It's hard to be offended by Fox News anymore. They've long since lost the element of surprise.

As for which was more offensive, Fox or Huckabee... I'd go with Fox if I had to choose. To me Huckabee's response seemed to be poorly worded but with good intentions.

If you really want offensive remarks about atheists, you need to see Bush Sr.

The "Non-believers" part was one of the only bones he throws to "my kind".

Mike Huckabee, he isn't part of my world. I wouldn't want him to be.

As far as I'm concerned, Mike Huckabee (and his opinions) are little more than irrelevant.

What makes me suspicious is that Huckabee is using metric measurements as an american politician addressing his fellow americans. 400 meters. Really. Did you guestimate that when you were there or is that from some online resource where you read this stuff up?

What's going on with all these analogies of Canada or Mexico firing rockets into the US?
Context of history doesn't seem to exist on mainstream media in the US. If the US blocked all foreign trade to Canada, somehow blocked all the seas, and put checkpoints surrounding all the metro areas then Huckabees analogy might start to make sense.

play this video along side the clip of ron paul pwning mike huckabee. Whos right?

To paraphrase Huckabee:

Imagine if the United States was blockaded by an army far more powerful than our own. An army which blocked supply routes for food and medical supplies. An army which claimed to have veto power over our democratic elections. An army which claimed our territory at will, repeatedly violated cease fires, and effectively converted our country to a vast open air prison. What would we do? Would we not respond, as we did during our revolution, with guerrilla warfare and improvised weapons which we could manufacture even with the blockade? The question is not why they are launching attacks on their captors, but why they agreed to this cease fire, now broken by Israel, to begin with.

looks like the analogy cuts both ways... What a tool.

I d>> ^HollywoodBob:
^ There's a lot of us that think that's the best solution. Just get rid of marriage as a legal construct, and you solve the "problem". Oh except for that pesky little fact that semantics are just a smokescreen for the underlying bigotry that is the root of the entire debate.


True, but arguing about how the government should define marriage seems unlikely to root out the bigotry or speed the process of getting homosexual couples the civil rights afforded by civil unions. In fact, it feels to me like it's slowing that process down and wasting a lot of energy.

>> ^RedSky:
What does marriage, in it's current context as a figurative and binding resolution of love and commitment have to do with procreation though? If you want to promote population growth then by all means provide tax credits to responsible child bearing couples.


I agree with you, the exclusivity of the concept of marriage to hetero couples doesn't affect reproduction rates. It's the financial incentives associated with it that affect responsible couples' ability to have kids, and increase the chance of kids being raised responsibly in general.

Not to mention birth rates have far less to do with whether couples tie the knot or not (ahaha), as negatively in relation with affluence and living standards, and cultural influences among many others factors.

>> ^jwray:
A country's power relative to other countries may be correlated with population, but the quality of life of the individuals in that country tends to increase dramatically when the fertility rate drops.


As RedSky was saying, affluent people or people with high living standards tend to procreate less than those living in poor conditions. Which comes first, increase in quality of life or decline in birth rate? I think quality of life increase comes first, because the more affluent societies seem to be the ones that start seeing negative growth rates.

>> ^Grimm:
>> ^nadabu:
You didn't quite get it. Definitions can only be "exclusive" when they are laid down by an authority over people being included and excluded. Again, this only matters because the government is defining this. Otherwise, we can all just keep our own definitions.


...
I get the feeling you are like many people who oppose gay marriage. As long as the govt defined it and enforced it the way you agree with you didn't have a problem with it. But your starting to see the writing on the wall. That it's a matter of time before things get reversed and the govt defines it and enforces it in a way you do not agree with. So now is the time to get govt out of the "marriage" business...you'll even say "it never should have been involved in it" yet people like you never really had a problem with the way it used to be...it's only what you see coming that truly bothers you.
So now you want to dump over the game board and go home. Let's get govt out of it and leave "marriage" to it's rightful owner...religion.


Wrong. I started getting pissy about the government's involvement in defining marriage and Christian capitulation to that when my friend's pastor wouldn't marry him until he got the legal papers in order. That was the year 2000. Long before Prop 8 or even Oregon's version of it 4 years ago. I was 20 then, and only just beginning to have friends get married at all and learn about such things. Pretty damn unlikely that i'd have gotten pissy about it any earlier. So, no, gay marriage was not at all what prompted this thinking.

And even if you were right about the cause of this thinking, i still don't feel you're acknowledging the core of it. It is that the government doesn't have any business defining or officiating marriage. So long as the government does, then people are not really free to define it themselves, religious or otherwise. And no, religion does not own the word "marriage". Don't be stupid.

>> ^Lodurr:
I'm an open-minded guy, and non-religious, and I've been doubtful of my own position based on who else has the same position I do. I agree with Huckabee, but for none of the reasons he gave.
I look at the argument differently than both Stewart and Huckabee. We have to examine what the purpose of our government recognizing marriages and unions is in the first place. I think its purpose was to help couples procreate by giving them the money to support children. We still have positive population growth in the US, but all the countries that have or are moving towards negative population growth have a real need to grant incentives for couples to procreate.
With that in mind, why should the government grant the same financial incentives to same-sex couples?


What does marriage, in it's current context as a figurative and binding resolution of love and commitment have to do with procreation though? If you want to promote population growth then by all means provide tax credits to responsible child bearing couples. Not to mention birth rates have far less to do with whether couples tie the knot or not (ahaha), as negatively in relation with affluence and living standards, and cultural influences among many others factors.

>> ^CaptainPlanet420:
>> ^jwray:
Any argument from biology here is moot since there is no shortage of reproduction. Basically the same principle applies as before: http://www.videosift.com/video/Barney-Frank-defends-individual-freedom

I don't think that warranted a post on either side. Who assured people that buying stocks was safe, when they proceeded to tank pathetically? Who operated a veritable homosexual brothel out of his own apartment? DING DING DING IT'S BAWNEY FWANK!


Only if you believe everything Bill Oh'Really and Faux News tell you.

>> ^jwray:
Any argument from biology here is moot since there is no shortage of reproduction.


That's not true, in Russia and Japan for example, the population growth is negative. It's a real problem that governments try to address, one region in Russia even made a national holiday for everyone to go home and procreate.

It's not just a matter of survival of the species. Governments want more citizens in order to be stronger societies, and grow their economies.

The linked video has a good point, but it doesn't address gay marriage because it's not just a matter of permission, it's a matter of government incentivizing and subsidizing gay marriage along with heterosexual marriage.

>> ^jwray:
Any argument from biology here is moot since there is no shortage of reproduction. Basically the same principle applies as before: http://www.videosift.com/video/Barney-Frank-defends-individual-freedom


I don't think that warranted a post on either side. Who assured people that buying stocks was safe, when they proceeded to tank pathetically? Who operated a veritable homosexual brothel out of his own apartment? DING DING DING IT'S BAWNEY FWANK!

>> ^quantumushroom:
To QM and others who seem to think it is all about biology and procreating...if that is your argument then the same can be said about people who don't want children or can't have children. But I have a feeling that your not for banning them from getting married are you?
The pro-gay-marriage side keeps trying to make this into a civil rights/equality issue. It is not. Blacks fought for the SAME rights that Whites have; gays are fighting for a redefinition of the linchpin of society itself to suit their needs.
With the arrival of civil unions, the acceptance by the free market of gays as a marketing bloc and government as a voting bloc, most of the steam in the argument for gay equality is gone in the best way: it's been achieved! Even Elton John can't figure out what American gays are upset about; he has a British civil union and doesn't care what it's called.
Quantum, what exactly ARE the benefits of marriage?
The institution itself provides legal protections and advantages that live-ins don't have, to the point that in some states live-ins are considered married by "common law".
Marriage promotes order and discourages random sexual encounters which may spread disease or create offspring without parents to care for them.
Marriage provides a measure financial stability and a structured family unit extra-protected by laws in which children are better off.


Heavens no! Not rules and structure! Liberals will have strict rules for my taxes, guns, and health care...but this morality...it must be done away with.