you don’t give away much if anything at all to him in the brains department. However if I qualified everything, my posts would be paragraphs long.
“The smartest gay man I know, well, except gobear, and gobear is a lot cuter, naturally. Oh, and Oscar Wilde of course, we can’t forget him. Now that I think about it, how does one qualify smart? Because …”
He also opposed a 1990s attempt in Massachusetts to bar gay marriage. He also is one of the most ardent supporters of civil unions on the national scene. He also has a 100% voting record from the Human Rights Campaign. He also led the fight for the ENDA, for adding gays to the hate crime bill, for fighting the DOMA. His record on gay rights is damn near perfect, down the line, every vote in every Congress he’s been in.
You clearly have not done much research into John Kerry’s record of fighting for LGBT Americans. It’s exemplary.
It was also a proper judicial decision given the laws of Massachusetts. While the backlash is unfortunate, there was no other option for the justices.
How about his entire record? Including the fact that, in 1996, in the only tough reelection fight in his career, he was the only incumbent Senator to vote AGAINST and publicly denounce the bigoted Defense of Marriage Act. That was both an exemplary thing to do, and an act of tremendous political courage.
He does not support civil unions. He publicly lauded and supported an amendment that would have destroyed every civil unionized family in America. His “support” for civil unions is a political chimera that only a total fucking idiot would buy into.
Ah, well, that’s all right then.
Signed,
Gobear (feeling mollified and ever so slightly horny)
Weirddave
I dunno. I’ve suspected for some time that Kerry’s position on gay rights has been cowardly supportive. His absence during the FMA vote (as well as Edwards’) was rather telling. And did you hear some of of his candid-comments on the issue of gay marriage when pressed by reporters? Something to the effect of “I would never want to get in the way of anyone’s happiness…”? What? Then there’s the obviously paradoxical “I’m against gay marriage, for civil unions, and against a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, except by the states, of which mine will never have one.” Bizarre? Yes. Conflicted? I think so. Have-it-both-ways pandery? Methinks…
Kerry, while certainly not a vocal advocate, certainly appeared tacitly friendlier to gays, if you aks me. Bush was just as vocally “supportive” of civil unions, but all the measure he backed contained language that specifically excluded that compromise. And again, the anti-gay vote was actively courted by the Republicans who proclaimed their desire to “defend marriage”, while Kerry, to his credit and certain electoral detriment, avoided the Old Confederacy like the plague.
Would this mystery gay man be the gentleman who is (or was) the closest Platonic friend of a mutual Lesbian friend of ours who doesn’t post here?
Just in case it was overlooked in the din of activity…
There has been a lot of hysteria on this board in reaction to the fact that gay marriage was shot down in eleven states (even liberal Oregon!).
“They hate gays and Lesbians! They want to take away all our rights! They want to ship us off to concentration camps!”
Nonsense.
Average Americans - even American Evangelicals - do not hate homosexuals. It is true that they frown on the gay lifestyle. But they have always taken the attitude: “Hate the sin; love the sinner.” Do not forget, when John Kerry tried to use Mary Cheney as a political weapon, James Dobson and Jerry Falwell rushed to her defense.
Americans oppose gay marriage because they are simply not comfortable with it. It does not sit well in their guts. Most of them probably could not articulate exactly why, but it just feels wrong.
However, I also oppose gay marriage and I can tell you why.
To begin with, marriage is an ancient institution. As early as the Sumerian civilization, a vast body of laws existed to protect and regulate marriage. As far as I know, no provision was ever made in any marriage law anywhere to cover same-sex couples.
Now gay couples like to argue that they are entitled to be formally married because they love each other, just like hetero couples. That is a touching point, but it is, however, an emotional argument and I am not swayed by emotional arguments.
The simple fact is, marriage was never about love. Arranged marriages were often the norm. If a couple actually loved each other, that was just extra icing.
The primary purpose of a marriage is to have children and raise a family.
The unwritten assumption about a marriage - unwritten because it is so fundamental as to be taken for granted - is that the couple is a breeding unit - a man and a woman.
And that is something which a gay couple can never be.
The triumph of traditional values in the 2004 election proves that Americans are very protective of the institution of marriage. If liberals try to change it or destroy it, they will continue to lose election after election. Marriage is now the “third rail” of American politics.
To gay Dopers:
I am a hardassed conservative Neocon, but I do not believe that the homosexual lifestyle is a choice. Why would anyone deliberately choose a lifestyle which permanently puts one outside the mainstream of American life?
I sympathize with gays who love each other. But formal marriage is not for them. As painful as it may be, I beg them to give up the quest. If they press it, they will only succeed in alienating Middle America and losing all the acceptance they have won over the last 40 years.
If you mean Rob, no, not him.