And no children. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I think Rush's greatest service to the world is the fact that he never reproduced.

"When our state allowed gay marriage, it caused my own marriage to disintegrate," said no one, ever.

Hmmmmm.... Well, Greenwald's an idiotic and puppetry-posting little prick, one who happens to be correct in this instance, much like the soulless works of a broken clock which appears to be correct for two moments each day.

But who said this?

People saw a few generations of children's hearts ripped apart in family court and decided that marriage wasn't about anything more than the sentimental claptrap from the ceremonies.

Sometimes people come up to me on the street and ask, what it's like being right all the time?

'Know what I tell 'em?

It's pretty fuckin' good.

Thanks to Cousin Dave for his research
assistance in the composition of this 
blog comment.

Rush as the spokesperson for traditional marriage certainly is a weird mix.

On another note, then, there's Steyn...

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/344287/death-family-mark-steyn?page=2

Also brings to mind Newt Gingrich, whom Ross Perot once introduced as being "pro-family before pro-family was cool."

This would be the same Newt Gingrich who brought his terms for divorce to the hospital to his first wife, just as she was recovering from cancer surgery. And who had to be taken to court...twice...because he wouldn't pay his child support.

There are numerous stories of husbands and wives that married to solidify the treaty or the kingdoms and fiefdoms over the years that only fucked around enough to create an heir and a spare, then both spouses went and found lovers they enjoyed. Just look at Di and Charles. And it happened to a certain extent in the U.S. with the various Carnegie, Rockefeller, and similar families.

So thinking we're the first generation that this has happened in is foolish and folly. But it was not in the open in the past; refer to the Stonewall riots if you don't believe me.

Rush has a hot wife, typical chick conservative guys are into. Old school style blonde tight lipped "without flavor" (a term in Spanish that I love when describing people).

Don't you just love how Crid makes up bullshit, calls it fact, claims it's been validated and then congratulates himself?

"A lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing." -- MacBeth.

His version is "a union of a man and one woman at time."

"Desabrida" for women specifically.

I love it when I hear people say how "without flavor" a woman is (it also implies that while she is bland be careful because she is also acidic).

I have a good friend who is a very opinionated Evangelical Christian. As you may inagine he has been having a coniption the last few weeks about the same sex marriage debate. He of course quotes the Bible passages about it being an abomination, etc etc.

I pointed out to him that Jesus never mentioned homosexuality (that we know of) but did address divorce several times, saying that it makes adulterers out of those who remarry. My friend is, of course, remarried after a divorce. So is his wife, also an Evangelical Christian.

Also brings to mind Newt Gingrich, whom Ross Perot once introduced as being "pro-family before pro-family was cool."

Being pro-family is cool?

Failing to uphold a high standard is much different than setting the bar at floor level and vaulting over it - and then holding yourself up as virtuous for clearing the bar.

That said, Newt's kinda creepy these days, desperately trying to recapture his past glory and relevance - kinda like the 40-year-old who attends Spring Break trying to pick up teenaged college girls.

I love seeing 60-something champions of traditional values with their 20-something wives and 30-something offspring from earlier marriages.

My friend is, of course, remarried after a divorce. So is his wife, also an Evangelical Christian.

Fresh out of college, I worked with a bunch of Evangelicals. Many of them were divorced and/or had kids out of wedlock. For some of them, this happened before their Evangelical awakening, so can be assumed as part of a non-pious life.

However, many of the Evangelicals I worked with were just slimy - cheating on spouses, promoting cronies, cheating on expense reports, etc. Not all of them, but enough to make me wary when someone ardently professes an outward Christianity.

The same wariness I feel when a liberal proposes expanding the government's reach and power "for the children" or insists that others pay their "fair share."

Annnd it never ends: double standards.

Especially on the part of people who don't like someone's opinions. Pick one thing, then claim all the opinions are wrong because the speaker's life isn't perfect.

Of course, this won't keep anyone from placing a high value on their chosen star. Bill Clinton, anyone?

> -- MacBeth

Yeah?

This will be the fifth time I've quoted this passage from Lileks. But it's short as can be and directly on point:

Maybe I’m just on a lucky streak - the last several times I’ve had to deal with anyone behind a desk, be it the rental car agency, the car-repair garage, the mortgage closer, various receptionists and clerks, I’ve been treated with brisk friendly efficiency. Even the gas station clerk who gave me the Powerball ticket said “good luck!” Yes, yes, it’s all a mask, a facade, a way of hiding the deep & malignant parochialism and passive- aggressiveness that lurks at the heart of the Minnesota soul, but I’ll take a cheerful civic lie over bald flat prominent disinterest any time. They’re necessary falsehoods, and civilization depends on them. Who believes that hypocrisy is somehow the greatest sin of all? Adolescents. Which ought to tell you something.

(emphasis: Cridmo)

And, furthermore, also...

(more below)

Besides, see this and this. (That second page is weirdly formatted. See the part that begins with "[Eugene Volokh, 7:23 AM]Hypocrisy: Jonah Goldberg, in The Corner argues....")

Additionally, with respect to other considerations in this discussion...

(more below)

What, you wanna start an argument, you silly little grumplettes? Fine! Limbaugh's foolishness hands it to you on a platter. And here's the thing: Some of you NEED to have it handed to you on a platter... I've noticed that no one in this thread actually comes out and says that it's wrong to have four wives in a row. This clown stood before society three times, demanded our attention, and said 'This is the woman for me and there can be no other, and I will care for her all of my days, and the rest of you will not be troubled by her needs so long as I breathe.' And then he changed his mind and did it again.

But none of you seems to have the clarity to acknowledge that this was a bad thing to do. You're so masturbatorially enchanted by his inconsistency that you forget to say how it brings costs to other people.

That's the teenage part of this. You're pretending that morality is mechanical rather than fleshy. You leave the impression that his sins themselves are meaningless, or that you don't want to have to do any better than he did.

But it's good to have moral standards. The fact that we don't always live up to them doesn't mean they don't, or shouldn't, exist.

If you think Limbaugh (or any other dorkasuares) is doing something wrong, you ought to be able (and perhaps eager) to say why.




> "Desabrida" for women specifically.

It's a wonderful and useful new word, and I'm going to use it someday soon. But our problem with Limbaugh isn't with with his taste.

> that's on them

It's not! It's not! I don't know why you say this.

For two reasons.

First, you're (seemingly) blind blind blind to the bond marriage forges between a couple and their society. You chirp as though marriage is all very darling & private... Your pretense is that it's mostly about Savage Garden music at outdoor ceremonies, when we both know better. The whole reason you want it for gays — or want to mock Limbaugh for fucking it up — is that it compels others (courts, governments, employers, neighbors) to do things... Things like spend money. We all pay for incompetent marriages. Pretending we don't is like saying TARP had no costs.

Second, because ascribing accountability with the expression 'X is on you' is absolutely despicable. It's just molten-core dumb, pure Appalachia stupid.

And yet you are not, we are told, a hillbilly.]

Grrr.

Rush likes the getting married thing. Being married not so, much. However, I really don't know if Rush divorced his wives or they divored him. There is a difference, I know.

Any gay person, that has children as a result of a previous sexual relationship with a person of the opposite sex, gets no credit for family values.

I am sure there are a lot of upstanding gay people out there who paid for a surrogate, or went to a sperm bank (which falls into my should be legal but still morally sleazy behavior) because of the expense and narcissistic nature of their reproductive choice.

But any gay person, who is raising children that were the result of their own previous sexual relationship or marriage to a person of the opposite sex gets no credit for family values with me. They put their sex life over their children's best interests, and should be called on it, like any other single or divorced parent.

A difference for the couple, maybe, but not for the rest of us. They're just cordwood in the fire.

(2:22 PM was for Dave B.)

> But any gay person, who is raising children
> that were the result of their own previous
> sexual relationship or marriage to a person
> of the opposite sex gets no credit for
> family values with me.

Any gay person who denies a child the intimate, nurturing, life-long love of a parent of the opposite sex gets no credit for family values either (with me).

Men & women aren't the same, which one reason why gays (like almost everyone else) has a preference.

Marriage is more than two people agreeing to live together and boink only each other until they get bored with the arrangement.

Marriage establishes a relationship between the married couple and society. Married couples are not, to society, simply individuals who are dating.

The widespread decline of marriage is society trying to figure out if it still wants to have a relationship with marriage anymore. We'll all be diminished if society decides against it.

Married couples have expectations of society. And society has expectations of married couples that it doesn't have of unmarried ones. And society makes allowances for married couples that it doesn't make for unmarried ones (that's part of what married couples expect from society).

Divorce is each individual in a couple's failure in its relationship with each other and the couple's failure in its relationship with society. It is also, in a way, society's failure in its relationship with the couple.

At its core, the debate over gay marriage isn't about whether gays should get tax breaks, automatic powers of attorney, automatic inheritance, and other financial and legal benefits from a government. It's a debate over whether society is willing to enter into the same relationship with a same-sex couple as it would a traditional couple. And until we recognize this, it will continue to be an acrimonious debate.

One of the few times I have to agree w/ Cridlonian. This is going to turn out bad.

"Things like spend money. We all pay for incompetent marriages. "

More to the point: we all pay for children raised (or not so much) by incompetent parents. In this day and age, I'm not sure that correlates very much to marriage. 75 years ago it did, but that ship has sailed.

"Divorce is each individual in a couple's failure in its relationship with each other and the couple's failure in its relationship with society. "

In my case, my failure was me choosing her as my spouse in the first place. Everything that happened after that was inevitable. And our relationship with society really didn't enter into it -- in most cases where she interacted with others apart from me, she "forgot" to identify herself as married, and so the people who interacted with her were doing so under false pretenses.

@CousinDave: "my failure was me choosing her as a spouse in the first place".

Exactly. And most of us are very poor at making these sorts of choices when we are at the age, and experience level we are when we need to get married if we are going to have children.

Our entire culture has organized itself under the false premise of "romantic love" and mutual hotness for each other as sufficient foundation for marriage. It is not, and it never has been.

It is just incredibly good luck, that a few of us, blindly stumbled into a great marriage without the outside support that extended family, common culture, and especially shared values brings to this process.

When your values and culture tells you marriage is for life, and for better or worse what is most important is: whether your prospective spouse shares those values.
This is why anyone engaged to a bridezilla needs to run for the hills. Her behavior is a red flag, that nothing is more important to her than "the party"

If you want kids, you want :

Someone with good genes, and a decent work ethic, intelligence, kindness, and tolerance.

If you enjoy the sex, it is an added bonus, but give me someone I can live with. You also want, someone who is not from a broken (or never formed) home.

Did you know the divorce rate is much higher among children of parents who were also divorced or never married?

Maybe this is because parents transmit their values to their children through how they behave themselves and not what they say. People who don't value marriage, are more likely to have children who do not value it.

Nothing is guaranteed, but you gotta play the odds. The odds of your Saturday night hook up, being a good bet for a lifetime partner, are slim indeed.

If you want to show that Rush is a hypocrite, you need to quote something that he actually said.

He has been avoiding the topic of SSM - one assumes precisely because his own lifestyle is not that of a social conservative.