Goddammit, can’t we just once have a political discussion on these boards that doesn’t lead to name-calling? I’ve seen a lot of harsh shit on the boards before, but calling liberals Rosie O’Donnell fans… man, that’s just going too far.
Heck, I’ll play, Brick. Though I’ll skip the ‘shameful’ and ‘joyful’ labels for ‘proper’ and ‘improper’. I am the sole judge of my behavior here.
Requires further examination. If the CGP has been opposing it with rhetoric about those damn gays or somesuch then it’s proper. If the CGP is opposing it on constitutional or other grounds then it’s improper.
See above. The concerns against a ‘day of silence’ or whatnot are not necessarily connected to one’s sexual orientation.
A judge should clearly identify himself in this case. I would think a recusal would be in order. If the judge refuses then it may very well be proper to bring it out to ensure a fair trial. Proper.
Ideally…see above. But it’s certainly possible (even very likely) for an impartial ruling from a CGJ on such a case. But the political ramifications are horrendous.
There is no taint of hypocrisy here. Any attempt at ‘outing’ would simply be for political reasons. Improper.
Again, that conflates ‘AIDS funding’ with ‘GAY’. The two are not joined at the hip (so to speak). Improper.
When someone is keeping a secret and such a secret could effect the means by which they are performing their office then that secret should be consider, for political purposes, in play and fair game.
Absolutely not on the recusal. In that case, every black judge with a black defendant, white judge with a white defendant, christian judge with a christian defendant would have to “identify” himself and recuse himself. Recusals aren’t as easy as “Matthew Shephard is gay and so am I so I must recuse myself”. Recusals are very complicated matters and that’s why you see/hear of so few.
Or druggie-basher and druggie (and ‘one-man truth squad’ and serial liar) Rush Limbaugh, if we’re gonna do tit-for-tat.
Speaking of which, it’s fun to see all the GOP biggies at the Convention continue to hang out with discredited liars like Limbaugh, Falwell, and the SwiftLiars.
I think in your rush to cast me partisan right winger, you completely missed the fact that I was making the exact same point. Hypocracy occurs on both sides of the isle, and should be condemned where ever it occurs. This thread was a gleeful (and deserved) skewering of a Republican hypocrite. I simply brought up an example from the other side of the coin and condemed it too.Try to read for comprehension before your knee jerks, OK?
GaWd: If you think that I am an example of the “ridiculous right”, man, your eyes must be bleeding from frustration considering what the NeoCon subset of the right wing has been up to for the past few years! Here’s a question: If I’m such an apologist for the right, how come I plan on voting for Kerry?
What was the point of bringing up someone completely unrelated to the issue, if not simply to get in a dig at the left? Are you not articulate enough to make a general point about hypocrisy without applying the example only to people that you dislike? When the person under consideration is a conservative (as in this case) intelligent people don’t need such a knee-jerk reaction as yours to be aware that hypocrisy is a problem everywhere. Conversely, if the hypocrite in question were a left winger, it would add nothing to the debate to simply march in and scream,“Yeah, but what about Rush!!!”
Furthermore, you responded specifically to my post as if i had somehow neglected to mention anyone except conservatives. As i already pointed out, i very deliberately used a “liberal” and a “conservative” issue (gun control and tort reform, respectively) in order to emphasize that my point was a general rather than a partisan one.
Now to Bricker’s challenge:
Well, i’m afraid that some (but not all) of my answers can be cribbed straight from Jonathan Chance’s response:
What JC said.
What JC said.
I’m going with GaWd on this one. There’s no reason for recusal, and no reason to out the judge. My thinking on this might change somewhat if the judge began to make biased rulings in the case, and to compromise the integrity of the legal process. Hopefully, any such behavior would be caught either during the trial itself, or would be uncovered on appeal.
See response to 3).
No excuse for outing the politician.
I’ll go back to JC on this one.
I should add that a couple of other things might come into play here. Firstly, guilt by association. When one chooses to affiliate with an organization, especially one as closely identified with certain policies as a political party, i think that one needs to expect that his or her actions will be judged not only against his or her own political platform, but against the platform of the party. When prominent Republicans spend so much time condemning homosexuality, it’s hard for this not to rub off even on the Republicans who don’t have such an attitude. Is this fair? Probably not. But joining a political party involves a level of compromise, and members of such parties, especially the politicians themselves, need to recognize that they will have to carry some of the party baggage, even if they don’t agree with all of it.
On the other hand, however, i’d actually be interested to know exactly what Congressman Schrock’s “anti-gay” agenda was. If it was nothing more than voting to leave the issue of same-sex marriage to the states, then i don’t agree with the outing. While i might not agree with the argument, a constitutional case can still be made for leaving the issue to the states, and taking such a position does not automatically make the person anti-gay. But, once the issue does go to the states, i firmly believe that anyone who votes, at the state level, to ban gay marriage, can reasonably be labelled “anti-gay.” I also believe that anyone who votes to amend the US constitution to ban gay marriage can reasonably be labelled “anti-gay.”
It’s not clear to me whether Schrock was openly opposed to homosexuality as a “lifestyle” or a “perversion” (or whatever other term the bigots like to use). He might well have spent every day ranting about how all fags are evil and are going to hell. I just don’t know. If anyone knows anything more about his record than what we learn from the OP’s linked article, i’d be happy to hear it.
Please see mhendo’s reply. Maybe puppet was the wrong term to use, but if you walk in acting like a right-winger, some people(like me), who don’t necessarily associate with you won’t be able to tell the difference between you and some of our more prevalent hardcore righties.
Hell, I don’t know why you’d vote for Kerry, why don’t you tell me? I don’t know you well enough to say.
Or he could say, “I’m 63 years old, I’ve had two good careers, done much I’m proud of, and refuse to put my family through the same shit that the governor of New Jersey is seeing. Bye, y’all.”
Well, he was a big supporter of the Marriage Protectino Act, but was also a co-sponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment. He was also on the record as wanting to get rid of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” so that the military could begin questioning recruits about homosexual experiences in order to weed them out.
What did I say in this thread that was particularly right wing? All I said was that Rosie was an example of a hypocrite whose politics are far, far to the left, far enoght that I feel comfortable labeling her part of the “loonie left”. If you wanted to talk about, say, Ann Coulter, I’d flat out say that she is a member of the rediculous right.
Mhendo, I still don’t get your point, or at least I don’t see how it differs from mine. I’m happy to dig at the right too, when the situation warrents. In a thread all about a Republican hypocrite, I mentioned a Democratic one to do the same thing you did-acknowledge that the problem spans the political spectrum. The only difference is that you mentioned two different issues in one post and I only mentioned one (because I figured that the rest of the thread was enough of an illustration of the other side)
Oh, God, GaWd, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I don’t know if I have it in my to type out how detailed and obsucre my reasoning has been, and I’m still not happy with the result.
Since an explanation obviously won’t suffice, I’ll offer up an apology for my insult. However, most our esteemed repubs join political pit threads with snipes and insults like your post. It was hard to tell the difference the way you made your entrance.
Oh, and don’t worry about mapping out your thinking on why you’ll be voting for Kerry. I’m sure it defies explanation
Schrock has a zero rating from the Human Rights Campaign. His record includes voting against recognition of same-sex marriage, against the expenditure of funds to pay for domestic partner benefits in DC, against allowing DC to use its own funds to enforce a gay-positive finding of the DC Human Rights Commision and against requiring “faith-based” organizations receiving federal funds being required to adhere to state and local anti-discrimination laws.
If he’s gay then there is absolutely nothing wrong with asking him why as a gay man he votes against the interest of gay people.
Oh, I’m sure he doesn’t. He probably has all sorts of rationalizations for how he can have sex with other men and still not be “gay.” It’s a lot easier to lie to other people once you’ve mastered the art of lying to yourself.
I don’t like to admit it, but the answer to that is a resounding yes. There’s so much stigma attached to being gay, and such desperation for people to be “normal,” that you can convince yourself that everything’s fine as long as you don’t completely succumb to it and define yourself as being gay or bisexual. You can rationalize it away as just “experimentation,” or think things like, “Well, I may like this and this, but at least I’m not as bad as those people.”
Of course, the guy’s still a colossal fucking hypocrite, and I don’t want to imply that I have any sympathy for him. Part of the reason there is such a stigma against homosexuality in the first place is because of fucktards like him, passing laws to strip people of their rights. You can’t just explain away a voting record as clearly anti-gay as his by saying “he’s in denial.” And even as much as you try to convince yourself and others that you’re “normal,” you still always know, on some level, what’s really going on.
But of course, the fact that he’s resigning because of allegations that he’s gay just adds a layer of irony to the whole thing. It really shouldn’t matter whether or not he’s gay, bi, or straight to vote so consistently against the rights of other people.
