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
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.
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.
The old president in more ways than one did exactly what the older president did.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.
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.
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.
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!
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 arent 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 societyand, many argue, the most important component of a democracyis also the least represented when it comes to policy. And as political wisdom will tell us, if youre not at the table, youre on the menu.
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.
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.
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 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.
Easy G (G²);61160359 said:The old president in more ways than one did exactly what the older president did.
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.
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.
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