Mississippi Burning

[Indy]

Galt, in the end what blows my mind about this is what has always blown my mind about it: people who are endlessly trying to turn the clock backwards, apparently to a time where homosexuality used to be criminalized.

You can't pray the gay away, and you can't legislate it away either. Quite often it's the same people who want to turn back the clock on civil rights, to that same magical time where blacks rode in the back of the bus and gays were in the closet.

It is the ultimate exercise in regression, not to mention a colossal waste of time and resources. Based on myths, bigotry and selectively chosen quotes from a 2000+ year-old book which as we all know can be used to "justify" just about anything.

And not surprisingly, evangelicals are driving this thing as they have for decades, claiming that allowing gays to exist or marry somehow, but inexplicably, threatens THEIR marriages which, as we all know, provide us with countless examples of these same people engaged in all sorts of adulterous behavior and worse.

The world is evolving yet these people have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, and they just don't want to go.

God, guns and gays. Such a cliche, but still a very TRUE cliche. We have better things to spend our time on then devising endless ways to mask discrimination and then cloaking ourselves in religious self-righteousness as we do so.

Sorry, I don't buy the idea that Ellen Page buying a slice of pizza in Indiana threatens straight marriage or Christianity. It's flat-out absurd.

Putting my feelings on the morality of it aside, just from a pragmatic standpoint it's senseless. But it's also what you use to distract the herd from the fact that they're living under plutocracy and/or oligarchy.

[Spider]

[John Galt]

The marriages were not shams you bigot

[Spider]

[exploited]

[Spider]

Oh piss off, Ex. Your childish trolling is as beneath contempt as ever.

As always, if you would just read the f**k words, you wouldn't stumble over the sentences like this.

[exploited]

[Spider]

[IndependentProfessor]

OK, Galt - got a mental exercise for you.

Marriage is essentially made of 2 components. The legal institution, which governs how you pay taxes, who may make various legal decisions on your behalf, disposition of assets, and a few other things. Then, there is the religious aspect which means whatever it means in that religion.

Now, we are mostly talking about the legal system here, though we have a religious forum if we want to go there. So, why does the government care if I marry a man? Is it going to change anything concerning my taxes if I'm married to a man or a woman? Will the IRS somehow collect less money if I marry a guy than a girl? Or, does the legal system care if my man-husband is allowed to make the decision to "pull the plug" instead of my girl-wife? Would my male-mate somehow get more or less than 50% of our assets in a legal divorce proceeding, whereas my female-mate would get that magical 50%?

Frankly, I don't see many people arguing this from a legal perspective, because it's patently obvious that you can't. So, all that's left is to argue from a religious perspective. Yet, isn't the country, and all legislative bodies contained therein, prohibited from making laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof?

So, how can the government tell me that my lack of belief in a particular religion (which, by definition, is a "religious belief") and therefore acceptance of gays marrying gays, is somehow illegal?

[Indy]

The reason it's so illogical Prof is because it is illogical.

That's why they have to come up with tortured reasons for why this is justified--it hurts straight marriages, it's giving people "special rights", a while back is was an attack on "family values."

All because people are selectively choosing things from their religious book--for that reason alone it should be tossed aside.