It's Slow Going on Gay Rights Issues for Obama

gay rights

Well said; but more poignantly done to us by our government: We have the finest, best equipped mentally and physically, they graduated from West Point, they speak Arabic, they served in our military for 18 years (or so) including Iraq. We than threw out more than 13,000 men and women of our military because they admitted to being gay. This represents a holocaust. It destroys our men and women and their families. Obama is doing nothing about this. Soldiers are being thrown out under his watch right now. Obama has the authority to suspend the ruling signed into law by Bill Clinton with the “don’t ask don’t tell” edict. This is a national offense and should not be tolerated.

Marriage

It seems that the law against gay marriage is based off of Catholicism and many other religions. In the Constitution of the United States in Amendment 1 it says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." Well by making same sex marriages illegal, isn't that creating a law in favor of a religion? That is going against what our Constitution clearly states. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm making a false accusation. But that is what it seems like to me.

Gay and lesbian relationships are just as equal to those of opposite sex ones. Relationships are made up of people that like/love each other. It does not matter if it is the same or opposite sex. It's just people who are attracted to each other. That attraction to the other person(s) does not lessen or grow depending on the sexual orientation of the people(s) involved.

No matter the sexual orientation of anyone, we are all people. Thus we all should have equal rights.

Obama's background and Gay Rights

Obama may be a hypocrite.... What was his relationship with his "mentor" growing up in Hawaii? Wasn't that man not only gay but a pedophyle as well? Weren't blacks considered 3/5 human? What if we increased that standing to 4/5 human; would that have made them satisfied? But I am 5/5 human and entitled to equal rights. It was illegal for blacks to marry whites. Obama seems to have a very short hypocritical memory. maybe I'm just ignorant and wrong to say such things....

Marriage

Advocating 'same-sex marriage' is a symptom of the disintegration of Western Civilization. Marriage is not merely a document issued by some government entity. It includes the cultural knowledge, the understanding, the effort, and the force of will needed for a lifelong commitment with a member of the opposite sex. Mankind's accumulation of this cultural wisdom required by our nature required thousands of years and hundreds of generations. We learned this wisdom as children observing the successful examples of our parents, and relatives. It's not something that can be taught from a book, or in a classroom. It must be learned by example. The destruction of this knowledge can occur in just one generation, like a broken link in a chain. Fewer and fewer children have the opportunity to learn from such examples in their daily lives, as they loose the opportunity to be raised by parents of each sex under the same roof on a daily basis. They cannot learn this knowledge from people they don't know. The growing epidemic rates of divorce and illegitimacy in Western Civilization are both the causes and the effects of this disintegration, like the spread of a disease destroying our culture. Love and commitment are required, but by themselves they are inadequate for such success in marriage, just as one parent’s love and commitment by itself is inadequate to pass on this knowledge required for success in the next generation. If you feel guilty when you read this, that's your conscience telling you that you've done something wrong. You must listen to it. If this subject makes you feel miserable, that’s your karma giving you the punishment you deserve. We must spend our whole lives becoming the person who would be suitable to be a lifelong partner for a member of the opposite sex. As a salmon's whole life is spent in preparation for the harrowing struggle back up the river of it's youth, a person's whole childhood must be spent acquiring the traits, the temperament, the knowledge, the wisdom, the attitude, the character, the integrity, and the will to succeed in this most important effort required for successful marriage. When we meet the right person, we must be worthy of the honor they would give us when they promise to spend the rest of their life devoted to our happiness, knowing that they are the person who will do the same.

Irritated

I wonder if a better understanding of the practical reasons people legally bind themselves as a couple (beyond the emotional and religious) would be an interesting point to discuss. The marriage contract I hear costs $84 dollars to file—that does not sound very romantic. It doesn't sound very romantic to me. A lot of people are breaking it with divorces. That doesn't sound very romantic either.

I can attest that someone can legitimately love someone of the same sex—whether they formalize it and make it "legal" is for them to choose. That people are supporting legal rights to domestic partners, but not allowing the (apparently sanctified) marriage license brings me to believe it is emotional or belief-based or religious—things that are personal and seem not to have relevancy to whether a "marriage" should be allowed.

I know "holy matrimony" is one way to look at marriage. I looked it up in a good American dictionary. "Matrimony" refers to a man and a woman, but "Marriage" came up with definitions that had nothing to do with people. For instance: "the marriage of eggs and milk was simply divine..." It seems the two words are used interchangably.

Allowing legal rights to couples would naturally have to happen at the Federal level to really be of use to those couples, as insurance companies and the like are not always based in the same state as the people who make use of their services, making individual state policies interesting and important politically, but ultimately regional and cute. From the insurance company's standpoint, it would be in their best interest to help this law pass as it would garner more business—not supporting more customers seems even against the capitalist model.

Happy Fourth of July!!! (part 1)

Tomorrow our nation will celebrate the 233rd anniversary of its founding. Along with my wife and our closest friends and neighbors we will be barbecuing in our back yard to mark the occasion, as those of us who love our country, and appreciate the blessings of liberty take full measure of these gifts from previous generations. We will be sharing this occasion with people who are Americans by birth, as well as others who are Americans by choice, and the citizens of other nations who also enjoy living here, leaving aside whatever philosophical differences we may have with each other, to celebrate what we all have in common.

I often lament the fact that Republicans are too polite. Our desire for civility often leads us to concede issues even when we know that we are right. When members of some disadvantaged group make a claim against us, too often we find it easier to surrender to their desires than to patiently explain to them why they are wrong in principle. Someone once explained the difference between the two parties like this: If the Democrats proposed legislation to suddenly burn down the library of congress, Republicans would object to such an extreme position saying that instead their proposal should be phased in over a period of years. This is why we always eventually end up where the Democrats want to go, even if we never get there fast enough to please them. We only slow them down, but never succeed in taking the country to where we want to go. Resistance is not enough.

Our freedom depends on a very small quantity of ink, as it was applied to a piece of parchment by a quill pen, now hermetically sealed to prevent oxidation, in the hopes of preserving it for the ages. More importantly our freedom depends on an understanding of the meaning of the words written on that parchment, by men with minds from the 'Age of Enlightenment' who no longer walk among us. When we reach the point where we no longer understand what they wrote, our freedom will be lost, and it won't matter that we still have the parchment preserved in pristine condition.

The communication I've had here convinces me that a growing percentage of Americans don't want to know the meaning of this wisdom from the age of enlightenment. They are so enamored by their own narrowly drawn interests on a range of issues having immediate impact on their own particular circumstances, that any consideration of the larger picture just causes them anxiety, which the express with insults. This time the issue at hand happened to be 'gay rights'. But we see this pattern repeated in nearly every issue where Republicans disagree with Democrats. Given our aversion to strident disagreement, the ideas of our party are consequently so poorly communicated that a large percentage our own politicians, that we elect, don't even seem to understand them.

Happy Fourth of July!!! (part 2)

As we politely choose the path of least resistance, we are walking away from the freedom that we've inherited more than earned. Perhaps we are also too focused on our immediate interests. We don't want to seem disagreeable in conversations with our friends. We don't want to offend our co-workers or our customers. We don't want to give someone the opportunity to falsely portray us as bigots. If defending freedom was easy, then why do most people in the world live under tyranny? We must therefore contemplate the meaning of the words of our first Republican president, who founded our party on these principals:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Happy Fourth of July!!! (part 3)

In word and deed Lincoln showed us why his visage belongs on Mt. Rushmore. The following passages show us why his is joined there with the likeness of Jefferson on that monument. You should also make an effort to commit these words to memory, and require that your children to do the same:

" IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

Happy Fourth of July!!! (part 4)

(The Declaration of independence continued):

“He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.”

Happy Fourth of July!!! (part 5)

(The Declaration of independence continued):

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”