Conservatives have stood up for gay rights in the Mid East; Liberals have stood by as gays are hung and beheaded. (Congress, radical)

[PedroMartinez]

Originally Posted by burdell

Well, we KNOW who sent them there, you'd have to ask the current POTUS WHY they're still there, eh?

Who sent them there? I know a few names:

Joe Biden
Hillary Clinton
John Kerry
John Edwards
Diane Feinstein
Chuck Schumer
Harry Reid


Any of those names, people who voted to sent them there, sound familiar? If not, I can look up their party for you.

[dechatelet]

Originally Posted by djacques

There is a simpler explanation. Liberals and moderates accept the common sense principle that job #1 is to clean one's own house.

Does "cleaning one's own house" include letting Muslims immigrate to this country?

[urbanlife78]

Originally Posted by PedroMartinez

Who sent them there? I know a few names:

Joe Biden
Hillary Clinton
John Kerry
John Edwards
Diane Feinstein
Chuck Schumer
Harry Reid


Any of those names, people who voted to sent them there, sound familiar? If not, I can look up their party for you.

Congress doesn't vote to send troops anywhere, that is the president's job. All Congress can do is to agree or disagree in funding troops.

[dechatelet]

Originally Posted by burdell

On the other hand conservatives are quite happy to spend the blood and $$$ of Americans while telling us it's a noble cause fighting to bring a better life to Iraqis while telling us buying a Band-Aid for an American is SOCIALISM! Why should it come as any surprise they'd fight for gay rights in other countries while telling gay Americans they deserve no rights?

One of the reasons I don't particularly like what currently passes for conservative but is anything but.

Sorry, but Democrats voted for and continued to fund those wars, using the same rhetoric as Republicans.

Conservatives have not said that gays deserve no rights. They have opposed gay marriage. Exaggerate much?

I still see no strong objection from liberals to the treatment of women and gays by Muslims.

Instead, it's all "Oh, you naughty conservatives." Changing the subject is not a valid argument.

As I said, conservatives are not hanging gays and stoning women.

And they don't rush out after each terrorist attack to insist that Islam is not the problem. It's liberals who do that.

[urbanlife78]

Originally Posted by dechatelet

Sorry, but Democrats voted for and continued to fund those wars, using the same rhetoric as Republicans.

Conservatives have not said that gays deserve no rights. They have opposed gay marriage. Exaggerate much?

I still see no strong objection from liberals to the treatment of women and gays by Muslims.

Instead, it's all "Oh, you naughty conservatives." Changing the subject is not a valid argument.

As I said, conservatives are not hanging gays and stoning women.

And they don't rush out after each terrorist attack to insist that Islam is not the problem. It's liberals who do that.

I am a liberal and I strongly object how other countries, including Muslim countries and including our own treat women and gays.

Now you can't say you don't see any strong objections.

[dechatelet]

Originally Posted by urbanlife78

I am a liberal and I strongly object how other countries, including Muslim countries and including our own treat women and gays.

Now you can't say you don't see any strong objections.

So you see no major difference between treatment of women and gays in the U.S. and treatment of women and gays in Muslim countries.

Your stance hardly qualifies as a strong objection.

Instead, it's the tired old liberal trick of "blame America equally if not more."

[urbanlife78]

Originally Posted by dechatelet

So you see no major difference between treatment of women and gays in the U.S. and treatment of women and gays in Muslim countries.

Your stance hardly qualifies as a strong objection.

Instead, it's the tired old liberal trick of "blame America equally if not more."

Yes, there is a difference, though neither is good. This part I find funny with your post is that this is our country, we should point out when we are doing something wrong and try to correct it. How should we, as a country, stop the treatment of gays and women in other countries?

[bluesjuke]

Not being an apologist for those that adhere to the mistreatment may be a good start.

[djacques]

Originally Posted by Loveshiscountry

Agreed so why the concern for the initiatives American conservatives have taken as far as the rights of non-Americans in Muslim countries?

Simple curiosity about wtf wutitiz was talking about.

[djacques]

Originally Posted by wutitiz

Sean Hannity yesterday on his radio show played this clip from Maher (where I got the idea for the post) and then spoke of his (Hannity's) opposition to the hangings and beheadings of gays in Muslim countries. This is nothing new. I remember maybe 10 years ago a conservative/Republican friend of mine on another site posted a photo of a pair of gay males being hung in Iran. He argued that it was yet another reason for our involvement in that part of the world. Lefties said no, leave them be.

I'm not sure how to untangle all the strands of confusion here.

1. Just about every American liberal and every American conservative and every American moderate, communist, socialist, green, libertarian, natural law party and whoever else I'm forgetting, would "oppose" executing people for homosexuality in Muslim countries with just as much fervor and credibility as Sean Hannity did. If Hannity actually did anything other than flap his gums, I'd be delighted to hear about it.

2. Execution of people for consensual homosexual relations is not a very common practice in any nation on earth. I have probably been hit on by more Kuwaiti men in chat rooms in the last 15 years than there have been executions for homosexuality in the entire Muslim world in the same span of time.

3. The Iranian men who became the one and only openly gay cause célèbre in the entire history of the American right were Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni. They were hanged in 2005, not for being homosexuals, but for raping a 13-year-old boy. Now, I do not approve of the death penalty in general, and I do not even approve of exceptionally harsh penalties for statutory (as opposed to forcible) rape, if that's what it really was; but the claim that Asgari and Marhoni were gay martyrs is one of the more contemptible hoaxes of the unhinged American right, when you consider the crazed rhapsodies of hatred the right commonly vents against "sex offenders" and "child molesters" in America.

4. Until the last five years or so, American conservatives habitually opposed every step forward for gay rights in the United States. The late Jesse Helms was especially known for this, even opposing the nomination of qualified gay Americans to government service, e.g. Roberta Achtenberg and James Hormel. They repeatedly opposed the repeal of criminal sodomy laws. They opposed equal penalties for homosexual and heterosexual sex crimes (see Limon v. Kansas). Ken Cuccinelli advocated reinstating Virginia's law in 2013 (!) and in the same year, the D.A. in Baton Rouge, Lousiana was attempting to make arrests based on that of his state.

5. If the deplorable condition of gay rights, or human rights generally, in Iran can be convoluted into an argument defending the overthrow the government of its neighbor, and the subsequent imposition of a government friendly to--wait for it--Iran; then anything can be convoluted into an argument for anything. Alan Jackson might be pardoned for not knowing the difference between Iraq and Iran, but people who post on politics boards really ought to.

Good comment--the way I see it, this is not a clear black/white delineation. While we can't save the entire world, we can make a difference. The 19th century battle against slavery is an example. There was an international movement in Christendom to do away with slavery. If the attitude had been 'your country, your problem,' we might still have slavery today in the West.

The first step is to lead by example. We can't give away what we don't have, and we are extremely far from being the gold standard when it comes to human rights.