<p>Google- it’s a good thing</p>
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<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dobson[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dobson</a></p>
<p>Thanks emeraldkity4.</p>
<p>funding father. You asked about laws that push the conservative theme. Here’s a link from today’s Newsday that shows how conservatives don’t always directly use legislation, but under the guise of regulatory powers, the different departments use a punitive and ideologically motivating assault on different areas…such as adult entertainment. The conservatives in government also use misinformation (lies) in various literature and websites to push their agenda. Such as on the AIDS websites not mentioning Gay people and saying that of course the famous there is no global warning and also on another website taking out condom info to protect against STDS in sex education and I believe on one it said that something (was that premarital sex or condom use) causes breast cancer and of course whatever it was did not. You realize that government departments who are supposed to protect people are being used to give misinformation and mislead people and protect businesses instead. Our labor department is not longer here to help labor. Our environmental department is hardly there to protect the environment, our commerce department, with the newly appointed person meant to oversee trading is totally for business, not there to protect us. I can go one forever. Our attorney general thinks torture is not so bad, and having the tobacco companies pay a huge bill for killing many of us and lying about addiction… is not necessary. Civil rights? Not so important nowadays. Corporate and rich people’s rights is the only thing that can keep this capitalist society going. It’s not the laws that make this so insidious.That is the point, they’re not necessarily using LAWS, but using their regulatory capabilities to misinform and push their conservative agenda. THAT IS MY FRIGGING TAX MONEY being used for that. I would think that this website, with parents of smart college students, would believe in Science not religious mumbo jumbo. We are in serious decline.
Note of warning… in the link, it’s true that the topic is about the adult entertainment industry, BUT the same regulatory push is being used for ever single other area, too. I am not advocating a push for adult entertainment. but it should be protected under free speech.
<a href=“Newsday | Long Island's & NYC's News Source - Newsday”>Newsday | Long Island's & NYC's News Source - Newsday;
<p>sorry, put the url into your browser, I couldn’t get a clean link</p>
<p>THis reminds me of how long it took to admit that AIDS and HIV were a health risk-. When the president assumed that it was “the gay plague” he wasn’t too fast at getting off the stick to have the blood supply tested, after all it was just those homosexuals who were getting ill right? Who cares about them?</p>
<p>I hope that no one has a comparable experience to our family when our premature baby required multiple transfusions of platelets during her first week of life when the platelet level dropped so low that she had internal hemmoraging throughout her body. Blood testing was not used for AIDS then- this was in 1982
Luckily the transfusions worked and her body stablized enough that she was able to go home from teh hospital at 8 weeks of age- two weeks before her due date.
However when testing did become available- it was advised that I have her tested. We had to go to the health dept as it was the only place that did not keep track of who was positive and I worried that it would harm her abilty to be insured if she was positive.
a very stressful time.</p>
<p>There’s a difference between “taking marching orders” and responding to an environment filled with misinformation and hysteria as organized by the work of Dobson, Gary Bauer (Family Research Council) et alia. Without the vitriolic anti-gay spew of folks like them, the anti-gay marriage movement would become as limp and flaccid as a balloon with the air let out. </p>
<p>Good post, Lauras50. </p>
<p>EmeraldK, actually, one of the many infuriating things is that theocrats attempting to hijack Christianity in this country are a theologically narrow group with an outsized voice because they are incredibly well organized. It was almost a shock to some of our Jewish friends in the Kerry campaign to discover that church-going Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, etc. could be pro-choice, supportive of gay rights, and very much collectively against spirit of the Busheviks’ agenda. The husband has gone on to become active in Democratic politics as a result.</p>
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<p>Very true. A technical point: the regulatory aspect is also a legal one - it’s just that groups are not trying to push their laws through Congress and instead are getting their ideology through our gov’t beaurocracy. The New Deal is now biting the Dems in the rear - but that’s a different rant about the dangers of an elected law-making body that does not have any constituents. If the EPA, FTC, FCC, et al were accountable to the public, this would not happen. Unfortunately, as of now, it is virtually impossible to get any of those people out of their positions of power - and so very hard to complain about it. It’s not like they are worried that we’ll vote them out of office if they claim that global warming isn’t happening (it’s happening, folks - part natural, cyclical climatic changes, and part the fact that we are trashing the earth). Maybe, just maybe, the Dems will realize that big, unaccountable gov’t is a bad thing - when it is used against them. </p>
<p>End federalist/libertarian rant. :p</p>
<p>Now here’s an interesting article about quantum physics and evolution versus creationism!</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/science/05essa.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/science/05essa.html</a></p>
<p>And here’s a great one on Gay marriage and how the history of marriage has made it inevitable. Good going NY times today!</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/opinion/05coontz.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/opinion/05coontz.html</a></p>
<p>“inevitable”? You think the article shows how the history of marriage makes gay marriage “inevitable”? It talks about how changing traditions didn’t unravel marriage and not much else. I’m not going to get into what I think here, but inevitable, at least from this line of reasoning, it’s not.</p>
<p>The following is the sum total of Coontzs consideration of children in marriage, its really quite revealing and fascinating and not at all too deep:</p>
<p>First, marriage allowed families to increase their household labor force by having children.</p>
<p>Turns out, our ancestors saw their kids as a way of perpetuating child-labor sans the love we all finally feel from our enlightened parents in these brave modern days; I always knew there was something not quite right about those old barbaric farts who preceded us. </p>
<p>Way to go New York Times, finally, the truth is revealed let us all make an extra effort to sleep well tonight.</p>
<p>bneg, those stats are very interesting… so are you implying that there is a much lower rate of etrosexuals having sex with anyone under 19…OMG, who knew? Even with each other??</p>
<p>That very thoughtful of you, citygirlsmom! You made a wonderful point; that ‘homosexuals’ and 'heterosexual who have sex with those besides their one and only spouse" are really no different, both needing our support and special care. You also prove that marriage is VERY sacred indeed, and should not be tainted with eyes seeing it as “traditional marriage”.</p>
<p>I am not really understanding the point you are trying to make bneg
what I got from citygirlmom comment was that stating that one half of a homosexual couple was under 19- assuming that was going to be shocking- really means nothing unless we know that the other partner is much older.
From what I have read- both hetero and homo sexual couples who begin experimenting with sex are usually close in age- the difference is- in some communities hetero couples are married off early so while there might be for example a high rate of teenage pregancy, it often isn’t looked at the same way- if the couple is married.
GLTB couples don’t have those pressures, but then again they don’t have that option either.</p>
<p>The point is that there is no point in comparing homosexuals and heterosexuals. The point is that all kinds of sex outside what is now called “traditional marriage” are equally hurtful, and the standard of marriage is kept not to patronize but protect.</p>
<p>I still don’t understand
I do have a fairly traditional marriage- but I lived with who is now my husband for 4 years before we decided we wanted to have children and that we probably should be married to do so.
We were in fact having sex- before we were married but I am not sure who would be hurt by that.
We married because we wanted our relationship to be formally recognized by the society in which we lived as a precurser to adding a child to our family.
If we were a gay couple and wanted to be formally recognized we would have been SOL. That would have been hurtful as you put it.
As it is , I am recognized as " the wife" and if my spouse is injured etc. I will be legally recognized as next of kin and have rights involving his care.
If we were a GLBT couple, I would have no legal rights.
That would be very hurtful.
As it is my husbands parents don’t recognize me as his wife even though we have been married for 24 years. I haven’t seen them for 5 years even though we live in teh same city. My husband sees them very rarely. However- I still am his next of kin- and legally recognized by the rest of society if not my inlaws.
I beleive that all adult couples should have the option of having their commitment legally recognized and honored.
We as a society should not be telling people who they can love-</p>
<p>No, not all sex outside of “traditional” ways is bad…and what is sex… seriously, many kids will do everythng BUT…so unless you count basically no physical contact below the neck as not having sex, well, fine, but there is a WHOLE range of activities that can create hurt, shame, and can create love and caring…it all depends on the peoples’ maturity and caring for themselves and the other person</p>
<p>If you read about what kids who say they are abstinant are really doing, it is quite interesting. And those behaviours can cause the same kind of reactions emotionally as going all the way.</p>
<p>Such paternalistic “protection” I am happy to live without. You may do as you will…or not…I’ll thank you–or anyone–not to impose the same narrow religiously-based view on me or mine.</p>
<p>Who would be hurt?</p>
<p>We were in fact having sex- before we were married but I am not sure who would be hurt by that.
It seems no one was hurt; you got married, as you say, as a precurser to adding a child to our family.
A traditional reason indeed. However, those who are likely to be hurt in a four year unmarried live-in are those who, lacking patience or fortitude, might have conceived a child first and then not only failed to marry but, as is far more common than not in these circumstances, separated from each other leaving a single parent (likely the mother) to support and care for her child with the father, or baby-daddy living it up in absentia (likely soon to enter another live-in). </p>
<p>Many people have unprotected sex without Pregnancy or AIDs or some other STD but few reasonable people would take that as evidence that having un-protected sex is the preferred or recommended method. Perhaps we could say the same for un-protected (non-married) live-ins.
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<p>If you read about what kids who say they are abstinant are really doing, it is quite interesting</p>
<p>How about those people who say they are really trying to loose weight, or quit smoking, or really get off drugs. Its not, I would think, a zero sum game. There are degrees of success in any effort of the will to reign-in desire. To dedicate yourself to quitting or limiting any of the above will more than likely take a great deal of not only physical, but moral strength. Perhaps it is better to praise those who make the effort than to mock them for not having yet succeeded in attaining the life they long for.
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<p>You may do as you will…or not…I’ll thank you–or anyone–not to impose the same narrow religiously-based view on me or mine.</p>
<p>Are all the views that diverge from your views religious? Or are they simply different? Are religiously-based views inferior to other (fill-in-the-blank)-based views by natural fact? I dont see anyone here railing against other and non-religious views.
The majority of Americans do not have Elite college degrees or any degrees at all for that matter, many of them have formed their views in traditional religious settingslike the family or home.
They do not refer to Rousseau or Kant or Nietzsche or Marx or Rawls or Singer or Habermas or Timothy Leary to make moral or political choices they will have to live with (morally and economically). And beyond that, as Descartes once said, and I believe, there is no theory too absurd that there is not an intellectual somewhere who will embrace itand I would add, enforce or encode it.
Im quite certain that the views of the average (religious/traditional) American are not as absurd as they are made out to be by those immodest and innovative intellectuals Descartes, some four hundred years ago, warned us of, like say, psychiatrists ;)</p>