If homosexuality is outlawed, only outlaws will be homosexual.


/lameness

I wonder how that drove of simpering pussies known as the DNC will respond to this great development.

> The judge wrote that the state's
> historical definition of marriage, by
> itself, cannot justify the denial of
> equal protection for gays and lesbians.

For the record, marriage is a historial/traditional institution, and gays and lesbians have precisely the same protections as anyone else. To hear this muddled rhetoric coming from courts makes one shudder.

Game on!

What does this mean? Does it mean I can get married to a man now? Or will there be years of challenges to this ruling?

Cridland, I don't see any muddled rhetoric. Slavery was a historical/traditional institution as well, but so what? I think the point is that tradition is not a legal factor, only constitutionality is.

".. and gays and lesbians have precisely the same protections as anyone else."

What do you mean by this?

Crid is going trot out his very cute assertion that gays/lesbians have every right to marry individuals of the opposite sex, so there's really nothing to get in a tizzy about here.

>>I wonder how that drove of simpering pussies known as the DNC will respond to this great development.

By expressing their concern for the feelings of their Constituents and saying we should all have faith in this matter, then looking at the sound guy to make sure that he got the democratic congressman using the word 'faith.'

Tizzy all you like; the point is gays aren't being discriminated against.

"The judge ruled that the state's historical defininition... cannot justify...." Well, OK then! Precedent is for shit. My contract to complete payments on my house CANNNOT justify this continuing intrusion into the flow of my finances....

>>For the record, marriage is a historial/traditional institution, and gays and lesbians have precisely the same protections as anyone else. To hear this muddled rhetoric coming from courts makes one shudder.

For the record, once a government starts attaching financial incentives to an historical/traditional institution, it ceases being an historical/traditional institution and exists now as a civil/economic institution.

But why not call everyone's bluff here. Here's my idea. Government recognizes no marriages at all. Only civil unions. You may link yourself civilly to one individual at a time, and it doesn't matter who it is. Breaking that union is the same as getting a divorce. Religious opponents of gay marriage can't complain that the government is approving of gay marriage because the government neither confirms nor disconfirms the existence of any marriage due to its own institutional indifference. We would find out once and for all if homosexual men and women are truly interested only in the rights of marriage and not the rites. And finally, the polygamy that everyone is worrying about doesn't occur any more often, because it is foolish for a Utah woman to 'marry' a man who has seven other wives, none of whom are covered under his health care. He would keal over from having to work enough jobs to support them and his wives would inherit nothing because his civil economic partner is his brother.

> ...once a government starts
> attaching financial
> incentives...

> Here's my idea. Government
> recognizes...

Government is not some distantly remote and isolated group of ninnies who cast social norms down from the mountaintop like brutal thunderbolts. The ninnies are right here among us, and they LIKE marriage.

All I'm saying is, don't hold your breath. Your scheme is likely to happen on the same day that we tax the churches and eliminate the homeowner's deduction.

My mistake, Cridland, I thought you had something intelligent to say.

>Government is not some distantly remote and isolated group of ninnies who cast social norms down from the mountaintop like brutal thunderbolts.

No? When's the last time you roasted a pig or went out to hunt pheasant with one of your senators. Did you three attend the same haberdashery fittings this winter?

One of my state's senators hasn't even been to his house in Pennsylvania in six years. I'd say his name, but it might not get through a vulgarity filter because it has other definitions.

I know my idea is a nonstarter, largely because the public wouldn't understand any of the distinctions that I make and it would be so easy to distort by the party that didn't adopt it.

I also know there is no way to oppose it fairly from a logical, ethical or moral standpoint and win the argument.

Taxing churches is as illegal as it is to prohibit a church from marrying two people who son't have marriage licenses, though the latter still happens. I have multiple reasons to get the government out of the marriage business and many of which are to protect the separation of Church and State in favor of Church autonomy and State autonomy.

> My mistake, Cridland, I
> thought you had something
> intelligent to say.

Your honor, move to strike as non-responsive.

> When's the last time you roasted
> a pig or went out to hunt pheasant
> with one of your senators.

November.

Sorry! Listen, isn't that setting the bar for representative government just a little high?

> I also know there is no way to
> oppose it fairly from a logical,
> ethical or moral standpoint and
> win the argument.

People who live lives of such certainty must while away the years in tearful, hopeless torment. Is there nothing left to learn from others?

Hey, can we talk about weapons of mass destruction some more?

PRESS RELEASE:

STUDY FINDS CONNECTICUT’S CIVIL UNION BILL WILL HAVE A POSITIVE IMPACT ON STATE BUDGET

March 15, 2005

Contact:
Lee Badgett – 413-577-0145 or 413-531-9997
Brad Sears -- 310-794-5279 or 213-842-9814

Los Angeles, CA -- Today two national think tanks released a study finding that giving marriage rights to same-sex couples will have a positive impact on the state budget of Connecticut. The study estimates that the state would save at least $3 million per year and as much as $13 million if same-sex couples could marry. Civil unions will result in more than $2 million per year in savings.

The study, conducted by the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies and the Williams Project of UCLA Law School, found several sources of savings for the state budget. The biggest source of savings will be the consequence of decreasing the number of individuals needing and being eligible for means-tested state benefit programs, thereby saving the State money. Marriage and civil unions will have this impact because a spouse’s income is included when determining eligibility for state benefit programs.

The State will also see a boost to its wedding and tourist businesses that could bring in almost $2 million per year in sales tax revenues.

"We’ve seen a lot of spending by same-sex couples on weddings in Massachusetts, and Connecticut couples are also likely to spend thousands of dollars if they could marry,” notes economist and study co-author, Dr. M.V. Lee Badgett, "Out-of-state couples would also travel to Connecticut to marry, bringing in millions of dollars to the State’s businesses and millions in sales tax revenues to the State."

The study, entitled Counting on Couples: Fiscal Savings from Allowing Same-Sex Couples to Marry in Connecticut, finds that marriage equality and civil unions would have only a minor effect on administrative costs, succession tax revenues, income tax revenues, state employee benefits, and the state court system. The authors used data from Census 2000 on same-sex couples and other government sources to produce these estimates.

"Our analysis makes it clear that providing Connecticut families with equal rights is fiscally responsible, "says study co-author Brad Sears, Executive Director of the Williams Project. "Making same-sex partners accountable to each other is good for families and good for the State budget."

This study reaches the same conclusion as the 2004 Congressional Budget Office report that found that same-sex marriage would save the federal budget almost $1 billion per year. Past studies of marriage and domestic partnership Vermont, California, and New Jersey have reached similar conclusions.

The study was produced jointly by the Williams Project of UCLA School of Law and IGLSS, the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies.

It can be accessed at www.law.ucla.edu/williamsproject and www.iglss.org.

>Sorry! Listen, isn't that setting the bar for representative government just a little high?

Nope. Not one senator is anywhere close to not being a millionare. Not one. And if I remember correctly there are only 20 or so Reps who are not millionaires.

>People who live lives of such certainty must while away the years in tearful, hopeless torment. Is there nothing left to learn from others?

Pass me a handkerchief, I think?

Oh yeah, you didn't find a way to logically argue against that civil union only proposal, though, did you.

>Hey, can we talk about weapons of mass destruction some more?

I don't get it.

Why don't you put up a link to one of those Jack Kelly articles where he says that we won Vietnam.
I won't have anything to say about that either.

> logically argue against that civil
> union only proposal, though, did you

You're constraining the conversation pretty tightly, which is not the same thing as persuading.

Poisonally I'm much more receptive to 'unions' than to gay marriages, not that anyone's asking. Especially from the pro-gay side... They want 'marriage,' and they're being as simplistic as possible, seeking (as demonstrated here) to confine the conversation to a few little points that they've think they've got covered... Points like "denial of equal protection." That the point is groundless doesn't deter them, which means we get to watch their headlong collision with some of the oldest, deepest currents in human thinking. It's fun to watch!

> I won't have anything to
> say about that either.

Whaddya call a liberal who's too appalled to talk about things?

Defeated! See you in '08!

I think it would have been more appropriate to call it a left hook. All the yelling at the Cridland and his yelling back was fun to read. It was obvious no one budged an inch, or will ever budge. It all comes down to my judge is bigger than your judge. At least in civilized nations. It's less the law, and more the jurists. All we've done is trade in big guns for big law slingers. Except maybe in Georgia. You can't cuff me, I'm the violence-prone defendent here. Wonder what that judge thought of that new no-cuff law when the alleged shooter allegedly entered his courtroom and allegedly aimed the alleged gun at him? Doesn't matter now. Here's a question then. Is one alleged rapist's image of innocence worth the life of one judge? You be the judge. But put on your bullet-proof vest first. Oops. We're talking gay marriage. Sorry, I'm still fuming over 4 dead people.

"It was obvious no one budged an inch, or will ever budge."

Not so, Allan. It appears to me that Crid, with his support of 'unions,' is indeed on the slippery slope to gay marriage:

"I'm much more receptive to 'unions' than to gay marriages, not that anyone's asking. Especially from the pro-gay side... They want 'marriage,' and they're being as simplistic as possible," etc.

It's moments like that when I truly dig Crid, because his compassion and generous spirit shine through even as he's winding up for another round of rhetorical gay-bashing. I love complicated men!

And I will always be amazed, amused, and humbled by the terribly untidy, non-linear progression of historical and cultural change. It's so much bigger than what's going on in the courts.

Long live revolution, baby!

>Whaddya call a liberal who's too appalled to talk about things?
>Defeated! See you in '08!

I love the so-called Republicans these days. When they don't have an answer and someone disagrees with their stupidity, they resort to name-calling. And it's always the same name-LIBERAL.

It's especially atrocious when they make that allegation based on the false assumption that everyone believes as blindly in one of two parties as they do in theirs. People like this stick so much more to the beliefs inherent in their self-classification as a 'Republican' than any defendable (and wise) beliefs such as fiscal conservatism and limited government intervention in its citizens' lives and finances.

Well, two can play the name-calling-based-on-no-evidence-of-accuracy game, you bald bastard.

What makes "Little Ted" so little? You talk like a big guy. Is it your pee-pee?

No, you're thinking of Bent-ass Tom.

Kidding.

Bad set of coincidences. My friend Chrissy happened to be looking at my baby photographs while the end of Bogus Journey was on TV, and she decided that baby me looked like Keanu's kid. She kept calling me Little Ted for the next week, which happened to be the week I signed up for AOL.

I'm a lifelong big-D registered Democrat, and not a gay-basher unless that merely means disagreeing with a particular set of gays on a particular issue.

Otherwise: Guilty! Gay Marriage is my favorite table at Amy's casino. (Bushliedpeopledied is second favorite)

"not a gay-basher unless that merely means disagreeing with a particular set of gays"

But you rarely make that distinction, Crid, even though I know I've told you in the past that ANOTHER particular set of gays -- a set to which I belong -- would actually be satisfied with a right to 'union' instead of marriage. Somehow that doesn't really seem to sink in, and you continue to rail against the gay community for "being simplistic as possible." Just because we're not issuing fatwas and death threats against each other doesn't mean there's 100% consensus on issues such as marriage vs. unions. I know a lot of gay men who are more interested in taking responsibility for problems such as the disproportionately high rates of substance abuse and teen suicide in our communities (note the plural, please) than they are in stamping up and down in their Mary Janes demanding the right to marry.

I'm not blaming you entirely for your distorted views. The pundits who define the terms of the argument tend to flatten out intra-group differences because it allows them to claim and re-claim the moral high ground and provide real entertainment (ie, EXTREME feelings: horror, superiority, anger, etc). And I confess to consuming that form of entertainment from time to time, even though I'd much rather be listening to my boyfriend moaning as I lick his nipples.

It's not even 6 AM. Whatever happened to morning prayers?

> But you rarely make that
> distinction...

Why bother? Those who'd be flattered are [A] not the ones driving the public debate, [B] not the ones making these fundamental errors of logic, and [C] (most importantly for blog comments) not the ones most fun to ridicule! There's no reason to pander to people who actually have their shit together. They're grown-ups. There's nothing distorted in my vision of this, it just declines to focus where you think it should.

I'm embarrased at harrassing people here. And REALLY embarrased at doing such a bad job of it (misspellings, "headlong collision with currents," etc). But seeing liberal themes pursued with such childish technique --grotesque simplification, snottiness, solipsism-- is just mortifying. Because that's how I did my thinking for the first 30 years. And it was wrong!

"Why bother?"

Because it would reflect reality more accurately.

>simplification, snottiness, solipsism--

I have dibs on solipsism.
I'll pick condescension in the second round.

I still don't know where this liberal bit is coming from when I say it's bad for government to have any say over a religious institution like 'marriage,' and should divorce itself completely and let the churches 'marry' and refuse to 'marry' whomever they want.

Wasn't it Reagan, after all, who said, "Government isn't the solution, it's the problem,"?

> it would reflect reality
> more accurately.

No, it's distracting and unnecessary to give a nod to each shade of rhetorical distinction when trying to say something. It chokes the speaker in prissy detail. It's political correctness.

> Wasn't it Reagan, after all, who
> said, "Government isn't the
> solution, it's the problem,"?

Yes, but he didn't mean it, which is why everybody liked him so much.

Government is in the marriage certification business because government has been, through the millenia, a really good institution in which people can express the responsibilities of the larger group to the individual, and the debts of the individual to the larger group. The troubled-teen, outrage-at-the-dinner-table sort of liberalism I loathe seems always concerned with the former, and oblivious to the latter.

"No, it's distracting and unnecessary."

No, it's veracity -- which, in writing, is really the name of the game (unless you're some kind of poetic blogging type concerned with an unobservable chimera such as "the blessings of masculine love")

Pout. Vote. Lose!

>No, it's distracting and unnecessary to give a nod to each shade of rhetorical distinction when trying to say something. It chokes the speaker in prissy detail. It's political correctness.

Agreed. I dislike when people demand qualifications for each insignificant group. It's tedious and unnecessary when one says "all kids like playing baseball" to tack on an ending such as "except the handicapped who can't play baseball, or the tribes in the rainforest who have never heard of baseball"

>government has been, through the millenia, a really good institution in which people can express the responsibilities of the larger group to the individual

Millenia? Aside from Athens, and the city of Rome (and only the city of Rome) during Rome's republic, I don't see how this is true at all. Certainly not in Feudal Europe.

I don't need people like Tom DeLay putting his slimy hand on my shoulder or paddle on my ass to teach me right from wrong from his own extensive experience with high ethics. I don't need Santorum telling me that police have a right to kick in my bedroom door next Saturday and give me a thumbs up when they see that I'm not banging a man, just a really ugly girl I found at the bar. I don't need Hillary Rodham Clinton lecturing me because I have some Zombie videogame on my harddrive. It's just none of their Goddamned business.

I like to think Reagan meant what he said. If he didn't than I guess I'll just have to chalk that up to the smartest piece of accidental wisdom in American history.

Right behind "there's a fine line between guts and brains." -Herb Brooks

> than I guess I'll just have to chalk that
> up to the smartest piece of accidental
> wisdom in American history.

Didn't say it was wrong, just that HE didn't mean it!

Guts and brains are SO not the same thing....

Especially when it is someone elses guts you are spilling.

"I dislike when people demand qualifications for each insignificant group [...] the handicapped who can't play baseball"

Take a minute to imagine that you were having that conversation about baseball with someone who was handicapped. Since when has common courtesy become "tedious and unnecessary"?

I took issue with Crid's simplistic characterization of the gay/lesbian community as "being simplistic as possible" about the gay marriage issue because I'm gay, and my stance on gay marriage really does not fit the picture he painted. And I'm not alone. And I live nowhere near a rainforest.

Common courtesy becomes tedious and unnecessary when so many qualifications are made that the purpose of the sentence is lost in the white noise.

Ritalin might help with that, Ted.

It's sure doing wonders for the children.