Keeping it civil instead of returning to our dark ways

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Incest also victimizes any resulting offspring. There are biological reasons why close relatives should not mate.

You end up with red states.

[Santorum]

Originally posted by Fugee
I'm going to talk to the few folks I know here who are quite vocally passionate about "protecting traditional marriage." I have pointed out to them in the past that I think it is a rEdiculous issue for evangelical Christians to embrace and they keep telling me it is not about being anti-gay but about protecting marriage. These are not hateful people so I believe they are sincere.

I think I will test that by asking about civil unions -- something that would give the parties all the same rights and responsibilities as a married couple but be something done down at city hall or the courthouse, not in a church -- and see what they say. A civil union could be for straight couples too -- a legal status that can be conferred by a government employee but not a minister. Their responses should be interesting.

I'd be interested in hearing their responses. It's hard to know how to take the elections, particularly since I and most of my friends live in blue states and most thoughtful conservative websites/blogs are ducking the issue. I'd like to believe people just didn't know they were banning civil unions when they did. Heck, there is an argument that the initiatives which seem to outlaw civil unions don't, although I think it's a loser. Still, it's clear that the leadership of the Republican Party is deeply hostile even to civil unions, and I'm afraid they will use their success in this election to justify similar behavior in the future.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
You end up with red states.

*sigh* You had to bring up the fact that my family tree doesn't necessarily fork as often as it should, didn't you....

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
You are too stupid to follow this conversation.

Hey now, we were all doing so well.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
So we should let states criminalize private conduct between consenting adults, because those adults can always move, but we should not let the states set their own standards for medical malpractice suits, because doctors are incapable of moving?


I'm sooooo confused.

Tell ya the truth, states (generally) should be allowed to do this stuff when it only invokes interests in the state, like Doctors in the state and whatever. Asbestos though, and a lot of similar torts, didn't fit this framework. If a lawyer and court in Madison Co. IL bankrupts Sealed Air with a 10 million dollar verdict for a healthy plaintiff, then 10 guys in Northern California who get sick 5 years later don't have anywhere to go. Well, except to the next 100 or 200 companies in line til they were bankrupted too.

But yeah, I buy the doctor argument, and I've told my doctor at Good Samaritan in Downers Grove that he should move his practice to Indiana with the rest. Personally, and I know this isn't moral, I can't wait until the people in Madison Co. and East Texas etc. have no doctors left, and have to operate on each other with meat cleavers. So the doctors fit in the framework but there are other types of torts that simply didn't.

Hello

[Santorum]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Rather than ask for consideration of the others, let me just say, that i would argue trying to catagorize types of hate is a slippery slope, except you said not to do slippery slope arguments.

I don't think I'm categorizing types of hate. I think any amount of vitriol one candidate or party wants to throw at the other candidate or party is fair game. Maybe you think that by seeking judicial recognition of same sex marriages, the gays made themselves fair game. San Francisco's mayor is hearing that this week. I wouldn't even be complaining if Kerry had raised the gay issue himself. But it's different when the target is a group of people, particulalry where the vitriol goes well beyond the public issue. Are we arguin apples and oranges, or do you agree that lots of Republican candidates exploited the public's general discomfort with the gays to gain an electoral advantage, above and beyond the issue of marriage?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Santorum
I don't think I'm categorizing types of hate. I think any amount of vitriol one candidate or party wants to throw at the other candidate or party is fair game. Maybe you think that by seeking judicial recognition of same sex marriages, the gays made themselves fair game. San Francisco's mayor is hearing that this week. I wouldn't even be complaining if Kerry had raised the gay issue himself. But it's different when the target is a group of people, particulalry where the vitriol goes well beyond the public issue. Are we arguin apples and oranges, or do you agree that lots of Republican candidates exploited the public's general discomfort with the gays to gain an electoral advantage, above and beyond the issue of marriage?

I wrote a pretty long post on this earlier. I think the Republicans were despicable. I think that several people here are personally impacted, and their emotions run really high. At least 1 is someone I consider an imaginary friend. So I don't want to seem insensitive. What I am not, that several of you may be, is surprised with the results of the votes.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Yes, but who makes those moral judgments? That is why I want neutral principles (and this is probably why you would consider me simple). There are some judgments with which I would agree and others I would not, and I fear centralizing that power in the courts.

I don't think you're simple, and I understand the impulse to neutrality, but I think it's a false neutrality. There is no neutral position here. Either the state can arrest you for having sex with a consenting adult in your own bedroom, or it can't. If you think it should be able to do this, you can reach that conclusion in different ways, but all will have a moral component.

This is very unfair.

I wasn't trying to be unfair. I was trying to say that if you're going to take the side of Texas in the Lawrence case, you can do it because you dislikes gays. That's a moral choice. Or you can do it because you think that the Constitution should be construed in accord with the original views of the framers. But that's also a moral choice.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
... For the same reason that I think divided government is a good thing, I think what we're about to see -- in terms of domestic policy -- in the next two years is going to be a disaster.

Ty, I watched the entire asbestos process unfold before my eyes last year. Di Fi was reasonable. It go the kabosh (sp?) because of Daschle, to the point where he wouldn't it allow it onto the floor for a vote (what's that procedure called again?).

It was all over medical criteria, whether the lawyers get paid off, and the amount of money in the fund. Daschle wanted people who have no symptoms of disease to continue to get paid, he wanted the lawyers to get a cut of the compromise, and he wanted whatever the trial lawyers told him to demand (145B+) plus a reversion to the courts if they could bankrupt the system with healthy plaintiffs. Business is business, and there is no way to negotiate with this. Which is why Daschle was targeted.

Today's WSJ has an editorial about how little has been done by congress because of filibusters and related actions by Daschles crew. 4 freakin years of constant roadblocking, and you are saying we should have just negotiated them more? Fuck that, we blew up the roadblock.

And I'm a bit nervous about the next 2 years, but your guys made us do it. It was like they were begging to be replaced by Rs in the Senate.

Hello

[SlaveNoMore]

Santorum
Are we arguin apples and oranges, or do you agree that lots of Republican candidates exploited the public's general discomfort with the gays to gain an electoral advantage, above and beyond the issue of marriage?

Popping in to drop 2 quick points from Sullivan today:

1) The anti-gay ballot initiatives apparently did not, in fact, have much impact on Bush's improved numbers:

So lots of pundits, including you, have been attributing Bush's success nationally to his having excited the base over the gay marriage issue. In particular, the strategy of using the ballot initiatives in 11 states, thereby dragging religious conservatives to the polls to vote against marriage and at the same time check the box next to Bush, is regarded as having been particularly effective.

That is, of course, fiction. Bush improved his share of the popular vote by 3.2% from 2000 to 2004 (47.9 in 2000, 51.1 in 2004). Now how did he do in the states which had anti-marriage ballot initiatives?

Arkansas +3.0%
Georgia +3.3%
Kentucky +3.1%
Michigan +1.8%
Mississippi +2.2%
Montana +0.7%
North Dakota +2.2%
Ohio +1.0%
Oklahoma +5.3%
Oregon +0.8%
Utah +4.2%

Only in two states (Utah and Oklahoma) did he gain a significantly higher vote share than he did nationwide. Maybe comparing to the national popular vote is misleading, so let's compare each of those states to a neighboring, politically-similar state which did not have an anti-marriage initiative on the ballot:

Missouri +2.9 (AR +3.0)
Florida +3.4 (GA +3.3)
Tennessee +5.7 (KY +3.1)
Wisconsin +1.5 (MI +1.8)
Alabama +6.0 (MS +2.2)
Idaho +1.2 (MT +0.7)
South Dakota -0.4 (ND +2.2)
Pennsylvania +2.0 (OH +1.0)
Texas +1.8 (OK +5.3)
Washington +1.2 (OR +0.8)
Wyoming +1.2 (UT +4.2)

Again, not much. In only 3 cases (UT-WY, ND-SD, and OK-TX) did Bush improve a lot more in a state with an anti-marriage initiative than he did in the state with which it was paired. And, in the case of North Dakota, the hotly contested Senate race in South Dakota may have skewed things a bit; a better comparison might be Nebraska, where Bush was +3.0% better in 2004 than in 2000, a better improvement than what he got in North Dakota.
That leaves two states, Oklahoma and Utah, which had an anti-marriage initiative on the ballot and in which Bush's vote share improved more both relative to the nation as a whole and relative to the neighboring state selected.

It is certainly possible that the fact that the Bush administration raised the issue to the level to which did led to increased turnout among religious conservatives nationwide, which then resulted in Bush's overall improved vote share over his 2000 performance. However, one would also expect that this vote share improvement would have been particularly high in states in which the marriage issue was particularly relevant. On the contrary, there is no evidence that suggests that the strategy of putting the anti-marriage initiatives on the ballot in several states did anything to improve Bush's performance in those states."

2) Apparently, Bill Clinton told Kerry that he needed to go anti-gay in order to win:

Say this about Clinton: he always understood how to triangulate. The president who doubled the number of gay discharges form the military, signed the ban on HIV-positive immigrants, and jumped energetically on the Defense of Marriage Act, told Kerry to back marriage and civil union bans for gays in the campaign. Kerry, to his enormous credit, didn't go there. But then Kerry never presided over the execution of a retarded man for his own political purposes either.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
If I were an alcoholic, this would be a specie of hate speech,

But you know that with you, it's love speech.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
I wrote a pretty long post on this earlier. I think the Republicans were despicable. I think that several people here are personally impacted, and their emotions run really high. At least 1 is someone I consider an imaginary friend. So I don't want to seem insensitive. What I am not, that several of you may be, is surprised with the results of the votes.

I'm not surprised in retrospect, but I was blindsided, and now I'm wondering how stupid I could have been not to see this coming.

I saw the Ted Poe ads here in Houston accusing Nick Lampson of not sharing his district's "values" because he accepts money from HRC. I should have known that it was part of a more national campaign, and knowing HRC as I do, I didn't think that anyone would take it seriously. HRC is a fairly innocuous organization and frankly, I was shocked that an organization called the Human Rights Coalition would be villified.

I'm certain that everyone else saw similar ads, but they were so small in scope (but targeted) that I dont' think that we saw it as a big deal in the national scope. Sure the people in East Texas were getting bombarded, but they always get the anti-gay ads. It was brilliant and dispicable.

Incidently, if anyone wants to go to the HRC gala in Houston, on April 2, theme of "Masquarade," $175 a ticket, PM me. I just got an e-mail from a group that's putting a table together.

[Santorum]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
I wrote a pretty long post on this earlier. I think the Republicans were despicable. I think that several people here are personally impacted, and their emotions run really high. At least 1 is someone I consider an imaginary friend. So I don't want to seem insensitive. What I am not, that several of you may be, is surprised with the results of the votes.

Sorry, I should not have personalized my response to you. I saw and appreciated your long post, although belatedly. Also, agree that emotions run high. I'm not particularly surprised by any single election result, but taken together it's staggering since so much of what happened was so obviously pandering to our lowest elements. I am now waiting to see how reasonable conservatives, who might support some of the President's goals, respond. Do they rebuke the elements that did this, or at least prevent it from happening again, or just run with what won this time?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
Ty, I watched the entire asbestos process unfold before my eyes last year. Di Fi was reasonable. It go the kabosh (sp?) because of Daschle, to the point where he wouldn't it allow it onto the floor for a vote (what's that procedure called again?).

It was all over medical criteria, whether the lawyers get paid off, and the amount of money in the fund. Daschle wanted people who have no symptoms of disease to continue to get paid, he wanted the lawyers to get a cut of the compromise, and he wanted whatever the trial lawyers told him to demand (145B+) plus a reversion to the courts if they could bankrupt the system with healthy plaintiffs. Business is business, and there is no way to negotiate with this. Which is why Daschle was targeted.

Today's WSJ has an editorial about how little has been done by congress because of filibusters and related actions by Daschles crew. 4 freakin years of constant roadblocking, and you are saying we should have just negotiated them more? Fuck that, we blew up the roadblock.

And I'm a bit nervous about the next 2 years, but your guys made us do it. It was like they were begging to be replaced by Rs in the Senate.

You sound like you're talking about process, but you're talking about substance. Daschle wanted different terms than your guys wanted -- and I should be clear that while I like Daschle, I don't know anything about this issue -- and your guys preferred to pass on a deal and use the issue to try to get Daschle beat.

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by Fugee
I'm going to talk to the few folks I know here who are quite vocally passionate about "protecting traditional marriage." I have pointed out to them in the past that I think it is a rEdiculous issue for evangelical Christians to embrace and they keep telling me it is not about being anti-gay but about protecting marriage. These are not hateful people so I believe they are sincere.

I think I will test that by asking about civil unions -- something that would give the parties all the same rights and responsibilities as a married couple but be something done down at city hall or the courthouse, not in a church -- and see what they say. A civil union could be for straight couples too -- a legal status that can be conferred by a government employee but not a minister. Their responses should be interesting.

While you're at it, could you ask them to articulate how "gay marriage", much less civil unions, will damage the Institution of Marriage? I hear that it's all about protecting marriage, but I've never heard a convincing argument about what marriage is being protected from.

Also, as a follow up, could they explain why they are not equally keen to protect marriage from the institution of divorce, since the rate of divorce in red states is higher than in blue states? They seem to have embraced divorce with enthusiasm - how is that consistent with protecting marriage?

Thanks. There'll be a little extra in your paycheck this week.