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First rant of the new account.
13 years ago
General
this was something I typed up for a friend that asked why I think the way I do. I got a little carried away..
this was rough, and off the cuff, So there may be some factual inaccuracies that I typically will catch in a typical review. Most of the times I check facts before I post, but I felt this was informal enough to let it slide.
So, here we go, post one on the new account.
In November of 2004, I had a crappy job, I was just out of Highschool, and I had the first semester of Community College education crammed into my head.
I knew that the 2000 election was a sham. I knew we where in a war on two fronts. I knew the George W Bush was a horrible president, and I knew that John Kerry was our only chance to see the year 2008 even arrive.
Well, I thought I knew.
Somehow we did make it to 2008. We had just started bailing out Wall Street Under the last executive actions of Bush, and it finally looked as if the worst had passed us. I knew that Obama, the man I voted for, had a pledge to transparency, and had an integrity above Bush that would be immediately evident.
Long story short. Every thing that I disliked in Bush, I saw in my own candidate. Granted, Obama was left with a "Dine and Dash" with the policies of the evangelical right wing. But it was not his economical policies that I gauged his character on. Good men can make bad choices. No, it was his morality I had questions about.
By the end of his first term Obama had escalated the wars in the middle east, something he claimed he wanted to scale back. He had re-signed into law the NDAA,, something he told us would be vetoed on the spot. He kept open Guantanamo. He gave corporate bail outs to bank buddies, with no terms in where they had to pay back (granted he squawked, and bitched about it, but he was the one that allowed it). Alan Holder, the attorney general was off the hook, when the ATF was caught red handed selling guns to drug cartels.
All the while, Obama was getting campaign contributions by the exact same organizations as Bush.
Before Obama was elected, I was already distrusting of the government. I assumed the Bush administration was simply the corrupt Republican party. I dug up as much dirt as I could, and Called republicans "morons", and far worse things. In retrospect I was falling into what I now see as a emotional manipulation. I fell for it, 100%, hook, line, and sinker.
As soon as I took the exact, (and I do mean exact) criticism I had towards Bush, and simply applied it to Obama. War, bailout, NDAA, you name it.. I started to see a pattern that flipped my world upside down.
I started digging up the same type of information that I did for Bush, when I was going out of my way to paint him as the bad guy.
I started looking at history, and more history. And started to see the education I had was vastly inadequate. Missing huge holes. Misunderstanding intent, and context. I had been taught that the Germans and the Japanese where working together in WWII. and that on August 9th the war ended because of a bomb. I thought that the Civil war was fought over slavery. Lincoln would hardly be seen today as an advocate for "states rights", a staple belief of the Republican party. I didn't even know in 1913 Woodrow Wilson Signed the Federal reserve act.
I kept studying more, and more , and more.
After a while it clicked.
I cannot trust a single thing anybody says to me. I have to do the math, research and find the evidence 100% myself.
It's like the old saying
"Only believe half of what you see, and nothing you hear"
After that revelation, I have seen that both candidates in a bipartisan system are only capable of a moderate standpoint. And simply grandstand to Social issues, that historically are not even to be addressed in the initial formation of a constitutional republic. The best example being the last election. Gay rights are the hot button issue. Last time I checked the Government should not be limiting religion. Yet, we move to regulate religion. As marriage is a religious ceremony that the government has no say in. [Civil contract outside of religion is also what I would consider protected under the 1st amendment rights] It's freedom of religion [or civil contract]. Yet, we are mislead to believe that one morality should be imposed over all other religions through federal regulation. We never question the constitutional argument of regulation, over the right of religious freedom;and civil union as protected by the 1st amendment]. We simply are told that these two men will decide that, thus distracting you from how symmetrical their policies are across the board, all while emotionally manipulating you for something that is not even legal in the hands of government control
So, my political views are established from being.. um.. dead wrong in the past. I simply had to learn from my mistakes. I do not feel that a system of two sides that has been exclusively in power for 100 years, somehow will turn it all around in the next 4. It's like the moronic idea of a Cola war. Pepsi , and Coke are just brown sugar water. And you will get fat if you drink ether one too much. If you want to solve your sugar addiction, you don't just choose the Pepsi over the Coke.. You flush out your system with water.
I hope this didn't turn into a ringing endorsement for my line of thinking. I really feel the simplest way to put it is, don't take my word for it. Just look it up. If anybody tells you anything, look it up. The news media today does not really help ether. They are bought and paid for by the same people who put the current people in office. Why would we trust the Fox (news network) to guard the hen house? If they sight a document, I look up the document. The best news I have found are Drudge report, the BBC, and http://www.aljazeera.com/. Sad, when the only domestic news resource I will even remotely trust is considered a radical right wing source. the only reason I like them, is because they at least link to the documents they report on. It took me over an hour to find the leaked white page docs noted on every other domestic news source regarding the leaked department of justice papers. Not a single one presented evidence. Not a single one..
I hope that helps to at least see where I get my outlook from. I try my best to forget the left/right paradigm in the established news media. It's not football teams. If it was, we would all be loosers. As we would be witnessing a 100 year tie game.
this was rough, and off the cuff, So there may be some factual inaccuracies that I typically will catch in a typical review. Most of the times I check facts before I post, but I felt this was informal enough to let it slide.
So, here we go, post one on the new account.
In November of 2004, I had a crappy job, I was just out of Highschool, and I had the first semester of Community College education crammed into my head.
I knew that the 2000 election was a sham. I knew we where in a war on two fronts. I knew the George W Bush was a horrible president, and I knew that John Kerry was our only chance to see the year 2008 even arrive.
Well, I thought I knew.
Somehow we did make it to 2008. We had just started bailing out Wall Street Under the last executive actions of Bush, and it finally looked as if the worst had passed us. I knew that Obama, the man I voted for, had a pledge to transparency, and had an integrity above Bush that would be immediately evident.
Long story short. Every thing that I disliked in Bush, I saw in my own candidate. Granted, Obama was left with a "Dine and Dash" with the policies of the evangelical right wing. But it was not his economical policies that I gauged his character on. Good men can make bad choices. No, it was his morality I had questions about.
By the end of his first term Obama had escalated the wars in the middle east, something he claimed he wanted to scale back. He had re-signed into law the NDAA,, something he told us would be vetoed on the spot. He kept open Guantanamo. He gave corporate bail outs to bank buddies, with no terms in where they had to pay back (granted he squawked, and bitched about it, but he was the one that allowed it). Alan Holder, the attorney general was off the hook, when the ATF was caught red handed selling guns to drug cartels.
All the while, Obama was getting campaign contributions by the exact same organizations as Bush.
Before Obama was elected, I was already distrusting of the government. I assumed the Bush administration was simply the corrupt Republican party. I dug up as much dirt as I could, and Called republicans "morons", and far worse things. In retrospect I was falling into what I now see as a emotional manipulation. I fell for it, 100%, hook, line, and sinker.
As soon as I took the exact, (and I do mean exact) criticism I had towards Bush, and simply applied it to Obama. War, bailout, NDAA, you name it.. I started to see a pattern that flipped my world upside down.
I started digging up the same type of information that I did for Bush, when I was going out of my way to paint him as the bad guy.
I started looking at history, and more history. And started to see the education I had was vastly inadequate. Missing huge holes. Misunderstanding intent, and context. I had been taught that the Germans and the Japanese where working together in WWII. and that on August 9th the war ended because of a bomb. I thought that the Civil war was fought over slavery. Lincoln would hardly be seen today as an advocate for "states rights", a staple belief of the Republican party. I didn't even know in 1913 Woodrow Wilson Signed the Federal reserve act.
I kept studying more, and more , and more.
After a while it clicked.
I cannot trust a single thing anybody says to me. I have to do the math, research and find the evidence 100% myself.
It's like the old saying
"Only believe half of what you see, and nothing you hear"
After that revelation, I have seen that both candidates in a bipartisan system are only capable of a moderate standpoint. And simply grandstand to Social issues, that historically are not even to be addressed in the initial formation of a constitutional republic. The best example being the last election. Gay rights are the hot button issue. Last time I checked the Government should not be limiting religion. Yet, we move to regulate religion. As marriage is a religious ceremony that the government has no say in. [Civil contract outside of religion is also what I would consider protected under the 1st amendment rights] It's freedom of religion [or civil contract]. Yet, we are mislead to believe that one morality should be imposed over all other religions through federal regulation. We never question the constitutional argument of regulation, over the right of religious freedom;and civil union as protected by the 1st amendment]. We simply are told that these two men will decide that, thus distracting you from how symmetrical their policies are across the board, all while emotionally manipulating you for something that is not even legal in the hands of government control
So, my political views are established from being.. um.. dead wrong in the past. I simply had to learn from my mistakes. I do not feel that a system of two sides that has been exclusively in power for 100 years, somehow will turn it all around in the next 4. It's like the moronic idea of a Cola war. Pepsi , and Coke are just brown sugar water. And you will get fat if you drink ether one too much. If you want to solve your sugar addiction, you don't just choose the Pepsi over the Coke.. You flush out your system with water.
I hope this didn't turn into a ringing endorsement for my line of thinking. I really feel the simplest way to put it is, don't take my word for it. Just look it up. If anybody tells you anything, look it up. The news media today does not really help ether. They are bought and paid for by the same people who put the current people in office. Why would we trust the Fox (news network) to guard the hen house? If they sight a document, I look up the document. The best news I have found are Drudge report, the BBC, and http://www.aljazeera.com/. Sad, when the only domestic news resource I will even remotely trust is considered a radical right wing source. the only reason I like them, is because they at least link to the documents they report on. It took me over an hour to find the leaked white page docs noted on every other domestic news source regarding the leaked department of justice papers. Not a single one presented evidence. Not a single one..
I hope that helps to at least see where I get my outlook from. I try my best to forget the left/right paradigm in the established news media. It's not football teams. If it was, we would all be loosers. As we would be witnessing a 100 year tie game.
Otherwise, pretty much agree with you.
Another interesting development in the world of media is outlets like Livesteram and Ustream being used as raw media feeds by protesters on the ground; especially in Egypt. It gave a whole new look on the protests.
My gosh, I thought I was the very few with the same idea on religion.
I just said there may be factual inaccuracies. No need to get pedantic. It's not as if I am not aware of that. The overarching point is that it was used as a distraction for something that is not any business of the governments, There is no reason any Abrahamic faith be used as an example, or a faith at all for that matter. I didn't say anything about what religion. I just used the word religion obviously too readily for the sake of argument. I agree with you.
On a side note, who the hell is a Levite anymore? From my understanding it was a strict sect of orthodox Jews who had to follow the code, not necessarily everybody . That, and the translation essentially is so absurd that shaving, owning a bunny, cotton/poly blends, are seen an "abomination" which means "sin" in the modern contextual equivalent.
Actually, lots of people do. There are orthodox Jewish communities as well as many super conservative Christians who follow those codes in the country. Shit, in NJ I live near one of the biggest ones (outside of Israel)! It's actually pretty interesting since their communities are pretty much self contained.
"Well, if anything the way I would have it, it would be equal definition, and protection under the law. So, you could whoever you want. What gets tricky is when you have the same civil contract to multiple people, some people use animals as an example [slippery slope]. but I am afraid that an animal other than a human is simply not subject to the same laws, no matter how you spin it. so, it starts to get tricky when you honor every civil contract in a civil union. I am not entirely sold on the idea of civil benefits from the government anyway. the idea of protecting a union is solid. I am skeptical of governmental involvement outside of that protection."
It's tricky, but equal protection seems to be the way to go.
I, for the record, go around in logical feedback loops on this issue.
Of course. We kinda have to think of the here and now and see how we all define marriage. Shit, I know if I was to marry the person I'm with now, we're not even sexual creatures nor are we in the traditional sense "in love", so we'd be doing it for the lawful protection it'd give us should we ever own a house together/share bank account/adopt kids, etc. So I reckon equal protection, for both straight, gay, transgndered, etc, marriages is what we should aim for, which is, I believe in anyway, in states that allow gay marriage, it is done by.
Lol, it's all good. I go on loops on a lot of issue, pft.
I think if anything your situation is a picture perfect scenario of the traditional marriage. "love" is something that is great, but the benefit of marriage seems to stem from other items gained by the union. I could be wrong. It's your situation, and I really don't want to put words in your mouth.
Well, my situation is more like why I think the whole religious debate crap is garbage, since it's like, who are we kidding, most of us would stay unmarried but in a partnership if we got the same protections as a couple. At least, that's how I see it. Shit, common law marriage sounds cool, too. Like a ~friend marriage~ if I can coin a term, of people living together but getting protection for it, even if they are same sex or otherwise.
If we had insurance from birth as most other countries do, we wouldn't have to worry about insurance in marriage, anyway, but that's another issue.
And eh, Canada is a free nation and the free health care I get even on a visa is pretty rockin, I gotta say. Better than paying $300 out of pocket in my home state just for a stupid specialist when I get it free here and can opt out of any service I want should I not like it.
I can admit we have problems. My question is more about our right to free healthcare. I just don't see it as a right. I see it as a system that needs attention. i have also liked the idea of regional health systems. So, we are not dealing with a sweeping national system that allows for the very points I have an issue with. County health care would allow for a much better oversight of a local populations needs. So, your hometown taxes would be put to use to lower your 300 dollar specialist bill. As opposed to it going in a national pot, and controlled by someone thousands of miles away.
I see it as a right to help our fellow neighbour. The fact that people say it's someone's fault when they get cancer and die, because they couldn't afford treatment is abhorrent. Regional sounds fine, but I still believe in free healthcare, since that should be a basic human right - the right to be healthy. I shouldn't have to go bankrupt because I get sick. That's ridiculous.
Well, let's clarify. You like state subsidized health care. It is hardly free.
A system of liberty can suck for this very reason. I do not think that establishing a state where healthcare is a right is the answer. As a state run triage system can also allow for people to rot out on the street. The establishment of healthcare as it as a right dose not exactly prevent that simply by existing.
Canada dose have it going on. But, they represent a system of 1/10th the population (roughly) of what we have here. I think if we took a system like that, and allowed for local policy makers to use that as a framework for their local communities, that is a workable solution. as it would need tweaking at a regional level to see similar results. A national established right could seriously go in the opposite direction.
Oh, I know it's not free. But I like to actually get something palpable back for my taxes, besides, you know, police services, ambulance services (which I still have to pay for, wtf), and infranstructure which is falling apart, anyway. Actually, I just think America sucks at using the taxes it gets, because for some god awful reason we put it all towards military.
And no one is saying directly copy Canada, but it's not a bad idea to use such an example and morph it to fit America. We are very very similar in many many ways, after all.
I think Canada is a perfect example. It just has to be to scale. One of the very first things you learn in engineering, is that if something works, you cannot simply scale up the design. Some issues, not inherent in small scale, can present themselves as you grow in scale. Exponentially. Making a sky scrapers out of legos tends to b a tricky proposition. though I should be careful saying that, with a legoland 30 minute from my house. That analogy could bite me in the ass. lol.
A "right" should not cost you to exist. As freedom of speech dose not cost you, nor the government to exist. Actually, the inherent rights laid out in the bill of rights one by one do not require a penny to be spent one way or another to be upheld. I am not talking about infrastructural amenities here. I am talking of principal. The idea of such a system giving you a right to be taken care of, dose not sound like a right. It sounds like a secondary policy that can be put in place, should your community choose to. I like the idea, please don't get me wrong. I just do not see it as something that would ever be seen as a right in a free society. As it establishes a right, and natural rights do not have to be paid for, therefor you have a inherent issue with the ability to collect to pay for the system, to carry out the right. I think it's the word "right" I have issue with. A social system, especially at small levels seems appropriate. I just want to clarify that a right denotes something that a paid for health care system cannot exist in by my definition. But, we do seem to agree with the ends, semantics aside.
Naw, man, it makes sense. I don't know much about government structure, so it's not my place to say how, only that logically, to me, it can be done with whatever compromises/changes/alternations that need to be done for a country so damn big as America (I'm always overwhelmed when I realize just how big America is. It hits me once in a while, lmao).
Well, in our traditions, being healthy didn't cost anyone anything either. Because the people who were doctors and knowledge holders were taken care of by the community in exchange for their services/knowledge/etc. Western implemation has thrown greed and monetary issues into the mix and it makes it ugly and only hurts everyone in the end. I hope we can decolonize a bit and share this sort of way life can be lived so that good health CAN become a right, instead of a privilege only the wealthy can afford. I can dream.
My neighbors share herbs with me all the time. I grow garlic for my blood pressure. So, if we are going with that sense, then where is the argument?
The city of Orlando has miles and miles of unincorporated land just hanging out. It's not as if we are using it to do anything more than make strip malls.
Might as well be made a nature perserve, if nothing else. Open land between suburbian is actualy good for insects and smaller animals.
so, it starts to get tricky when you honor every civil contract in a civil union.
I am not entirely sold on the idea of civil benefits from the government anyway. the idea of protecting a union is solid. I am skeptical of governmental involvement outside of that protection.
I always found the two party system was very strange, just because you advocate X about gun control, you must also advocate Y about gay rights and Z about abortion? Do international relations only have two options? Are there only two ways to protect the environment? (rather than an infinite amount of possible strategies, some of which will probably fail horribly, others which will probably achieve different goals)
I felt the same way, didn't like bush, thought Kerry was weak but still a better option, was extremely skeptical of Obama (he IS from chicago after all... I'm from chicago I know how politics go there) but hoped he actually meant what he said because he said all the right things... but it's just more of the same.
Libertarian party didn't even get 2% of the vote this year, but they got mine. I wish folks would stop going with the "candidate they least dislike", the vote CAN make a difference - any 3rd party that gets more than 5% of the vote gets access to all kinds of resources and can step it up from there.
Beyond the 3 basics of Reading, Writing and Arithmetic (and maybe some science), public schools have an agenda to only teach and promote viewpoints that fit a more liberal, socialistic society.
Conservatism would receive less flack if they didn't keep focusing on religion. Having conservative views does not mean religious, just as having liberal views does not mean drug-addict. The stereo-typing of the extremes of both of these groups is why everyone is so polarized against one another.
It's a shame that more and more people leave school without even knowing the Constitution, or having ever heard of the Federalist Papers; or can even recognize that the U.S. is a Constitutional Republic, let alone know what that means. We allow people to vote, who really have no education on the rules and laws of this nation, but merely see who is dangling the biggest carrot before them.
So yeah, there is a lot that can be ranted about, and I look forward to hearing your views on whatever happens to hit your fancy on any given day. :)
Given that so many people have replied to this journal in regard to the Gay Marriage issue, I guess I'll chime in a little as well. ;)
I support gay marriage, but I also understand why it is so difficult for governments (local, state and federal) to support it, and it has nothing to do with religion. I had posted on this to someone else's journal several months ago, and had links to the numbers, but I really don't have the time right now to look them all up again.
But basically, you have to look at things on a historical basis, where 2 issues stand out the most:
1) For a populace to survive and prosper, the birth rate must match or surpass the death rate. To encourage this steady-state population, incentives are provided for people to get married and have children. Thus, governments frown upon giving these same benefits and incentives to people who are not contributing to the long-term benefits of a populace.
2) Allowing gay couples to adopt is frowned upon, because gay couples end in divorce at a higher rate than non-gay couples, and despite what the media will try to tell you, there are many studies that show children raised by a single parent, do not do as well as those raised by two parents. Children from broken families are statistically more likely to drop out of school and commit crimes.
Now, there are a lot of factors taking place now that counter these items, such as immigration keeping population numbers steady, and the percentage of gay marriages surviving longer without divorce. However, the number of years governments have to look at these numbers, is simply not enough yet for many of them to risk the added cost that goes into tax and medical benefits for married, gay couples.
Things are progressing, but for a government that must be responsible with its budget, the changes will be slow. No matter what moral beliefs the people have, there is still a responsibility upon the government to ensure its own survival and well-being; and stealing from the hard-working rich in order to do so, is not the solution. Gays must prove that their receiving of these benefits will in some way be productive to the overall society, and not merely their own personal desires.
And before people say anything, 'gay marriage' is about receiving the same benefits as non-gay marriages. If this was not the case, they would be fighting for civil unions and be happy with that; but on multiple occasions, when offered the opportunity of civil unions instead, such offers were rejected, with nothing less than 'marriage' being acceptable.
So, while there will be religious and ethical arguments as to the sanctity of marriage, what is made into law is based on what is best for a population first and foremost, on both financial and safety issues. If a government believes that it cannot afford to do it, or that it poses a greater risk of criminals and delinquents, it will resist such changes for as long as possible, or until new evidence to the contrary arises.
...public schools have an agenda to only teach and promote viewpoints that fit a more liberal, socialistic society.
This is absolutely not true all over the board. It varies a lot depending on where you are and who your teachers are. I have attended three different public schools, and not a single one taught me anything approaching liberal, much less "socialistic." My teacher in 7th grade refused to cover evolution. My teachers who taught history gave a tiny mention to the slaughter of native americans by europeans, but covered the holocaust extensively. We learned very right-leaning reasons for everything from the civil war to vietnam to the cuban missile crisis. Everything was framed from a US-focused ethnocentric point of view. I still remember textbooks from multiple classes teaching things such as natural gas being a clean source of oil and petroleum not being harmful to the environment at all. My science teacher taught us that climate change wasn't real ... in *high school.*
These things aren't isolated incidents, either. Here are some examples of how conservative views make it into officially accepted and used text books for public education on a regular basis: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/arc.....gination=false
http://billmoyers.com/content/messi.....xas-textbooks/
As you can see, your blanket statement is not only wrong, but dangerously so. We need to be fighting this trend, and it's not the left that's doing this. Individual teachers may have a bias toward liberal views, but the system is certainly not set up to reinforce them.
1) For a populace to survive and prosper, the birth rate must match or surpass the death rate. To encourage this steady-state population, incentives are provided for people to get married and have children. Thus, governments frown upon giving these same benefits and incentives to people who are not contributing to the long-term benefits of a populace.
This *might* hold water if the reproduction rate of the US was a) affected by marriage rates (which I sincerely doubt, given our lack of proper sex education and high teen pregnancy rates) and b) not high enough that we are consistently growing. We are *overpopulated,* not only here in the US but over the globe. The amount of human beings on this planet is ludicrous and we need to be encouraging less reproduction, not more.
2) Allowing gay couples to adopt is frowned upon, because gay couples end in divorce at a higher rate than non-gay couples, and despite what the media will try to tell you, there are many studies that show children raised by a single parent, do not do as well as those raised by two parents. Children from broken families are statistically more likely to drop out of school and commit crimes.
Rates for gay marriage *in the US* might be higher than straight marriages, at the moment. But rates for gay marriage elsewhere are actually lower: http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2012.....-than-gay-men/
Why? Because we're just now getting around to legalizing it in some areas, so people are rushing out to get married. It's not rocket science. That was an obvious effect of keeping it illegal for so long. Once it's normal and accepted country-wide, those rates will probably even out and become steady. I sincerely doubt homosexual couples are just inherently more likely to divorce than heterosexuals. That's silly.
You also act as if living in a home with a single parent is worse than being bounced from foster home to foster home, living on the streets, or in a poorly funded orphanage. My single mother raised 2 foster children in addition to myself and my two brothers, and never once has either of them said "man, I wish you'd have left me in that foster program so I could go home with a nice, 2-parent family." The reality is not enough couples adopt or foster homeless children to account for them all. I'm sure most would much rather have *any* kind of home than none.
No matter what moral beliefs the people have, there is still a responsibility upon the government to ensure its own survival and well-being; and stealing from the hard-working rich in order to do so, is not the solution.
There are so many problems with this statement.
First off, "the hard-working rich" implies that those without aren't hard working. Do you know how difficult it is to get ahead when you are born into poverty in this country? It's nearly impossible. In fact, the tax rates on the top "earners" in the US have been dropping pretty steadily since the 30's: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/.....t-with-Charts#
In addition to that fact, the wealth disparity in the United States continues to grow: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/.....alth-disparity
... and as far as social mobility goes, it's mostly a downward trend more than an upward one, and the little upward mobility that there is tends to be not only at a far lower rate than other first-world countries, but it's dropping steadily: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howar.....b_1676931.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17036544
Gays must prove that their receiving of these benefits will in some way be productive to the overall society, and not merely their own personal desires.
No. No no no. When it comes to personal freedoms, individual rights take precedence over society. You cannot have a separate class of people just because society doesn't like their lifestyle. Especially given it's something as simple as whether or not they can be legal spouses. That has nothing to do with the government budget, and everything to do with personal opinions, biases, and homophobia. How could two men or two women getting married possibly negatively affect the federal government and its functioning, much less its budget?
And before people say anything, 'gay marriage' is about receiving the same benefits as non-gay marriages. If this was not the case, they would be fighting for civil unions and be happy with that; but on multiple occasions, when offered the opportunity of civil unions instead, such offers were rejected, with nothing less than 'marriage' being acceptable.
I'm assuming you meant to say it's *not* about receiving the same benefits.
I'm not even going to get into why most "civil unions" don't match up, in terms of equality, but my main question here is this: why should they have to accept anything less than what heterosexual couples have? Please justify this.
If you're looking to cut spending, look at the military. Look at corporate subsidies. Look at tax breaks for the wealthy. Look at how many multi-billion dollar profit companies paid little to no taxes in the past few years. Acting like poor people and homosexuals are in any way connected to the government's ludicrous spending is laughable. It's all about the money, and to learn who is benefiting, you have to look at where that money leads. It doesn't go to gays and poor people. If it did, maybe gay marriage would already be legal and we wouldn't have such a large segment of the US population living in poverty.
meant "energy" not oil. should have proofread more.
I also despise the notion that gay couples do not procreate, and therefore do not contribute to societal well-being. This implies that the only thing anyone can contribute to society is more people and nothing else that they do in life carries any merit at all in the eyes of the rest of society. This line of thinking would invalidate any achievement (scientific, literary, philosophical, etc.) that anyone has ever made in any way at any time. It's childishly imprudent.
As for the 'hard working rich', it should be noted that about 2/3 of people who are generally considered 'rich', or at least decently successful did not make this achievement solely on the merits of their own initiatives. They had help, and lots of it. About 1/3 of the 'rich' had nearly all of their wealth infrastructure given to them in the form of handouts from other people. "Hard Work" isn't a myth, but it's often misapplied to everyone who is wealthy. There are a significant number of people who are wealthy, but also happen to be radically lazy and did nothing to earn what they have. On the other hand, there are people who bust their asses every day at work and have little to show for it at the end of the year.
I don't know anyone who when they were in the womb made the proclamation that they wanted so badly to be born to a single crack addicted mother in a poor neighborhood. Would you?
Althought, considering many religious institutions *want* to acknowledge gay marriage as legitimate, *not* allowing them to do so is also regulating religion.
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/...../#cid:31733581