Liam

I don't know the methodology of the underlying survey or how the survey takers ascertained the political affiliations of their subjects ("... deeep breaths, and puuuussshhh... are you a liberal?... three quick breaths... puuussshhh..."). I suspect that they got these results more by looking at fertility rates in certain parts of the country that tend to vote one way or the other and are extrapolating from there. Here in the US, population growth is highest among Hispanics and Latinos who tend to vote Democrat much more than Republican. And in the 2006 election, Democrats increased their votes in the more child-bearing region of the sun belt.

Interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/29/us/29wre...amp;oref=slogin

I read about this vote in the Boston Globe the other day but didn't get an opportunity to read the entire article. Could someone explain to me what is the significance/ramifications of naming Quebec a nation within Canada? Does it give them the ability to exercise legislative power that other provinces lack? Does it give them the right to secede?

Typical right wingnut reaction -- when they can't address facts presented before them they revert to throwing mud at liberals.

It's not strapping bombs to chests -- yet -- but this article shows that religious intolerance can take root even in Christianity and that we must, therefore, be mindful of the enemies within: http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp...date=11/21/2006

Betsy, I am actually embarrassed for you that you have asked this. I thought it was a given that none of us likes a suicide bomber, that none of us condones murder. But if it takes an affirmative statement for you to believe that it is true, here you go: suicide bombing is evil and the people who support it and who commit it will burn in Hell. Happy now? Can we go back to engaging in a discussion of the potential enemies within our faith or does every discussion about abuses in our society need to be counterposed with the evils of others (e.g., Islam)? Didn't Jesus say something about removing the plank from your own eye first? Must we always divert attention by pointing to the dust mote in another's eye?

I don't mean any of the following to be a personal attack and I hope that my calmness comes across. It is not meant to be bitter or an angry rant: Why marriage and not civil unions? I can't speak for Canada, but here in the US, the Supreme Court decided in Brown v. Board of Ed. that separate is not equal. Having two different statuses (stati?) is inherently unequal. Marriage as a Christian sacrament is defined as the union of one man and one woman in the eyes of the Lord. (Other religions, Islam for example, allow for different marital structures such as bigamy, so even the Christian definition of marriage as one man-one woman is not universal.) Being gay myself, knowing many people who led the marriage equality fight here in Massachusetts, and reading a lot of gay media, I have never seen nor heard one single gay person even whisper about wanting to force churches and religious institutions to honor gay marriages. Your church is safe. Your faith is safe. We know we're not welcome and we have no interest in crashing your party. Marriage as a secular institution is what gay people seek. The state issues licenses for marriages. In the US, the state has an obligation to treat all its citizens equally unless the state can argue a compelling state interest in acting in a discriminatory manner. There is no compelling state interest in banning gays from getting a civil permit to be married. Gay marriage does not threaten the family unit -- but even if it did, the onus is on the state to prove in a court of law that preserving one man-one woman marriage is a compelling state interest and that gay marriage would destroy it. The reality is that states cannot prove it because it is not provable. Therefore, gay couples should be issued marriage licenses as freely and as equally as the state gives them to straight couples. About bigotry, no, being against gay marriage doesn't automatically make you a bigot. But since opposition to gay marriage almost always boils down to one's dislike of gay people, revulsion, or misinformation about some "gay agenda" to kidnap and convert your children, you have to understand why most gay people automatically call their opponents bigots. The fact is that most of the people who oppose gay marriage do so based on certain bigoted impulses. If you can think of a purely non-bigoted reason why the state ought to discriminate and/or treat people differently, I'd love to hear it. Religious belief doesn't count as an argument, since we're talking wholly about the issuance of a civil (i.e., secular) marriage license. About the sin aspect... I would never tell you what your religious faith should be, but I would encourage you to at least be consistent. Either the entire Bible is the word of God or none of it is. I am one of those people who is frequently called a Cafeteria Catholic because I don't live my life 100% according to Catholic doctrine. Well, how about most Christians? Most are awfully selective about which parts of they Bible they choose to follow and which parts feed their outrage. Either apply your religious beliefs as the basis for every aspect of civil life, or apply none of it. If you believe that gay marriage is a sin, then you also ought to be against gambling, being disrespectful of one's parents, touching the flesh of a dead pig, and being covetous of your neighbor's goods and wife and you ought to be equally engaged in the battle to outlaw such Biblical proscriptions. If you want to legislate according to the contents of the Bible, fine, be against gay marriage. But don't be surprised when someone leads the charge to shut down Las Vegas, or to burn all those Pamela Anderson posters, or execute people who work on Sunday -- for all are sins (gambling, lust, not honoring the Sabbath) explicitly proscribed in the Bible. Will you be as equally acquiescent to their legal/Biblical wishes as you ask the rest of us to be with regard to yours? But you raise an interesting point: sin. It may be a sin to be actively engaged in a gay relationship, but isn't it also a sin to be unfair to your fellow man? All I ask is that the state give me the freedom to sin in the privacy of my home and in the privacy of my personal relationships. Opponents to gay marriage seek to enshrine a different sin (inequality) into the law of the land.

Thanks for that write up. Very informative!

But even if being gay is immoral, we don't always outlaw that which is immoral according to the Christian Bible. I, for one, would love to see "Christian" moralists who claim gay marriage needs to be banned through a Constitutional amendment at least be consistent by working tirelessly to similarly outlaw gambling, adultery, divorce, and the collecting of interest on loans. Surely, these evils are as much a threat to stable and healthy families as two men getting a joint Home Depot charge card?

Oh, Kimmy... don't you see? Leafless and his friends only want to support tradition. Now shut yer yap, get in the kitchen and fetch him a beer!

The Dems didn't need to engage in a Mark Foley witch hunt and they didn't -- the GOP was already stabbing one another in the back over it, so Dean's call isn't the whitewash you claim it is. Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is the leading political lobbyist for gay issues and they issue a legislative report card on every congressman and senator each election cycle. HRC measures votes for things like domestic partner benefits, hate crime legislation, extension of retirement beneficiary rules, votes for/against certain judicial nominations, etc. The difference between the two major parties is extremely stark. GOP Members of Congress (even the known-to-be and/or suspected-to-be gay ones, e.g., Jim Kolbe, Mark Foley, David Dreier) almost uniformly score zeroes or in the lower end of the percentage scale. Of course there are one or two each time who score well by HRC's assessment. Democrats, on the other hand, rarely score below 50% and only a handful of the most conservative Democrats score in GOP territory. Admittedly, the one sore spot that most gay people have with the Dems is that they lack the courage to come out in support of equal marriage rights. On the whole, however, gay voters know which party is more supportive. more open, and more tolerant of gay folks. Your accusation that Dems merely mouth the right words is absolutely baseless and is purely uninformed opining on your part.

I am not defending attacks since I find logic so much more persuasive, but perhaps it is because the initial comments about gay people are almost always so wildly off base, so incredibly insulting, so narrow in view, so belittling and so angrily expressed that an angry response is pretty much pre-ordained? Dialogue in the conservative realm is based on outrage, anger and moral superiority. It is rarely positive and never inclusive. You can't expect any reaction other than what you get when an initial discussion begins with "[party X] is immoral" or "anyone who disagrees with me is a terrorist-lover". You reap what you sow.

Best George Allen line after the Macaca incident: "George Allen met his Vindaloo."

The points I raised were the ones that, as I know from talking to conservatives, caused them to back away from the GOP in the past year. Cronyism, failure to be fiscally responsible, bridges to nowhere, playing politics with the Schiavo family tragedy, losing its way on so many other topics (Katrina, Harriet Myers, torture, Mark Foley). Iraq, the right track-wrong track sense of America's direction, and government corruption were the biggest issues among non-GOP voters (Democrats and independents). Dems were already angry with the GOP for all the reasons I enumerated in my earlier post, but it was the rank and file conservatives (NOT "Republicans," because there is a difference) that got angry and disillusioned leading up to the elections. Re: Schiavo. No, you have the facts wrong. Schiavo told her husband she never wanted to be kept alive. He held out hope for several years that Terry would emerge, but as time wore on and the medical news became more grim, he opted to honor her initial wish to not live like that. He tried to "pull the plug" but her parents fought him. The two parties wound up in a multi-year court battle and the husband won each and every legal battle to honor his brain-dead wife's wishes. The Republicans went into a furor over it. Bush flew back from vacation early all to sign legislation forcing another round of court activity in the Schiavo matter. Bush has/had never come back from vacation early for anything before or since this. It was all for naught. The husband again won the final round and was able to allow Terry Schiavo to die. Tom Delay threatened "activist judges" with retribution. The whole incident was a cynical ploy to curry favor with the Christian fundamentalists. It was not an exercise in conservatism. And it was entirely disrespectful of a family's internal struggle. Regarding the Founding Fathers, yes, they prayed. Yes, they used the conventions of their day in addressing government matters (exhortations to the almighty and such). But are you saying that someone who prays cannot want or cannot design a government that is secular and not a theocracy? By the way, many of the Founding Fathers were followers of the Enlightenment and/or Deists. They were not "Christians" as we apply that term today (i.e., the Falwell mode of being one who adheres to the letter of the Good Book... or who claims to do so): http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/summer97/secular.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin : "Although Franklin's parents had intended for him to have a career in the church, Franklin said that he became disillusioned with organized religion, after learning about Deism. "I soon became a thorough Deist." " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson : "On matters of religion, Jefferson in 1800 was accused by his political opponents of being an atheist and enemy of religion. But Jefferson wrote at length on religion and almost all scholars agree with Jefferson's claim that he was a deist, a common position held by European intellectuals in the late 18th century." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine : "He described himself as a "Deist" "

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see the GOP move to the center on social issues, but Rudy hasn't got a shot. Even if he manages to secure the GOP nomination, Christian fundamentalists would stay away from the polls on election day. Aside from being pro gay marriage and pro choice, Rudy had an affair while married and while mayor of NYC. And he dumped his first wife through a TV interview. The Democrats would love to run against Rudy. All it would take to win is to remind "Christian" voters who this guy is and Rudy's support would evaporate.

As an American and semi-Libertarian, I don't see the need for government money to support these things, either. (And that also goes for spending five hundred million in city/state/provincial dollars on a stadium so various billionaires can send their millionaire gladiators onto a gridiron or baseball diamond.) Based on my participation in a chat board for gay athletes, I personally observed a lot of bitterness between the Montreal supporters and FGG supporters. One of the charges the Chicago/FGG supporters kept making about Montreal is that it was geared primarily to be a party (it was timed to coincide with Montreal's gay pride events) and that its focus was not seriously on the sport side of things. I can't comment on your friend's (or friend of a friend's) impression, but it would not surprise me to hear that he or she went to the Montreal games. I had several friends compete in Chicago this summer and their feeling was that it was one of the most rewarding and uplifting sports competitions they've participated in.

Actually, prior Gay Games have been enormous draws for gay tourism dollars. The problem all along with the Montreal organization is that their break-even point was overly ambitious. I believe they needed something like 12,000 or 14,000 participants to break even. To be fair, prior Gay Games in NYC, Sydney and Amsterdam had similar high participant rates, but many of them also had money problems. The Federation of Gay Games (the group that officially runs these events), saw prior fiscal problems as a threat to the viability of the event going forward and wanted Montreal to be more conservative in their scope. By 2004, discussions between the FGG and Montreal broke down and the FGG awarded the official Gay Games to the runner up host city, Chicago. Montreal decided to go ahead with their own games, dubbed them the Outgames, and proceeded with their flawed plans. Chicago held the "official" Gay Games just two weeks prior to the Montreal event and was, by all accounts, a success. It was smaller than it would have been had it been the only major gay sporting event in North America that year, but perhaps its scaled sown size also made it less a financial disaster. I believe the Chicago Gay Games ended up $200,000 in the red but, unlike Montreal, it did not receive any government support or subsidies. It was designed to be a success or failure solely from corporate sponsorship, participant fees, and ticket sales. Montreal definitely had an advantage over Chicago in that it had a head start of couple of years' planning and publicity activity. On top of that, there was a sense that the Montreal folks would use general dissatisfaction with US foreign policy to lure the sizeable European leagues from Chicago. But the problem with Montreal, as I understand it, is that their plan was too grand and to expensive.

Once again, a conversation gets pushed into gay bashing. FWIW, Elton John spoke out against *organized* religion. I don't agree with him 100%, but I will say that in the past couple of decades, those who are most vocal about faith and values tend to fit nicely into EJ's description of being mean-spirited lemmings. I don't agree that religion is bad. It provides a lot of people with comfort and sense of worth. Overall, it is of incredible value. But organized religion can be entirely different. Once you get up into the administration and bureaucracy associated with an organized religion, its beauty fades. A former priest friend of mine said that there was nothing more beautiful on Earth than the Catholic Church at the priest and nun level and nothing uglier on Earth than the Catholic Church at the Bishop and above level.

I think Rumsfeld's/Bush's decision to go in with 150,000 was mainly driven by their wish to reach Baghdad quickly and overwhelm the world (shock and awe) with TV footage of soldiers walking through Saddam's palaces within a week or two. Perhaps budget and congressional approval were considerations, but Congress and Bush have never questioned one another's spending habits. In the end, I would argue that losing the war after keeping 150,000 soldiers in Iraq for four years will prove to be much more costly than winning the war after having 500,000 in there for three years.

This freedom you speak of. is it a valuable thing? I mean, is it worth a life or many lives? Do you think that only we in the west understand it and reach for it or can others participate in it as well? Further, when it is tough, should the Iraqis just roll over and let whomever rule them? Should we not support their freedom or, just say 'sorry, freedom for you is too high a price for us' and pull out because Bush didn't handle certain parts as well as hindsight has shown us? Lastly, how should Bush have run this campaign that would have pleased you? Yep, I said that and I stand by it. Freedom is, indeed, a valuable thing. Furthermore, freedom is also an incredibly fragile thing because its continuance requires the dedication of those with power to not exceed their bounds and preserve institutions for the benefit of future generations. The problem, though, is that the ideal conditions for freedom to take root is where it grows organically within a people. I am not so sure it could be grafted onto a country like Iraq under the current conditions of "post-war" Iraq. Western-style democracy worked in Japan after WW2 because the nation was entirely demoralized, its government was bankrupt and the US military completely overwhelmed the nation of Japan. Furthermore, post-war Japan didn't suffer from internal strife (or religious and ethnic division) like Iraq does today. Yes, freedom is valuable but it is also fragile. I'm not sure the Iraq of today is a very suitable candidate, sadly, and a major reason for that is that we failed to create conditions where freedom could take root. How would Bush have kept my support? First, he should have committed 500,000 soldiers to the war. We should have flooded the country with troops after Saddam fell. Doing so would have kept order. No post-war rebuilding can take place when there is no security. Second, he should not have disbanded either the standing Iraqi military nor the Iraqi civil service. I think that had he done those two things, Iraq would been a vastly different country today, and perhaps one moving more and more toward the free country we all wish it could be.

Playing Devil's Advocate: so if we achieved most of our objectives and have already won, woud you agree that most of the US troops in Iraq should be redeployed? I think you're painting an overly rosey picture of the situation in Iraq. In some (many?) areas of the country, people don't even have basic services and family members go missing at the hands of militias and extremists. I think cases where one teacher goes missing to be replaced by another brave soul are very few and very, very far between.

... still waiting for that apology...

1. If it was known that half of Saudi Arabi and Syria would come in to capitalize on chaos in Iraq, why did we allow chaos to ensue? The Bush administration was incompetent and those who stood in the best position to take advantage of that chaos took advantage of it and we're now pretty screwed in terms of Iraq. 2. Of course Iraq is the property of the Iraqis. You fail to grasp what I'm saying. Bush and Rumsfeld saw the war ONLY in terms as a race to Baghdad, in terms of grabbing ground. They assumed the flowers and chocolates and confetti-laden parades would follow. They were wrong. What mattered more was winning the long term goodwill of the Iraqi people. Bush failed. I know that Iraqis voted, but that doesn't matter in terms of victory. When your sister gets blown to bits or when your child turns up with his throat slit, do you really feel happy that the US is occupying your country? In the view of most Iraqis, these things would not have happened if the US didn't invade. What mattered is whether Iraqis viewed us as liberators and as proponents of a path worth fighting for. Unfortunately, we uncorked the bottle which held in check all the thnic strife that always bubbled below the surafec in Iraq. With our cowboy diplomacy, we thought we could go in there and crack skulls and everyone would all just get along. Not so. We failed to understand the terrain, the ethnic clashes. We DID NOT win over the hearts and minds of the Iraqis, despite their voting. If we won hearts and minds, how do you explain the chaos in Iraq today? Believe me, I would love to see us win in Iraq, but you can't gloss over all the missteps and think that becoming strident in rhetoric when discussing the issue with domestic parties is going to win the war. The truth is that the war is going to evolve with or without our opinions. It is going to be won or lost without our input. My opinion is that we have put ourselves so far down the path to defeat that total victory it is all but hopeless at this point. And, so far, my position has been borne out in just about every report from the front.

Heretic!!! How dare you question the Dear Leader?!?!

<deep inhale>... I don't even know how to respond. This, oddly, sounds a lot like what's going on in Iraq already. Someone gets kidnapped and his family gets a call, "Are you Sunni or Shia?" the caller asks. The family has to weigh their response -- do they tell the truth or do they lie and hope they've hit the 50-50 knowing the wrong answer means a bullet in their loved one's brain. Either way, I think we in the west ought to strive for being better people than that. Maybe I'm alone in thinking we ought to be better.