There’s a lot of ruckus going on right now about the California supreme court decision finding a “natural right” to gay marriage in the state constitution.
As a Christian, I believe scripture teaches against homosexul behavior. I do not oppose people who have such inclinations, but rather their actions in fulfilling them. I was born with a propensity to steal, but that doesn’t make it right. That a man is born with (or develops) a sexual attraction toward other men does make it right to follow through on said attraction.
(Note: I realize this will not convince non-Christian acceptants of homosexuality; it’s simply an illustration of my perspective.)
I believe the growing social acceptance of homosexuality is a destructive force in our culture; I believe the same thing about the high heterosexual divorce rate and number of “broken” families. I believe there are plenty of sociological and economic arguments to be made for why our society should bless heterosexual but not homosexual marriage with various benefits, while leaving the explicitly Biblical arguments out of the public square.
All that said, as much as I support protecting “traditional” marriage, I am categorically opposed to a Constitutional ammendment as a solution. Our founding document is not the place for specific policies. We tried with Prohibition, and it was a total disaster. It serves only to cheapen and weaken our founding document. The Constitution should reflect over-arching principles and basic rights; peripheral issues (or issues unrelated to what is actually addressed in the document) should be determined by the legislature.
If that results in some states legalizing and endorsing a lifestyle I am opposed to (morally, socially, and economically), so be it. I will work to convince others of my view and to make changes legislatively.
Many states are pre-emptively passing ammendments to their state constitutions that protect “traditional” marriage. I am less concerned with that than I am with ammending the federal Constitution. Perhaps that is inconsistent; I’m not entirely sure yet.
Journalists, and especially humorists, need to come clean and admit that none of us ever really wanted to see Hillary Clinton in the White House. No, it isn’t her hair or her know-it-all attitude or her inexplicable marriage or her pitiful attempts to portray herself as a tribune of the working class or the fact that she went to Wellesley that puts us off. She’s just no fun, and politicians who are no fun are hard to write about. A barrel of monkeys is fun. A barrel of dead monkeys is no fun. Hillary is less fun that three barrels of dead monkeys. Maybe 300. […] For a satirist, the most depressing thing about this year’s campaign is that Hillary is still standing while so many other richly amusing candidates have fallen by the wayside. Dennis Kucinich and his UFO theories was a peach. Mike Huckabee provided loads of fun with his pastoral quips and bass guitar. No one ever looked sillier in a vote-seeking sweater than Mitt Romney (not even Wesley Clark). John Edwards, the prole with the 28,000-square-foot McMansion, never failed to charm, and Rudy Giuliani, with his romances, his comb-over and Bernard Kerik kept the whole nation loose. All of them are sorely missed.— Hillary Is Too Boring to Be President - WSJ.com
“If American culture is under assault today, it’s not from immigrants who aren’t assimilating but from liberal elites who reject the concept of assimilation. For multiculturalists, and particularly those in the academy, assimilation is a dirty word. A values-neutral belief system is embraced by some to avoid having to judge one culture as superior or inferior to another. Others reject the assimilationist paradigm outright on the grounds that the U.S. hasn’t always lived up to its ideals. America slaughtered Indians and enslaved blacks, goes the argument, and this wicked history means we have no right to impose a value system on others.
“But social conservatives who want to seal the border in response to these left-wing elites are directing their wrath at the wrong people. The problem isn’t the immigrants. The problem is the militant multiculturalists who want to turn America into some loose federation of ethnic and racial groups. The political right should continue to push back against bilingual education advocates, anti-American Chicano Studies professors, Spanish-language ballots, ethnically gerrymandered voting districts, La Raza’s big-government agenda and all the rest. But these problems weren’t created by the women burping our babies and changing linen at our hotels, or by the men picking lettuce in Yuma and building homes in Iowa City.
“Keep the immigrants. Deport the Columbia faculty.”
PASS A LIE DETECTOR TEST
Ma’am, not only is your heart beating fast, which obviously confirms your guilt… But, well, we’ve never actually seen a blood pressure as high as yours before…
Are your eyes naturally black, or are those your pupils?
A post back, I asked people to explain to me why they thought meeting with Iran (as Obama proposes) was a worse idea than the Bush/McCain/Clinton strategy of blustering in the irrational hope that this somehow persuades Iran to do what we want it to. SDS took a shot at it, citing “author and student of Middle Eastern politics” Joel Rosenberg. According to Rosenberg (and Rush Limbaugh), Ahmadenejad believes the annihilation of millions of jews is his life’s purpose. And, according to Rosenberg, his beliefs get crazier from there.
I was a bit hesitant—because I’ve listened to Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric and while he was certainly a hard-liner, he didn’t sound like a religious zealot. So I looked up Rosenberg. By “author,” SDS apparently meant “fiction author,” apparently of the Dan Brown variety. And by “student of Middle Eastern politics,” he means the kind of student without citable laurels. Needless to say, I’m not willing to base a foreign policy on Rosenberg’s fictional conspiracy theories.
So, would anybody else like to take a crack at explaining why we can’t talk to Iran?
OK, here are some more reasons why the U.S. should not talk directly with Iran: to quote John McCain, “It enhances prestige of a nation that is terrorist sponsor and is directly responsible for the deaths of young Americans.” We should not lend legitimacy to a regime funding Hamas, funding Hezbollah and providing weaponry for attacks into Israel, providing weaponry to insurgents in Iraq, having secret dealings with North Korea, maintaining a cozy relationship with Hugo Chavez, threatining to wipe Israel off the map, capturing and humiliating troops of our ally Britain, repeatedly flouting UN demands to halt their pursuit of nuclear weapons, etc. Not to mention that he believes his 2005 five speech to the UN assembly put everyone present in a trance.
I am not a gunslinger on this. I’d much rather we didn’t have to bomb Iran; indeed, I have high hopes for the effect serious economic sanctions could have on the country. But when it comes down to it, we should not negotiate with this nutjob, and we should draw a hard line and stick by it.
Blip is my new favorite site. TechCrunch writes:
Call it “Twitter for Music” since it’s essentially just that: a way to suggest music and share your thoughts about it with a network of contacts.
The beauty of Blip is that, unlike with Pownce, no file uploads are necessary. Just search for the song you have in mind and Blip will grab it from Seeqpod, Skreemr, or parent company Fuzz’s own database of music. Your followers (”listeners”) can hear full versions of the songs you post using a Songza-like player at the bottom of the page.
Of course, just as people are wary of joining yet another social network, they’re sure to think twice about leaving behind a network of followers for a new micro-blogging platform. So Blip debuts with the ability to push messages out to FriendFeed, Twitter, Pownce, and Tumblr. This may not ensure its survival in the long run, especially if Twitter or Pownce decide to integrate Songza, but it should help with adoption rates.
I have two questions. First, why does Bush think it’s a good idea to lump Iran and Al Qaeda into the same group? Secondly, (and this is a serious question for anybody who disagrees with me), how would an unpreconditioned meeting with Iranian leaders be bad idea? It doesn’t have to be a full state visit with all the pomp—but why not have some people with authority to talk with eachother get together in Egypt or somewhere? Iran is no more eager to give up its nuclear program than we are to give up ours—so why are we refusing to discuss issues that we could make some headway on until they do something we already know they’re not going to do?
I believe the U.S. should not meet with the Iranians because it would legitimize and lend respect to a crazed regime unworthy of respect or direct communication. Author and student of Middle Eastern politics Joel Rosenberg describes best why Iran cannot be deterred or reasoned with:
No one who truly understands Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s eschatology — or end times theology — could honestly believe that Ahmadinejad can be deterred. Ahmadinejad believes it is his God-given mission to annihilate the U.S., Israel and Judeo-Christian civilization as we know. To what end? To create the conditions that will bring the Islamic Messiah known as the Mahdi or the “12th Imam” to earth. Ahmadinejad is not just another power-hungry dictator in the mold of the Soviet or Chinese leaders of yore. He is a Shia Islamic fascist. He believes his life destiny is to kill millions of Jews and Christians and usher in an Islamic caliphate. He believes he is a John-the-Baptist, a forerunner, of the Islamic Messiah. If he dies, he believes he will spend eternity in paradise with 72 virgins. But he doesn’t really believe he’s going to die. He believes he has been chosen for a divine appointment, and that nothing can stop him. That is what makes him so dangerous. Unfortunately, too many Washington politicians — Sens. Clinton and Obama included — do not understand this.
I’m unsure if McCain explicitly understands this either, but at least he’s willing to unequivocally condemn terrorist’s jihad against us as a “transcendent evil.”
This is what’s truly disturbing about Barack Obama’s foreign policy vision — it sees ending the Iraq War as the Philosopher’s Stone that, once found, will turn all of our leaden overseas problems into golden opportunities.— Jim Geraghty
Americans like to believe we turn to religion because of an accident or the loss of a loved one, but in my case it was simply the culmination of searching. I wrestled with a lot of theological questions, and then one afternoon, I thought, I love you—I want to go back to you.” - Author Anne Rice explaining her conversion back to Christianity, Time, March 17, 2008, p. 6.— Youth Culture Hot Quotes (via bellatoris)
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