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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
"Why is it that when conservatives give their opinion on an issue such as gay marriage, abortion, etc. we're sticking our noses where they don't belong?"
Fightthetheocracy did a fine job answering this question, but let me elaborate: It is all about choice- it really is as simple as that. There is a bumpersticker that puts it very well: If you don't believe in abortion, don't have one." We (me, fightthetheocracy and a lot of the rest of us here) don't have a zero-tolerance attitude towards you and your ignorant beliefs. We don't require you to get married or not regardless of our own orientations and beliefs, nor do we require you to terminate pregnancies. We don't make you go to church or not, and we don't require those we would choose to be leaders to adhere to our beliefs- or lack there-of. I personally think belief in a personal god is complete bullshit akin to belief in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, but I don't impose that belief on you. Nor do I impose it on whoever the next president will be by making religion a test of their qualifications. You "conservatives" on the other hand demand and claim the right to tell us what to do with our minds, bodies and lives, and think it is perfectly OK to invoke the long arm of the law to force everyone to toe the hard line you draw. Unbidden, you attack other countries to impose your beliefs on others. If you were content to simply believe in what I hold to be utter nonsense in private I would have absolutely no problem with it. I see no evidence you have any intention of according me the same respect.
Name a single law put into place by the Bush Admin forcing anyone in this country to adhere to Christian beliefs...chirp chirp...chirp (silence). Stating our "opinion", based on your post, is apparently not allowed. Libs make laws all the time based on their beliefs (see State of Mass and same sex marriage).
Bush didn't do it, and maybe McCain won't either, but they certainly talk about removing a woman's choice re abortion. That would be imposing religion on the rest of us. The fact that gays are not allowed to marry in most of the U.S. (and people are fighting to take it away where it IS legal) is a matter of removing choice from people and imposing religion. Even the fact that it seems clear that the religious right would shout down any candidate that didn't kneel and make Christian noises removes choice for the rest of us.
Yes, secular values are imposed on society when, say, gay marriage is allowed instead of forbidden. But you are not forced to marry someone of the same sex - it's just that people have that choice. Under Christian values, that choice is removed.
So who's poking whose nose into whose business?
"I'm an old-fashioned, bleeding-heart, ultra-liberal, atheist, feminist, who has not served the GOP in any way since I learned to think and feel at the same time."
Except by bequeathing me and mine a four decade legacy of GOP dominance, and the death of all progressivism.
I believe you, of course. And believe me when I say being an old-fashioned liberal is no glory cry in the dismal days spent living in a country that has very little at all to do with "old fashioned" liberalism. I won't address your complaints against Obama, anybody is welcome to visit Hi44.com for a blessed insight into the lens these "truths" pass through and often originate from wholecloth.
There is one thing you might be proud of; your candidate carried on the very old fashioned, and quite highly prized liberal tradition of losing the race. On my part I could not be more eager to part ways with those who came before me and failed miserably. It's time for America to have an Opposition party again.
Well, let's see, our taxes have to pay for the military so yeah, we should get to have a say in it. As for murder, if that guy crossed state lines it might become my problem. The marriage thing has always been weak because:
1) Most of the examples that you give have alternative explainations for why they wouldn't work anyway (if you can get a horse to consent to marriage, you'd have your own sold out act in Vegas I guarantee it!) .
2) You seem to have made stopping gays from getting married more important then healthcare, cost of living issues, and pretty much everything except abortion to the point where your willing to let innocent people suffer. Seems like kind of a high price to pay just to get back at all those uppity sodomites who forgot their place.
3) The "tradition" excuse was used to justify stopping interracial marriage just 40 years ago. And you know what? They were right. It did go against tradition. But our society decided just because something is a tradition, isn't a good enough reason to keep it around. Especially in regards to traditions that harm a minority group. Sound familiar? Slavery was a tradition too, maybe you think we should have kept that one as well. Interracial marriage doesn't challenge the conventional definition between a man and a woman you say? Why don't you hop in the Delorian and head back to Georgia circa 1965 and tell that to the people then. See how that will fly.
4) Say what you want about us "Libs", we aren't trying to change our nation's founding document everytime we don't like something. It isn't just gay marriage, it's everything. Don't like flag burning? Just amend the constitution. Want the ten commandments up in every courtroom in America? No problem, an amendment will take care of that. I may not believe in your religion, but I'm not going to use our nation's founding document as some sort of revenge fantasy just because you don't think like me. And then turning around and claiming to blieve in less government after doing so! So not only are you nosy busybodies, you are also liars as well.
and finally:
5) No matter how appalled at it you may be, you still haven't given one example of how it really is any of your business. When most groups take up a cause, be it gun control, or poverty, or even Darfur, it is usually to either: a) improve the lives of someone and make them better or: b) protect themsleves from some sort of harm. So far, none of you bigots have been able to show how two guys marrying each other either harms you or makes anyone's lives better. All you've shown so far is that you like to tell other people how to live their lives and interfere in their relationships.
I have things I disagree with too, doesn't make it any of my business if other people do them.
As for abortion, if you can tell me when life actually begins it might settle this issue. But of course you would have to prove it. At what point does something that starts out as two cells become a technical person? First trimester? Third? Now you see why this isn't a black and white issue for many of us. I have a hard time buying the idea that something half the size of a grain of rice has the same rights, and responsibiilties, as I do. Even your own holy book only gave out a fine for abortion. This was at a time when kids were stoned to death for disobeying their parents. What was that about God respecting life again?
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
