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Good Lord...do people really go to bed at night with their covers up to their necks in fear and sweat worrying about people marrying their dogs?
Homosexuality is natural. on my mother's maternal side I can trace it back three generations. On her paternal side I can trace it back 2 generations. My mother had three children and I am the only straight one. I knew my siblings were gay their whole life. All animals, humans included, are born with their sexuality wire in. No one would chose a lifestyle that even in these modern times will get them killed. Marriage is a civil rights issue and eveyone should have that option.
There is no way divorce will ever be outlawed it would hurt too many politicians Gingirch would be all over the place campaigning against that one.
@Zero G - it's true that in the past our selection of facts and technology was simpler, cuz we had less of both. But our life struggles could be very hard.Think about Vietnam, Civil Rights, Russian nukes pointed at our heads.
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About the young man who just called and said Thom was not being scientific in re gays was amusing, since Thom had just cited several scientific study. The caller seemed quite certain of his position, and since he was right, he seemed to have to state that science supported him, even though he couldn't think of any.
I've written a blog entry about AVATAR from the perspective of a person with a disability, thought you might be interested:
http://www.polymer-clay-art.com
Dogs are more than happy to "live in sin" w/humans.
Dang, I used to have a cited paragraph on studies about gay being natural- and , as callers have said, gay people are offended by such studies as the real issue is whose business is it of the republican party as to who each of us has sex with and how- what next, the gender inquisition?
http://genderstudies.uchicago.edu/lgsp/
SB - My wife will kill me for exercising it but I have a farging right.
Is there a movement out there of people trying to marry their dogs?
When divorce is outlawed, only Outlaws will be divorced.
How can we outlaw divorce? My Ketubah, complete with its Lieberman Clause, defines my rights and obligations for a divorce under the laws of Moses . . . I have a RELIGIOUS RIGHT to a farging divorce.
My will kill me for exercising it but I have a farging right.
Thom, I just posted this over at the Daily Kos, but I know you like the orignal,so here's the next episode.
A day in the life of Joe Republican. 2030
Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The coffee perks him up and gets him ready for his morning. He then gets into his car and drives to work. The traffic on the highway is backed up but it's ok. Homeland Security is searching all vehicles before they cross over the river for bombs. Its a small price to pay after the great Golden Gate Bridge bombing of 2015.
When he gets to work he parks his car in lot far away from any of the office buildings and begins to walk. Its a small price to pay after the car bombing spree that Al Qaeda went on in 2022. At least the streets are clear of cars and he can walk down the boulevards.
Before he makes it to his building he is stopped by a Homeland Security agent for a random strip search. Its a small price to pay after the suicide bombers who walked the streets in Manhattan with underwear bombs back in 2012.
While at work he is interrupted by his companies security guard to check and see if he has any weapons hidden on him or in his desk. Its a small price to pay after the over-worked under-paid accountants at Big National Bank went on a shooting spree in 2020.
When he is done he goes to the mall. There he is put through another strip search before entering. Its a small price to pay after the North Korean terrorists set off a bomb in the Mall of America just last year.
While at the mall he sees that night's football game on TV. There are no fans in the stands as that was banned. Its a small price to pay after the bomb that an Iranian terrorist set off during a game back in 2018.
After receiving another random strip search he purchases the new movie that just came out. He can no longer see it in a theater as they have all been shut down. Its a small price to pay after Hezbollah set a bomb off in a theater back in 2027.
When he gets home he sits down in front of the TV and sees that there has been another terrorist attack. A North African terrorist angry about America's invasion into his country drove a tanker truck full of gasoline into a church. Joe screams at the TV, "What is this countries problem? We need to send in more troops, build thick cement walls around all churches, and ban gasoline tanker trucks. What a stupid idea...trucks loaded with gasoline." He shakes in head and gets angry at those sissy liberals who allowed this to happen.
asymptotically
rewinn,
I'd have to posit that pre-computer times were simpler. My father grew up with radio, not tv, I remember my great-grandmother never had an electric toaster, (even when the banks were giving them away for new deposits.)
The graph of the totality of human knowledge is rising asyptotically to the y axis.
Oh, one more thing about that poor anti-gay Representative: she cites Will and Aerial Durant as her authorities.
They wrote a nice, popular multivolume history of the world back in the 1960s. He was a nice popularizer and got the Pultizer Prize, but he shows the prejudices and ignorance of his age in matters relating to sex. I recall that early in his discussion of ancient Ireland that the kings practiced a form of lex prima noctis which had (Durant asserted) valuable eugenic results (he didn't use that word but it's what he meant) and in the next paragraph mentioned a custom of killing the 1st born, which with a moment's thought would have vitiated the prior point. Perhaps that was a singular aberration in his thought processes but at any rate it's safe to say that our knowledge of history, biology and sex has advanced considerably in the last half-century ... so I would suggest that the Representative needs to bring her knowledge up to date.
Her citation reminds me, however, of an explanation advanced on the Jon Stewart show earlier this week as to why conservatives claim that our past eras were simpler, happier times. Those times were simpler and happier because we were CHILDREN then! I can imagine the Representative reading Durant as a teen and being awed by the wonders of history, not having the self-knowledge today to realize that that author seemed great because she had nothing to compare him to.
I think I will add this too,
Might as Leonardo Di Caprio conveys in his Eleventh Hour, we learn from nature’s superior models. For example, trees transport water with no electricity or even gravity feed. Could not our engineers learn to build our skyscrapers mimicking the efficiency of the xylem tissues of say a giant Redwood? Thom Hartmann (2007), in that same documentary, posits that in order to awaken people to these possibilities we would need to integrate such values and possibilities into our cultural awareness.
Two points regarding Ms. Kern's arguments. First, my son and his wife were divorced by her choice, they had two small children at the time. Five years after, my son and his ex are getting along better than when they were married. The children are both honor students in their elementary school. Both parents are very supportive and attend their activities as they occur.
Second point. I was born in 1946, I started school during the early 50's, hardly the "age of enlightenment". I knew that I was attracted to the opposite sex in the first grade. My cousin who was two years older than I knew that he was attracted to the same sex during that same time period. Granted, it is much easier to out today than it was when I was growing up but that didn't stop the preferences of sexual orientation from being any different.
Whenever this topic comes up.. or gay marriage for that matter I always think of this CS Lewis quote because I think he says it best.
"A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammeans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognize that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not."
I wish Thom would QUIT repeating the argument that peopel are "born gay" (or straight). The right-wingers are correct, we are NOT born gay, and there is no evidence that "sexual oritnation" is biologically determined. At the least, social, biologial & biological factors play a part in determining our sexual identity/preference, and even our "orientation".
Thom makes the mistake of accepting scientific claims of knowledge without critically evaluating them. There is NO "gay gene," and we know for a FACT that some people have changed their sexual identity/preference over their lives. The SOCIOLOGICAL evidence is that sexuality is NOT determined by biology..
We need to make a more radical argument for sexual liberation that does NOT rely upon questionable scientific claims. We should have a right to CHOOSE our sexual identity (gay, straight, bi)! We need to quit making the limp liberal argument that gays should be accepted because they can't help being gay since they didn't choose it, and make the argument that we have a constitutional right to CHOOSE our sexual identities, just like our other identitiels (religioius, etc.)
Visit http://www.queerbychoice.com for more evidence that we can CHOOSE to be gay, etc.
Jim Maynard
Queer Notes http://queenotes.blogspot.com
May this be the year that ALL Americans have the same civil rights. We are also into another blizzard in central Nebraska after our Christmas blizzard. It is -4 with wind chill at -23. Not a lot of snow but high winds. And they say there is nothing to global climate change?
I think we as a country need to decide if we are a 'Christian' country, a judeo-christian country (which would then include Islam as muslims too consider themselves among the Judeo-Christian faith and belive Jesus as a messenger of God) OR are we a nation of laws guide by the principles and rules laid down in our Constitution.
But then, is it a good thing for Empires to exist indefinately...or at all.
THERMOPYLAE disproves the idea that gays destroy nations.
If it weren't for the 300 brave bisexual Spartans (and their 900 also-bi helpers) our entire Judeo-Christian civilization would not exist (...if you believe the Greek side of the story, which may be questionable.)
So God and Mother Nature gives us individuality in our FINGERPRINTS, never duplicating a FINGERPRINT.
But when it comes to our SEXUALITY these Artists use a 'cookie cutter' and 'black and white' paint.
another thing that is natural is IGNORANCE and that is more dangerous to our Society as displayed by 'homophobia'.
Your guest who argues that every empire that accepted homosexuality fell within a few generations had to argue that "generation" meant "centuries".
It was nice for you to have her on and treat her gently, but it's clear she has her feelings and can't back them up with facts. So when you present her with a fact (Greek empire from 700 BC to 31 BC) she just re-writes her own facts to fit.
You'll never persuade her but you can show others her absurdity
Somehow, I am amusingly reminded of Anthony Burgess'
"The Wanting Seed"