"It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our Nation's commitment to due process is most severely tested; and it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad."
Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld - 2004
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
I so rarely get critical comments, and I like responding to them:
Like a true Lib. You do not get it. "Family" IS a heterosexual privlilege. Joe and Steve are NOT mom and Dad. I do not care if one of them wears a dress.
"Marriage" IS not our exclusive privilege. A gay guy can get married if they choose to. To a WOMAN.
"Legal" does not make killing babys ok. You just feel better about it.
Being called a liberal is not disparaging, so thanks. I think you don't "get" what it means to live in a democracy. Equality between people does not embrace privilege for some classes over others. America supposedly aspires to be a classless society, although I'm feeling that less and less. To narrow the definition and privilege of "family" to just Mom and Dad leaves out a heck of a lot of hetero American situations (say, single Dads). You are further inspired to separate homosexual unions from heterosexual unions for hidden reasons (whether they are based in religious bias, fear of association, or just a need for superiority). On your website you espouse separate but equal treatment of gays which is just a thin veil for separatists, racists and biggots.
You define marriage as only a man and a woman, rather than the union of two lovers, and then offer that gays are "free" to deny who they are by conforming to your narrow definition of marriage. Alas, you conclude, marriage is not a privilege for straight people. This is absolutely irrational. That's like saying that the Jews, who were stripped of the privilege of German citizenship, could have just gained the privilege by converting to Christianity and adopting Nazism--thereby German citizenship was not a privilege. Same logic. By the way, Hitler also separated homosexuals from "civilized" society.
Damn, dividing people into classes and different privileges is such a wonderful thing to do, isn't it?! Hey, I don't think liberals should do it either--but at least we're motivated to do it in order to help the disenfrachised, not to actually disenfranchise people.
I don't know anyone who thinks abortions are "ok." I just wish our society had more condemnation for war, domestic abuse, and economic corruption as we do for women who have abortions. Jesus did.
The difference between you and me is that I think the moral responsibility for having or not having an abortion belongs to each pregnant woman--it's between her and G_d. If we collectively decide to take that private, legal, moral choice away from her, then I believe that you, me and the government become responsible for her health and that growing child. She loses ownership of her own health (pro-life men and women really don't consider this) and I call it slavery to the state. Do you really want responsibility for that? If you advocate that abortion should be illegal, you cannot avoid making a pregnant woman's body the property of the state. If everyone's okay with that, then I'm going to advocate that men who make women pregnant out of wedlock should be sterilized by the state until they can prove that they are married. That would be equal and fair--upon the occurance of an unplanned pregnancy, each of the responsible parties would become the property of the state. It's very Brave New Worldish, don't you think?
Very few "pro-lifers" really think about how intrusive their position is--they just don't want anyone to kill the fetus. Well, neither do I, and that's why I support birth control, good relationship skills, and a healthy economy (heathlcare, living wages). Yet nature ends the life of fetuses all the time, as do people who want perfect children or a certain gender (morally questionable), as did quite a few conservative hypocrites I grew up with who publicly claimed that they were against abortion but arranged it for their 16-year old daughters (reprehensible [very little makes me angrier than this!]), and you'll hopefully never have it happen to your loved ones.
As it is, plenty of unplanned children are waiting for us to help them; where is our concern for them? Our compassion for them? Frankly, I don't trust abortion-banning societies with children or pregnant women--I think that most pro-life anger is all comfy, do-nothing, idealistic bullshit that has nothing to do with supporting life at all--and the whole-lotta pointing our fingers at women won't make us a better society. To me, a pro-lifer is a whiny hypocrite who spends a lot of time expecting other people to behave much better than they do, yet does nothing to improve relationships or conditions within a community (that's some liberal's job). But that's my own twisted experience of hundreds of people, nothing personal.
Like a true Lib. You do not get it. "Family" IS a heterosexual privlilege. Joe and Steve are NOT mom and Dad. I do not care if one of them wears a dress.
"Marriage" IS not our exclusive privilege. A gay guy can get married if they choose to. To a WOMAN.
"Legal" does not make killing babys ok. You just feel better about it.
Being called a liberal is not disparaging, so thanks. I think you don't "get" what it means to live in a democracy. Equality between people does not embrace privilege for some classes over others. America supposedly aspires to be a classless society, although I'm feeling that less and less. To narrow the definition and privilege of "family" to just Mom and Dad leaves out a heck of a lot of hetero American situations (say, single Dads). You are further inspired to separate homosexual unions from heterosexual unions for hidden reasons (whether they are based in religious bias, fear of association, or just a need for superiority). On your website you espouse separate but equal treatment of gays which is just a thin veil for separatists, racists and biggots.
You define marriage as only a man and a woman, rather than the union of two lovers, and then offer that gays are "free" to deny who they are by conforming to your narrow definition of marriage. Alas, you conclude, marriage is not a privilege for straight people. This is absolutely irrational. That's like saying that the Jews, who were stripped of the privilege of German citizenship, could have just gained the privilege by converting to Christianity and adopting Nazism--thereby German citizenship was not a privilege. Same logic. By the way, Hitler also separated homosexuals from "civilized" society.
Damn, dividing people into classes and different privileges is such a wonderful thing to do, isn't it?! Hey, I don't think liberals should do it either--but at least we're motivated to do it in order to help the disenfrachised, not to actually disenfranchise people.
I don't know anyone who thinks abortions are "ok." I just wish our society had more condemnation for war, domestic abuse, and economic corruption as we do for women who have abortions. Jesus did.
The difference between you and me is that I think the moral responsibility for having or not having an abortion belongs to each pregnant woman--it's between her and G_d. If we collectively decide to take that private, legal, moral choice away from her, then I believe that you, me and the government become responsible for her health and that growing child. She loses ownership of her own health (pro-life men and women really don't consider this) and I call it slavery to the state. Do you really want responsibility for that? If you advocate that abortion should be illegal, you cannot avoid making a pregnant woman's body the property of the state. If everyone's okay with that, then I'm going to advocate that men who make women pregnant out of wedlock should be sterilized by the state until they can prove that they are married. That would be equal and fair--upon the occurance of an unplanned pregnancy, each of the responsible parties would become the property of the state. It's very Brave New Worldish, don't you think?
Very few "pro-lifers" really think about how intrusive their position is--they just don't want anyone to kill the fetus. Well, neither do I, and that's why I support birth control, good relationship skills, and a healthy economy (heathlcare, living wages). Yet nature ends the life of fetuses all the time, as do people who want perfect children or a certain gender (morally questionable), as did quite a few conservative hypocrites I grew up with who publicly claimed that they were against abortion but arranged it for their 16-year old daughters (reprehensible [very little makes me angrier than this!]), and you'll hopefully never have it happen to your loved ones.
As it is, plenty of unplanned children are waiting for us to help them; where is our concern for them? Our compassion for them? Frankly, I don't trust abortion-banning societies with children or pregnant women--I think that most pro-life anger is all comfy, do-nothing, idealistic bullshit that has nothing to do with supporting life at all--and the whole-lotta pointing our fingers at women won't make us a better society. To me, a pro-lifer is a whiny hypocrite who spends a lot of time expecting other people to behave much better than they do, yet does nothing to improve relationships or conditions within a community (that's some liberal's job). But that's my own twisted experience of hundreds of people, nothing personal.