It brings up an interesting point. Recently in the Bay Area, there was an initiative on the next ballot about banning circumcision within city limits, but I think it got removed after multiple religious representatives in partnership with the ALCU threatened to sue the city.

I find something inherently masochistic about gay people wanting to be married in an institution that loathes them.

Unless it's secular, but then it might as well be a civil union/partnership. I guess I'm missing something.

>> ^MarineGunrock:

Um, I wasn't talking about Cenk. Even Tits McGee's audio is terrible. Also, bandwidth? What bandwitdth are they paying for? Last I checked, Youtube was free. >> ^BoneyD:
>> ^MarineGunrock:
God, I hate TYT. Why the fuck is their audio recording so shitty? My cell phone has better clarity than these morons' set-up.
Also, why the fuck can't I just watch a newsclip?

Because Cenk is in New York, talking via PolyCom back to their Los-Angeles studio. Previously, they were using Skype while he was over there, which was just a god-awful experience; constantly breaking up or cutting out.
Why isn't it better? Well... I guess despite TYT turning over $1 million a year from member fees, advertising and YouTube partnership, their 11 employees and bandwidth costs must be expensive. The stream from the LA studio itself has improved over what it was a couple of years ago and the YouTube clips are generally much higher quality.
I dunno. For a non-corporate media outlet, I think they do okay.



They broadcast their whole 2 hour show on the site, looping 24 hours a day. Statsholic shows ~45k unique visitors a day and similar from freewebsitereport. How much data they actually use, I have no idea; but I didn't suggest that bandwidth was their sole expense.

BTW, I had watched this segemnt from the live stream. When I went back and watched this YT clip, it was WAY clearer. Is it 1080p? No. But does it really, really need to be that good?

Um, I wasn't talking about Cenk. Even Tits McGee's audio is terrible. Also, bandwidth? What bandwitdth are they paying for? Last I checked, Youtube was free. >> ^BoneyD:

>> ^MarineGunrock:
God, I hate TYT. Why the fuck is their audio recording so shitty? My cell phone has better clarity than these morons' set-up.
Also, why the fuck can't I just watch a newsclip?

Because Cenk is in New York, talking via PolyCom back to their Los-Angeles studio. Previously, they were using Skype while he was over there, which was just a god-awful experience; constantly breaking up or cutting out.
Why isn't it better? Well... I guess despite TYT turning over $1 million a year from member fees, advertising and YouTube partnership, their 11 employees and bandwidth costs must be expensive. The stream from the LA studio itself has improved over what it was a couple of years ago and the YouTube clips are generally much higher quality.
I dunno. For a non-corporate media outlet, I think they do okay.

>> ^MarineGunrock:

God, I hate TYT. Why the fuck is their audio recording so shitty? My cell phone has better clarity than these morons' set-up.
Also, why the fuck can't I just watch a newsclip?


Because Cenk is in New York, talking via PolyCom back to their Los-Angeles studio. Previously, they were using Skype while he was over there, which was just a god-awful experience; constantly breaking up or cutting out.

Why isn't it better? Well... I guess despite TYT turning over $1 million a year from member fees, advertising and YouTube partnership, their 11 employees and bandwidth costs must be expensive. The stream from the LA studio itself has improved over what it was a couple of years ago and the YouTube clips are generally much higher quality.

I dunno. For a non-corporate media outlet, I think they do okay.

Civil partnership should be equal to marriage in everything but name and ceremony and straight couples should boycott marriage in solidarity. Saying "you can get a partership but you can't call it marriage" is almost like telling them they can ride on the bus, just not in those seats.

Marriage doesn't belong to the church anymore, it belongs to society.

If NY Times has any doubts about the Assange's motives they could have and should have expressed this early rather than after they have benefited from Wikileak's partnership for so long. No one forced them to partner with Wikileaks and they could have passed the baton on to someone else.

Going on about what Assange's "true" and secret motives are is so conspiratorial and pointless. Why waste your time wondering what he's really thinking (world domination or ruins??) or whether he's just a boy who happened to climb a tree that rained shit (this is how you describe information released). You could have doubts like this about anyone - it's the people that hide it the best that would scare me the most. You are never going to know until some solid evidence is provided by ... a whistleblower.

Let's focus on what can be seen and proven to have happened. Wikileaks had the guts to accept classified information and to bring it to the public. This has opened the eyes of many people and opened up a lot of debate. The clip of the innocent iraqis and journalists killed was horrifying but needed to be seen. I will thank Wikileaks even for just this one little clip.

If and when I see Wikileaks/Assange do something against my beliefs then I will stop supporting them.

To me, Wikileaks have allowed journalists to kick down thousands of strands of ropes from the top of the tree to where the rest of us on the ground can take hold and, if we wished to, climb a little higher so that we can begin to see exactly why or how it all happened as individuals and make our own minds up.

>> ^MaxWilder:

I don't know what is going on here. Is this a move by the line owners against the independent ISPs that are leasing the bandwidth? Is this their way of getting around the regulation that forces the owners to let others share their lines?
And both sides are arguing that it's in the best interests of the end user, when they are actually concerned much more about their bottom line? That's what it seems like with my limited information.


That is EXACTLY what it is all about. Here in Canada, ISP's have been allowed to charge customers on a metered billing basis. I even preferred using the local metered billing ISP because they also consistently provided you the full speed they advertised, not the "up to speed x", but a dedicated, you can always hit speed x no matter how many users are on at the same time. You just had to be aware that if you ran that line at full speed all month you'd go over your cap. It was a tradeoff, but I much preferred a line that was going to really be high speed all the time, instead of discovering that between 4 and 11pm you can't even get half the speed advertised because the ISP had so badly oversold their capacity.

The new regulation passed here in Canada is, as you observed, extending that policy to include the lines that major providers like BELL/ATT are required to provide at cost access to for other smaller ISP's. This requirement is based on the government having spent a lot of it's money in partnership with BELL/ATT to put the cross country fibre lines in place. Before this legislation passed, smaller ISPs would be renting a line from BELL/ATT for say 100x more than a normal customer, but with no usage caps. That in turn let the smaller ISP resell to customers who would, on average, never run the line full and make a profit. With the new change, BELL/ATT are immediately using this as an opportunity to crush out the pesky competition. They are now applying a cap on the lines they are obligated to lend out to the smaller isps.

To try and summarize it, BELL/ATT are required to lease/rent/share their network access with smaller ISP's at a price fixed by the government. This new ruling doesn't let BELL/ATT change that price, but it does let them apply a usage cap on those fixed price lines. So instead of paying $10 a month to use a line for 720hrs a month, BELL/ATT can just say it still only costs $10 a month, but you can only use it for 100hrs a month now without paying a premium. BELL/ATT can and will use this to destroy the competing ISP's that depend on access to the infrastructure that the government helped BELL/ATT to build.

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 OTTAWA 001258

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/22/2018
TAGS: PREL PGOV CA
SUBJECT: THE U.S. IN THE CANADIAN FEDERAL ELECTION -- NOT!

REF: OTTAWA 1216

Classified By: PolMinCouns Scott Bellard, reason 1.4 (d)

¶1. (C) Summary. Despite the overwhelming importance of the
U.S. to Canada for its economy and security, bilateral
relations remain the proverbial 900 pound gorilla that no one
wants to talk about in the 2008 Canadian federal election
campaigns. This likely reflects an almost inherent
inferiority complex of Canadians vis-a-vis their sole
neighbor as well as an underlying assumption that the
fundamentals of the relationship are strong and unchanging
and uncertainty about the outcome of the U.S. Presidential
election. End Summary.

¶2. (C) The United States is overwhelmingly important to
Canada in ways that are unimaginable to Americans. With over
$500 billion in annual trade, the longest unsecured border in
the world, over 200 million border crossings each year, total
investment in each other's countries of almost $400 billion,
and the unique North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD)
partnership to ensure continental security, excellent
bilateral relations are essential to Canada's well being.
Canadians are, by and large, obsessed with U.S. politics --
especially in the 2008 Presidential race -- and follow them
minutely (with many Canadians even wishing they could vote in
this U.S. election rather than their own, according to a
recent poll). U.S. culture infiltrates Canadian life on
every level. 80 pct of Canadians live within 100 miles of
the border, and Canadians tend to visit the U.S. much more
regularly than their American neighbors come here.

¶3. (C) Logically, the ability of a candidate, or a party,
or most notably the leader of a party successfully to manage
this essential relationship should be a key factor for voters
to judge in casting their ballots. At least so far in the
2008 Canadian federal election campaign, it is not. There
has been almost a deafening silence so far about foreign
affairs in general, apart from Prime Minister Stephen
Harper's pledge on September 10 that Canadian troops would
indeed leave Afghanistan in 2011 according to the terms of
the March 2008 House of Commons motion, commenting that "you
have to put an end on these things." The Liberals -- and
many media commentators -- seized on this as a major
Conservative "flip flop," with Liberal Party leader Stephane
Dion noting on September 10 that "I have been calling for a
firm end date since February 2007" and that "the
Conservatives can't be trusted on Afghanistan; they can't be
trusted on the climate change crisis; they can't be trusted
on the economy." He has returned in subsequent days to the
Conservative record on the environment and the economy, but
has not pursued the Afghan issue further. All three
opposition party leaders joined in calling for the government
to release a Parliamentary Budget Officer's report on the
full costs of the Afghan mission, which PM Harper agreed to
do, with some apparent hesitation. However, no other foreign
policy issues have yet risen to the surface in the campaigns,
apart from New Democrat Party leader Jack Layton opining on
September 7 that "I believe we can say good-bye to the George
Bush era in our own conduct overseas."

¶4. (C) The U.S. market meltdown has provided some fodder
for campaign rhetoric, with the Conservatives claiming their
earlier fiscal and monetary actions had insulated Canada from
much of the economic problems seen across the border.
(Comment: there is probably more truth in the fact that the
Canadian financial sector does not have a large presence in
QCanadian financial sector does not have a large presence in
U.S. and other foreign markets, and instead concentrates on
the domestic market. The Canadian financial sector has also
been quite conservative in its lending and investment
choices. End comment.) PM Harper has insisted that the
"core" Canadian economy and institutions were sound, while
promising to work closely with "other international players"
(i.e., not specifically the U.S.) to deal with the current
problems. He warned on September 19 that "voters will have
to decide who is best to govern in this period of economic
uncertainty -- do you want to pay the new Liberal tax? Do
you want the Liberals to bring the GST back to 7%?" The
Liberals have counter-claimed that Canada is now the "worst
performing economy in the G8," while noting earlier Liberal
governments had produced eight consecutive balanced budgets
and created about 300,000 new jobs annually between 1993 and
¶2005. The NDP's Layton argued on September 16 that these
economic woes are "the clearest possible warning that North
American economies under conservative governments, in both
Canada and the United States, are on the wrong track," but
promised only that an NDP government would institute a
"top-to-bottom" review of Canada's regulatory system -- not
delving into bilateral policy territory.

¶5. (C) On the environment, Liberal leader Dion, in
defending his "Green Shift" plan on September 11, noted that

OTTAWA 00001258 002 OF 002

"both Barack Obama and John McCain are in favor of putting a
price on carbon. Our biggest trading partner is moving
toward a greener future and we need to do so too." PM Harper
has stuck to the standard Conservative references to the
Liberal plan as a "carbon tax, which will hit every consumer
in every sector" and claimed on September 16 that, under
earlier Liberal governments, "greenhouse gas emissions
increased by more than 30 percent, one of the worst records
of industrialized countries." NDP leader Layton argued
that, on the environment, PM Harper "has no plan" while
"Dion's plan is wrong and won't work," unlike the NDP plan to
reward polluters who "clean up their act and imposing
penalties on those that don't," which he said had also been
"proposed by both U.S. Presidential candidates, Barack Obama
and John McCain."

¶6. (C) NAFTA? Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative?
Border crossing times? The future of NORAD? Canada's role
in NATO? Protection of Canadian water reserves? Canadian
sovereignty in the Arctic and the Northwest Passage? At
least among the leaders of the major parties, these issues
have not come up so far in the campaigns, although they seize
much public attention in normal times. Even in Ontario and
Quebec, with their long and important borders with the U.S.,
the leadership candidates apparently so far have not ventured
to make promises to woo voters who might be disgruntled with
U.S. policies and practices. However, these may still emerge
as more salient issues at the riding level as individual
candidates press the flesh door to door, and may also then
percolate up to the leadership formal debates on October 1
and 2.

¶7. (C) Why the U.S. relationship appears off the table, at
least so far, is probably be due to several key factors. An
almost inherent Canadian inferiority complex may disincline
Canadian political leaders from making this election about
the U.S. (unlike in the 1988 free trade campaigns) instead of
sticking to domestic topics of bread-and-butter interest to
voters. The leaders may also recognize that bilateral
relations are simply too important -- and successful -- to
turn into political campaign fodder that could backfire.
They may also be viewing the poll numbers in the U.S. and
recognizing that the results are too close to call. Had the
Canadian campaign taken place after the U.S. election, the
Conservatives might have been tempted to claim they could
work more effectively with a President McCain, or the
Liberals with a President Obama. Even this could be a risky
strategy, as perceptions of being too close to the U.S.
leader are often distasteful to Canadian voters; one
recurrent jibe about PM Harper is that he is a "clone of
George W. Bush." Ultimately, the U.S. is like the proverbial
900 pound gorilla in the midst of the Canadian federal
election: overwhelming but too potentially menacing to
acknowledge.

Visit Canada,s Economy and Environment Forum at
http://www.intelink.gov/communities/state/can ada

WILKINS

>> ^blankfist:


Corporations exist because government gives them legitimacy. They also receive corporate welfare, subsidies, regulatory favors, enjoy franchise monopolies, etc. In rare occasions the government has even used eminent domain in their favor, i.e. Walmart.
So you tell me why corporations rule the marketplace and why small business entrepreneurs find it tough to compete.


Ah, absolutely true, but this bias enables those large businesses to stomp small competition out of the market with marketing and buyouts. The problem is the money in the entire system. The politicians and corporations have developed a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" partnership. The politicians funded by these large corporations then turn around and pass legislation favorable to the corporation in question. In this environment the worker class has no control, which is what the majority are rapidly becoming. Since government rules and regulations are still somewhat under our control via the democratic process, we need to join together to take the money out of politics and then elect competent leaders. If we solely vilify government and seek to destroy its power, we'll have no way to limit the government.

We can do this now through the democratic process if we join together before it's too late. While we may hold somewhat different political beliefs, we need to put those aside for now to focus on electing leaders whose sole platform is to take the money out of politics. When our voice is restored to the nation's government we can discuss other topics further in a civil manner.

Mind you, when I say money out of politics I mean we need to vote for controls to ensure money stays out of politics indefinitely. I would propose a smartly worded constitutional amendment.

I do want to encourage innovative business management, but when large corporations can wipe up their worker's conditions and poor customer service with advertising and political bribes, we need to lower the volume to make our voices heard. Internet discussion groups like this are one of our last remaining avenues for civil discussion of this nature. Let's work together to figure out what our priorities are.

This is a lesbian's view of the legal stuff: "The Difference Between Marriage and Civil Unions".

It's a short enough article so worth a read. IMO the important points start at "Taxes", halfway down the first page.

My own two cents: I think that in a human sense marriage is just a label for loving commitment. People can be everything a husband and wife can be without that label just as that label doesn't automatically make the couple a paradigm. In that sense I don't care who calls themselves married. In the legal sense I always thought of marriage as a declaration of two people as a single legal entity and all the entitlements that that brings are a natural progression of that. I guess that simple definition won't stand up to most people's standards but in my mind everything else is just an elaboration. I don't see why a state would interfere with that on the basis of genders. The only difference between a homosexual union and a heterosexual union (excepting sterility) is the ability to produce kids. There's plenty of evidence that even the ability to raise kids is the same.

So... Gay marriage legal? It's only a label and taxes. The label doesn't matter a damn and the main argument against tax equality boils down to "we give these guys tax cuts 'cos they breed". <sarc> I say give the children of unfit breeders to fit gays and give everyone who's raising kids the extra rights. </sarc> Or not. There is that whole over-population thing.>> ^quantumushroom:
For me, the gay "marriage" debate ended with the arrival of civil unions. If a gay couple has the same legal rights as a married couple, then that is, in essence, the libertarian goal. As Elton John put it: "I don't want to be married. I'm very happy with a civil partnership. If gay people want to get married, or get together, they should have a civil partnership. The word 'marriage,' I think, puts a lot of people off. You get the same equal rights that we do when we have a civil partnership. Heterosexual people get married. We can have civil partnerships."
Obviously the 'loudest' gays are not happy with "civil unions"...

First of all, let me say thank you for the reasoned arguments. As liberalsift's only "conservatarian" a heavy (voluntary) responsibility weigh on my shoulders. I'll attempt to address the talking points.


Native Americans practiced same-sex coupling. Thousands of years even before that, there's evidence of humans pairing off for mutual protection and cooperation - two prehistoric dudes have a better chance of taking down large game than if they worked alone. Two female cave girls have a better chance of surviving and avoiding being raped by cave dudes than if they were separate.

But what you're describing isn't marriage, and even if there were homosexual acts under these circumstances, it's not something the tribe would recognize. Even the ancient Greek pederasts scoffed at the idea of gay marriage.

Same-sex coupling has existed as long as humans have. Hell, even modern day penguins are known to engage in same-sex coupling.

We shouldn't be looking to the animal kingdom for comparisons, where cannibalism and killing other beasts' offspring is normal.

Before people cite the Book of Matthew, let me remind them that "Man shall not lay with another man..." doesn't refer to homosexuality. There wasn't even a word for it when the bible was authored. The line references how we are not to treat men the same way we treat women. And just how were women treated during the days of the bible's authoring? Like cattle - merely objects to be bought, sold, and bartered for. The line speaks that we should not enslave men the way we enslave women. The line speaks to institutionalized misogyny, and has NOTHING to do with homosexuality.

I have never heard this interpretation of Matthew so I remain...neutral.

The first amendment guarantees us freedom of religion. It also guarantees us freedom FROM religion. Every law needs a secular reason for existing. "God says it's wrong" isn't, nor will ever be, reason enough for a law. The 14th amendment guarantees equal rights and freedoms, even to people you don't like.

The First Amendment does NOT guarantee freedom "from" religion, this deliberate distortion is a 'gift' Progressivism. Equal rights and freedoms have very obvious limitations. You're free to ride a bicycle and you're free to drive a car on the freeway, but you're NOT free to ride your bicycle on the freeway.

The Judicial branch did it's job - protecting the people from themselves. Just because the majority voted for something doesn't mean jack shit. If it's unconstitutional, it won't fly, no matter how big the majority.

A judge made up things for a non-existent "right", similar to how abortion was made legal by non-existent privacy rights. Whether you agree with abortion or not, the ruling was inept and corrupt. There was a time when slavery was considered constitutional, so it's true that things change.

And why is it "Small-Government" types always try to use the government to enforce their religious views? Seems HYPOCRITICAL to me.

Some libertarians vouch for the "privatization of marriage" which means the State doesn't recognize any marriage but can only enforce contracts between (any) people. (Unfortunately?) we don't live in a libertarian society---far from it---and the State (with much thanks to Statists) has its tentacles in all manner of arenas and areas in which it has no business. The main reasons governments evolved was to preserve private property rights and keep enemies outside the gates. Marriage is a legal contract, and since it affects taxation and a slew of other things it is the State's business, for better or worse.

For me, the gay "marriage" debate ended with the arrival of civil unions. If a gay couple has the same legal rights as a married couple, then that is, in essence, the libertarian goal. As Elton John put it: "I don't want to be married. I'm very happy with a civil partnership. If gay people want to get married, or get together, they should have a civil partnership. The word 'marriage,' I think, puts a lot of people off. You get the same equal rights that we do when we have a civil partnership. Heterosexual people get married. We can have civil partnerships."

Obviously the 'loudest' gays are not happy with "civil unions", which brings me to my next point: there is indeed something special about the one man/one woman marriage. If there was not, these gay pawns (the latest pawns of Progressive Statist subversives) wouldn't be so adamant. Except for the fundamentalists, no one could care less about people's personal lives....but if you force a majority to recognize something as being on par with what they consider sacrosanct, then it will be received negatively.

I would be personally delighted if some judge ruled---against the will of the people---that all controlled substances drugs be made legal, prostitution be made legal, all excessive federal hurdles to owning firearms be abolished, perhaps the income tax be replaced with something else.......but it's not the way the system works. As a member of society I am as much a "victim" of traditional values as everyone else.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Society is stupid. A large community of people in Germany decided killing Jews was ok (Godwin seekers you can now leave). It's a big reason we don't have a pure democracy: because people are STUPID. They're ignorant, they're fickle, they're quick to react to things they're afraid of and it is just plain stupid put somebody's rights to a vote, if that right isn't violating another person's rights.

Society is indeed stupid, but not all the time, and therefore the accumulated wisdom of centuries of trial and error shouldn't be readily abandoned.

----------------------------------------------------
Well, this is just one sifter's opinions. At present about 70% of Americans oppose same-sex marriage. Perhaps in 10 years only 30% will be opposed and society's values will radically change.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

What a "civil union" might be is rather nebulous, and civil union and domestic partnership statutes as enacted thus far in the US often do not approach the breadth of rights accorded to married couples, and are in legal limbo regarding state reciprocity agreements. Accordingly, the only way to guarantee equivalent rights to married couples is for LGBT unions to have the same legal identity.
It is an issue - and one I appreciate. However - see above. You can't just say, "OK - gay marriage is legal" and ignore the fact that there are thousands of churches who will refuse to perform the ritual, and who happen to have 1st Ammendment rights protecting that stance. Civil unions are the best solution here, even though they are not perfect.

Who's talking about forcing churches to perform gay marriages if it's against their values? I'm not aware of any prominent gay rights advocates who oppose people's right to dissent from such actions or conscientiously decline to involve themselves in such ceremonies. Churches can't even be forced to perform interracial marriages, if the members of the church are opposed.

I am aware that some opposed to the legalization of gay marriage have claimed that churches conscientiously opposed to gay marriages would be forced to perform them, but such claims do not have legal justification, and misrepresent the goals of gay rights advocates. We don't want to force people by law to accept us--we just want to be able to live our lives with the same freedoms and privileges everyone else has.

Further, it must be noted that there is no shortage of churches actively supportive of gay marriage. There are plenty of them even right here in Oklahoma, in the middle of the Bible Belt. Surely, if freedom of religion is that important to you, you would want to defend the rights of these churches to affirm same-sex unions as marriage.

>> ^dannym3141:

How do you get to be kinda gay? Not that i'm interested or anythin.....


Short answer: Being born that way.

Long answer: Sexuality's complicated sometimes. I like girls enough that, if I met just the right one, I might be interested in making a go of it. But not enough that, generally speaking, I'm terribly interested in more than appreciating a woman's good looks sometimes. I sort of fall between the cracks between "bisexual" and "gay."

Things such as "gay marriage being accepted by the church" isn't radical, it's just asking for equal treatment.

Simple, basic rulings that say gays can visit relatives in hospitals and such are fine. These things deal with secular rights. I've never met a single person opposed to these kinds of issues. But gay 'marriage' as a concept is inherently tied to the marriage ritual, which is a sectarian ordinance that confers secular benefits. That's where the radicalism enters in...

Human society developed in such a way that Churches are where marriages tend to be performed, while secular laws were passed to promote marriage because the nuclear family unit was beneficial to society. So on the one hand if you want marriage you (as often as not) are going to a religious organization. But when you want the societal benefits of marriage, you are talking about secular rules.

So if you tell the gay community they can get 'married', then they are going to go to churches and demand the sectarian ritual to obtain the secular benefits. But many churches are highly opposed to homosexuality as a moral violation. To ask them to perform such a ritual for a gay couple would be highly offensive - the equivalent of marching into a vegan's house and DEMANDING that they personally butcher a cow and chow down on the resulting BBQ.

So when advocates demand gay marriage and DO NOT account for these distinctions, then the legislation moves from sensible to radicalism. Most gay couples just want the secular benefits. Most religions have no problem with that. But when marriage laws are proposed, they MUST contain concrete language protecting the rights of those who oppose the lifestyle on a sectarian level. Without that language, the proposal is radical because it violates 1st Ammendment protections - no matter how many 'sensible' things it may confer. This is what the bruhaha over Prop-8 was all about.

What a "civil union" might be is rather nebulous, and civil union and domestic partnership statutes as enacted thus far in the US often do not approach the breadth of rights accorded to married couples, and are in legal limbo regarding state reciprocity agreements. Accordingly, the only way to guarantee equivalent rights to married couples is for LGBT unions to have the same legal identity.

It is an issue - and one I appreciate. However - see above. You can't just say, "OK - gay marriage is legal" and ignore the fact that there are thousands of churches who will refuse to perform the ritual, and who happen to have 1st Ammendment rights protecting that stance. Civil unions are the best solution here, even though they are not perfect.

Then you can attempt to tackle the argument of forcing a religion to change its core values

The fact that there are people IN AMERICA saying these kinds of things is why religious groups are so sensitive on the subject. "Forcing a religion to change its core values" is the language of a totalitarian regime, not the USA. I know it's hard to tell with Obama in office, but it's still a free country...

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Nothing wrong with this. If the gay movement stuck to sensible steps like this then they'd find people much more amenable to their agenda. Sadly, they tend to tie far too many radical agenda items in with too few good ones, and act all surprised when there is opposition. It is a problem with agenda groups on all sides.


Now maybe--being kinda gay myself--my perspective is just a bit skewed, but I don't know what you're talking about here. Most of the gay activism in my area is concerned with things like funding for a new health clinic to help deal with LGBT concerns, or putting laws on the books against employment discrimination based on sexual orientation--in half of all states in the US, you can be fired simply for being gay. Heck, until a couple years ago, school administrators could discriminate against LGBT kids in the OKC metro area without any consequences. Fully half of all homeless teenagers in my state are gay, bisexual, or transgendered, and suicide is the leading cause of death among LGBT teenagers. These are the things gay activism is overwhelmingly concerned with in most areas of the US. I hardly think that working to alleviate these problems is radical.

The American public is overwhelmingly in favor of allowing gay and bisexual folk to serve openly in the military. So that's not too radical, either.

About the only "radical" agenda item that's really pushed is gay marriage--which is given a disproportionate amount of press when compared to other LGBT issues. But the reasons for pushing for marriage instead of "civil unions" or "domestic partnerships" are quite practical rather than merely ideological. What a "civil union" might be is rather nebulous, and civil union and domestic partnership statutes as enacted thus far in the US often do not approach the breadth of rights accorded to married couples, and are in legal limbo regarding state reciprocity agreements. Accordingly, the only way to guarantee equivalent rights to married couples is for LGBT unions to have the same legal identity.>> ^choggie:

Oh and gay marriage?? Many more homosexuals who have been in monogamous relationships with their partners for years prior to all the activism associated with changing the marriage laws of states, would rather things stay they way they are-You don't need sanctions to live/love together, and the tax breaks are insignificant.


Many more? Really? To the contrary, in my experience. Do you have studies that say otherwise? Or are you perhaps better linked in with the gay community than I--a gay man--am? I must confess my doubts.