(no subject)

[altarflame]

I'm finding myself increasingly politically frustrated, lately. I do not use facebook as a political platform, because the idea of discussing politics with my extended relatives, fellow PATH moms and old high school acquaintances sounds like a nightmare to me - but everybody else seems to. So I get exposed to a wild spectrum of thoughts and ideas, many of them shouted through offensive gifs or typed in caps lock with a bunch of exclamation points.

Anyway, the two main things I cannot stop thinking about as I drive and sweep the floor lately are:

1. It doesn't matter what your religious beliefs are, or what your political party is - if you are not gay, gay marriage is just NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS and actively trying to get in it's way is not ok. I just do not GET how anybody thinks it's their right or their duty or any of it to regulate or curtail the rights to LEGAL (not Catholic, not Mormon, etc) marriage in AMERICA. Going out and voting against something like that just seems so terrible to me, so wildly busy-bodyish and hateful! Secular marriage is not the same thing as Christian marriage, at all, so I don't understand why it's suddenly equated as soon as we bring in gay people. Secular marriage involves everything from immigrants trying to stay in the country through friendly arrangements that end when citizenship is achieved to celebrities on their 10th spouse; in many of our states, it can be cousins and/or it can be ended through no-fault divorce. Legal marriages are often "open" or involve swingers, they can be performed as a Pagan handfasting, or can include home-written vows and be done by a minister of the Church of Satan in a graveyard at midnight. There is place in Vegas where you can get married in your car at a drive-thru place. NONE OF THIS IS BEING LEGALLY BLOCKED, and do you know why? Because we're a free country, and people believe in individual rights for all even when they go against their own shit! GAH!

2. I've had this big hang up for a long time as a pseudo-liberatarian, that even though I believe in many democrat-type ideals I also really, really believe in smaller government. Over the last month though, more and more, I think that republicans are not in any way making government smaller. We don't have small government now. Everyone who thinks Obama is making the government too big and too powerful just make me think things like:

How is it not causing anyone to panic or be scared that our freedom is being eroded that (GMO, Monsanto, etc) corn and soy are heavily subsidized to the point that they are in every single thing we freakin' eat, and the government buys gross enormous quantities of pink slime for school lunches and that's normal - but when Michelle Obama wants to institute healthy school lunch programs and put in an organic community garden on the white house lawn, everybody panics that we're on a terrifying slippery slope? I'd rather be on THAT slippery slope, you know?

There are tons of parallels like this. Car subsidies, gas subsidies and WARS OVER OIL are fine and right in line with small govt, but gas prices going up and environmental subsidies are large govt? Wrong. You can't just call everything you don't personally agree with big government. You can say you don't like the direction things are headed in or you agree with the old ways, but that's not the same as someone, you know, destroying the constitution.

Regardless of any feelings I've ever had on the matter, mandating TRANSVAGINAL ultrasound before an abortion blows my mind. Does govt GET any bigger than that? I mean I had six pregnancies and a ton of ultrasounds and every single ONE of them was done through the belly, and yet Republicans want to make it law that the doctor has to be able to do that to you? I had to laugh at the thing I saw that said, "Government so small it can fit in your vagina". I am saddened by abortion but it is absolutely ridiculous to require a photo of your dead fetus to stay in your medical records for doctors to see along with the print record.

Right now, hospital fees are INSANE and insurance is wildly expensive, because of the vast sea of uninsured Americans who use hospital ERs as free clinics without ever paying the bills. Tax payers fund medicaid for the pregnant women and small children in that sea, and Medicare for the elderly among them. It's a totally unsustainable system that makes no sense because the people who have more are paying for everyone else anyway - the only alternative would be to turn them away at the doors and have them dying of totally preventable stuff, and we aren't going to do THAT. So...what is the problem with instituting a system? How have they not already done that? My stepmom has over a million dollars in unpaid medical bills from breast cancer, my dad half a million, they don't even make payments. I owe a hospital in Boston hundreds of thousands for Elise...they aren't getting it, unless I become a millionaire one day or something. Meanwhile I can't afford to get my thyroid checked out and my fucking hernia is a pre-existing condition. Unsustainable! Government systems suck, having to wait for things sucks, but geez man my grandparents - one of whom is a veteran with full retirement benefits - can't get a home care nurse even part time for my Nana, even while he has a needed surgery. I've always been the one there saying "But then they can determine the care we get, what if we don't get to pick our own doctors, etc" - but you know? Medicaid paid for a maternity center. The private insurance my sister has pays for a midwife. MEdicaid wouldn't pay for Nancy in Boston, so we found a way to do it ourselves. I mean geez you can't turn everything into some wild conspiracy theory that recalls Nazi Germany, sometimes a social aid program is just a social aid program. Like the one that's allowing me to go to college (Pell Grant) or get Isaac counseling and evaluation or the one that funds the Greater Miami Youth Symphony. I don't like them all! I don't like public schools! So I opt out, and it's more expensive to buy our own stuff but that's worth it to me. I don't want to forget all of history, and I know politicians are liars and motivated by their own interests, but I also don't want to constantly live in some state of paranoia that politicians are EVIL and have hidden agendas that involve destroying the nation in some calculated plan that benefits nobody.

/end rant

Feel free to weigh in if you like.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with just about everything you've written here. I'm a life-long Republican (at age 31--so I've voted in 3 presidential election), but lately I just can't behind the party's hypocrisy. The primary reason I aligned with the Republican party was its small government policies. I am socially liberal (support gay marriage, abortion, most social programs and think the war on drugs is a failure) but, until recently, believed that the private sector was better at managing most services than the government. Now, I'm not so sure. The current healthcare system sucks for all the reasons you mentioned, but that said, I'm not sure socialized medicine meets peoples' needs any better. The thing that really put me over the edge with the GOP, however, was the recent vote that doubled student loan interest rates. Between my private student loans and my federal loans, I am $120,000 in debt and looking at $1,000+ per month payments. (I should be able to swing that, but that means not being able to save for retirement, take a vacation, buy a new car, or do anything besides work my butt off.) These loans cannot be discharged ever, under any circumstances, thanks to the Republicans. If (God forbid) I were to become disabled, they'd take most of my Social Security check every month. My point is: the system is messed up. Both parties are corrupted by greed and special interests. I don't want to be paranoid, either, but I firmly believe that the political elite could not care any less about the middle class.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

Yeah, don't get me started on the war on drugs, how's that for "small government"? Now the privatization of the prison system is a total nightmare, too...And the student loan stuff is going to be effecting me in the future, as well :/

[aelf.livejournal.com]

Not being able to discharge student loans in bankruptcy has been supported by both parties, in part because it's supposed to help loans and grants continue to be available to students who need them. That particular issue cannot be blamed on one party or the other.

I have issues with it because I think it's led to skyrocketing tuition. I suspect if colleges weren't guaranteed full repayment by the government, fewer people would qualify for loans, fewer people would qualify for large loans, and tuition could not rise as it has been because fewer people could pay it. OTOH, easy and accessible loans have made college possible for more people than ever before.

[(Anonymous)]

I am convinced that more pressing concern for the legislature is NOT keeping funding available for students or preventing abuses, but rather, capitalizing on the money made from defaults. Sally Mae et al. make a big chunk of their revenue from penalties, as to the private banks offering student loans. They come out ahead when students cannot pay because they will get their money one way or another, be that through life-long wage garnishments, social security garnishments--whatever it takes. You're right, it's not either party, it's the big-bank special interests, the same people who caused the housing bubble and credit crisis, actually.

I think you're correct in that skyrocketing tuition is another important issue at play here. There are no easy fixes for that one.

A Bad Argument and a Poor Strategy

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

... if you are not gay, gay marriage is just NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS ...

This argument makes no sense, since all citizens have an equal right to speak or vote upon the law. I would agree that gays have far more of an INTEREST in the laws and customs regulating gay relationships, but that does not mean that non-gays must remain silent on this issue.

This is also a foolish argument if your intent is to legalize gay marriage, since it is an empty boast: since we live under one law, all it will achieve is to turn non-gays against gays -- and non-gays are the vast majority of the population. They will ignore your statement and vote gay marriage down, or worse.

If you want to see gay marriage made legal, as I do, then reach out to non-gays and convince them that homosexuality should logically and morally be no impediment to love or to legitimizing love through marriage. Attempting to exclude from the debate those whom you have neither the legal nor moral right to exclude from the debate will simply make those you wish to exclude desire to thwart you, to call your bluff and throw it in your teeth.

I just do not GET how anybody thinks it's their right or their duty or any of it to regulate or curtail the rights to LEGAL (not Catholic, not Mormon, etc) marriage in AMERICA. Going out and voting against something like that just seems so terrible to me, so wildly busy-bodyish and hateful!

Remember that the historical precedent has not been to allow, but rather to deny homosexual marriage (*). You are attempting to change an element of the definition of a legimtiate marriage.

Secular marriage is not the same thing as Christian marriage, at all, so I don't understand why it's suddenly equated as soon as we bring in gay people.

You greatly underestimate the scope of your opposition when you equate it to the population of devout Christians. The world is very much monotheistic: Christians, Jews and Muslims alike abhor homosexuality. Non-monotheistic faiths sometimes have a place for gays, but it is often a very marginal and despised place, as in the example of the caste of Hindu transsexuals (who are in any case "transsexual" in a way horrific to most Westerners including most Western gays and transgendered persons).

Also: trying to make your argument "gays vs. Christians" is a losing strategy, because it automatically paints as enemies many Christians who might be willing to tolerate secular gay marriage provided that Christians are not forced to in private and religious matters acknowledge the eqwuality of such unions. You may find this bigoted and hateful, but would you rather spit bile at your opponents, or would you rather win?

Legal marriages are often "open" or involve swingers, they can be performed as a Pagan handfasting, or can include home-written vows and be done by a minister of the Church of Satan in a graveyard at midnight.

Read the law. Legal marriage -- at present -- is exclusive and limited to one man and one woman per marriage. Yes, of course more than two people, of either or any conceivable mix of genders, may consider themselves married to one another, and IMO this should be legal, but the law does not bend to my or your whims. For numerous important legal purposes, the law will only acknowledge two of the individuals, one male and one female, per marriage as having the rights and duties of spouses.

Don't imagine that you've won a victory when the game is still on!

===

(*) Yes, I know that here and there, some cultures have allowed some elite individual homosexuals to contract gay marriages. This is VERY much the historical exception, and even then it was a privilege rarely extended to non-aristocrats: in other words, to anyone not in a position to enforce private law at sword's point. What you're trying to achieve here is a much more general reform, and in a culture which was until the last generation very unfriendly to any such idea. You must acknowledge the difficulty of what you are trying to achieve, or you will not achieve it.

Re: A Bad Argument and a Poor Strategy

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I'm not trying to make an argument or come at this from a strategic angle - I mean, clearly I'm being hypocritical as a passionately pro-gay marriage person who is making blog posts. But I am just SO TIRED of seeing very conservative religious people protesting and coming out in droves and modifying amendments and crap, to bar gay people from being able to marry - and this is my reactionary off-facebook rant. People really seem to think "traditional marriage" is in trouble if gay marriage is legalized and it just drives me crazy that anyone even makes that argument. In my mind it is so obvious that there IS no argument to be made whatsoever, that this is about things like hospital visitation and tax benefits and the ability to share work benefits and to make co-custody simpler for families that already exist anyway, whether you like it or not. What other people do does not have to effect your life, beliefs, ideals or commitments AT ALL and that is what I mean when I say it just isn't even your business and you're stepping out of your own life and onto other people if you try to block this...

I honestly would not ever force or support legislation to enforce religious weddings of any type for anyone. I understand that straight people are routinely denied Catholic weddings too (for being previously divorced or currently cohabiting or just not being Catholic) and that's fine - if you want a Catholic wedding, you want a very specific thing that is very strictly defined and I wouldn't mess with that or expect the govt too.

Re: A Bad Argument and a Poor Strategy

[(Anonymous)]

But it does effect us. I have lived all over the country..the deep south, liberal areas, areas with a heavy immigrant population, etc etc and I know for a fact that the cultural environment is heavily effected by the laws. Now there is the whole chicken and egg debate, but if you have been some place long enough you can see how a new law comes into place, or an old law is abolished and things change. Whether or not it is for the better depends on your own personal values.

Abortion, for instance..was suppose to be extremely rare. People thought that less than 1% of pregnancies would end in abortion. Well, the culture changed and now we by-and-large accept abortion as a necessary evil and about 25% of pregnancies end in abortion. I am sure that peoples sexual choices are effected by the safety-net of abortion. Somehow, despite easy access to birth control many unplanned pregnancies are a result of no BC use at all..probably because drunk people going home from the club aren't very cautious. Without the safety-net of abortion people who want easy access to sex might get married instead of hitting the club.

This is why the whole "don't like abortion don't have one" argument falls on deaf ears to pro-lifers. They don't care..they want to live in a world where they don't have to work so hard to convince their daughters that abortion is wrong while the rest of the world is saying it is just a blob of cells. And maybe some of them don't want to have the temptation of abortion available to them because they know if put in the situation they might do it and then hate themselves afterwards.

Nothing that happens in a society only effects a small percentage of it..it effects us all. It CHANGES THINGS. Las Vegas has very liberal public decency laws and allows people to walk around virtually naked. The result? You see a lot of people walking down the street in thongs. Its a major culture shock. We certainly can't say that it only effected the people who want to walk around in thongs because the rest of us are being forced to look at their ass cheeks.

Re: A Bad Argument and a Poor Strategy

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry that was me, Likeinabook

Republicans, Democrats and Liberty

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

. Over the last month though, more and more, I think that republicans are not in any way making government smaller.

They are more interested in doing so than are the Democrats -- but your point is quite valid. The present-day Republicans have leaned far to their religious right wing and away from their libertarian faction. As a semi-libertarian myself, I wish this were not so, but this is the reality of the situation.

Having said that, since the policies of the Democrats are very likely not only to bring about global warfare this decade but also leave us pathetically-unready for the fight when it heats up, and since the enemies of the West, whom we would be fighting, want to kill all homosexuals, I think that a Republican victory would be better in the long run for gays than would a Democratic one.

How is it not causing anyone to panic or be scared that our freedom is being eroded that (GMO, Monsanto, etc) corn and soy are heavily subsidized to the point that they are in every single thing we freakin' eat, and the government buys gross enormous quantities of pink slime for school lunches and that's normal - but when Michelle Obama wants to institute healthy school lunch programs and put in an organic community garden on the white house lawn, everybody panics that we're on a terrifying slippery slope? I'd rather be on THAT slippery slope, you know?

You may think differently when your favorite foods become expensive, unavailable or even illegal. And it's not as if food is the only obsession of Obama's unelected Czars, ruling by decrees enforced by borrowed and often poorly-supervised Presidential authority, often in defiance of Congress and the Courts.

There are tons of parallels like this. Car subsidies, gas subsidies and WARS OVER OIL are fine and right in line with small govt ...

We have fought exactly no "wars over oil," save in the limited sense of preventing enemies from using oil wealth to embark upon (or continue, in the case of Saddam Hussein) careers of conquest. If you find that a poor reason to fight wars, then you are essentially arguing that America should abandon all her alliances save perhaps with Europe and the Anglosphere, and let the rest of the world fall into violent chaos.

We tried that before. In the Interwar Era. It's why the 1920's and 1930's are known as "the Interwar Era." The part of the West who mainly did this -- Britain and France -- were punished with economic and demographic devastation and the loss of most of thier power for the vacation they tried to take from history. Why do you suppose this strategy will turn out better this time around?

Oh, and incidentally ... The foreign enemies who America holds back right now from acts of aggression? Most of these Powers consider homosexual acts as rightly deserving of severe legal consequences, ranging from years in prison all the way up to painful public execution. Are you sure that a policy which would increase those Powers' influence in the world would be good for gays?

As for business subsidies in general: Yes, they are illiberal, immoral and logically unconstitutional. Though note that it is the Justices the Republicans appoint to the Supreme Court who are most likely to agree with my last point. Also note that Obama, the most left-wing Democratic President this country has ever seen since the (Northern) Democrats decided to start playing "progressive" back in the 1910's, is also the one who has handed out the heaviest and most politically-preferential business subsidies in American history.

Re: Republicans, Democrats and Liberty

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

The things you say are compelling if they're true; I don't mean if you aren't lying, I mean if you aren't misinformed (as I believe you are sincere). I just don't understand, in my own admittedly very limited time/resources/experience, how any citizen can determine what will or will not cause war - among many other complex issues that seem impossible to unravel for an "average person". I would be (truly) interested in hearing what democrat policies you believe will start global warfare, but also why you believe you're right about them, because my biggest personal problem and ongoing confusion, about politics, is just that I feel that no matter WHAT I learn...I can hear the opposing point spelled out eloquently by the right person at length and change my mind, or at least waiver. None of this is REALLY black and white. I have very strong convictions about a lot of things, but I assume there is tons and tons of shit we don't/can't know because it's unreleased/confidential shit that the media can't get ahold of or will be squashed if they do, when we get down to the brass tacks of starting wars or what's really going down behind closed doors in the white house. It's so, so easy for me to see the side of "all this is Obama's fault!!" AND "this is all the fault of Obama's predecessor!" that people who are adamantly convinced they know exactly what's up and shout it from the rooftops kind of baffle me. My impression of American politics is that even if I had a triple masters degree in history, economics and law, and spent 20 hours a week watching various news stations, there would still be a whole lot of ins and outs I would never get around to considering and a ton of stuff I'm just not privy to, regardless.

My own reasons for supporting Obama are based on concrete things that directly effect my family and friends: my husband makes radically more money and is moving up an expanding career ladder, because of health care expanding over the past 3 years, and that will continue or collapse based on this next election. Everything he does depends on Obamacare, and that is our livelihood. I'm also dependent on govt aid to go to college, and have a pre-existing condition that is keeping me from getting insurance that will make the surgery I need affordable. I am going to cry if Obamacare gets shut down, for this reason alone. For us, personally as a family, I know we need Obama to win. For the gay people I know and love and have spent my whole life around, where I live, they need Obama to win.

Clearly, yes, if we all get killed in nuclear blasts it would have been better for us all if Romney got it, since everything else will be moot, but I don't know how to feel convicted over that kind of conjecture to the degree that I throw basic obvious beneficial stuff under the bus based on the vague fear. As far as whether or not people should be selling their money for gold bars or he is stomping all over the constitution; that all seems way muddier and more difficult to determine, when I go researching. All the information is so biased and contradictory, everyone is writing from a partisan platform, you know what I'm talking about?

It's like with abortion laws - they don't just effect abortion! I used to be pro-life and want to vote pro-life but the more I learn - abortion laws effect birth rights and a slippery slope of criminalizing pregnancy behavior, as well as funding for basic women's services, and ALL KINDS OF STUFF. It's this whole web where the deeper you dig, the more angles you discover, and at some point you can't even tell whether the sites talking about racial cleansing and the beginnings of planned parenthood are dead on or total nonsense. At some point if you're going to try to save fetuses you're forcing transvaginal ultrasound on women in an already difficult position and somehow fueling a fire against birth control? Gah.

I hope you know what I'm saying here, as I realize I am rambling and not especially grammatical at the moment.

[eternamariposa.livejournal.com]

Are you serious...politics before pictures of my baby? I know you've got 'em lady.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

Dude I can pop on here and bang this entry out in like 10 minutes on any computer in the house - if I want to post pictures I have to get control of the main computer (you know, where Grant, Aaron and Jake play Minecraft now?), get all the pictures off my phone and resize them in PSP, upload them all on an ftp program and then input all the code in my entry. It's a process, usually best done in the middle of the night (which doesn't exist for me lately since I've been getting up and getting everyone else up really early).

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

Please understand I AM gonna do it, and hopefully this weekend...I'm just trying to excuse myself for doing this with that undone ;)

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I just put a good one on tumblr since I can upload it from my phone with the tumblr app.

[eternamariposa.livejournal.com]

I saw the picture and I do love it, but you know I was just giving you a hard time right? I am not actually outraged.

[jsl32.livejournal.com]

the ER=why health care is spensive thing is a myth. only about 3% of hospital costs are reflected in unpaid ER bills. and that's hospital costs, so less of the whole total.

the rest is mostly duelling straw arguments from both sides.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

What about unpaid NICU costs? I watched a documentary that talked about how labor and delivery costs are a huge proportion of hospital revenue, and hospitals are not allowed to turn away a laboring woman or turn out her infant until stable and ready for life outside, either. There are lots and lots of NICU cases caused by preventable prematurity related to poor maternal care that correlate with very low income people, and NICU bills are routinely in the hundreds of thousand - over a million is standard if we're talking micro-preemies or multiples (which many micro preemies are).

Also, the things I mentioned above about my mother in law's cancer treatments and my father's post-surgical/inpatient bills are not related to the ER at all. But they're not uncommon. She's a waitress, he's a cab driver, and they live in a tourist-driven area with an off season.

[(Anonymous)]

I am so politically confused I am not sure I will vote at all. The one thing Obama did to completely lose my vote EVER is not let the Church's be exempt from the birth control mandate. And by exempt..I mean totally exempt and not have to pay for insurance that provides it..not just passing the buck to the insurance companies who then will charge the Churches anyway. Nobody should have to buy something that completely violates their conscience.

I worry that a constitutional amendment to the constitution guaranteeing the right to gay marriage will also lead to an infringement on the rights of Church's to not participate.

I am also extremely pro state-rights. I have no problem with welfare, laws that limit individual liberties, etc. I think there are very few laws that should be federally enforced because I don't think laws are objectively right or wrong but are/should be dependent on majority rule because what a society allows dictates the kind of culture they create. If Dearborn Michigan wants to impose Sharia law then they should be able to do that up until it starts allowing honor killings because murder should be federally banned. California is generally liberal so they will have liberal laws...maybe even excessively liberal laws that would be inhospitable to my choices like banning driving certain types of cars or making it impossible for a large family to find a rental (because of rules dictating who can share a room) and while I wouldn't want to live there I wouldn't begrudge California the right to create its own culture.

All government is basically a big social experiment. Our rules and laws create our society and whether a society survives or dies depends on the culture it adopts. This is why States rights allows for us to see what social experiments are more successful than others. When Big Government decides what is and is not OK..as if they are any real authority on anything...then you get a culture war on a national level and it doesn't work..its a big ole tug-a-war that leads to societal tensions and very little actual change.

My ideal is to live in a place that bands no-fault divorce, makes it extremely hard to divorce at all, does not allow gay marriage, and supports father rights by not giving default full-custody to mothers. Now I realize this isn't everybodies utopia, but I am traditional and pro-patriarchy and I want to live in a culture that reflects those values. I don't blame people for wanting a society that reflects their values even if those values are opposite of mine, I just don't agree that they can say with any real objectivity that I am wrong and they are right. Maybe we are both wrong..chances are we aren't going to know that in our lifetime so in the mean time it is the majority that rules.

-the artist formerly known as likeinabook

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I think I actually adamantly disagree with every single point in this comment.

[(Anonymous)]

lol..well elaborate! Maybe you will change my mind.

-likeinabook

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I just don't have time to get into it heavily today, but I'll link you to this for a start: http://altarflame.livejournal.com/481432.html


The other thing I think is that, personally, I will always favor free will over legal restrictions where "social issues" (as opposed to violent crime or what have you) are concerned. I would never want to live in a place where divorce was nearly impossible, that's just insane to me. My vision of what America is and should be does not support legislating morality over freedom. Haven't you seen The People Vs Larry Flynt? <---only half kidding

I also think "majority rules" gets pretty Lord of the Flies when we're talking about racist, sexist, under-educated and poverty stricken pockets of the South :/ Little girls, little gay children, everyone deserves certain rights that no state government should be able to ban. Adults can choose to move places, but kids don't get to make those calls - and honestly there is a pathology that happens that makes adults feel trapped in the situations they grew up in a lot of the time, too.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't really think that employers should have to buy insurance at all and it should just be subsidized by the state, but you can't make a religious argument for that since it is a political opinion. But requiring Churches to buy insurance that covers contraception for contraceptive purposes, or IVF, or abortion, or whatever.. is asking them to *knowingly* participate in sin.

It isn't comparable to people being free to spend what they want with their paycheck. First of all, the Church will absolutely fire someone who is living a life that is very obviously unChristian, so if anyone got wind of the wild weekend in Vegas they would probably be fired for it. Secondly, labor for wages is not the same as buying an insurance plan. It would be more similar to the Church buying a bookstore and the government telling them they have to have a special section just for porn.

It isn't about the other people, it is about imposing sin on the bishops and priests. Yes, YOU can do what you please but you're priest can't. Like, if I am a taxi driver and I know my passenger wants to go to an abortion clinic for an abortion then I have on my own conscious a participation in that persons sin. Does her right to get an abortion trump my right to not participate?

Nobody has to work for the Church but if they do they know what to expect. Saying that the Church absolutely must do something to carry on business is requiring that the Church close its doors.

-likeinabook

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

Your points makes a great deal of sense when referring to the actual churches. But when you start talking about Catholic Universities and hospitals - which is what Obama is talking about, since he gave the churches themselves exemption - things change. Because 15% of US patients are handled by Catholic hospitals, and there are more than 230 universities and colleges. Those hospitals and schools are heavily subsidized by the US government AND enjoy tax exempt status - they are a pretty thorough blend of the religious and the secular, staffed heavily by non-Catholics, and (partially because of government help/influence) a big enough contender in the job market in this economy that it is not so simple as "Nobody has to work for the Church...". You know what I mean?

[(Anonymous)]

I think you make a good argument for the Church ran hospitals and Universities disentangling completely from the government and giving up the tax-exempt status and subsidies.

The Church and the state are bad bedfellows.

-likeinabook

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

See, now I'm with you 100% :)

I think mixing religion and government up can just never be a good thing, unless we're talking protective measures or stepping in against violence or something.

[(Anonymous)]

Another thing- I don't see progressive values staying consistent in all situations.

If there was a tribe that lived in a rainforest that had never been exposed to modern life and they had their own culture and believed in their own gods and did a lot of things we would find not very progressive we might question the willingness to run in and tell them about multiculturalism and feminism and racism and homophobia and mandate that they conform to our cultural sensibilities.

On some level we LIKE that other cultures exist, we just don't want to be forced to conform to those cultures. Every society has a culture, the best we can hope for is to have a variety of cultures to choose from.

-likeinabook

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I see progressive values as being "progress" that is only possible when peoples' needs are being met and they have more than they need - think Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. So yeah, tribes in rain forests aren't gonna have them, but I would definitely want to help women that were strictly controlled or having their genitals mutilated, and I think if those women had access to education they would overwhelmingly welcome that help. I feel like all those "isms" are ignorance, that can rarely if ever be maintained if a person simply learns more.

I love other cultures - food, clothes, music, art, languages, etc - but I don't think there's any part of me that is glad for the parts of any culture that you're talking about, here. It seems like what you're saying with "mandate they they conform to our cultural sensibilities" is "make the men stop beating women and the straight people stop casting gays out of the tribe and force them to not shoot arrows at other tribes", which is like...um, I'm trying to come up with the right phrasing here. Basically I just have no idea why you would favor protecting the rights of the biggest, strongest, most "normal" and able-bodies men in the tribe to continue lording over everyone else with force, as opposed to protecting the rights of each person to be able to live the way they want to regardless of whether they can actively defend themselves against the leaders.

[(Anonymous)]

Because a society where people are doing as they please is simply not sustainable. The end of marriage results in feral children and feral children become adults stuck in perpetual adolescence. This results in the end of civilization as we know it, because nobody is upholding the societal norms that make it possible.

It isn't really based on my own preferences but on what I think can actually last based on what we know about human behavior.

I mean, there are a lot of things I wouldn't have liked about being an Old Testament Jew but it was a successful society that kept the Jewish race alive. I wouldn't want to go THAT old-school..I am speaking more of a patriarchy-lite.

-likeinabook

[(Anonymous)]

I think when we understand why we are being controlled we can usually accept it better and even thrive and be happy in those conditions. It is when the rules seem totally arbitrary or only benefiting a particular group that resentment builds.

For instance- I recently lived around a lot of Amish people and talked to them at the birth center I went to and most of them seemed pretty happy despite the fact that the live in a very non-progressive society. They believed that their lifestyle was superior because it kept them and their children safe and was spiritually edifying. If you look at the statistics for the Amish it is clear they are doing something right. They have very little drug or alcohol abuse, less domestic violence than the national average, and 80% of children raised Amish stay Amish. That is a better statistic than kids raised as devout Catholics.

-likeinabook

[babyslime.livejournal.com]

I feel like you've grown so much from the, "hate the sin love the sinner" person I could barely talk to regarding gay marriage so many years ago. <3