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I am the other way around. I see Gay marriage as a non-negotiable issue of basic principle. For example no matter how much money it would bring in if all speech were regulated and taxed, I would not go for it, because it is a matter of principle. We just don't do that here.
Likewise, I find the discrimination built into our legal system sickening. I believe the correct way to fix it is to remove marriage from the government, and simply have a boiler plate domestic pertnership contract that is extensible to N consenting adults of either gender. But, realistically we have years, maybe decades to go before we can get to that sort of reform. In the meantime, I don't think it is right to deny people the same basic rights I have, simply because it is financially expedient. It isn't right to leave them shut out, and if the short term solution is to expand the definition of marriage, so be it.
There are a lot of places I am eager to trim the fat and save money, but upholding the Constitution and delivering equal protection under the law is not one of them.
-NoCapo
So two men can marry but not two men and one woman?
The only reason to limit the redefinition of marriage to just two individuals is because equal marriage is a lie.
What liberals support is same-sex equal marriage, and the reason for that is the real purpose is to use the power of the state to redefine what constitutes normal sexual behavior.
As for that generic domestic partnership contract, I'll buy into that provided an individual can be joined to anyone regardless of prior relationship, sex or sexuality.
For me is doesn't matter if it is a choice or not. If we were to deny marriage rights to heterosexual couples who already have more than 2 children, that is a choice, and I would find that to be wrong as well. The point is the government should not be making decisions about this, choice or not.
Realistically, though there is not the political will to do anything about it. The best we can do is add same sex couples to the list of those who are allowed to be married. Without having the real math in front of me, I still feel confident that adding gay couples to those eligible for survivors benefits would be a drop in the bucket compared the the amount we could save by not invading other countries, or not spying on every single American citizen 24-7. If we could tackle those things, the fiscal concerns of upholding the Constitution would just vanish.
As a side note, as I was thinking about this, it seems to me that replacing marriage with a more broad contract law partnership won't change your fiscal argument. The government would still be required to pay survivor's benefits to same sex couples. In fact it would make it worse, because it would now include poly tuples and other groupings. It seems that the only fiscal argument that can be made is that we can't afford it now, regardless of how it is implemented. My position is that on issues of basic rights and equality, the question of finances should come in to play when determining how we fix the problem, not if.
-NoCapo
To completely ignore the fact that marriage came to exist because men and women create children and that these children and faithful partners need to be protected from the potential harm caused by sexual infidelity requires a specific and deliberate effort.
To also ignore the unique nature of the relationships between biologically related individuals within the family defined by traditional marriage and to dismiss the importance of those special bonds exposes the reckless indifference same-sex marriage advocates have for marriage and what marriage really is.
You'll note I had the word priority in quotes, as I was using it euphemistically.
Meanwhile, I was talking about the other word you typed. I was pretty sure I did everything anyone could possibly have expected me to do to make clear that that was the word I was focusing on and responding to.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Volobjectitarian
The problem with big government is that...
Can you admit, at least to yourself, that what you wrote here was nothing but a self-serving diatribe, crafted to extol the virtues of something that you feel would benefit yourself? The reality is that people - real human beings - need to be protected from the vigorously self-motivated patterns of government that you call for - people who are among our society's most vulnerable and therefore who would be harmed most by the abrogation of civic responsibility that you plead for. I issue the same challenge to a lot of folks these days: Please say something that shows you placing the basic human needs of people you don't know, people who are less financially secure than you, above these petulant preferences you have that would tend to benefit those who already have a comparatively higher level of financial security. Say something that shows you recognize that everything doesn't necessarily have to be structured to benefit you and those people who you care about. Can you find any way to bring yourself around to promoting things that are to the benefit of others rather than yourself?
A lot of drug offenses in our society are for marijuana possession or distribution. Contrary to myth, the majority of marijuana users are productive citizens that work hard just like everyone else.
Can you admit, at least to yourself, that what you wrote here was nothing but a self-serving diatribe, crafted to extol the virtues of something that you feel would benefit yourself?
I won't admit to what isn't true. Championing liberty, freedom and natural individual rights is championing the best possible condition within which humans can exist. It serves me no better or worse than any other human.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bUU
The reality is that people - real human beings - need to be protected from the vigorously self-motivated patterns of government that you call for - people who are among our society's most vulnerable and therefore who would be harmed most by the abrogation of civic responsibility that you plead for.
And that's what actual charity exists to do. Left alone to be charitable, human beings tend to be a very charitable lot, especially Americans. Long before the New Deal, the Great Society, and other various constructs of the welfare state, there was charity. Ever since all of the government hijackings of voluntary charity, there is still charity. My parish actively helps the most vulnerable in our community. So does every other church in my neighborhood. I donate time, money, clothing and other resources to my parish and to city, state and national charities. I've been to shelters and food banks and other places that help the really truly vulnerable, all with volunteer time, volunteer money and volunteer effort. That's how a moral society helps their most vulnerable - by choice. An immoral society removes that choice and puts "charity" at the business end of the centurion's spear.
You make the classic false dilemma mistake of the collectivist who believes only government can do a thing because you think without government forcing our hands to those things they feel should get "charity" then charity itself disappears. But the reality of the current world says otherwise, else how would so many private charities exist and stay funded year after year? You assume that because I don't want to be forced at gunpoint to give til hurts that I won't give til hurts of my own volition to charities I find worthy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bUU
I issue the same challenge to a lot of folks these days: Please say something that shows you placing the basic human needs of people you don't know, people who are less financially secure than you, above these petulant preferences you have that would tend to benefit those who already have a comparatively higher level of financial security. Say something that shows you recognize that everything doesn't necessarily have to be structured to benefit you and those people who you care about. Can you find any way to bring yourself around to promoting things that are to the benefit of others rather than yourself?
I already said it - charity. You make the assumption that the only way the less financially secure can be helped is via government. They cannot help themselves, nor can they get charity/assistance voluntarily from neighbor and community. Nope, only the government can be charitable. It's more of that same false dilemma where if the government isn't doing it by force, it will never get done. And once again, private, voluntary charity proves that belief wrong on a daily basis.
The thing about voluntary charity that makes it beautiful is that it offers a choice. Government simply taking from one to give to another robs the "giver" of that choice. An analogy - homeless person on sidewalk. Scenario A, you give them $20, and in scenario B, they mug you and take only $10. Under which scenario are you feeling more charitable, happy and morally righteous? In the scenario where you get a choice, you end up "spending" twice as much as the scenario that involves theft, but I bet the voluntary scenario is the one where you are most satisfied with the outcome.
Now let's look at it another way. Let us say there is a charity case type person in your neighborhood. You decide that you're well off and can afford to help them. So you give them $50 per week. No worries. You're happy, feeling morally righteous, so rock on. 6 weeks into your new charitable gig, you see the charity case coming out of the liquor store with a case of scotch. You ask around, and you find out that the person you thought was a charity case is actually pulling down $2,000 a week because they have a bunch of other folks convinced of their helplessness. Do you keep giving that person your charity? This example is not meant to say that everyone receiving government assistance is running a scam, and I'd wager that those who are represent a minority of all recipients, but you and I...we'll never know one way or the other using the current system, but if charity was local and voluntary, we'd know in a jiffy.
There's an inter-faith charity network in the city I live in. They run an 8 week program for getting homeless/down and out folks back on their feet and into the game. The rules are simple - you live at the church, you do not drink alcohol, you do not smoke, you do not do drugs, you are in bed at 10 PM, you are awake at 7 AM, and each day you're either learning how to interview, learning skills, looking for job, or some other useful purpose intended to get you back on your feet. Failure to abide by the conditions gets you bounced. I asked a priest at one of the churches that participates what happens after 8 weeks of following the program to the letter and the person still doesn't have a job. His answer? Not one person who follows the program has ever gotten to 8 weeks without being employed, living in an apartment and actually back on their feet. There isn't a government program in existence that can come close to that success record. Why? Because when government "helps" you, they do it from far away, with very few conditions on their continued help, almost no monitoring of your progress, and with bureaucratic waste making each dollar and minute of the taxpayers' money and time less efficient than if the taxpayer just did it themselves.
Another example - you are aware that three private charities beat the local, state and national government agencies to immediate response during Hurricane Katrina...right? Baptist Ministries, Catholic Charities and the Red Cross were there before anyone else, handing out water, blankets, meal packets, etc. Who do you think distributes what little foreign aid going to Africa doesn't get turned into AKs and 7.62 ammo? If you guessed Catholic Charities, Baptist Ministries and other religious charities, go to the head of the class.
Americans are charitable people. Without government creating dependence, the most vulnerable would get help from the neighbor, the town, the family, etc.
So you see, in a world of private charity and a much smaller government, not only do the most vulnerable get taken care of, but everyone is more free and has things like choice, voluntaryism, and all the upsides to liberty restored.
Well hopefully despite your vacuously self-serving denial of the reality you're acknowledging it at least privately.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Volobjectitarian
It serves me no better or worse than any other human.
Prove your ridiculous contention. Prove how dying of cancer because you don't have the financial resources to afford proper preventive and remedial healthcare is "better". The self-serving nature of the nonsense you support is so patently offensive that it defies reason.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Volobjectitarian
And that's what actual charity exists to do.
Wrong. Charities never intend, much less succeed, to take responsible for society's failings entirely. They're typically aimed to ameliorate some of the harm those failings cause, but no matter how much you try to bend yourself into a pretzel, in a vain attempt to deny civic responsibility, the is no indemnification for society from charities against society's obligations to its members. Your bloviating make very clear that you'll post practically anything to try to defend the morally offensive self-serving claptrap you prefer. Don't expect to do so without having it repudiated for the egoistic avarice it is, at every turn.
Do you support ACA? Universal Healthcare is a classic example of something social liberals would support, but it is also a classic example of something fiscal conservative would oppose.
I disagree. A single payer universal health care system would be the most economically
sound and cost effective. And that makes it a fiscally conservative position
ACA has nothing to do with affordability but more to do with government control e.g. private company mandates, irs fine/tax...
a reason no one should have supported it.
A comment that could only be posted in the context of proverbial gouging your own eyes out so you don't have to acknowledge the actual impact on poor people from the Medicaid expansion and from the subsidies. But that's not uncommon - lots of people attempting to support the corrupt, self-serving perspective on this do everything they can to blind themselves to how ACA actually does help some, albeit not all, poor people.
Well hopefully despite your vacuously self-serving denial of the reality you're acknowledging it at least privately.
Your story...you tell it any way you like. I know what I am about, and one dedicated forum critic won't change that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bUU
Prove your ridiculous contention. Prove how dying of cancer because you don't have the financial resources to afford proper preventive and remedial healthcare is "better". The self-serving nature of the nonsense you support is so patently offensive that it defies reason.
Appeal to sympathy, false dilemma and a straw man...all in one!
The ACA is not the only way a person can get preventative and remedial health care (false dilemma) to prevent dying (appeal to sympathy) from cancer. I do not need to prove that dying from cancer based on lack of resources is better than anything because I never made such a claim and you're a specious liar to suggest that I did.
My contention is that the maximum amount of liberty and respect for natural individual rights is the preferred state of existence for humans. Your demand for proof above can only be based on the assumption that only by government removing liberty can anyone receive treatment for cancer, else you would not ask me to "prove" that dying from cancer is preferred over government intervention.
It is patently offensive to you because you invented it to be so, and you live in a world of false dilemmas where either draconian government cures you, or you die! In that black and white fallacy world of yours, yes, any suggestion I have of less government would be recieved by someone with such puerile thinking as yours to be a suggestion of making people die. Thing is, that's not my contention, but how your incredibly warped mind reads even simple suggestions on the nature of liberty.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bUU
Wrong. Charities never intend, much less succeed, to take responsible for society's failings entirely. They're typically aimed to ameliorate some of the harm those failings cause, but no matter how much you try to bend yourself into a pretzel, in a vain attempt to deny civic responsibility, the is no indemnification for society from charities against society's obligations to its members. Your bloviating make very clear that you'll post practically anything to try to defend the morally offensive self-serving claptrap you prefer. Don't expect to do so without having it repudiated for the egoistic avarice it is, at every turn.
I never said charities intend to take responsibility for society's failings. I never said they succeed at it. I said charities can and do provide charity to those who need whatever charity it is any specific charity provides. The collectivist ideal of the risk/harm/worry free world is impossible, and the foundation of your own bloviating claptrap. We've dropped how many $trillion into a war on poverty for half a century...how's that war going? Poverty is a permanent fixture of human civilization, and yelling at a libertarian won't make it any less so. Sickness and death are permanent fixtures of the human condition. Yelling at a libertarian won't cure sickness or prevent death.
Society's first obligation is to do no harm to its members. Every single thing your beloved welfare state does first requires doing harm to someone that someone else may receive some benefit of that harm. It's utilitarian harm in the name of net good. Take some freedom away from many, give much reward to few. But your civic responsibility notions all start with first doing some manner of harm to someone. That's a simple fact and the nature of how government does anything. Limiting rights and restricting freedom is what governments do. The more involved the government, the more freedom you lose.
And I know that you're cool surrendering freedom so long as the trains run on time, but that makes you what Malcolm X referred to a house slave. You love your master because you live in the house, you wear nice clothes, you eat good meals and all your survival needs are taken care of by master. But a house slave is a slave nonetheless. And there's the crux of our difference. We both recognize that we are slaves. OK, I know I am a slave and you think you're "societally obligated", but the difference between us is that I would prefer to be free, even if it means not having master give me clothes and food anymore.
So insult away, proud house slave. Defend the master you love so dearly because he feeds and clothes you. Be his ignorant, doting servant. Use big words like avarice and bloviate to make your childish tantrums sound more erudite. Won't change the fact that you like being a slave and I don't. We'll never agree, so let this stand as my notice that I am done speaking to you. Now go lick master's boots, gimp.
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