Yup, that’s the only reason I did it. Not a chance in hell I can get to a Worldcon on the other side of the continent to me. Heck, I couldn’t even manage to get to it when it was in my city…
I’ll just leave this here.
If the so-called activists, during planning of an “action” (i.e., PR extravaganza), asked themselves “and what is this alleged action going to accomplish?” 10% of the time, it was change the face of politics and activism.
Admittedly, the biggest change would be the number of so-called activists who are exposed as idiots and promptly dumped out of the arena.
George R.R. Martin Mansplains complaints of Larry Corriea, Brad Torgenson, Sarah Hoyt, Tom Kratman, and others of harassment due to their political beliefs.
All the top hits are there.
“I haven’t seen it”
“We’re all good people, and good people don’t act like that”
“Are you sure you just aren’t too sensitive?”
“Don’t let a few bad apples ruin the basket”
“It can’t be what you thought it was, you must be paraphrasing”
Sorry, can’t comment on George R.R.
It would take far too long.
Great, now there are people dropping their Hugo nominations like they were stolen.
The group yelled at for being all old white men just lost an immigrant and a bisexual woman, because they were taking so much heat for being one of them.
I’m really getting tired of people assuming that the SCOTUS is going to rule against the state governments and legislatures. It’s a crap shoot. Any one of those people could have a random neuron misfire and derail the whole thing. Any one of them could drop dead tomorrow, throwing the entire court into disarray, and then we will get to watch the Grand Obstructionist Party put any nominations into gridlock long enough for Rush Limbaugh to fabricate some dirt.
Way back in the 70s, we thought we had it pretty good. A number of cities across the country (and one state) had enacted ordinances protecting gays from discrimination. But then a certain ex-call girl and ex-singer got involved and we had a coast-to-coast backlash that we didn’t recover from until the late 80s.
When we finally got the US government to acknowledge that people were dying, in the 80s, we thought we were looking at the light at the end of the tunnel. But then we had a huge uptick of anti-gay violence and smarmy discrimination based on “Gawd’s judgment on homersectuals”.
What’s going to happen is SCOTUS will find any possible cop-out, so they can tacitly bless inequality they possibly can. And that will open the gates of Hell, for us at least, when there is yet another backlash. And quite a few politicians, in legislatures, megachurches and other elected positions, will rub their hands with glee, before picking up the pitchfork and torches.
History: Lather, rinse, repeat.
If I was in office I’d pass freedom to marry laws, not protection laws because I’d like to remove the ones that are there already, but access laws. There is more reason for progressives to make sure gay people continue to be oppressed than conservatives. An oppressed group will vote in lockstep with their saviors, a freed group had time and ability to look at other issues.
I know I’m blind to this, since this really is a case of straight privilege, but I don’t really see it going much harder than it is now. We’ve proven here in Indiana that we’re living in a corporatist state, so much for Citizen’s United, apparently a state will crumble under pressure from companies, and megachurches, without campaign donations even being brought up. And those companies are riding the pro gay wave.
I wish I could say that gay people won’t be beaten in the street for being gay, but I can’t say that about anyone. People are beaten or killed for what they are on a daily basis in America, it’s part of the wonder of the melting pot. For every gay man drug behind a pickup truck there’s a white woman dumped in a trash bag with bleach in all her orifices left to sufficate. Or a black woman beaten with baseball bats in a parking lot that loses her baby. And for each of those there are theories on why it “really” happened, like it matters to them.
So, umm, this looks awfully bad to me.
Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation as Russians Pressed for Control of Uranium Company
(mobile link because I know Lee hates those)
Beyond mines in Kazakhstan that are among the most lucrative in the world, the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States. Since uranium is considered a strategic asset, with implications for national security, the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from a number of United States government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off was the State Department, then headed by Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.
And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.
(This is from that bastion of the right wing Koch media mouthpiece, the New York Times.)
Add on top of that her PAC has been accepting foreign donations, and her 10 million dollar book deal. Wanna bitch about “dark money” how about the book deals prominent democrats get?
Though our current president was elected with foreign money too, so I guess it just doesn’t matter until a Republican gets caught doing it.
Think the cronyism and corruption are bad under Obama, just wait for Clinton. That woman never saw a shady deal she didn’t like. Anyone want to rent the Lincoln bedroom again?
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Was going to put in made me happy, but I politic enough everywhere on here.
Watching/Reading people’s heads explode because Bruce Jenner identifies as a Republican. Rubio went to an event sponsored by a gay couple, and Cruz say he’d still love his daughters if one of them were gay.
The political left has believed their own caricatures of the right for so long they don’t think they are human beings any more. They have plugged minorities and alt lifestyle people into their widget holes for so long that they can’t imagine any of them acting out of place.
Dick Cheney didn’t disown his daughter, and he’s a neo-con master demon. Why is it so hard for some people to understand that you can take a personal stance against something like gay marriage, or even being gay in the first place, and still respect and associate with gay people? The heart of Christianity is supposed to be forgiveness, and considering how many Christians are sinners anyway (All of them) who are we to judge?
I could make an argument for being personally against gay marriage, but voting for it’s legality. I don’t want to marry a man, I’m not sure if it’s right, but that doesn’t mean I would say you can’t or that I wouldn’t go as your friend. As CWX has brought up a couple times, the time to decide if I can deal with you being gay is when I meet you or when you come out. Waffling after that fact, or preaching about it past that point is just rude.
I’m against casual sex, does that mean that I won’t love my daughter if she ends up having some? Or that I didn’t go to my oldest daughter’s wedding and support her? No. Does it mean that I think people who go to swing clubs are less than human? I’m not a huge fan of BDSM, that I know of at least, but again, you want to have a bondage wedding, I’ll show up man.
Why is it so hard for progressives to understand that you don’t have to endorse something to be OK with it. And I know the ideal is that everyone embrace everyone’s lifestyle, but there are people who won’t, just like there are people in alt lifestyles that don’t like breeders, or muggles, or whatever their term for “other” is.
And then they went to the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition forum and backtracked all over themselves.
I don’t need conservatives to “endorse” my sexual orientation. What I would like is for them to stop acting like it is up to them whether I am allowed to live openly, something straights are allowed to do by default. I would like them to stop demonizing me based on ignorance and bigotry (there’s plenty of real reasons to demonize me). I would like them to stop getting rabid over the concept of allowing me to participate in the same every day activities that straights take for granted.
Read the Iowa piece, don’t see any walking back there. Cruz is against gay marriage, in the Iowa statement, he’s still against gay marriage. Most of the rest of it was about abortion with Rand and Rubio saying they’d leave marriage up to the states, since it’s a state law that most people get married under anyway.
You want human nature to change. There are people that will never, ever, ever, accept people that are different than them. In hair color, or neighborhood, or religion, or whatever. We can change the great mass of people, and I think the opinion has reached a tipping point. Hell, 6 years ago these Republican opinions would have been more liberal than the Democrats running for president.
Gotta get back to work but that’s my initial thought.
Gee, what a surprise. Nope, didn’t see any of that coming, at the Supreme Court, ahead of time. Nope, not at all. (okay the rabid evangelist in the gallery, I didn’t see coming, for some reason)
It’s the Roberts Court. What the F did people expect?
Roberts has attended every CPAC event for years, practically soliciting donations so he can run for office (without actually running for office). Do people really think he would allow this case to open without doing his best to stack the deck? Do people really think he is incapable of finding some way to intimidate Kennedy into waffling? Do people really think Roberts hasn’t whipped up the fervor among his political cronies?
Kennedy has left himself a nice big hole he can dive through. I’m surprised that he hasn’t just recused himself, or called in sick.
And it doesn’t matter anyway. No matter who “wins”, it will be a mess. If the rabid right wins, the gay rights groups will whip things up until it gets nasty. If the gay rights side wins, the rabid right will get very nasty (I would put money on somebody from SCOTUS getting lynched). And I fully expect the states, a la Alabama, to refuse to acknowledge any ruling they don’t like.
Nothing gets settled anymore. It just escalates.
Don’t know about that, Indiana has gay marriage for half a year now. Go back twenty years and imagine even thinking that.
The forces in Alabama and similar states aren’t the ones that the gay rights movement are built to beat. It’s same people that raised a stink in CA, and I’m not talking Mormons. The black and latino religious left is even more against gay marriage than most evangelical conservatives. The minority vote is pretty square against gay marriage from most of the polls I’ve seen, though I don’t follow them that close and honestly am going from the news around prop 8, or 9 or whatever.
Considering his total fold on the ACA, who knows what makes this man tick? He seems very attached to people’s opinion of him, I suppose the way to make sure you win is to make it so that ruling the way you don’t want him to makes him look bad. Roberts has pretty well pissed everyone off so far, which I suppose is just about what a “fair” judge would do too.
And when SCOTUS rules in favor of the bans, how long do you think that is going to last?
The minority might have some votes, but they have very little political or judicial clout. And frankly, the religions keep the minorities stirred up against it more than anything else.
Tell Al Sharpton, Obama, or Jesse Jackson how little clout the black vote has. I doubt Reverend Wright sees gay marriage the way I do.
If the voting public had their way, forever. I don’t understand why the assembly keeps trying to make life hard on gay people in Indiana, it’s not like there are protests against it, or referendums, or whatever. They’ve just decided that this is their mission. Too many old men in there I’m thinking.
Of course we do have a representative in DC that wants Sharia law in our schools, but at least he caucuses on the left side of the aisle.
The predictions I’m reading on the issue is that the ruling will side with the definition of marriage as “two people” which would seem to settle it. Except then the polyamorous people come out of the woodwork, and after them the first cousins.
I liked the way Jon Stewart harpooned the so-called “slippery slope” argument.
“Why should gay people have to account for anyone who’s ever going to
want to get married after they get the right to marry?” Stewart asked.
“When women fought for suffrage, no one was like, ‘Well, what if one day
a dog wants to vote, how about that, ladies?’”
Imagine if Christians had been denied freedom of assembly, based on the concept that someday Charles Manson would start a cult.
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Great Harpoon, except when women were trying to get the vote there weren’t dogs demanding the vote as well. John Stewart is great at making what sounds like a reasonable argument that is actually full of shit.
The slippery slope here is not a reason to not do it, but it is a reason to be careful on how it’s worded, which since so far it’s mostly based on a right that isn’t explicitly defined it’s a bit different.
It’s more like being worried about reducing the drinking age to 18, which is something that should be done, but knowing that when you do so people will be yelling for a 16 year old drinking age. The fact that 16 year olds will be screaming for alcohol doesn’t mean that 18 year olds shouldn’t get it, but it does mean you need to think about how you do it.
If you make the change by saying that 18 means you are an adult and adults have the right to pursue happiness now you’ve created a whole other problem. If you just change the law that says you have to be 21, to you have to be 18, that’s great.
With marriage it seems like we’re changing the definition of marriage, but not solidifying it afterwards.We’re changing it from “Everyone knows it’s between a man and a woman” to “Everyone knows it’s between two people”. I don’t think this is a reason to not allow gay marriage, it is a reason to be worried about “Everyone knows it’s between people”.
I don’t know anyone demanding to marry their dog, a la Sanctorum et al., either. ( I do see quite a few people who want to marry their car and/or cell phone)