2. Actually, with all due respect, your argument against further deviant acts being legalized is a bad argument. Just because you see it as unrealistic doesn’t make it so. I would imagine back in the day when no-fault divorce was being debated, there were people like you saying ‘it’s unrealistic to say that homosexuals will one day be married’ blah, blah,blah. This is the insidiousness of incrementalism. Too many people are gullible enough to think that the ‘small’ gains by whichever party will not lead to radical results in the future. I imagine that, if PTTP and my concerns are realized (and without a complete shutdown of the homofascist movement, they will be), there will be many weak-minded ‘conservatives’ calling traditionalists like us ‘bigoted’ or ‘hateful’ for railing against bestiality perverts, polygamists and pedophiles. This is the danger of adopting the language of the left, which includes words like ‘bigot’ and ‘hate’.

3. There is no evidence for your assertion that the country is trending toward the acceptance of homosexual marriage, aside from a few polls from questionable sources. Everywhere, EVERYWHERE it has been put to a vote by non-ruling class people, it has failed.

4. Those independents that everyone is so worried about are so weak-minded, they don’t have any principles. It is folly to worry about swaying them,, because there is no consistency to them, there is no consistent way to appeal to them. The key is get your base out. Amendments like NC’s and the support thereof is a great way to motivate your base.

As far as the slippery slope goes, I still believe my argument stands. PTTP is trying to say if we allow gay marriage, then it could open up this can of worms and could possibly lead to those different scenarios he is trying to get alabamered to decide where his line in the sand is drawn. I see all of them as unrealistic as I said before. We’re not going to see laws enacted to allow brother to merry sister or polygamy. I think it’s a bad argument, because there is no way anything of that sort would ever get passed in any congress.

Before the Civil Rights act of 64 was drawn up, I’m sure there were all kinds of these questions about where it would end and “where’s your line in the sand” kinds of questions. Now I’m not comparing the Civil Rights Act to gay marriage, I’m simply using an example of a controversial law at that time to make a point that there will always be bills or laws that are passed, that could possibly end up being more negative then positive, we have plenty of them. I just do not see this as anything that’s going to lead to laws as bad as PTTP is talking about.

Where my concern really comes from is I don’t see this particular amendment in NC, helping Republicans politically. As I do feel the country as a whole, is trending toward accepting gay marriage, and no matter how many laws we pass to stop it, if the majority of people want it, eventually it’s going to happen.

I’m not opposed to gay marriage, I’m not for it either. What I’m opposed to, is the Republicans doing themselves more harm then good in this very important election, passing laws such as this, that could drive a wedge between conservatives and the indys that Mitt Romney needs to beat Obama.

His idea was a good one. Yours is even better.

Mew

I don’t think it takes much insight to see the relationship between ‘gay’ marriage and what PTTP forewarned. Homosexuality has historically been considered a deviant act. They have waged a successful campaign to first have it decriminalized, and then stricken from classification as a mental/emotional disorder and now accepted as a legitimate lifestyle. Other groups are already pushing for this. There are serious ‘scholars’ at respected universities pushing the idea that bestiality (‘zoophilia’ – don’t you love the euphemisms these miscreants conjure up?) should not be criminalized. There are people in the psychological community trying to decriminalize pedophilia (they call themselves ‘B4U-ACT’ and refer to these deviants as ‘minor-attracted’ people – again, don’t you love the acronyms and euphemisms these freaks come up with?). This is in line with the way the militant homosexual movement pushed their agenda. First decriminalize it. Get it classified as an illness. Then declassify it as such – they’re just misunderstood dontcha know? And then push for legitimacy as a ‘lifestyle’. finally, push for special protections, such as ‘hate crimes’ protections.

These people, as well as the groups PTTP mentioned, have in common that their entire identity revolves around sexual proclivities. They can call it a ‘culture’, they can claim they’re born that way (no scientific evidence for this, of course,), they can call people that are repulsed by their behavior ‘bigots’ or ‘hateful’, but that doesn’t change the fact that they simply want to fully indulge themselves in their basest appetites and passions, and make the rest of us applaud them for it.

I wonder if a psychologist/headshrinker would call that ‘narcissistic’.

My idea of “civil unions for all” would encompass any situation with two roommates regardless of whether they have sex or not. In essence, it just puts marriage back in the private sector.

In my view equating natural marriage with homosexual union does far more to trivialize the traditional one than does the elimination of fault, and you have yet to explain, so far as I can tell, the connection you draw between no-fault and homosexual marriage. That one law does damage to the institution is not an argument for a second law that does more damage.

One thing I have been thinking about is whether the two-person limitation will survive should same sex marriage become legal in most places.

One down side about civil unions is that because it isn’t marriage, I think people will be more likely to push the envelope with non-romantic relationships (getting dad’s social security benefits).

I do think that in my lifetime, kids will marry their parents for purely monetary reasons like SS, tax avoidance, etc. It will be a mess.

I don’t disagree with you, but there are a lot of legal shorthands that would need get blown up. Lawyers will make out pretty well.

If you or someone else can show me a movement that is fighting for the elimination of no-fault divorce, and ways to make this a possibility, I like that as an option. Otherwise, I like the notion of “private” marriage, because it allows for the possibility of stronger, more enforceable contracts and involvement of interested parties (like church officials). It might even lead to the development of norms that would lead to the reinstitution of divorce as a serious breach in societal norms.

That is, the self-definition of religious commitment is, for many people, varies according to time, with the potential for beginnings and endings, ebbs and flows (cf. “good Catholic/bad Catholic” vs. “love the Lord/carnal Christian/backslidden” vs. “long-time member/church-hopper” vs. “born again/dead in trespasses and sins”). Divorce, however, defines a much more permanent status. The weakness of the summaries as presented is their tendency to state “only x% above commitment level z are divorced, compared to the significantly higher y% below commitment level z” without accounting for movement relative to z. That could begin to give a clue to correlation by differentiating whether, e.g. a highly-engaged Christian became so after–and thererfore possibly due to other realities uncovered by–the trauma of divorce, or whether his high engagement level so disrupted his erstwhile stable family life that it imploded.

If the former example is more prevalent, the BP-referenced numbers could actually be understating the difference between divorce rates in the two samples; if the latter, overstating–and a call for the highly-engaged Christian community to ask “what is wrong with this picture–not the numbers, but perhaps the diet our members are actually receiving?”

It is clear to me that there is actually anecdotal evidence for both conditions dependent on even higher–shall we say, theological–factors. But without consistent metrics, the numbers should be taken with much salt.

2 W. Bradford Wilcox and Elizabeth Williamson, “The Cultural Contradictions of Mainline Family Ideology and Practice,” in American Religions and the Family, edited by Don S. Browning and David A. Clairmont (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007) p. 50.

3. C.A. Johnson, S. M. Stanley, N.D. Glenn, P.A. Amato, S.L. Nock, H.J. Markman and M .R. Dion “Marriage in Oklahoma: 2001 Baseline Statewide Survey on Marriage and Divorce” (Oklahoma City, OK: Oklahoma Department of Human Services 2002) p. 25, 26.
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I’m interested in digging into this, but not sure I have the time this month. Does anyone have free time to track these down?

The Barna Groups does a lot better job of explaining it in the notes on their surveys.

Of course people have smoked pot. Given. However…many more people smoke it to “emotionally” KICK THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD” than they did before. What does that say about a person when they “habitually” use a substance to escape.

Tobacco, being one of the most insidious, addictive substances on the market today is terrible. However, cigarettes, having been one of the “punks” that smoked it many years ago, does not give one that flight from reality. Now, the real question arises…and that is one of honesty…from the people who have continued to use it and gone onto other drugs…”why did they use it”. The answer…”I didn’t want to deal what what I had to deal with…so I escaped”

So…Kyle…is there not enough “ESCAPE” brainwashing going on in society today, i.e., not taking responsibility…without adding pot to the mixture to put the mindset ON STEROIDS.

Everyone enjoys a glass of wine…a drink after coming home from work…but Kyle…what public analyses does not convey is that our jails are full of people who use “escape” drugs and the crimes that were committed started with some type of “dulling” of the psyche. Relatively speaking, meaning comparing the number of people in the population…and stricter laws…WE STILL have more people committing crimes against society than we did before…more people as a percentage of population in jail because of some drug and if you ask them what it started with…it was pot.

Doubt me…go visit a jail…if just 2% of inmates are jailed without any drugs being involved…then what does that tell you?

Anecdotally, it makes sense. Whether it is actually true or not is unknown.