Lots of 'I love you guys' and very few specifics.  I hope the President has a nice cup of shut-the-f***-up and actually does something.  He's showing a Clintonesque level of courage on this issue, and the disgraceful thing is that Clinton didn't sell himself as the civil rights candidate, whereas Obama did. 

I'm pinning my hopes on the National Equality March, not on Obama and HRC, whose job over the past 15 years has been to explain to GBLT activists why it's just so inconvenient for Democrats to do anything on gay rights.  No wonder that Obama picked this venue for his speech; he's surrounded by professional ass-kissers who think having him there is a major step forward for gays.  Not quite.  If these folks were black in Apartheid South Africa, they'd probably think that being allowed to work in the police force is an incredible act of magnanimity on behalf of the white government.  The entire scene was quite pathetic, the smooth-talking non-actor schmoozing with cohorts of apologists. 

CH

I think Obama's speech was good. People are expecting too much of him in a hurry. Everything takes time.

Videos

i surely don't.

Equalty isn't a half of cup of coffee.

Euqality isn't separate but equal buses.

Equality is ....everyone has same access.

I too would like to see things happen faster. The thing is that I recognize that things are changing. A few months ago federal employess gained rights and benefits for their same-sex partners. It was still incomplete but would that have EVER happened under Bush? Also don't ask/don't tell will end. I'd love for it to end today but that's not how things work. Obama also said that he wants congress to repeal the "defense of marriage act" (a misnomer if ever there was one).

From taking office we're told that pulling out of Iraq will be 18 months, assuming nothing goes wrong. The stimulus package will take a year and a half to two years to have a lot of impact. The debate over health care will run months and then if a bill is passed it'll be phased in over years. If we pass the energy standards bill being discussed it's all about meeting very modest targets by 2011 to 2013. Things are changing but it's not realistic to think things will stop on a dime, do a 180 and shoot off like a rocket. I think it could be amped up a bit, but probably only a bit.

As far as I know, under the US constitutional make up marriage is a state issue.  And if it isn't clearly listed as either state or federal it becomes state by default.  (as opposed to Canada where if something is not clerly defined it is assumed to be a federal issue--and of course in Canada the definition of marriage is federal while the licensing of marriage officiants and the issuing of marriage licenses is provincially determined)

As to the civil union issue, the only way that is equality is if the ONLY legal status, regardless of the genders involved, is civil union.  Personally I wouldn't be opposed to this, particularly if only government employees could grant that status--no church officila could do the legal stuff, thereby leaving churches free to bless and celebrate relationships regardless of legal status.

I am not sure.  But the issue is why the government should have a role.  (Discussing purely the civil union side of the issue, governments have no role in the faith-based, celebrating the relationship, people making a covenant with each other side).

Legal unions provide certain partnershp rights and responsibilities.  LEgal unions provide for the care of each other.  Legal unions provide for a levle of family stability (this is arguably not as true as it once was).  THe government has a role in developing these htings and in enforcing them.

The government has a role in helping to ensure that people enter these relationships freely and safely.

There is a role, but what it is can be a matter of arguement.  ANd certainly how that role is played out is up for debate.

I don't think that there should be any law against any and all marriage-forms involving consenting adults.

Good point. I agree.

If marriage is a human right, then humans have the right to get married.If marriage is a human right, then humans have the right to get married."If this is the case, then polygamy, sibling marriage, and parent-child marriage are all on the table. "

Comparing incest to two consensual adults forming a relationship.  Nice DC, your intelligence is breath-taking. 

And marriage may not be a human right, but equality is the basis of all rights, and when you have an institution that says one group of people is different, then that violates the principle of equality.  It becomes discrimination.  It's like banning black people from sitting on certain public park benches and saying that it's okay, because being able to sit on a bench isn't a right.  That line of argumentation is incredibly stupid.  When the law discriminates unreasonably, it loses its legitimacy.  After all, why should we follow it if singles out one group of people for different treatment? 

As for your suggestion that civil unions are a solution, they're not.  We had them in Canada, and the Supreme Court said very clearly that they're discriminatory.  You can't have opposite-sex couples having access to marriage rights in a way that same-sex couples do not.  Just because civil unions are a step above not having any recognition at all doesn't mean that they still don't signify second-class citizenship.  This is no more a solution than being allowed to sit only at the back of the bus (hey, at least we're letting the n****rs on the bus, right?) 

Anyways, I'm not interested in having this argument yet again.  We're talking about Obama. 

I won't comment on your intelligence, only on your lack of civility.  If you are not interested in having this discussion, then don't, but there is no reason to be insulting. 

People over the age of consent are considered consenting adults.  The fact that one is a parent and the other the child, or that they are siblings, or that they are more than two, is exactly what is being contested.  If you don't want to talk about that, fine, but it is coming to a courtroom near you in the not too distant future.  As I said, such cases are already before the courts and not becuase the people involved have been charged with incest or polygamy, but because they are demanding the right to live together as husband(s)  and wife (wives).  They are demanding this as a right.

free, thanks for the reply, but I am not interested in discussing anything with you as long as you resort to name-calling.

Have a nice life.

"Oh no, free_thinker was allowed to talk about something related to him specifically, you shouldn't have allowed this. Now we'll have 2000 word essays on why gay rights are fair, while pedophilia and incest are not."

There's no logic that can be used against this kind of dehumanization.  It overwhelms the human desire for reasonability, for some kind of reciprocity in justice.  It's like Jews who were suddenly accused of being bankers who started wars: how does one argue against such an accusation? 

"It's all anecdotal, it's all subjective and there's nothing you can say to justify homosexuality as sexually unhealthy behaviour."

Yes, as a human being, equality affects me personally.  I don't know anyone who can be 'objective' about such things; no one should be.  Rights affect people, and people's well-being is not something you can coolly and "objectively" pass judgment on from a distance.  The only human who can be objective about other humans is a non-human, and that's a condition that a lot of bigots like yourself Beshpin actively pursue by deadening the possibility of the one thing that holds us together - empathy. 

"So what's the deal, did it become OK to be gay when it was removed from the APA's list of psychological disorders?"

It was always OK.  Psychiatry, a discipline that didn't exist until the late 19th century, realized that in this regard, its judgments were guided by cultural prejudice, not science, and that error was corrected far too late.  Homosexuality wasn't the only area where cultural prejudice guided science: until quite recently, psychiatrists considered women and non-whites to be mentally inferior.  Do you accept their judgment as infallible in these areas too, or only when it concerns a minority you didn't particularly like anyways?  

"What I most despise about these arguments is that they are completely contextual, totally subjective and completely based on your own extremely biased view of the situation. "

As opposed to your arguments Besh, which are completely 'objective.'  Your insights into the human condition are so rational that it's only 'objective' people like you who can determine who counts as a human being, and who counts as a pervert.  Yours is the rationality of a Beria or a Himmler, coolly consigning millions of people to anonymity based on a rational evaluation of history and morality that they themselves are unable to see.  It is you who should determine who we are, not us, because, being us, we can't think objectively about ourselves. 

Can you?  

"Homosexuality IS NOT genetic, at least, not the same way race is."

But it is mostly genetic, hence its presence in all cultures and several thousand animal species.  It is a part of the human condition, as is heterosexuality. 

Beshpin:

Before you go spouting off on what is adn is not genetic, don't you think you should learn about genetics first?

I'm sure you think you know all about it in that prejudiced litle world of yours Beshpin, but the reality is you don't have a clue about genetics, or the biology of human sexuality.

The trouble with ignorance, especially willful ignorance, is that the delusion of knowledge often prevents the ignorant from becoming educated

"How can you be such an ignorant, self-servient moron that you can sit there, telling me I'm a bigot for having an opinion and then continue on to explain that you have an opposing opinion on the same issue?"

You're free to have an opinion.  And I'm telling you that that opinion is bigoted. 

" We're all equally able to think, feel, say, do what we want, but for some reason, you're saying that I'm not allowed to think what I think about what you do?"

I'm not trying to prevent you from thinking; I'm actually trying to get you to think by realizing just how dehumanizing your views are. 

"Should I make fun of you for not agreeing with incest?"

My issue is that you think an inherently abusive, exploitative relationship is on the same moral plane as two consenting adults who love one another. 

"Start showing people the respect they show you."

You haven't shown me any respect by comparing an entire class of people to paedophiles.  You deserve none.   

"Empathy is certainly not being shown to me regarding my opinion of homosexuality, why is it that when I say I'm not comfortable with homosexuality, I get hissed at, called a bigot and berated?"

Yes, it's so unfortunate that people don't empathize with your bigotry.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if you had a few other people you can hate with?  It must get lonely being so narrow-minded. 

"Are you really telling me that you're fighting for empathy when all you ever do is shit all over everything I think?"

Your problem is that you don't think, and when you do, the results are something you'd expect out of Apartheid.  I have no obligation to respect opinions that will result in inequality and dehumanization.

"I don't take the things I like and discard the rest, as you have shown to do with your cleavage of homosexuality from other sexuality and consentual marriage issues (polygamy, incest, pedophilia, beastality)."

I have no idea what you just said, and I'm not going to respond to it.  I trust that there's some kind of logic to your ignorance, but it's slipping. 

"So now, when you use the argument that "it's the law" I'm going to start saying "not everywhere and not always". "

It's the law was never my argument on this issue or any other. 

"So the fact that it's OK in Canada has nothing to do with the validity of homosexuality in india, or china, or south africa. "

Actually, India just got rid of its anti-sodomy laws, and (scary, authoritarian, yellow, Commie) China did so a while back, before the Land of the Free actually struck down its last anti-sodomy laws in 2003.  As for South Africa, after the fall of Apartheid, they became the first nation in the world to explicitly make sexual orientation a protected category in their new Constitution, and in 2005 they become the 5th nation in the world and the first in Africa to legalize same-sex marriage.  Having had the experience of a government that writes off entire sections of humanity as sub-human, South Africans have learned a thing or two about equality, in a way that smug moralists like yourself haven't.  Mandela and Tutu realized that homophobia was just another form of Apartheid. 

Anyways, if you needed examples, why not point to Pakistan, or Iran, where 13-year old gays are executed.  I'm sure that's an example that's exactly to your liking. 

"Well, golly GEE free_thinker, you're right, I totally am a nazi for having an opinion about homosexuality that isn't your own.'

You're not a Nazi.  Read what I said.  I said that by coolly and rationally writing millions of people off as less-than-human, you're participating in the kind of dehumanization that made Nazism and Apartheid possible. 

"You're acting as entirely ethnocentricist as you're trying to assume I am, you're assuming that your culture, your beliefs are more valid than mine and you're using them to measure my arguments."

Ah yes, relativism.  Actually, I have no qualms about denouncing viewpoints that will result in inequality and harm.  Tolerance goes only insofar as it's mutual; the moment one party seeks tolerance for its own views so that it can put down an entire group of people, it undermines the ground it stands on.  That is why we must be intolerant towards the intolerant by refusing to respect their bigotry. 

"You'll take this argument to your grave before you admit that you're a sexually unhealthy person."

I'm not, and I don't see why this is something I have to prove to the likes of you.  Why don't we turn this around: how do YOU know that you're so sexually healthy? 

"Murder, rape, incest, these all happen within human and animal societies. Does it make them right?"

The difference with homosexuality is that these things harm other people, whereas homosexuality doesn't; in fact, it can be just as edifying as heterosexuality.  The central issue is that of harm towards others, and it's something you haven't addressed because if you tried to, you'd realize that there's no basis on which to persecute this one group of people.  Hence the reason why bigots like you need to invent imaginary harms, like harms to public order, or family values, or proper sexual development, or whatever. 

"Of course not, so your argument that because something occurs in several and diverse geosociological circumstances is bunk"

My point was that it was a part of the human condition, and that since it's edifying and not harmful, it ought to be accepted. 

"According to free_thinker, pedophiles should NOT be shamed because  "it's genetic", neither should polygamists, nor should zoophiles."

Address the harm point, dumbass. 

"What we know through psychological research is that genes provide a tendency, they DO NOT form causal circumstances concerning personality."

Yes, there is an interplay between genetics and social environment, in a way that heavily leans towards genetics.  Anyways, the genetic point is secondary.  Regardless of how people become gay, the fact is that at least 5% of the population is gay, and that's not something that can be changed.  The APA has shown quite consistenly how attempts to do so are not only unsuccessful but overwhelmingly harmful. 

Anyways, enough about moral legitimacy, let's talk about what you think gay people ought to do.  The 5-10% of the population that is gay, you think are perverts and sexually unhealthy.  How do you propose we live our lives?  Do we abstain from sex entirely, or do we let quacks who have been censured by the entire medical profession try to psychologically and chemically engineer us into what we ought to be?  Do we enter sham marriages and pretend that we're straight?  If we're as unhealthy as you say we are, what would you have us do?  I'd like to know Besh.  Or do you just not care, this being 10% of people whose happiness and well-being you don't really care about because they don't fit your definition of human?  

Ah yes, NARTH, that front-group set up by Focus on the Family to try to make their explicitly religious dogma look scientific.  NARTH is a lot like the creationist Discoverity Institute, or the climate 'sceptics': these are quacks who pretend to be scientists in order to undermine scientific consensus that doesn't fit in with the far-right's ideology.

Whether it's climate change, evolution, or sexual orientation, legitimate science is being undermined because it contradicts the ideology of the religious right and the oil industry. 

You contradict yourself in the same post:

"That being said, I don't agree that same-sex marriage is ethical. I also don't agree that homosexuality is "normal".

followed by,

"Let me ask you something witch... when in your life did you begin to assume that you know something about the world that other people don't? Why is it that your moral opinions and standards are the ultimate?"

I'd like to ask you the same question, Besh.  When did you decide you knew so much about the world that you can write off the lives and loves of that 10% of people as irredeemably unhealthy?  How many gay couples are you familiar with?  And why do you think your views of sexuality are the standard they ought to answer to?  

What I learned, while earning my actual degree in biology, was a little scientific discipline called ethology.

And while I don't really want to give in to your furious backpeddalling now that you realize you have to narrow your straw man in order to weasel out some measure of credibility, I'll ask you this

If genes cannot cause behaviour, what conscious decisions do jellyfish, or bacteria, or planarians, or viruses make to determine their behaviour?

I guess all those university professers must be wrong? Or is it that you're wrong in telling University professors what they have to say?

Anyone who says genes don't cause behaviour is uneducated at best.... which is why you won't get any credible source to say it.

In your opinion... and we all know how much that's worth.

Burden of proof Beshpin. Another scientific concept you should learn.

You made the positive claim first. You need to provide credible, peer reviewed, scientific evidence that genes don't cause behaviour.  An non-peer reviewed article published by a political organization that has a definate bias does not constitute scientific evidence. Something like the written diary of a paramecium, where the animalcule relates his/her decision to discriminate against the slime mold down the street might work too, since if genes don't cause behaviour then paramecium must make thoughtful decisions, right?

Once you do that, it then becomes my burden of proof to show that genes can cause behaviour. Fortunately I have the entire credible and peer reviewed Biology community, including the entire discipline of ethology, to back me up. So I won't have any problem in that regard.

So put up or shut up Beshpin. Give us something other than the rambling opinion of another homophobe, from a organization of homophobes, to work with.

. . . why must people turn everything on this site into a fight? I mean soon there will be people going to the "Last poste thread" just so they can start a fight...

I liked Obamas speach. I thought it was a great speach. I don't think he is taking his time just to f**k with us. I think things take time in this crazy world and after waiting so long that another day, week, month...hell, another year (imho) would be better then it never happening at all. And remeber, when it does happen which it will then we can all turn to those who think that we are chosing to be hated, judged, mocked, discriminated against and killed and we can smile and walk away because another part of our master plan has been accomplished!

And now, for the first time ever, our LGBT, age old master plan!

1. be hated for thousands of years

2. be hated hundreds of years

3. slowly gain accseptance

4. marry into loving families

5. ????

6. PROFIT!

peace

.

Thank you witch. It's been proven conclusively but the fundys live in a reality free bubble where it's still a choice. I know a girl that I went to school and church with. She's very conservative on most things. It turns out she's a lesbian. She went through misery being in that small town and that conservative Baptist church and that's with relatively few people knowing. If it was possible to choose a sexual orientation she would be straight. She tried very much to be but it's impossible to choose. GOD made her a lesbian and it is HIS will that she be a lesbian. GOD did not make anyone a thief or a murderer or a child molester. None of those things are genetic. Being gay or black or female is all hard-wired into our brains and our bodies when we are born. Those other things are not. There is a lot more to it that just believing it's not a sin. It's true that it isn't sinful. The belief that it is sinful is because of people relying on flawed translating of the scripture.

The reason it matters is the law. I work at Wal-mart so I'll use that as an example. If Wal-mart said "we won't allow black people to be cashiers or sales floor associates because they "look ghetto" and we don't want that image people would be rightly outraged. It would also be discriminatory and illegal for very good reason. Now Wal-mart can (and does) say that it's employees can't come in to work in dirty or ratty clothing because that looks cheap and unprofessional. They could (but don't) bar us from having great big mohawks and lots of piercings showing. Those things are choices. Being black or gay or redheaded or left handed or short are not choices. Having a mohawk or visible tattoos aren't sinful but some employers won't hire you if you have them and that's within their rights to do so. They can't however not hire you based on a demographic factor like race or sexual orientation. Therefore this is a lot bigger than is it a sin or not. Equal treatment under the law including non-discrimination and marriage equality is what it's about.

This is true. There probably are people who MUST see the earth as spherical, and therefore are unwilling to listen to objective evidence to the contrary.

The problem is, we'll probably never know, because those people also have objective evidence, and reality, on their side. Do they believe the Earth is a sphere because it's reality, or because they believe it for all the wrong reasons? Very dificult to determine.

OTOH, it's easy to determine that those who MUST see the Earth as flat are doing so for all the wrong reasons, because there is no objective reality on their side to confuse the issue. Likewise for those who MUST see homosexuality as a choice.

 I'm curious Besh, why is homosexuality so unhealthy?  I'd like a detailed answer to this question. 

Every opinion deserves some consideration.

Yes I understand that your prejudice will not allow you to consider my opinion, even though it is based on objective evidence and training, and is paralleled by the opinions of the experts in the field.

I really don't expect that any amount of expertise and objective evidence will make you override your prejudice. Your need to hate homosexuals is not based on evidence or expertise.