Comments on: Don’t Even Think Of Marrying Your Dog or Robot In North Carolina

By: Eclectic Radical

Eclectic Radical — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:49:27 +0000

I live in Tennessee, near the Virginia border. Obama carried VA, though he lost TN by a huge margin. However, I can say with a great deal of satisfaction that there are a great many younger people, even in this part of the country, who are cosmopolitan Americans rather than rural Southern stereotypes. Many younger people are increasingly intellectual and increasingly pursue education, whether formal or simply by reading and listening.

So I do believe change is coming. I didn’t mean to imply that I did not.

I simply believe that it will take time and attrition.

By: Ron Chusid

Ron Chusid — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 19:25:17 +0000

Fortunately younger voters tend to be more tolerant. Over time I expect first the blue states and ultimately the red states to overcome this bigotry. Unfortunately in some areas it might still take quite a while.

By: Eclectic Radical

Eclectic Radical — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:06:42 +0000

Honestly, nomoreGOP, it has to work like all civil rights movements ultimately work.

The slow drip of cultural growth will eventually make human rights the mainstream and bigotry the minority, as it has with other civil rights issues. Racism and chauvinism are still real, but they are no longer ‘respectable’ or ‘mainstream.’ Today people are shocked by jokes that used to be socially acceptable.

This doesn’t mean we should stop fighting for human rights, because working for such rights is part of what causes cultural change. It does mean, however, we need to know what to expect.

Alexander Hamilton, after all, wanted to abolish slavery in 1776. It took a touch longer.

By: nomoreGOP

nomoreGOP — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 06:13:58 +0000

touche eclectic…

now.. how do we get the crazy religious folks to listen?

lol

By: Eclectic Radical

Eclectic Radical — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 04:21:35 +0000

There is belief among conservatives that homosexuals are being given ‘special rights’ when they are given equal protection under the law. The complete inability to separate Church and State that so dogs the modern fundamentalist Christian in America is partially responsible. Because the Bible says X, then the government should legislate X and X is often assumed to be official policy because it is not officially rebuked. When official policy attempts to officially rebuke X, then those who assumed X was de facto policy get up on their soap boxes to condemn the government for betraying its principles when what they really mean is that the government must follow their priniciples.

I don’t want to say the word ‘stupid’, but an intellectual disconnect is involved. Because Christian marriage is strictly male-female, the ‘right to marry’ is seen as referring exclusively to heterosexual relationships, so the right for a man to marry a man or a woman to marry a woman is a ‘special right’ not granted to the rest of the populace. There is no ability to understand the idea that, in the strict accordance of the Supreme Court definition of the right to marry, anyone is free to marry anyone they choose regardless of social convention because marriage is a civil right.