Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Prop 8 WON?!?!?

Why the fuck would you vote against gay marriage? If you're gay you're for it and if you're not you've got no self-interest either way, so what the hell happened? Who is voting against this? Why? How do they justify themselves?

I don't understand people.


But hey, Obama won, and...y'know, I'm not that stoked that he beat McCain, I could've lived with either, but I'm glad as fuck that Bush is going. It was thirty-five degrees in Seattle last night, and this was the scene on the street:

11 comments:

  1. Even over here its been on all the news channels it will be nice to get back to some normality

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  2. I would probably get laid a lot more (maybe twice a year!) if I could stomach political rallies.

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  3. its going to be fucking awful to tell my friends "sorry 'bout your marriage, hope you guys had fun". sometimes people just confound me.

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  4. Actually, there is a reason to vote against it: Because you're "preserving the 3000 year tradition of marriage" (Or 5000 or whatever number one chooses). This reason relies on the uninformed belief that U.S. marriages are fundamentally christian in nature and that the judeo-christian marriage traditions have always resembled those of today - when most laws and traditions of modern marriages really only range from 50-200 years old. And also that change is bad.

    But hey, when you've got tons of people on the internet who are reacting to the election with "OMG You idiots elected a socialist muslim who will destroy america, thanks libtards and dumbasses who listen to them!!!!!" is it really that surprising?

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  5. I wouldn't have voted for Prop 8, but it's dangerous to put positions in other people's heads like that; you eventually start to believe it.

    Obviously it would be foolish to vote for such a thing if you believed you had no interest in the outcome--but that should tell you, right on its face, that the people who voted for Prop 8 do NOT believe that.

    Many of them believe that their religion commands them to oppose homosexuality in the society in which they live. They believe that homosexuality is not only an individual sin, but that it does harm to the entire society--and they have a responsibility to protect that society.

    There's a big difference between thinking that's incorrect and assuming that they don't believe it, that they really think just like you and yet insist on voting the other way simply to be perverse.

    In any case, the national tide is still flowing in the same direction, but you couldn't really have thought there would be no setbacks.

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  6. Bruno - Well, maybe not these rallies. Unless you're rather open-minded.

    DG - Oh, I know that people voted for a gay marriage ban because they believed in it, I'm not saying they were "perverse" or anything, I just don't fully understand why they believed in it. Why does their religion care and why does that part of their religion mean so much to them and are 50%+ of California really that religious and augh why can't we all just hug.

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  7. You're assuming people are thinking about it. I suspect most don't get beyond "Gays? Ick."

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  8. Not "perverse" in a sexual way or an immoral way, but perverse in its original meaning--being contrary for the sake of being contrary.

    It's not uncommon to make that assumption at all. If you look closely in my post above, you can see where I did it even as I chided you for doing it.

    I spend a lot of time on gun control issues, and I see it every day. Gun rights advocates think the gun controllers can't possibly believe that gun control works, so they're forced to conclude that people like the Brady Campaign are perverse (again, meaning they act contrary to their own beliefs for the hell of it) or evil enough to be using gun control for the purpose of creating failure and violence.

    A case in point: about a year ago, a commenter on a well-known gun-rights blog was discussing a woman who had recently testified in favor of increased gun control in Virginia. Her son was a student at Virginia Tech, and the shooting there had convinced her that no guns should be allowed on campus, for starters.

    Now, I disagreed with this woman. Still do. I think she was wrong. But I never doubted for a moment that she thought she was right.

    This commenter couldn't stretch his brain as far as believing that she didn't share his worldview, so he assumed that she agreed with him in principle--that is, that gun control in Virginia and gun bans on college campuses would make college students less safe and more likely to be victims of mass shootings. Since he was sure she believed that, how could he explain her efforts to enact those measures on her own son's campus?

    Simple, he explained. She didn't love her son. She didn't care if he got killed. She was probably holding large-scale life insurance on her own son in the hope that he would die soon and make her rich; if she could increase the odds that he might be shot by a maniac by disarming him and his classmates, she would certainly do it.

    He went through all those mental gymnastics to avoid the simple, seemingly easy step of admitting that he and she were individuals whose ideas, experiences and ways of thinking differed.

    Oh, and for Michael--from the analysis I heard on the news this morning, it sounded like the marriages performed before Prop 8 takes effect will be upheld as valid. Cold comfort for everybody else, but the people who were smart enough to rush to the courthouse and strike while the iron was hot are going to be OK.

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  9. To expound further on Don Gwinn's comments:

    OK--there is a strong tradition in the Old Testament that God is, unlike the other gods of the time, not rooted to a place but active in history & politics. Therefore the political fortunes of the faithful are dependent on how well they obey God's law. Failure to obey God's laws leads to adverse political consequences. This is one of the central themes of the Book of Judges.

    Now, if obedience to God's laws have political consequences, the logic goes what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms IS the state's business because it will affect how God treats the State and the State's political future.

    This is, of course, bronze age thinking and totally ignores the establishment clause, but that is irrelevant to some folks. So there is some logic behind their actions. Primitive, unconstitutional logic, but logic nonetheless.

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  10. Yup. God ain't no joke; he'll totally sell your whole nation to the Midianites if you get too big for your britches.

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  11. DG - I know what perverse means! I went to school and everything!

    I know what you mean with the gun-control analogy. One side has worked out that there'll be less violence with less guns, and one side has worked out that there'll be less violence with more guns plus it's a civil right to own them. But in debate it often comes down to "you want to take away my rights"/"you want to get my kids shot" when in fact that's not what either side actually wants.

    So I know that people voting for Prop 8 don't directly want to make gay people miserable for hate's sake. (Although I wouldn't rule it out for everyone.) I just have trouble understanding what they do want.

    Coroner - Okay, so maybe that's what they want, but it seems like some religious groups devote way more energy to defeating gayness than they do to more obvious and destructive sins. So it's hard not to look for ulterior motives. But I dunno. I had a warm and fuzzy religion back when I had any at all, so I just don't have the right frame of reference.

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