the honest and civil political discorse thread.

Allright, some of the speech on this board can get out of hand, i admit i have been guilty of it a couple of times, but i think a nice place where people can act civilly, talk intelligently (instead of just trying to make a bunch of points, let's have a good conversation), and not get tied down in partisan B.S. is a good idea.

ofcourse, these are pretty vauge definitions, so here are some specific rules/guidlines, that i would be much obliged if you followed if you want to make a post (otherwise i will track you down, give you a stern talking too and ten minutes in 'time out'. )
1. No flaming, this includes:
a) ad hominem attacks (people had typos, are ugly, just calling them names basically.)
b) repeated, annoying posts that don't contribute to the thread at all.
2. No Bashing
a) ad homemin attacks (i.e. bush is a monkey faced buffoon, michael moore is a lardass.)
b) political bashing (i.e. conservatives/liberals are sheep)
3. No 'point making'.
I want an honest discussion, i don't want a bunch of people here just making blanket emotional appeals, posting pictues (if they don't contribute to the discussion), basically short pieces people write just to be heard.
4. No signatures if they violate the above.
5. If you are proven wrong with a factual, non retracted, credible news source (here to be defined as any national/international non-tabloid news services that does not obviously have a politcal slant, cnn, foxnews ((shudder)), reuters, new york times new york post etc...) then you have to apologize.


right that's it i'll start with a topic of conversation: gay marrage, go!

 

sigh, i kinda knew that this wasn't going to be a popular thread, ohwell.

 

Heh sorry, just save this thread for later, its time may come. I'm not really in the mood for gay marriage debates lately myself.

 

It's the first thing that popped into my head, if you have something else you want to debate feel free.

 

Uh, mmkay, hmmm...

Well this kind of relates to gay marriages I guess, sort of the root issue... it's what came to mind first anyway - separation of church and state.

I think it's an important principle, and is backed by the Constitution's clause of "freedom of religion," as well as Congress "shall make no law in the establishment of an organized religion" - no official religions, in other words. I think religion and politics should be kept as separate as possible, and neither has a place meddling in the other's affairs, or else at least religious establishments should lose their tax-exemption status.

There ya go, fire away.

(btw, could you explain your "point-making" stipulation more please?)

 

The point making thing refers pretty much to the practice of certain people just saying what they want to say regardless of the comments of others. I don't a bunch of people just airing their opinions out, but more of an organic conversation. If that makes any sense.

And i agree with the seperation of church and sate, but why should church's loose their tax-exempt status if they try and influence people, i mean most churches are just establishments to do just that?

 

Hm, you have a point there, religious establishments certainly do serve to influence masses of people. But I always understood it that theoretically they are to steer clear of, say, partisan politics, that sort of thing. Aren't they supposed to be concerned primarily with spirituality? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the tax-exemption of religious establishments was supposedly justified because they are supposed to be... "above" politics and government (of course, history has shown otherwise, but I'm talking about the ideal model that religion is held to), that they answer to a "higher authority," etc, etc, and thus are not subject to tax legislation. When religions get involved in politics, isn't that being breached?

 

I thought that their tax exempt status was due to the first amendment forbidding congress from passing any laws regarding religion. But this in of itself is a double edged sword i guess, because by passing any laws with regards to regards to religion (i.e. gay marrage) would violate this....
Anyways, the 700 club people give me the creeps.

 

Depends on how you view things like the pledge and gay marriage, I don't see the pledge as really religious in any sense, just over glorifying. Saying "under god" has nothing to do with religion, it's just saying "hey guess what? we're better than you!". I have to agree with Micheal Savage on this issue though sadly, I think that if we legalize gay marriage, that we'll put in text books. Little kids in the "ihate girls" or "i hate boys" stage are gonna see that and think, Hmm well this is alright then for me to like girls. I'm no religious in any organized sense, but i think ebing gay is really a failing in biology. If you aren't reproducing you aren't serving your purpose. But with the world over populated i can understand the rising tide of homosexuality.

 

I don't really buy into that sort of "opening the floodgates" theory about the consequences of legalizing gay marriage, that it will unleash some sort of wave of homosexuality as a societal fad, or anything like that. Nothing like what you predict has really happened when we relaxed other laws and social attitudes regarding homosexuality, so I don't think that legalizing gay marriage should cause any sudden outburst.

And I would argue that the idea of homosexuals as "biological failures" is rather irrelevant to the issue, whether there is any merit to it or not (which I doubt there is). For marriage does not have to be only about biological obligations and simply producing more children. If that were the case, one might even say that marriage itself is a fairly inefficient system of doing so... we'd produce much more children if we weren't monogamous and had frequent random sex instead, wouldn't we? Marriage is also about relationships, love, affection, all that good stuff. Any two people can have sex and produce children. A marriage in our society today is generally founded on the fact that the two people involved share emotional bonds more than anything else.

 

Well, about people choosing to be gay, i don't think that is real. I have met gay people, and they themselves sometimes wish they weren't. My mom summed it up best: "Why would anyone choose to be that way, it is a hard life." and i think she was right.
Also, i heard once that in any animal population, when the herd overpopulates, their is a rise in homosexuality, does anyone have a link to this? I would be ever so grateful.