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Richard Ortiz
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Richard commented on the article |“I would contest with that. Bush, McCain, Steele, all believe in the absolute oppression of LGBT, they believe women are less than men, so on and so forth, they are an absolute example of the religious right.” C’mon!! This claptrap is utter nonsense! Give me a break! How do you expect to be taken seriously when you spout such ignorance?
“Tell me how is bushes … policy not christian when he quoted bible passages…” Because that’s what politicians do. As an ancient Greek put it, “The philosophers equally disbelieve all religions, the common people equally believe all religions, and the politicians find all religions equally useful.” Quoting Bible passages does not a Christian make. Even that sexual predator and anti-Christian bigot President Clinton quoted Bible passages when he thought it would help his cause de jour. Likewise Bush, in other statements, made it very clear that he is not a Christian.
“…party to impose their narrow minded religious beliefs on all.Those who feel morally superior to everyone else and wish to use our government to impose that superiority onto others.” When the party is not listed, this sounds like Nancy Pelosi and her Democrats.
“The only one you named that shows quasi support for social progression is Schwarzenegger.” Do you know how Schwarzenegger got into politics? The energy companies, most notably Enron, bribed the previous governor, Democrat Gray Davis (campaign donations), then artificially set up a series of energy shortages to help Gray Davis sign energy contracts very favorable to the energy companies, picking the pockets of California consumers. Then Gray Davis was recalled in a special election. The front runner to replace him was a Republican, reputed to be the best expert on California law in the legislature, who promised to tear up these contracts because they were illegal. The energy companies were in a panic. So they called in their big shots, Pete Wilson, Warren Buffet, and a few others, to find a person with no principles who was willing to sell out to the energy companies, who had a big name and was electable. They found their candidate in Schwarzenegger. He did not tear up those contracts. Yes, he’d make a perfect Democrat.
“I am not a christian, I am an atheist,” figured as much. What I find so interesting about atheism is that it is so logically incoherent. Fascinating.
“I despise religion…” yet you are a firm disciple of one—atheism.
You wrote that the Republicans “… became a party that supported anti miscegenation laws…” silly, that was the Democrats, read your history, “…became more and more racist,…” such as passing the 1964 civil rights laws over the opposition of the Democrats, when the KKK was still an active part of their party.
So much of the rest of your two messages is so out of touch with reality that I found myself laughing out loud while reading it.
However your closing comments that Christians ought to get psychiatric treatment because they are a danger to society reminds me of the Soviet treatment of political dissidents, among whom Christians were a large percentage, in mental institutes using drugs that would often destroy their minds.
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Richard commented on the article |“Why privatize when you can expand?” That’s just the problem with government sanctioned marriages. That’s why whenever the people are given a chance to vote on it, instead of being dictated to by tyrants from above, they vote it down. It is not the marriage itself that is the problem, rather the web of laws surrounding it that have often been used by homosexual activists intolerantly to impose on others.
By privatizing all marriages to where the law recognizes only contractual arrangements, then nobody will be able to impose their view of marriage on others: neither the heterosexual onto homosexuals, nor the other way around.
As for kinship, that is there only if it is recognized. Privately made contractual kinship can be made for legal matters, even without the formality of marriage. It will carry much more weight if there are no other, competing forms of kinship recognized by the state, such as a state sanctioned marriage. That’s why when I say “all marriages” should be privatized, I mean all marriages.
Another reason I say all marriages should be privatized, is because that would sidestep all the messiness of the present politicization of the marriage question.
“So instead of getting the government out of a secular institution, how about we get religion out of a secular institution?” This is what privatization will do. For those Christians who follow the New Testament, marriage is first and foremost a religious activity. That scrap of paper (marriage license) from the state is unnecessary, and with the ease of divorce through “no fault divorce” being as it is, that scrap of paper is pretty worthless too. The moral and kinship values conferred by a Christian marriage far supersede anything that that state issued scrap of paper can.
In fact, the state shows how important it thinks that scrap of paper is by recognizing common law marriages.
Because marriage is first and foremost a religious institution to a Christian, he can never accept a “same-sex marriage”. That’s a contradiction in terms. But he can accept a contractual agreement that doesn’t carry the baggage that marriage confers. To force him to accept such a marriage is tyranny.
But you right now are suffering the tyranny of the other side. Our present marriage laws and baggage were designed to follow the Christian model. But you follow a different religion. In a religiously pluralistic society, why should you have to follow the marriage laws of a different religion? Just as the churches, when they came here were removed from the state teat, is it not about time that marriages also be removed from the state teat so that all religions—atheist, Buddhist, Islam, Christianity, etc.—can celebrate their own marriages as they see best?
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Richard commented on the article |
Dave:
You wrote, “…part of the problem is that marriage is used for many purposes.” That’s exactly the problem, and why it is such a political hot potato.
By privatizing, at least a contractual arrangement can be made apart from the politicization, so that the two would not be legal strangers. I don’t have all the answers, but even here it appears that privatization would make it easier to deal with the other messy details.
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Richard commented on the article |Ioan:
You wrote, “GLBTQ people are nothing like the KKK. We do not advocate the killing of straights or killing them. We do not traash their places of businesses or any of the other things that the KKK does.”
First of all, the KKK as an organization has been defunct for several years, was a branch of the Democrat Party, hence the last of its former grand wizards in Congress is Senator Byrd, D. W. Va.
I live in San Francisco. Once I watched a “Pride Parade” in which a banner sign stating “Kill all the Christians” was carried. My curiosity sated, I have not watched another one. A church was firebombed one night, if the wind had been blowing a different direction, one of the pastor’s family would have been killed. Another church was invaded and trashed during a Sunday worship service by a homosexual mob. One pastor came to his office one morning to find a bullet hole in his office window, with a rifle bullet buried in the back wall. Recently a group of Christians were escorted by the police to protect them from the violence of a homosexual mob. If a political campaign is considered important by the homosexual community, threats against campaign workers for the other side are common, though I don’t personally know if any were carried out, but vandalism has been. A few times I have observed Brown Shirt tactics used to try to silence those who disapprove of homosexuality. These are just a few actions that I personally know about from within town.
Today homosexual activists are major players in the political machine that rules this city, whatever they want they get, so that mob trashing of buildings and burning of cars is not as common as in the past.
I am not a news hound, but occasionally I hear of similar actions in other cities.
If a homosexual get killed by a bisexual in a robbery, it is trumpeted far and wide as a hate crime. If a straight accidentally kills a homosexual while fighting off a homosexual rape, he gets life in prison. So much for truth and justice.
This is reality.
Yes I have heard of violence by straights against homosexuals, once myself threatened by a group who mistook me for a gay, but every case I know of, the perpetrator was not a Christian.
So the GLBTQ is not a hate group? With lies being told online such as above to incite hate? With the above record, what am I to think?
You wrote, “If a business wants to do business with the general public it must serve any people who are not a part of a hate group.” So a restaurant that has a policy of “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service” must serve a naked man who walks through the door? So a homosexual could have been forced to work for the “Yes on 8” campaign in CA last year, or in the recent one in Maine? So why do you want to force someone who for religious reasons (part of the Constitutional First Amendment) disapproves of homosexuality, to violate his religion to participate in a specifically homosexual activity? Why should that not be considered an act of hate?
Tolerance is a two way street. As long as the homosexual community intolerantly keeps demanding approval without allowing that some groups have good reasons to disapprove of homosexuality without being either hateful or fearful, does it deserve tolerance in return?
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Richard commented on the article |
Ioan:
“I do not believe that those who make a living from marketing skills or merchandise to the public should be allowed to discriminate against that same public.” Really? So a black should be forced to rent his public space for a meeting of the local KKK? Or a Jew forced to do publicity for the neo-Nazis? So a Christian, whose Bible tells him that homosexuality is a sin, should be forced to violate his conscience to do service in a ceremony he finds morally repugnant?
That, sir, is fascism!
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Richard commented on the article |
Chris:
Obviously you are neither a social or Christian conservative, nor a Republican. Nor do you know or understand them.
Bill Maher may be close about the Democrat Party, a willing tool of large corporations where center-left politics are a cover for policies that restrict competition, hence the corporations get richer. This is socialism soft, the third way making corporations part of government.
But with leaders like Steele, McCain, Bush (père et fils), (girly man) Schwarzennegger in California, and on and on, all of them left of center. Maher looked at the words, but actions speak louder than words and the actions say left of center, the whole bunch. Their actions are almost identical to Democrats. And visa versa. Obama’s actions look like Bush on steroids.
Is it any wonder that social and Christian conservatives are abandoning the Republican Party in droves? They’re tired of being talked down to. They’ve had it up to here of promises that were never fulfilled. They say “Enough already” to being taken for granted by Republican Mandarins.
As George Wallace said back in the ’60s, “There ain’t a plugged nickel’s worth of difference between the two parties.” It seems that that’s as true today as it was then.
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Richard commented on the article |
William:
You have just illustrated the problem with state recognized marriages: it is not the marriage itself but the legal web surrounding the state sanctioned marriage that can become a real nightmare. In fact, it is being used by activists to wield the power of the state to oppress people, contrary to the Constitutional First Amendment protections. This oppression is pressed by activists, both homosexual where the laws have been changed, and heterosexual where the laws have remained the same. Therefore, if marriage is privatized, all other mention of marriage in that web of laws surrounding marriage should either be privatized at the same time, or made void.
Chris:
The religious bigots want the status quo, or more accurately the status quo from years ago. They do not want the state to forego the special status of one man, one woman marriage where none other arrangement is allowed by the government. This is where removal of all special status of marriage is something that they hate. They would no longer be able to use the force of law to oppress others.
However, what good is a marriage contract? Why get married? With no fault divorce as it stands, it is easier to get out of a marriage contract than a standard business contract.
Again why get married? Is it metaphorically to stick your finger in the eye of those you hate? Then you are using marriage laws as a weapon of hate, at which point the laws are better not to be changed. Is it to get the state to mandate certain actions out of other people? Then you are using marriage to oppress others. Then you have become as hateful as the people that you decry as bigots. It is that sort of bigotry on the part of some homosexual activists that is fueling much of the opposition to homosexual marriage today. Is it to show your love and commitment to another? Then you don’t need state approval. And if no marriage contracts have greater authority before the law than any other contract between businesses or private individuals, then all marriages automatically are equal before the law. So why do you want marriage?
What’s wrong with privatizing all aspects of marriage so that the government is completely out of the picture? Why should the government dictate to me what sort of marriage I should have? Should I be able to call on the government to force you to have certain attitudes and actions towards my marriage, and punish you if you don’t? Should the government have the authority to approve of some marriages, and not others? Isn’t privatization the best way to accomplish all the above goals?
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Richard commented on the article |
Ioan:
You wrote, “Maybe if we allowed marriage for ALL ADULTS who can enter into CONSENTUAL agreements, we would not be having this problem. The problem is the Christianists insisting that their "one man, one woman" model be the only legal sort of marriage.” This is exactly the reason I think the government should get out of the marriage business. As long as the government can define which marriages it will recognize and how other people are to react to those recognized marriages, it will remain a political football. But by privatizing marriage and rescinding its special privileges, then no one can dictate who may or may not get married. Marriage then will become like any other contract between private parties. Then the Christian can have his Christian marriage, the Buddhist his Buddhist marriage, and the homosexual his homosexual marriage, all without infringing on the rights of others.
Tolerance is a two way street. It is not helped by lies said to incite hate, which is the reason I first responded on this list. Tolerance does not mean agreement, rather it means respecting disagreement. Where is the tolerance, when all children attending California public schools are required to be indoctrinated in pro-homosexual propaganda, even those who would prefer not to receive it? Where was the tolerance shown to Elaine and Jon Huguenin who did not want to violate their conscience and be part of a lesbian ceremony? Where was the tolerance for a local Knights of Columbus council in British Columbia, sued in 2005 for following their religion and refusing to rent their hall for a same-sex “wedding” reception? Where was the tolerance shown to a Methodist facility in Ocean Grove, N.J., sued because they were asked to violate their conscience to host a homosexual commitment ceremony? There are many more such incidents of intolerance by homosexual activists. Then there are these “hate crime” laws, many of which are hate crimes in and of themselves, that criminalize beliefs. It’s these acts of intolerance that fuels much of the opposition to “gay rights”.
Tolerance is agreeing to disagree, in the process adopting a live and let live attitude. I call for a privatization of marriage because I believe the state has no right to dictate to me what sort of marriage I may have, knowing full well that such a privatization will automatically legitimize homosexual marriage. Isn’t that what you want? Tolerance?
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Richard commented on the article |
Ioan:
You ask, “If fundies are so damned interested in heterosexual morality, why don't you hear about it?” Two reasons: 1) you aren’t listening and 2) those who practice heterosexual immorality aren’t out in the streets demanding that people accept their sexual practices as normative and natural. Those who make the most noise will get the most attention.
“As I have said before, unless we are doing anything except making nice and letting the bigots walk all over us, we are being hateful.” This is a lie designed to arouse hate, hence hate speech. For the most part, people just don’t care who is homosexual and who is not. And with the exception of a few bigots, almost everyone opposes unjust violence against innocent people, it doesn’t matter who the victim is.
If you truly want marriage equality in such a way that it does not result in oppression of those who disagree, is not the best way to repeal all governmental recognition of all marriages? It’s unjust that one view of marriage derived from one group is imposed on the whole society through governmental fiat. Other practices, not just LGBT but also polygyny and polyandry as practiced in some Asian countries have been impacted with unnecessary pain among immigrants. So instead of trying to impose your will on an unwilling public, which only arouses opposition, why not instead remove the threat of governmental oppression by taking the government out of the picture entirely? Won’t you get a lot further towards eliminating this injustice?
Tolerance means to give people the space to disagree. Many homosexual activists are intolerant bigots unnecessarily making enemies of people who otherwise would be willing to work together. Instead of spouting off hate speech, would it not be better to look for creative ways to eliminate injustice?
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Richard commented on the article |
The Democrat Party is treating Blacks, Hispanics, union workers (as opposed to union bosses) and LGBT people the same way as the Republicans treat social and Christian conservatives: give them nice words saying how they feel for the concerns of these groups, maybe even making a promise or two with no intent to keep it, then once they collect their money and votes, go off and do what they intended to do all along. Do you want to support this sort of hypocrisy?
A pox on both their houses (political parties)!
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