and i stand by my position on the issue. i feel that the government should have no say in marrige at all. i think it is a religous institution and deverse nothing in our legal system. my vote came down to money and this view. i don't want the infection to spread. maybe i can not erradicate it but if i can help slow i feel i did the right thing. this is just my belief and i can think of many people on this board with very radical to the left mine just happens to go radical to the right. sorry if it offends you.

while i don't always agree with radical ideas, i have no problem with the idea of getting govt. out of marriage. make it a religous thing only. great. but denying gays marriage rights because you don't want "the infection to spread" smacks of bigotry. rather than working towards getting govt. out of marraige, you'd deny them the rights that everyone else has. i personlly think that the reasons you gave in teh other thread were nothing more than BS. if tehy weren't, then i don't think you have a very realistic or rational view of the world.

as it were, based on your reasoning, i'd have to say that if i were gay, i would probably find a lesbian friend to marry, and maybe have my life partner marry hers, so that way we're still getting the tax breaks and whatnot that you're so against. so since they can still marry people tehy don't love, you really haven't done anything.

I think we should try to keep this set of posts as peaceful and non-agressive as possible please, it is my belief that this topic was started to promote good-will between all sides of the political spectrum. So, to keep with that, I'll support the libitarian's push for more than a two party system and the republicans help to create a ballance between enviromental needs and the need for economic progress. =)

While I disagree with his approach, I also disagree that it's necessarily the least bit bigoted. I think the idea is that the government would be irretrievably entrenched in the marriage thing if it handles gay marriages as well, and the best time to get govt out of marriage is before state marriage is extended to teh gheys.

i found one! i actually found something bush proposed or did that i actually support:

this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/07/po...gn/07bush.html

an edit of the text:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 - President Bush told a convention of 5,000 minority journalists on Friday that colleges should not give preferences for admission to the children of alumni, a position that put him at odds with his own history at Yale University.

Mr. Bush made his remarks at the Washington Convention Center in response to a question from Roland S. Martin, a syndicated columnist and a member of the National Association of Black Journalists, about whether colleges should give preferences to applicants, commonly called legacies, whose parents or grandparents attended the same institution.


"So the colleges should get rid of legacy?" Mr. Martin asked Mr. Bush at a question-and-answer session that followed the president's address to the convention.

"Well, I think so," said Mr. Bush, who is a son, grandson and also a father of Yale graduates. "Yeah. I think it ought to be based on merit."

Mr. Bush said that he assumed Mr. Martin had brought up the issue because of the president's Yale legacy, but Mr. Bush also joked that "in my case, I had to knock on a lot of doors to follow the old man's footsteps." Mr. Bush apparently meant that he had to work hard to succeed.

Mr. Bush was questioned in the context of a 2003 Supreme Court decision that preserved affirmative action in college admissions by upholding the system of the University of Michigan's law school, which considered race as only one factor in admissions. At the same time, the court ruled that a formulaic racial point system used by Michigan's undergraduate school was unconstitutional. Mr. Bush opposed both policies, calling them thinly disguised quota systems.

Supporters of affirmative action have long said that legacy admissions are effectively affirmative action for whites, and that anyone who opposes affirmative action as special treatment should be intellectually consistent by opposing legacies as well. Mr. Bush appeared to embrace that argument on Friday when he said, in the context of legacies, that there should not be "a special exception for certain people in a system that's supposed to be fair."

Mr. Bush made his comments about legacies at the end of a speech that was coolly received and at one point interrupted by a heckler who shouted, "Shame on you for your lies." The man was removed from the room, and organizers of the conference said that he was not a member of any of the black, Hispanic, Native American or Asian-American journalists' organizations that are taking part in the convention.

Mr. Bush, who delivered a version of his campaign stump speech and did little to tailor his remarks to the group, received mostly tepid applause and was greeted with far less enthusiasm than his Democratic opponent for president, Senator John Kerry, who addressed the convention on Thursday.

========
only 4-5 days after everyone lost interest in this thread, by some miracle, i managed it.

When political discussion is more than rants, attacks, or propaganda life is good.
Gasp, we even talked about issues rather than canidates.

Thanks Pan6467.

i'll resist the urge to give yet another backhanded compliment.

i think the democratic stance on worker's comp and worker's rights are better. they may not be the most efficient ways to get the economy going white-hot, but i know from experience that without the regulations the democrats often promote the average working person will get trodden on. sometimes the republicans advocate the economic equivalent of the "law of the jungle" which might be good in the short-term but really opens the door for employee neglect.

Republicans:
- Promotion of personal responsibility (unfortunately, this is taken too far into the defense of corporations)
- Gun ownership (for the hobbyists and the paranoids)

Democrats:
- Pro-choice
- Gay marriage (for the gays)
- Corporate regulations (unforuntately, this is taken too far into absolving personal responsibility)
- Affirmative Action
- Support for the United Nations
- Progressive taxation

Greens:
- Environment. Obviously.

Libertarians
- Promotion of personal responsibility (but with the same issue with the Republicans)

Anarchists
- The definition of freedom


Negatives equally shared in common by both Republicans and Democrats:
- Campaign tactics
- Both parties are unfortunately led by politicians
- The complete lack of recognition that the U.S. is a good deal responsible for creating the conditions in the Middle East which produce terrorism.

Yes, this is a good thread and glad it has found new life. No need to thank me tho, it was the posters who didn't troll and flame... and even Roachboy found something finally. Was worried for awhile.

I think I must come under the "other" heading (one time in this forum someone posted some survey to tell how far left you were, I was the furthest to the left by about 2 points (out of 10) of the whole board)... I was supposedly futher left than Chairman Mao!

But I support the fact that John Kerry supports the equal right for all adults to marry - I believe that to deny some citizens the legal right to marry (regardless of the religious ceremony of marriage, which is not a matter for the state at all) is an infringement on those citizens human rights. If Kerry becomes president I hope that he will push forward the right for single sex marriages in all states... if any individual state resits they will have to be overcome by legal means - they must be forced to allow their people to be free.

Though it hasn't happened yet, I have much more faith in the Democrats to treat Gay rights as a full-on civil liberties/equal rights issue. We aren't there yet, but I believe the Dems will be leading the way.

Dems: Corporate Responsibility, although they do take it too far sometimes, but it does counteract the extreme of the sometimes view by the Republicans of Pure Classicist Economics, so it allows for both sides to make compromises and come to a bi-partisan conclusion (hopefully).