You're talking past one another. If we lived in an alternate reality where "civil unions" were what the state did, with all of those rights the states gives currently to "marriage," and "marriage" has been reserved for religious ceremony and mickamucking, we wouldn't be currently having this conversation about "marriage." (We would, almost certainly, be having this conversation about "civil unions" though, because at the end of the day the social-con right's problem with gay marriage isn't some pedantic bit of philological dalliance around the historical uses of the term "marriage," so much as it is a gut level impurity/disgust reaction to the idea of gay sex, gayness, and the idea that society at large is validating gay people and their icky gross ass-oriented ####### with officially sanctioned status.)

This point needs to be made. If civil unions were the magic bullet, well they would have been the magic bullet. Civil unions everywhere for gays, done and done. Hasn't happened. Once you move on to civil unions, the opponents say "well, that's just like marriage" and it's no to civil unions too. So much for semantics. Some of the "domestic partnership" laws actually have fewer rights than marriages or civil unions, but how come we don't have domestic partnership everywhere?

Waiting for the first fresh post that takes on the African-American or Latino communities for their lack of sufficient support for what I agree is an important issue.

Waiting for the first fresh post that takes on the African-American or Latino communities for their lack of sufficient support for what I agree is an important issue.

"What are you looking for exactly?"

"Waiting for the first fresh post that takes on the African-American or Latino communities for their lack of sufficient support for what I agree is an important issue."

I am intrigued by the fairly even proportion of same-sex marriage backers on whether opposition to it guarantees the "bigot" comment.

The political party phrase "big tent" isn't exactly coming to mind for the more hardcore half, which leaves out many African-Americans and Latinos in particular. If the Democratic Party took on this stance, they might not do as well down the road.

Anyone who calls any gay marriage opponents "bigots" should not be as namby-pamby about different folks who say it. In fact, why not focus hardest on the traditionally left groups who aren't following suit sufficiently? We're 24 months before another big election - why be shy now?

Waiting for the first fresh post that takes on the African-American or Latino communities for their lack of sufficient support for what I agree is an important issue.

Anyone who calls any gay marriage opponents "bigots" should not be as namby-pamby about different folks who say it. In fact, why not focus hardest on the traditionally left groups who aren't following suit sufficiently? We're 24 months before another big election - why be shy now?

I am not exactly a stranger to these communities, compared to most of those here....

"Marriage is X and I'm doing Y but I demand you call Y marriage because otherwise I would feel less dignified!!" is not an argument that moves me.

Great, but that's a stupid argument.

The argument in the SSM case is "Marriage is X and I'm doing X so I demand you call it X because to do otherwise is to fail to grant me the dignity I deserve as a fellow citizen with equal rights."

I am clearly getting an affirmative action boost! There's a white guy out there somewhere who could've made that post.

I knew there was a reason that my BBTF entrance exam had "identify which color is blue" and "how do you spell 'cat'?" as questions instead of calculus and 16th century English history.

Is this the part where I high-five, or does that come later?

And we now have the analysis, a fascinating report just issued by the Congressional Research Service. The CRS is a nonpartisan entity that produces academic-quality research to answer tough policy questions. The bottom line conclusion of the CRS report is this:

The reduction in top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution.

The report notes that tax rates were at the highest when growth was at its peak, and that the reduction in rates has not had any discernible impact on the types of investment that lead to growth. Rather than acknowledge the findings, however, Senate Republicans successfully pressured the CRS to withdraw the report. It is reminiscent of a different era, when news the government didn't like was simply suppressed.

The important point here is the rigorous conclusion reached by the study: Raising the top income tax rate to 39.6 percent will not have any of the damaging consequences that the Grover Norquists of the world suggest. A week after the political and ideological battle for slightly higher taxes on the wealthy was won, we now have a careful analysis supporting the same course. Facts matter. And in this case, fairness wins.

Is this the part where I high-five, or does that come later?


High-fiving is out. We fist-bump now.

However, I don't know what a bigoted position is. Bigotry in my mind has always been around a person and their opinions. A person is bigoted. Their opinions reflect their bigotry.

My preference was that the Government get out of the business of recognizing "marriages"- have the Government solely recognize civil unions. let Church's recognize or not recognize "marriages" as they see fit.

Have you ever taken the implicit racism test?

There's a lot of intragroup politics behind how advocate groups represent and market a particular assimilationist vision of homosexuality in an attempt to neutralize the threat gay *culture* (to the extent that such a thing exists, it is of course an imaginary) was seen as posing to straight culture.

Wait, those are supposed to be valid reasons?

Yeah, but having been in the movement for a while, I think that's pretty much been shown to be a load of crap. It turned out, contrary to the fears of some radicals, that marriage wasn't assimilationist. The opportunity to commit and have that commitment recognized fully by the state has been an opportunity equally for buttoned-up bankers and leather daddies alike. The gay marriage movement has been so fully embraced by folks across the spectrum in the gay community that it's been an amazing source of unity and a source of new forms of gay culture.

It was a real mass movement, a movement of ordinary folks in many ways contrary to, or at least separate from the aims of elite groups, both activists and theoreticians.

Or maybe they're not even "morons", but simply people...

But same-sex marriage is not X. If it were X, there would be no problem.

A lot of feminists, especially of the older stripe, have long made abolishing/moving past the institution of marriage a goal, and a lot of gay rights advocates share similar roots.

Things in this I question:

a.) "A lot."

b.) The present-tense statement of this percentage.

3rd Wave feminism moved passed that somewhat in the 80s and 90s, and 4th wave feminists all but ignore the position completely. But hey, keep arguing to the 1970s, man. Later we can all get worried about OPEC and stagflation, put on our bell bottoms and smoke a bowl in the basement listening to that new "Dark Side of the Moon" LP.

*Yes, the gay rights movement aligned to this position in the 70s and early 80s; in fact Andrew Sullivan was almost run out of "Gayville" for even suggesting that gays and lesbians ought to fight for inclusion in the institution of marriage, rather than fight to eliminate marriage from the post-modern world. In 1995.

This seems like a terrible way to think about the history of rights advocacy. Third wave feminists basically took abortion rights as a given. That turned out to be a mistake. Second wave feminists were encouraging them to think of it as an ongoing battle, rather than something another generation fought and won.

That doesn't mean those perspectives are gone, or that the debates have been permanently settled, or that the concerns they give voice to are invalid. There are a plurality of perspectives on the issue, and that plurality is being erased in this discussion. There are identities that have been marginalized in this push, and they're not just the identities of elite queer theorists. You can invalidate those perspectives if you want, but I'm not sure what there is to gain in doing so.

I'm not invalidating those perspectives, I'm just telling them that they're wrong.

I knew there was a reason that my BBTF entrance exam had "identify which color is blue" and "how do you spell 'cat'?" as questions instead of calculus and 16th century English history.

But hey, keep arguing to the 1970s, man. Later we can all get worried about OPEC and stagflation, put on our bell bottoms and smoke a bowl in the basement listening to that new "Dark Side of the Moon" LP.

Folks who don't support same sex marriage are supporting a bigoted belief. It doesn't matter where they got it - their religious leader, their parents, their friends - it's still a bigoted belief. It also doesn't matter what race they are.

As I said somewhere above, I'm not eager to be married again myself. But I'm not eager to own a home or a boat, or barbecue, or build a deck, or go to summer action movies, or watch tennis on TV. I do think that other people should have the right to do those things, however :)

So basically this entire scandal both at the outset and in the denouement was driven by Freakshow FBI Agent X who both wanted to bed the victim of the alleged harassment and also decided that the FBI was covering up it’s investigation of the Tampa socialite to protect President Obama. And this because of his “worldview”. Please let us meet this awesome example of American law enforcement.

Were transfolk just referred to as considering themselves something that they're not?

The whole point is that the culture wants them to be what they arent while they want to be accepted as what they are.

(Have you ever taken the implicit racism test? That thing'll scare you as to what's actually in your unconscious brain.)

(Have you ever taken the implicit racism test? That thing'll scare you as to what's actually in your unconscious brain.)

Ms. Kelley, a volunteer with wounded veterans and military families, brought her complaint to a rank-and-file agent she knew from a previous encounter with the F.B.I. office, the official also said. That agent, who had previously pursued a friendship with Ms. Kelley and had earlier sent her shirtless photographs of himself, was “just a conduit” for the complaint, he said. He had no training in cybercrime, was not part of the cyber squad handling the case and was never assigned to the investigation.

But the agent, who was not identified, continued to “nose around” about the case, and eventually his superiors “told him to stay the hell away from it, and he was not invited to briefings,” the official said. The Wall Street Journal first reported on Monday night that the agent had been barred from the case.

Later, the agent became convinced — incorrectly, the official said — that the case had stalled. Because of his “worldview,” as the official put it, he suspected a politically motivated cover-up to protect President Obama. The agent alerted Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, who called the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, on Oct. 31 to tell him of the agent’s concerns.

?

And just for good measure to 7459, ANOTHER 4 star has been quite the typist - Gen Allen has sent 20 - 30,000 PAGES of inappropriate email to Jill Kelley. And gay marriage is somehow the threat here.

I would ask a TG why they feel marginalized. Why they feel the need to identify with gays and lesbians at all. Are they gay or lesbian, or just TG? Why not stop using the generic alphabet soup "GLBT" identity bucket that might as well be marked "let me identify myself by what I'm not, thus giving the power that I claim to be fighting back to the heterodoxy that I claim to be opposing without so much as a "by your leave.""

Well, I see you've gone from "Bitter Mouse said this" to "many people on the left" say this, but you still can't figure out what is being said.

My opinions on the racist qualities of the protestation of Affirmative Action: When you say it as an insult, yeah, it's racist. When you say that the only reason a cum laude graduate as successful as plenty of Supreme Court Justices has ever advanced AT EVERY SINGLE LEVEL OF THEIR CAREER is because of Affirmative Action, yes, it's tending towards racist. When you pick a random job you know nothing about that's been filled by a minority and cry omnisciently that YOU KNOW the job should have gone to some beleaguered white person who was passed over because of Affirmative Action, it's... well, it's mostly pathetic whining. But it's also kind of racist as well.

When I said I hadn't gone back, I meant I hadn't gone back to JOE K's repeated commentary to compare it to BM's - who I did read - so therefore I was kind of guessing from memory, as I was at work. I said I didn't pay attention to what Bitter Mouse wrote? ORLY? No. Man, you are something else with the making #### up you want to believe. As self-aware as you are, though, I assume you already know that.

I disagree. I still strongly believe the best argument here is the libertarian one (though that shouldn't come as a shock to you guys, I'm sure). Marriage is none of the government's business. Or, to rephrase it for the religious, marriage is too sacred to let a government play a determining role.

The argument at the top, I personally find weak. I feel that gay marriages being easily obtainable as a matter of contract to be the superior position, but the argument is weak to use on those that disagree because you're essentially telling them "my personal beliefs can be codified because they are more legitimate than your personal beliefs." Religion is more than rituals and creation myths, it's the foundation for an ethical framework. The division drawn between religion/secular is generally quite arbitrary - on a fundamental level, libertarianism, progressivism, etc. take on the same characteristics as a religion, each with their own set of dogma and beliefs that we hold as a matter of faith. It doesn't really matter if we hold our ethical positions because we get our inspiration from a creator-God, from the opinions of others, or from ourselves. I'm not a religious person, but I do get along well with plenty of people with deep faith and essentially telling them that your moral construction is objectively superior to their moral construction is the 100% wrong approach to convincing them on a subject.

That's why I feel getting government out of the marriage game *enhances* religious freedom (and the argument I've had the most success with when talking with religious people that aren't on board). An American civil marriage contract being separate from a Catholic marriage, a Jewish marriage, or an Atheist marriage, allows everyone to marry according to their own rules of their own religion.

To me, the SSM question is a no-brainer. But I also understand that ID politics are insanely complicated and personal, so I'm interested in leaving open a space for dialogue about the new marginalizations/exclusions created by new modes of inclusion/mainstreaming

Because of his “worldview,” as the official put it, he suspected a politically motivated cover-up to protect President Obama.

But you just defended centuries of racial bigotry.

But if they are getting into positions of power/importance like this...

terrorist trial in absentia

I find the alphabet soup ID game (GLBTG...) to be silly at best, counter productive at worse. It's basically allowing their to exist only two possible, binary options of identification; "normal, heterosexual, straight" and "other, abnormal, freaky deaky weirdo ####." You don't break down heterodoxy by allowing it to define the terms from the start.

First, as I said to Blastin, I find the alphabet soup ID game (GLBTG...) to be silly at best, counter productive at worse. It's basically allowing their to exist only two possible, binary options of identification; "normal, heterosexual, straight" and "other, abnormal, freaky deaky weirdo ####." You don't break down heterodoxy by allowing it to define the terms from the start.

The point isn't that you have to come to the party at the country club. It's that the country club can't refuse to let you in because you freak them out a little with your crazy-assed high heels wearing man-thang.

I just took that test and it said that I have a slight preference for African Americans. (I'm white.) Not sure what that means.

you freak them out a little with your crazy-assed high heels wearing man-thang.