Assault on California's Constitution

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Oh, yeah, Steve -

here in Germany our Dr. Schäuble is using every single opportunity to take us back to the past...with technological eavesdropping at a level to make the worst of the GDR look like a child's game.
And all in the interest of our security.
Yeah, right...
Sometimes people wake up enough to fight back, but it is hard to do - fear is a powerful motivator and you are always confronted with the: "if you have nothing to hide, then you shouldn't mind the government listening in" mentality.
Like the current scandals at our Telekom, Aldi, Lidl, etc. aren't evidence enough that whenever you give these politicians an inch they'll take a mile.
Währt den Anfangen...prevent the beginnings.
Gosh, Andrew, you've made your feelings about blacks and Hispanics very clear. Do you suppose you could set aside your anger towards them long enough to see why it is in our interest to work with them? No, I am not very hopeful that the black community will, as a whole, help us - there is a serious gap there between what their grandparents achieved and the reality they now live. But we have to try.
The Hispanic community must be sensitized to just how easily this will make them vulnerable, then they will tell their local priest that he's wrong about this one and jump on board.
 
Lots of letters appearing in the local paper on this subject. A great one today from someone who advised they have been "married" for 24 years and asked,

"Did God ordain our marriage? I doubt it. We are atheists. We were married by a judge. As long as marriage is a legal contract administered by the government, it must be available for any adult to enter into with any other adult. Separation of church and state requires this, as the court rightly decided. Individual churches have the right to deny the marriage service to their own members if they choose to do so, but our government may not so discriminate."

This is one of the better rebuttals to the christianist drivel I've been reading since the court rendered its decision.
 
Keven -

Your comment about my feelings towards blacks and hispanics is way the hell out of line and dead ass wrong.

Having many friends who are black and/or hispanic, but especially black, the concept of acceptance of homosexuality is foreign to them. Not because they're black, but for religious reasons, especially here in the south, where the majority of them are southern baptist. But then again, show me any Baptist clan that accepts us as anything other than subhuman. African Methodist (AME Church) is not much better, and departs from the mainstream Methodist church on many issues, not just this one. Hispanics and Mexicans (no, they are not the same thing) are generally more "old world" devout Catholic, where homosexuality is simply not accepted. And yes, Catholicism as practiced in different cultures does differ from what we might encounter in the states or in Europe.

Does this make me angry? You bet your ass it does. But not because of race or color, but because of religion and the twisted, warped, perverted teachings of their form of "Christianity". And I've known enough of both black and hispanic folks as friends, co-workers and acquaintances to know that their "faith based" prejudices are not going to change any time soon. As a people, blacks, hispanics, and mexicans stand together with their own regardless of the issue. And they do it well and they make their voices heard loud and clear. Maybe that's something this minority can learn from those minorities.

Simply being "tolerated", to me, is completely unacceptable. All this means is you have to be nice to me to my face. Being accepted is a whole different ball game. And that is the direction in which we should all be heading.
 
Read the arguments in California's case and one can easily see why the "defense of marriage" camp lost, and has lost in other cases from Massachusetts to Hawaii. They rely on the same three ridiculous and legally indefensible arguments over and over again:

1. Same-sex marriage is icky and we don't like it.

2. Same-sex marriage is icky and God doesn't like it.

3. The sky will fall if we recognize same-sex marriage.

As Chief Justice George (a Republican appointee) pointed out in California's decision, these are the exact same set of arguments that were used to justify laws against interracial marriages for 150+ years in the U.S.:

"The opinion, written by Chief Justice Ronald M. George, cited the court's 1948 decision that reversed the state's interracial marriages ban. It found that "equal respect and dignity" of marriage is a "basic civil right" that cannot be withheld from same-sex couples, that sexual orientation is a protected class like race and gender, and that any classification or discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is subject to strict scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the California State Constitution. Associate Justices Joyce L. Kennard, Kathryn Werdegar, and Carlos R. Moreno concurred." (see link)

That last part should be music to the ears of any gay person, and it's a literal knife in the heart of the "defense of marriage movement", at least in California. Once a given class of individual is declared to be protected, there is no justification (or precedent) for subsequent courts to claim it is not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_California
 
"Gosh, Andrew, you've made your feelings about blacks and Hispanics very clear. Do you suppose you could set aside your anger towards them long enough to see why it is in our interest to work with them? No, I am not very hopeful that the black community will, as a whole, help us - there is a serious gap there between what their grandparents achieved and the reality they now live. But we have to try.
The Hispanic community must be sensitized to just how easily this will make them vulnerable, then they will tell their local priest that he's wrong about this one and jump on board."

Keven, is it ever possible for you to comment on any single issue without putting down America and Americans, accusing us of thought crimes, and TEACHING us about the realities we bear witness to every day of our lives?

How do YOU know about what Andrew's feelings are, toward blacks and Hispanics? And, even if you THINK you know, who are you to demand he change them? You have no way of knowing how varying personal experiences, his own cultural identification, or (gasp!) his OWN, unique take on things may have been formed.

And you are totally (and almost constantly) out of line in demanding he, and all the other posters here who don't necessarily share your multi-culti, neo-Marxist point of view, adopt YOUR only way of believing any gay man or progressive may think!

Now, I understand your German references. I also happen to have ties to Germany, and understand contemporary German culture, for better or worse.

Your way of thinking is not necessarily normative there, either.

And the arrogant, puff-up-your-chest, morally outraged approach doesn't play well here, either.

I did that here as well when I was new. It doesn't help matters or get your point across. In fact, the militancy and stridency turns members off.

So, puh-leeze stop TEACHING us about your takes on cross-cultural exchange, your lofty ideals, your inherent progressivism and intellectual superiority, because you're becoming a bad caricature that neither America, Germany, or the rest of the planet can really afford right now!

You are completely out of touch with reality, you have little to no empathy or understanding for anything which is not within your self-contained little bubble, and it's getting to a point where you could not possibly be deriving anything worthwhile to contributing to these threads, the way you do.

Not everything in life is "Scharaffenland". If incremental progress is the best we can manage for now, in the face of more pressing concerns, we can either forsake that for the benefit of becoming "Tom Of Finland" cartoon characters that the nation will rightfully laugh off as nonsensical and not worthy of consideration, or we can work for "change" in a concrete, hands-on, responsible, EXPERIENCED manner and actually have something to show for it at the end of the day.

Rant over.

As always, I apologize in advance for any wounded or insulted feelings the above may have caused.
 
"Simply being "tolerated", to me, is completely unacceptable. All this means is you have to be nice to me to my face. Being accepted is a whole different ball game. And that is the direction in which we should all be heading."

There are things in life, that you cannot force people to accept.

You cannot legislate others to treat you in one way or another, or even to discriminate against you, for whatever reason they perceive.

The best you can hope for, is to establish legislation that reduces the worst of the abuses, and to prevent violence (and even that's a stretch).

But marriage equality will not make anti-gay people less anti-gay. In fact, it will probably inflame matters, and make things worse.

That doesn't mean one shouldn't strive for it. It simply means that approaches to it will vary, and we need to be realistic about what can be achieved, and what it all means in the final analysis.

You cannot legislate human nature.
 
Scott, you're right for the most part, but quite a few exceptions can be cited. Remember Gov. George Wallace, standing in the hallway of the University of Alabama, blocking entrance to two black students, and declaring in his inauguration speech that year, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forevah!"

The man wound up dying a champion of civil rights.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1294680
 
Well,

I am not a neo-marxist, or any other type of communist. Nor have I ever been. I doubt you even now what a neo-Marxist is. I didn't until you called me one and I looked the term up. So sorry, it ain't me. In the 1950's, I would have been an Eisenhower Republican. In the 1960's, I found much to admire in Goldwater, tho' his position on civil rights already displeased my childish mind.
I am a democrat and a firm believer in the strict interpretation of the US Constitution. A rather fascinating document, especially the Amendments pertaining to civil rights.

Enough. You are just looking for an excuse to dump your considerable venom. Today you want me to play your victim, and I won't play.

Andrew, really and truly, I mean no offense - but now is not the time to tell other minorities that we are far more enlightened than they and they can begin improving themselves by helping us...

Full disclosure: My childhood nurse was black, my husband was black, all but one of my students when I was student teaching in the Bronx was black. Many of my students here in Munich are black Americans.
Growing up in the Southwest, need I even mention that I have at least a working acquaintance with both Hispanic and Native American cultures? I have found nothing in these racial and ethnic groups to justify such sweeping generalizations. Yes, many blacks are against us. Unfortunately. Yup, many Hispanics cling to a religious interpretation which is pre- Vatican I never mind II. But if we confront them with such attitudes, need we wonder when many feel affronted. You are trying and failing to do exactly the same thing to me by implying that my "European-ness" disqualifies me to understand the signifigance of civil rights for all citizens.
 
You cannot legislate human nature

No, you cannot. But because of legislation, gay and lesbian people are the only ones who can be openly vilified. You can't get away with preaching or seeking to foment hate against the former targets like Blacks and Jews. Sexual orientation along with related issues like gender idenity are not protected by national civil rights laws passed in the 1960s and the District of Columbia is the only jurisdiction whose constitution does not allow for referenda on any civil rights laws. Home rule came late to DC and the constitution was drafted by people very savy in civil rights legislation, among them Blacks, Jews, Gay Men and Lesbians. There are all kinds of folks who still hate Blacks and Jews and some Blacks who hate Jews and vice versa, but the haters have to be guarded in their speech and cannot propose legislation restricting the rights of Blacks and/or Jews. To do so makes them liable to be taken to court for violating the civil rights of others.

Actually "The Bible" does not prohibit charging interest on loans or debts. That is one reason Jews could be money lenders and financiers. You are talking about a Christian prohibition.

The earliest campaign issues of the Nazis were morality and family. They campaigned against abortion and homosexuality. It is easy to unite the majority in distaste of a minority. Ironically, it is the religious teachings against birth control that made abortion an issue. Going back into ancient Jewish history, there was not a problem with birth control. After a couple had two children it was acceptable and the Talmud and other writings even gave the directions for making the herb-infused contraceptive sponges used thousands of years ago. Have any of you ever noticed in old Sears catalogs that contraceptive devices could not be shipped to Connecticut? State law made the sale of any form of artificial birth control illegal.
 
Good Point, Tom - as always.

I think, ultimately, there is going to have to be some sort of guarantee in the Constitution prohibiting discrimination against gays and transgendered people. Until then, we are open to attack.
Not that we necessarily need non-gays for that...
I'm out of this thread. The topic interests me, I feel passionately about it - but when we reach this point, it is just a matter of time until the flame wars get going again. They ran quite nicely without me the month I was gone and I am quite sure they will do equally well here.
A promise I made to myself. I can't change others' behaviors, just my own - and I am being an appalling guest in Robert's living room. So time to leave the party. See you on other threads,
panthera
 
"Enough. You are just looking for an excuse to dump your considerable venom. Today you want me to play your victim, and I won't play."

Panthera? You don't KNOW from venom. Trust me on that.

"Andrew, really and truly, I mean no offense - but now is not the time to tell other minorities that we are far more enlightened than they and they can begin improving themselves by helping us..."

And we don't need YOU, playing Bolshevik thought police and
telling people what they may say and what they may not.

"Full disclosure: My childhood nurse was black, my husband was black, all but one of my students when I was student teaching in the Bronx was black. Many of my students here in Munich are black Americans."

Exactly my point. Who cares? What is this supposed to prove to us? "I have black friends?"

"Growing up in the Southwest, need I even mention that I have at least a working acquaintance with both Hispanic and Native American cultures?"

Fine, but that's West Coast, a totally different kettle of fish than we have going on in the East. And Florida can be a world unto itself.

"I have found nothing in these racial and ethnic groups to justify such sweeping generalizations."

Again, YMMV, according to region. And, if you totally surround yourself with those who tend to (or have an interest in) thinking exactly the way you do, and snob and flip off the rest, you'll continue to be UNABLE to imagine a different assessment of the facts on the ground.

"Yes, many blacks are against us. Unfortunately. Yup, many Hispanics cling to a religious interpretation which is pre- Vatican I never mind II."

Don't even TRY to ignore the homophobes like Moss and Farrakhan in the black cults while thinking you can pawn the Mexicans off on a normative, respected church that has done more to help and take care of gay people living and dying with AIDS and feed our homeless, don't you DARE!

"You are trying and failing to do exactly the same thing to me by implying that my "European-ness" disqualifies me to understand the signifigance of civil rights for all citizens."

You're caught between two very different worlds and perspectives, and are trying to glom the best off both and synthesize them into one incompatible, globalist wet dream, and I'm saying, NO, well over half of America's citizens don't WANT that, and we don't work and exist to subsidize your personal sensibilities and comforts.

There is literally nothing that you bring to the table but rabblerousing, and ill-warranted imperious attitudes.
 
"The man wound up dying a champion of civil rights."

True, Jeff, but how comparable is this struggle to that one?

Also, times are different. There's much more at stake.

You can't tell someone who's potentially looking at ten bucks a gallon for fuel oil this fall (yes, ten) and argue that marriage equality mitigates serious hardship.
 
"But because of legislation, gay and lesbian people are the only ones who can be openly vilified."

The problem is, nobody is forced with going out to get a job, find a home, etc., as a black, a Jew, a Hispanic, etc., unless you actually are one or more of those groups.

Sex is something everyone does, and marriage is a sacred day to everyone as well.

(I'm not arguing the position, just pointing out what I hear most often from those who oppose marriage equality. They consider our marrying some sort of defilement of their own.)

It's an emotional response, but it still has to be dealt with, and I'm not sure there's an answer.
 
That normative, respected church has been driving institutionalized persecution of gay people for 2000 years (and Judaism for another 1500 years before that). Meanwhile their clergy has comprised, by far, the largest organized group of gay people in the world, also for the last 2000 years.

The issue of gay rights does not threaten the church, but it does threaten to force the church's hierarchy to finally deal honestly with their astonishing hypocrisy. Keven's charge of "cherry picking the Bible" is exactly correct: Jesus said nothing about homosexuality, but he did explicitly say that a man who divorces and remarries commits adultery. Yet "defense of marriage" "christians" haven't had a damned word to say about heterosexual divorce, and they certainly haven't mounted any campaigns for civil laws to ban it.
 
"That normative, respected church has been driving institutionalized persecution of gay people for 2000 years (and Judaism for another 1500 years before that). Meanwhile their clergy has comprised, by far, the largest organized group of gay people in the world, also for the last 2000 years."

Do you know any Catholics that were alive 2000 years ago?

I don't. I'm not sure why it's necessary to take a potshot at one specific religion, particularly since it relates not one iota to a discussion of an "assault on California's Constitution".

Not to mention the fact that you can still be stabbed to death in Jerusalem, 2000 years later. Or most evangelical churches may choose to "cure" you.

I feel not one shred of guilt for events that transpired long before I was born.

Let's get more pragmatic for a moment.

If the religious-hating wing of the gay community chooses to continue on its regrettable path, two things will happen: they will lose the solidarity of those gays of faith who see a new, frightening persecution for what it is, fascism in a progressive wrapper.....and, secondly, they'll lose religious straights who really are in favor of normalizing marriage equality, simply because they see it as a sensible extension of secular law, if this comes down to a referendum question on a state ballot.

If the segment of the gay community that continues to express hatred and intolerance of the religious majority in this country, out of malice and unresolved psychological, spiritual, childhood issues that they have not resolved well into middle age, continues to be allowed to "own" the gay side of the battle, than we will lose, and we will DESERVE to lose, because we are turning around and projecting the same hatreds and intolerances we claim to decry.

We continue to allow the freaks of our own world to define us.
That's a losing proposition, if I ever heard one.
 
If you look at who is behind the organized "defense of marriage" campaign, it's almost exclusively "christian" churches, with the RCC among its primary sponsors. So your first claim is absolute nonsense.

As for hatred, for 3500 years we've been stoned to death, boiled alive in oil, mobbed, lynched, court martialed, and even in the last few years been hung, castrated, tied to fences and then beaten to death.

Tell us all about hatred and unresolved psychological issues.

http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2005/11/21/iran12072.htm
 
Ah! You finally get around to mentioning Islam!

"If you look at who is behind the organized "defense of marriage" campaign, it's almost exclusively "christian" churches, with the RCC among its primary sponsors. So your first claim is absolute nonsense."

So, uh, a church, synagogue, or mosque, refusing to marry a gay couple is equivalent to:

".....for 3500 years we've been stoned to death, boiled alive in oil, mobbed, lynched, court martialed, and even in the last few years been hung, castrated, tied to fences and then beaten to death."

Uh-huh. Well, okay, I barely know you, but I am here to tell you and anyone else here that, if you indeed believe this, you have taken complete leave of your senses, have a major chip on your shoulder about your whole identity and your relationship to the rest of the world, and we will indeed NEVER see marriage equality, or any other further kind of equality, because this is not even about realizing that goal anymore, for you.

This is about revenge. This is about baseless hatred, and thinking you can grab from other people, what has been denied you so long, to PUNISH them for the sins of the past, that they had absolutely no culpability in.

I only hope that the most militant, strident, radical, hateful, unhinged wing of our community, that continues to lash out when they should examine their own actions and attitudes, does not gain further traction within this country. Any gains that are made, will be nullified by the motivations and ends we justify to achieve them.

I want to see a lot of things happen too, but I'm not willing to become what I've always hated in order to get there.
 
JeffG has brought the voice of Santa Cruz County to the board!
How's the initiation going for you so far, neighbor?
 
So far so good Ralph. With Scott's last post we're now beyond troll territory and well into situation comedy.

Really, claiming out of one side of your mouth that 3500+ years of Bible-based gay bashing somehow isn't relevant to today's political activism by christian churches, and then in the very next sentence accusing the *gay community* of "baseless hatred", well I'll let that speak for itself.

My (hopefully) parting shot is that the questions I asked at the start of this thread were not rhetorical. I honestly don't know if all these right-wing initiatives are a very good or very bad sign, or no sign at all. And I stand by the (IMO) common-sense opinion that efforts need to be organized to defeat these initiatives, not just on the marriage issue.
 
"Really, claiming out of one side of your mouth that 3500+ years of Bible-based gay bashing somehow isn't relevant to today's political activism by christian churches, and then in the very next sentence accusing the *gay community* of "baseless hatred", well I'll let that speak for itself."

Do. Because I don't "speak out of one side of my mouth"...my words are right in your face, for you to blithely ignore, in typical elitist, pseudo-revolutionary fashion, or to ponder thoughtfully, as sensible alternatives to radical voices begin to quietly assert themselves in the foreground.

No one was accusing the gay community itself of baseless hatred. I was accusing you, as a representative of the most strident wing within the community, and a subset of religion-hating, psychologically damaged zealots that are behaving as simple idiots for a larger cell of evangelical atheist "progressives", for allowing a worthy issue to AGAIN be used as a wedge issue against the gay community politically, for the community itself is as split down the middle nationally as the left is.

Prevalent attitudes and mores in the San Francisco gay community do NOT call the shots and dictate the attitudes of American gays nationwide, any more than New York or Los Angeles do.

Your particular views do not represent any sort of consensus among gays in America, particularly in terms of this issue's
relative importance to us in an election year, and the tactics willing to be employed in our name.

THIS is the point I am trying to make. You hold no monopoly on "common sense", anymore than any other member here.

When it comes to a point where moderate voices are automatically trumped in favor of professional radicalism for little to no discernible potential gain to the community as a whole, one must really reevaluate for oneself who exactly the "trolls" really are.
 
"Evangelical atheist progressives"? Congratulations, you've officially become a caricature of yourself.

Even if your delusion was grounded in some kind of reality, which it isn't, I'll gladly take "evangelical atheist progressives" over "raging fake christian theocrats" any day, as should any American with a shred of patriotism -- gay or straight. Because that first group is willing to stay the hell out of our personal relationships, is not pushing to amend our constitutions specifically to ram their Medieval social agenda down our throats, and is not trying to destroy the primary reason why our country was founded 230 years ago. Capisci?

Listen to this, and then provide a link to a single "evangelical atheist progressive" equivalent. Just one. From any source. Until you can, kindly refrain from spewing regurgitated Savage Nation on this forum. It's nauseating enough on the way down.

 
"Capisci?"

Never. Because it's your form of mental midget that will not be satisfied until every shred of actual progress I've worked for, over three decades, is totally reversed by an angry, reactionary public exhausted with hissy fits and manufactured outrages over NOTHING.

I wish you would have been so verbal when it actually mattered.

Start with the drunken Hitchens, reminisce over the thankfully stilled Hicks, take the long run with the sleazoid Maher, and wrap it all up with the whiny, unstable Garofalo, and you'll have as much of a tour as I have patience to point out.

"Savage Nation, LOL?"

Uh, if you're as blind about ALL other people as you are about me, maybe you need to have your voltage increased.

You don't dictate to me my opinions or my right to voice them.

And what other people think, believe, or choose to worship is NONE of your fucking business. This forum is an inappropriate place for you to sow seeds of discord between members and spread your offal upon.

Religious hatred, especially toward MY faith group, I will not tolerate.
 
Communications breakdown.

So little bandwidth. So many miscommunications and misunderstandings.

Trust me sometimes we all hear what we WANT to hear......

6-12-2008-06-27-11--Toggleswitch2.jpg
 

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