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Gay Republicans; feeling the love?

Coldwine said:
The knife cuts both ways on this one. The left goes out of their way to try to sniff out and shut out every whiff of dissent on this issue, which does create a slightly inquisitorial optic. It's bad for gay people in the long term, and accomplishes nothing good for us. I think that the whole dynamic is more centred around bashing the 'redneck outgroup' than 'there is a legitimate problem here'. The left is letting their witch hunt feed the right's paranoia, and it's an all-around dumb move.
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oh yeah, like there's never been an inquisition/witch hunt conducted against gay people, nope, never. Hell, you're really saying this when it's still legal to be fired or denied housing in 30 states for coming out? THAT is an ongoing witch hunt

The bigots are only starting to be dismissed out of hand the same way racists have been for a long time. Go complain about how oppressed racists are
 
Coldwine said:
Force of habit. They've lost, they just don't know it yet. Those who still hammer on it will become more and more irrelevant.
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no, aside from a few fanatics, they know they've lost and have known for years. The vast majority are just using hateful rhetoric to churn out the bigot vote in their districts. It's the same reason Bush II of the "i think he doesn't give a ****, he never talks about this stuff" tried to pass a constitutional amendment. Just self serving politicians
 
chromium said:
oh yeah, like there's never been an inquisition/witch hunt conducted against gay people, nope, never. Hell, you're really saying this when it's still legal to be fired or denied housing in 30 states for coming out? THAT is an ongoing witch hunt
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That's not really what 'witch hunt' means. That's an absence of protection, sure. But it's not an instance of the state, or lawless mobs, hunting down and persecuting gay people.

chromium said:
The bigots are only starting to be dismissed out of hand the same way racists have been for a long time. Go complain about how oppressed racists are
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I already do. It is unwise to shut your opposition out of discussion. Bad ideas fester like a wound when sequestered, and sunlight is the best disinfectant.
 
Coldwine said:
That's not really what 'witch hunt' means. That's an absence of protection, sure. But it's not an instance of the state, or lawless mobs, hunting down and persecuting gay people.
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it is when you're singled out as not deserving of protection. Or i could mention the practice of forcing gay youth into torture camps, which the republican platform endorses

Coldwine said:
I already do. It is unwise to shut your opposition out of discussion. Bad ideas fester like a wound when sequestered, and sunlight is the best disinfectant.
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the opposition has nothing worth listening to, never has. "I'm better than you" is not a discussion
 
chromium said:
it is when you're singled out as not deserving of protection.
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No it isn't. 'Witch hunt' has a specific meaning. 'Not being protected' isn't it.

chromium said:
Or i could mention the practice of forcing gay youth into torture camps, which the republican platform endorses
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Have you ever considered the theatre? You certainly have a flair for the dramatic.

chromium said:
the opposition has nothing worth listening to, never has. "I'm better than you" is not a discussion
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Yes it is, by definition. It's also remarkably easy to win.
 
sangha said:
Wrong.

The Supreme Court is singular. There's only one and it's decisions are singular


SCOTUS' decisions are constitution, by definition. They may not always be wise and sound, but they are always constitutional
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It will astound me to my dying day how many people simply are lost to that fact.

Just FM.
 
Tanngrisnir said:
It will astound me to my dying day how many people simply are lost to that fact.

Just FM.
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That fact isn't lost on them. They're just not honest enough to admit it if that means losing on the internet

For example, they're more than happy to ignore dissenting opinions when SCOTUS declares one of Obama's actions unconstitutional.
 
Fishking said:
False. There are things that go against my ideology that I still agree with the courts on. As a Christian, I believe homosexual acts are a sin and therefor so would gay marriage but I believe the SCOTUS got the decision right with DOMA.

The problem is with the lack of objectivity and integrity. Again, if this where not so then we wouldn't be fighting over who gets to make the appointments and rulings wouldn't have this tendency to go down party lines.
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You keep making this complaint without recognizing that the law and the constitution simply are intentionally and by necessity vague, and for many questions about how this vague and general law or phrase in the Constitution applies to this specific set of facts there is no 'right' answer.

You're basically asserting that when Scalia disagreed with RBG that one of them lacked integrity and/or objectivity, because there is an objective 'truth' in this vague law and only one right answer. I don't see how anyone can believe that's the case. There are at least 10s of thousands of lower court decisions each year that don't get appealed anywhere. A few of those are heard by various appellate courts, and a very, very few of those reach the Supreme Court. Cases in which the the black letter law demands a certain outcome never reach the SC, and even on those that DO reach there SC, there is actually wide agreement - Scalia and RBG agreed on about 70% of the cases.

And so your dispute is with a handful of cases, split along ideological lines, for which the circuits are almost always split, with some of the brightest legal minds in the country presumably coming to honest and sincere differences of opinion as reflected in amicus briefs supporting both sides. So it should surprise no one that ideology affects the outcome of decisions in those relatively few but important cases, but for which the law simply IS unclear. They become, in short, political decisions, and so who appointed them has always mattered and will always matter. It doesn't mean that one side is corrupt and the other pure as snow. They have different world views. End of story.
 
Fishking said:
No, your statement is just specious that it is meaningless.

"You only say that this food tastes bad because you don't think it tastes good."

(a) the SCOTUS does not disagree. Some members disagree and, mysteriously, the disagreements seem to happen on party lines.

And, no, if members have made themselves the enemy of the Constitution then they are not ruling in a constitutional manner.
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Which of the sitting justices are enemies of the Constitution (and we can include Scalia)? Who determines that? On what basis is that determination made? As far as we can tell from the discussion, "enemies of the constitution" are those who have different opinions on the law than you.
 
Fishking said:
*part of the SCOTUS disagrees. You know...there is this thing called the minority's dissent. Also, your premise that the SCOTUS always makes the constitutional decision is flawed at it's base.
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I doubt anyone believes the majority of the justices at any point in time and for every single decision are infallible.

But it's also just nonsense that there is for every case in front of the SC a "constitutional" decision and all other decisions therefore "unconstitutional."
 
kamikaze483 said:
I am a gay person and will be voting Republican. Comments like this demonstrate that even liberals try to force gay people into a box of their own making. Contrary to popular belief, there are more issues in a gay person's life than the government's stance on gay rights. We own businesses, have investments, are concerned about foreign policy, gas prices, corruption within the government.

What the government thinks of me is, quite literally, the least of my concern.
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That is why single issue voters are such a danger to liberty. We all are more that a single aspect of ourselves and in as much as I disagree with your choice in this election I applaud your broader perspective than a single issue.
 
JasperL said:
You keep making this complaint without recognizing that the law and the constitution simply are intentionally and by necessity vague, and for many questions about how this vague and general law or phrase in the Constitution applies to this specific set of facts there is no 'right' answer.
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The Constitution isn't vague. The only ones who believe it so are those who wish to ignore it. It's actually very specific. Any power to specifically enumerated to the federal government is automatically relegated to the states to decide. In other words, if it's vague, then it belongs to the states. It's that simple.
 
Fishking said:
The Constitution isn't vague. The only ones who believe it so are those who wish to ignore it. It's actually very specific. Any power to specifically enumerated to the federal government is automatically relegated to the states to decide. In other words, if it's vague, then it belongs to the states. It's that simple.
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Of course it is. You write like you have some expertise in the law, but if you want to claim that the Constitution and a whole slew of laws aren't vague, with lots of acceptable shades of grey, you're just making it very easy to dismiss your comments entirely.

And, no, state versus federal powers have nothing (that I can see) to do with whether a question is 'vague' or not. Pick any right - there are limits to that right or times when that right can be restricted, limited, curtailed, stripped altogether, and the outer boundaries of those limits are just going to always be judgment calls. I keep mentioning and you keep ignoring the example of the right to keep and bear arms. Who, which arms, when, in what circumstances just for starters. Does a mentally ill person have a "right" to a machine gun and to carry that weapon into the State of the Union speech? Of course not. Obviously the legislature can impose limits on that right, and it's the court's job to set boundaries on what the legislature can and cannot do, and you can't look at the language in the 2nd Amendment for definitive answers. It doesn't mention machine guns, mentally ill, or State of the Union addresses. This is obvious, and there are hundreds maybe thousands of examples like it.

I deal in taxes mostly, and the SC is regularly called on to resolve ambiguities in the code or regs with no clear 'right' answer, starting with most famously a whole series of cases defining what is and is not "income" subject to the "income" tax. It's not a simple question.
 
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JasperL said:
Of course it is. You write like you have some expertise in the law, but if you want to claim that the Constitution and a whole slew of laws aren't vague, with lots of acceptable shades of grey, you're just making it very easy to dismiss your comments entirely.

And, no, state versus federal powers have nothing (that I can see) to do with whether a question is 'vague' or not. Pick any right - there are limits to that right or times when that right can be restricted, limited, curtailed, stripped altogether, and the outer boundaries of those limits are just going to always be judgment calls. I keep mentioning and you keep ignoring the example of the right to keep and bear arms. Who, which arms, when, in what circumstances just for starters. Does a mentally ill person have a "right" to a machine gun and to carry that weapon into the State of the Union speech? Of course not. Obviously the legislature can impose limits on that right, and it's the court's job to set boundaries on what the legislature can and cannot do, and you can't look at the language in the 2nd Amendment for definitive answers. It doesn't mention machine guns, mentally ill, or State of the Union addresses. This is obvious, and there are hundreds maybe thousands of examples like it.

I deal in taxes mostly, and the SC is regularly called on to resolve ambiguities in the code or regs with no clear 'right' answer, starting with most famously a whole series of cases defining what is and is not "income" subject to the "income" tax. It's not a simple question.
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We've had private citizens own cannons so I'm confused as to what the problem is. As far as the mentally unstable, they lose all kinds of rights, not just 2A rights and that is it's own issue.
 
Fishking said:
We've had private citizens own cannons so I'm confused as to what the problem is.
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You're just avoiding the issue. I'll quote myself and maybe you'll address the point next time:

Who, which arms, when, in what circumstances just for starters. Does a mentally ill person have a "right" to a machine gun and to carry that weapon into the State of the Union speech? Of course not. Obviously the legislature can impose limits on that right, and it's the court's job to set boundaries on what the legislature can and cannot do, and you can't look at the language in the 2nd Amendment for definitive answers. It doesn't mention machine guns, mentally ill, or State of the Union addresses. This is obvious, and there are hundreds maybe thousands of examples like it.
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As far as the mentally unstable, they lose all kinds of rights, not just 2A rights and that is it's own issue.
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Where in the Constitution does it outline that the mentally ill "lose all kinds of rights"? If the Constitution is NOT not vague, and requires no subjective interpretation, that conclusion is black letter law and clearly defined in the Constitution itself, and requires NO judgment at all by judges or anyone else. So, please, cite for me the relevant text of the constitution that defines who is "mentally unstable", how it's determined, and who can make that determination, their appeal rights to that determination (if any), and what rights of theirs are curtailed or stripped and the exact outer boundaries of in what conditions?
 
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Fishking said:
The Constitution isn't vague. The only ones who believe it so are those who wish to ignore it. It's actually very specific. Any power to specifically enumerated to the federal government is automatically relegated to the states to decide. In other words, if it's vague, then it belongs to the states. It's that simple.
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If that were true, we wouldn't need the entire judicial branch of government. There would be no interpretation of the law necessary.

You are spitting in the face of several hundred years of political science.
 
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