Democrats Likely to Make Same-Sex Marriage Part of Their Platform

Mary of Bethany

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I still think the percentage that supports gay marriage to be small and greatly exaggerated by the media. But it will grow, because children are still going to public schools, where they are being indoctrinated (subtly) daily that it is normal, and getting the message reinforced by the media when they come home. The older folks don't know how to respond, though they know it to be wrong, and the younger ones are being taught, quite literally, foolishness.

Even more seductive than what they will learn in school is what they see on tv. The "normalization" of homosexuality is everywhere in the media. And those who are against it are always the "bad/stupid" characters.

My tv watching is pretty much confined to sports these days.

Mary
 
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gracefullamb

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Even more seductive than what they will learn in school is what they see on tv. The "normalization" of homosexuality is everywhere in the media. And those who are against it are always the "bad/stupid" characters.

My tv watching is pretty much confined to sports these days.

Mary

This I think has more to do with homosexuality, bisexuality, and "gay marriage" being accepted more so than public schools teaching "tolerance" or fundamentalist groups preaching hate and causing a backlash. It scares me how much of an influence TV and movies have on forming the beliefs today of people.
 
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Dorothea

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We don't regret ditching our Dish. We now control what we want to watch without having to block out 80% of the channels but still pay nearly $80 for the 20 or less channels we used to watch. We can watch the movies we want. We can play the video games we want. No crummy commercials to mute and change channels to avoid, even on children's stations. It really is liberating. :)
 
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ArmyMatt

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Even more seductive than what they will learn in school is what they see on tv. The "normalization" of homosexuality is everywhere in the media. And those who are against it are always the "bad/stupid" characters.

My tv watching is pretty much confined to sports these days.

Mary

oh yeah. I remember watching stuff on MTV back in the day like Real World and Road Rules, and they used to have a token gay person with a token fundie Christian person, and the gay person always converted the Christian to his/her way of thinking. it's never the other way around.
 
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The gay character is always wise, methodical, caring, and insightful. The Christian is always the hick biggot with a narrow mind. The Catholic priest is always portrayed as a hypocritical jerk, the nun cruel and heartless, the Buddhist monks wise and introspective with great knowledge. The Christian witless and one-dimensional. Hindus are portrayed as guru masters of seeing more to life than most, Muslims as pitiable and persecuted, the Christian as a turkey.

oh yeah. I remember watching stuff on MTV back in the day like Real World and Road Rules, and they used to have a token gay person with a token fundie Christian person, and the gay person always converted the Christian to his/her way of thinking. it's never the other way around.
 
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But there's a heap of hypocrisy 'round these here parts. The red through-and-through Republican Christian traditionalist "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!" crowd here has issues. These Republican voters who espouse their old-school morality have a dark side. We have the highest out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy rate in the United States. We also place in the top five spot for the worst meth lab and meth use criminality, and our crime stats are alarming. Someone's ignorin' the ole sermon on Sundee mornin'! ^_^

it's the same in PA. red except for the areas around Philly and Pittsburgh. my home county at least was the reddest in the country, with our neighbor to the west at number two. it's been moderating recently though.
 
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Gxg (G²)

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It kind of reminds me of the outcries and protestations of Republicans in the last four years about how Obama has turned the United States into a communist worker's paradise anti-capitalist cesspool and weakened our military positions with cowardice and innaction/apologies when in reality he has

* Kept the Bush tax cuts
* Liquidated Osama
* Tortured more terrorists than Bush did in 8 years
* Kicked butt with drone airstrikes continually
* TARP bailed-out big corporations pandering to big business
* Never followed up on Wall Street "reform" regulation
* has continued payroll tax cuts
* has pretty much given Republicans everything they want.


At our union meetings, our president was showing us the $$$ figures for lobbying in Washington. For every $3.00 the Workers' Unions spend in lobbying Capital Hill, the Corporations spend $30.
The old president in more ways than one did exactly what the older president did.
 
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MKJ

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I think we've really lost sight of what marriage means. It's more than love or affection or appreciation of another person, it is essentially a union of a man and woman and the real underlying no-brainer is childbirth and procreation. Now I know the gay argument is always "what about infertile couples? Are they forbidden to marry then?" Hardly. At least an infertile couples has the biological purpose to procreate even though it doesn't function properly.


I think though that it isn't just that we allow infertile couples to marry. We allow couples who have no intention or desire for kids to marry, and people who win a spouse on a reality tv show to marry, and people to marry six people one after the other.

Our cultural understanding of marriage has been deeply deeply changed. People for the mosat part really believe that it is about having a companion or "best friend" that you like to have sex with, and if that is the logic same-sex marriage makes perfect sense. Not only have we lost the idea of marriage as a sacrament and a legal/social institution to protect children and mothers, we don't see the family as a fundamental economic unit in society. This change has been going on for something like two generations - arguably since the industrial revolution.

I think that it is a real question, when most families have two working parents who in many ways function as individuals (and the state seems to like that) whether a lot of the legal structures/benefits we have around marriages make any sense.

I find it hard to get that excited about this question because I think it is really small compared to the other issues around marriage. It only directly effects a very small number of people, and really people have already changed their views, and aren't likely to question same-sex marriage as long as that is the case.Things like it being normal for the majority of people to work outside the home rather than with the family, easy divorce, and very small family sizes and all the issues around that seem more fundamental to me.
 
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ArmyMatt

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The gay character is always wise, methodical, caring, and insightful. The Christian is always the hick biggot with a narrow mind. The Catholic priest is always portrayed as a hypocritical jerk, the nun cruel and heartless, the Buddhist monks wise and introspective with great knowledge. The Christian witless and one-dimensional. Hindus are portrayed as guru masters of seeing more to life than most, Muslims as pitiable and persecuted, the Christian as a turkey.

Shintos are also always disciplined, Hindus are ascetic, and Christians are fat rich guys who pass a football after a collection plate. yep. Christians are only good when they are marching in a protest, usually for something that is antithetical to Christianity.
 
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Gxg (G²)

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If we go to a pure capitalist system, we won't have unions, won't have the ability as workers to collectively bargain, won't have social security or medicare or social safety nets for people, we won't have weekends/bereavement leave/sick time/maternity leave, we won't have income taxes (sounds great, but think of the implication of dropping them), and the top 1% will have ALL of the power with nothing to check their gross dominance over the middle and lower classes. There is a tension between the concepts of democracy and pure capitalism. I think the best option is a mix between the socialism that we see in Europe in some, emphasis on some, parts of their societies, and capitalism in others. Ideally, Chesterton's distributism would be the best model and the most Christian. Both communism and capitalism have the potential to do such damage!

Most people are already fearful of socialism in any/all forms because they think of the U.S.S.R and assume that communism began with socialism. But that's not necessary, IMHO, when considering the many variation of socialism just as there are variations of capitalism One form of socialism that's often not discussed is the Bottoms-Up kind where people take action themselves, from the bottom up instead of being directed by small elites, top down. It can be seen as a forn of communalism.....and technically, as much as many capitalists say socialists want the government to have more control, it's always interesting how much the government is used to look out for/enforce the interests of the big buisnesses---especially when certain people in government will favor (via lobbying) some buisnesses more so than others and effectively have a socialism for the rich. ..and a capitalism for the poor where resources are taken and people are still told to compete with each other/do their best.

20081201-socialism1.jpg

One of the most brilliant characterizations I have yet heard of the American economic system was given by Stephen Bannon (director of the recent documentary “Generation Zero”), on Sean Hannity’s show: “we have socialism for the very poor, and we have socialism for the wealthy; we have capitalism for the middle class.” The unsustainable nature of the economic system, even accounting for the incomplete state of the socialist programs for the lower class, is clear in more ways than one...and I say that in light of doing a lot of street ministry/working in government funded programs where this was seen often. Banks continue to lavish bonuses on their star performers even as they suck life out of the public, while through corruption, waste or fraud, many able-bodied, self-sufficient individuals take advantage of public monies intended for those truly in need.​

As another said best:​


In many general respects, the socioeconomic story of the US over the last 30 or 40 years has been one of the ascendance of right wing, laissez-faire policy regimes. However, at a less general level conservatives, beginning with and including Reagan, have consistently failed to significantly roll back key socialist-inspired programs like medicare or social security. In addition, important parts of the state interventionist welfare regime have remained solidly in place, enjoying broad support, to say nothing of such thorns in the libertarian side as the Department of Education. Left-wing success.
Nonetheless, with the aforementioned rightist ascendance, public handouts aren’t just for liberals anymore. One of the main ideas independents like myself believe is that both parties favor wasteful big spending, just on different things. Sure enough, Republicans and conservatives have spent liberally (pun intended) on Big Business, the rich and foreign entanglements during their time in power.
And so we have socialism for the rich and the poor, and capitalism for the middle class. That is, while the rich have enjoyed a free lunch at the public trough, and the poor have gotten by with ill-managed, but still significant, programs of their own, the middle class has been stuck with the bill on both sides.

In a normal universe, progressive taxation-and-redistribution systems would mean, by definition, that it is mostly the rich that pay for the benefits of the less well-off. But with the oligarchic character of so much of American politics (on both the Democratic (think Wall Street) and the Republican sides), we have a system in which the most productive component of society—and, many argue, the most important component of a democracy—is also the least represented when it comes to policy. And as political wisdom will tell us, if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.
IMHO, socialist systems can't (and never have, to my knowledge) create as much wealth as capitalists ones, and for very good reasons that any decent economist can explain. Therefore, if the "good" of the people is the aim, and all of the programs that help the people and make them more equal are the more specific goals, then socialists should favor a system that gives the most economic power to accomplish these goals to the government. In other words, the system that creates the most wealth is the system from which the most wealth can be extracted for welfare and other socialist plans. In the United States, for example, welfare spending per recipient is certainly greater than any per-person redistribution of goods in Cuba or other socialist countries. Why? Because the money is there...


 
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Gxg (G²)

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Shintos are also always disciplined, Hindus are ascetic, and Christians are fat rich guys who pass a football after a collection plate. yep. Christians are only good when they are marching in a protest, usually for something that is antithetical to Christianity.

A lot of monks have often been portrayed as wise compared to others who are corrupt when it comes to showing monks/nuns who are righteous Christians.
 
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ArmyMatt

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Easy G (G²);61160571 said:
A lot of monks have often been portrayed as wise compared to others who are corrupt when it comes to showing monks/nuns who are righteous Christians.

yeah, but it seems that it's the compromising monks that are wise, while those that hold on to their faith are backwards or superstitious, at least as far as Christian monks go.
 
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rusmeister

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This I think has more to do with homosexuality, bisexuality, and "gay marriage" being accepted more so than public schools teaching "tolerance" or fundamentalist groups preaching hate and causing a backlash. It scares me how much of an influence TV and movies have on forming the beliefs today of people.

I'm back to trying to point out that the language itself is corrupt and enables corruption. from the true understanding of the nature of things, there IS no hypen-sexual. I can add any Latin prefix and make something wicked, something that represents, not normal humanity but a thoroughly broken one sound like something normal. In Harry Potter, the spells sound cool and sophisticated because we are no longer taught Latin and Greek. But to anyone that understands and translates them, their banal nature is revealed. I'm not saying that we don't know what "bi-" etc mean, but that they have an effect, one of making truly abominable things sound clinical and natural, and represent falsehood at their root. Properly understood, "bisexual" would mean that a being has two sexes. Instead, it takes an attraction toward two sexes and makes it sound like a natural state of being within themselves, and so they do treat it as 'who they are by nature', "nature being understood in the senseof "normal, proper", NOT, as it should be, by Fallen nature.
A word like "gay" goes far beyond that and links merry joy with abominable acts, until we can no longer see that they are abominable.

So the words themselves spread the falsehood, which takes root in people's minds.
 
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rusmeister

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I think though that it isn't just that we allow infertile couples to marry. We allow couples who have no intention or desire for kids to marry, and people who win a spouse on a reality tv show to marry, and people to marry six people one after the other.

Our cultural understanding of marriage has been deeply deeply changed. People for the mosat part really believe that it is about having a companion or "best friend" that you like to have sex with, and if that is the logic same-sex marriage makes perfect sense. Not only have we lost the idea of marriage as a sacrament and a legal/social institution to protect children and mothers, we don't see the family as a fundamental economic unit in society. This change has been going on for something like two generations - arguably since the industrial revolution.

I think that it is a real question, when most families have two working parents who in many ways function as individuals (and the state seems to like that) whether a lot of the legal structures/benefits we have around marriages make any sense.

I find it hard to get that excited about this question because I think it is really small compared to the other issues around marriage. It only directly effects a very small number of people, and really people have already changed their views, and aren't likely to question same-sex marriage as long as that is the case.Things like it being normal for the majority of people to work outside the home rather than with the family, easy divorce, and very small family sizes and all the issues around that seem more fundamental to me.

You seem to be agreeing with Gurney, and no argument.

But I have a different view on your last comment. I do agree that the other issues are larger. But it's like saying that poverty is a larger issue than how welfare is administered in a given country. If the definition of welfare is changed to mean that it shall be given to everyone, whether they need it or not, then welfare is thereby diluted, and ceases to be well-fare, that is, doing good and actually makes welfare ultimately untenable. So it is here.

It affects EVERYONE. It is a redefinition of what marriage and normal sexual relations are to be for everyone, not just for the minority that will be actively practicing it. It means prosecution and persecution for people who refuse to accept the new definition.

Each attack on the family over the last century (all successful) has encroached ever further into the territory of the family. We are in a war, a spiritual war, so we can only use metaphors to illustrate, and here easy divorce, the first great attack may be compared to the Maginot line. That line has fallen and will not soon be restored. We must deal with the "military" situation we have now. So I certainly agree that the industrial forcing of people, above all mothers (but the case can fairly be made for fathers as well, of course) to work outside the home, and especially easy divorce - which made the toleration of adultery and fornication possible in society, which, when fait accompli, made sodomy tolerable, and now we can only await the inevitability of toleration of inappropriate behavior with animals and sex with youths and the equally inevitable persecution of those who dissent or even only refuse to support.
So this is a new line. Maybe it's the 38th parallel. But to say or suggest it is of little importance because the Maginot has fallen and ought to be restored (the last being a right and true sentiment, of course) cannot be true. It is of vast importance. Hardly Armageddon, and certainly our final concern must be our salvation, but this is one that will transform society more thoroughly than even easy divorce did. If we have any power to stop or at least slow it, we ought to, for it says that the family is what you make of it (so clearly symbolized in Pixar's "The Ice Age"; in effect, that there shall be no clear family any more.
 
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Heaven forbid! Someone agreed with Gurney! ^_^ It's the apocalypse! Call the four horsemen and someone call Megido! :p

You seem to be agreeing with Gurney, and no argument.

But I have a different view on your last comment. I do agree that the other issues are larger. But it's like saying that poverty is a larger issue than how welfare is administered in a given country. If the definition of welfare is changed to mean that it shall be given to everyone, whether they need it or not, then welfare is thereby diluted, and ceases to be well-fare, that is, doing good and actually makes welfare ultimately untenable. So it is here.

It affects EVERYONE. It is a redefinition of what marriage and normal sexual relations are to be for everyone, not just for the minority that will be actively practicing it. It means prosecution and persecution for people who refuse to accept the new definition.

Each attack on the family over the last century (all successful) has encroached ever further into the territory of the family. We are in a war, a spiritual war, so we can only use metaphors to illustrate, and here easy divorce, the first great attack may be compared to the Maginot line. That line has fallen and will not soon be restored. We must deal with the "military" situation we have now. So I certainly agree that the industrial forcing of people, above all mothers (but the case can fairly be made for fathers as well, of course) to work outside the home, and especially easy divorce - which made the toleration of adultery and fornication possible in society, which, when fait accompli, made sodomy tolerable, and now we can only await the inevitability of toleration of inappropriate behavior with animals and sex with youths and the equally inevitable persecution of those who dissent or even only refuse to support.
So this is a new line. Maybe it's the 38th parallel. But to say or suggest it is of little importance because the Maginot has fallen and ought to be restored (the last being a right and true sentiment, of course) cannot be true. It is of vast importance. Hardly Armageddon, and certainly our final concern must be our salvation, but this is one that will transform society more thoroughly than even easy divorce did. If we have any power to stop or at least slow it, we ought to, for it says that the family is what you make of it (so clearly symbolized in Pixar's "The Ice Age"; in effect, that there shall be no clear family any more.
 
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Like the Who song line "come meet the new boss....same as the old boss!" ^_^

Easy G (G²);61160359 said:
The old president in more ways than one did exactly what the older president did.
 
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Yes. And we're starting to see inappropriate behavior with animals in some parts of the world as "normal" while pederasty has magazines devoted to it and some European nations pretty tolerant of this sickening evil. I agree that we're not far off from complete sexual libertine abandon with next to no boundaries. "Marriage" is cheapened and will be 'expanded' into all sorts of perversions because the essential core of it, the sanctity of it, has been forgotten.

You seem to be agreeing with Gurney, and no argument.

But I have a different view on your last comment. I do agree that the other issues are larger. But it's like saying that poverty is a larger issue than how welfare is administered in a given country. If the definition of welfare is changed to mean that it shall be given to everyone, whether they need it or not, then welfare is thereby diluted, and ceases to be well-fare, that is, doing good and actually makes welfare ultimately untenable. So it is here.

It affects EVERYONE. It is a redefinition of what marriage and normal sexual relations are to be for everyone, not just for the minority that will be actively practicing it. It means prosecution and persecution for people who refuse to accept the new definition.

Each attack on the family over the last century (all successful) has encroached ever further into the territory of the family. We are in a war, a spiritual war, so we can only use metaphors to illustrate, and here easy divorce, the first great attack may be compared to the Maginot line. That line has fallen and will not soon be restored. We must deal with the "military" situation we have now. So I certainly agree that the industrial forcing of people, above all mothers (but the case can fairly be made for fathers as well, of course) to work outside the home, and especially easy divorce - which made the toleration of adultery and fornication possible in society, which, when fait accompli, made sodomy tolerable, and now we can only await the inevitability of toleration of inappropriate behavior with animals and sex with youths and the equally inevitable persecution of those who dissent or even only refuse to support.
So this is a new line. Maybe it's the 38th parallel. But to say or suggest it is of little importance because the Maginot has fallen and ought to be restored (the last being a right and true sentiment, of course) cannot be true. It is of vast importance. Hardly Armageddon, and certainly our final concern must be our salvation, but this is one that will transform society more thoroughly than even easy divorce did. If we have any power to stop or at least slow it, we ought to, for it says that the family is what you make of it (so clearly symbolized in Pixar's "The Ice Age"; in effect, that there shall be no clear family any more.
 
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Yes. And we're starting to see inappropriate behavior with animals in some parts of the world as "normal" while pederasty has magazines devoted to it and some European nations pretty tolerant of this sickening evil. I agree that we're not far off from complete sexual libertine abandon with next to no boundaries. "Marriage" is cheapened and will be 'expanded' into all sorts of perversions because the essential core of it, the sanctity of it, has been forgotten.

You can't compare a relationship between two consenting adults to inappropriate behavior with animals or child inappropriate contentography/abuse. It's apples and oranges.

The next big fight after gay marriage will be to legalize polygamy. It's already happening in a few areas.
 
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