The OFFICIAL United States Presidential Election Thread! IV

[Arrian]

Not if states only granted domestic partnership rights to all, leaving marriages to churches.

Of course, then what is done with the present rights/privileges of marriage? I'd leave them with domestic partnership (or rather, civil unions). Marriage, IMO, is a religious thing that should be left to churches/synagoges/mosques/etc.

Ned, we agree on something (I think).

FYI, my "position" on Christmas, which you inquired about earlier:

I have to have a position on Christmas? It's a holiday. It's been around for a good long time, and everyone gets it. Some people worship during it, others do not. It's just fine by me. I don't go to church (well, last year I got dragged along and had to listen to the minister preach on about how only through faith could people really feel safe in this unsafe world of ours - gee whiz, doesn't religion just LOVE scared people!), but I still enjoy the time off and seeing family & giving gifts.

-Arrian

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Ned
I take it then, Drach, that you advocate killing the newborn at the request of the mother without more? All births are dangerous to a degree and all abortions can be justified medically to a degree because all abortions reduce risk -- TO A DEGREE! To allow a heath exemption without any limitations on DEGREE merely sanctions murder.

Missed my last few posts? There has to be a substantial chance the mother will die, at the very least.

As for first trimester abortions, I see no need to stop them.

Of course, a lot of people like to think people have abortions willy-nilly and with no thought to it. That is simply not the case.

-Drachasor

[Lefty Scaevola]

Originally posted by Ned
Not if states only granted domestic partnership rights to all, leaving marriages to churches.

Regulation of familial relationships, as allowedable at all, belongs to the state, not to some consortium of churches. Unless procreation is by public policy a necessary element of marriage, I find no reasonable secular purpose to deny both the benefits and title of marriange to same sex couples.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Lefty Scaevola
Regulation of familial relationships, as allowedable at all, belongs to the state, not to some consortium of churches. Unless procreation is by public policy a necessary element of marriage, I find no reasonable secular purpose to deny both the benefits and title of marriange to same sex couples.

This is a logical response. Impeccable logic.

But when 80% of the people want to define marriage as being between a man and a woman (without denying necessary rights to alternative couples), it is wrong. I hope you can understand why it is wrong.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Drachasor


Missed my last few posts? There has to be a substantial chance the mother will die, at the very least.

As for first trimester abortions, I see no need to stop them.

Of course, a lot of people like to think people have abortions willy-nilly and with no thought to it. That is simply not the case.

-Drachasor

I have no objection to a threshold of "substantial likelihood" of death if the birth were completed that must be crossed before partial term abortions could be legal.

(I just don't believe that the last few centimeters would ever place the women at that level of risk were she not at that level of risk independent of the last few centimeters.)

[Winston]

Just as an aside, if Americans want to know part of the reason why President Bush is so despised among a lot of Europeans, look to the way American events and affairs are reported on in the mainstream, predominantly left-leaning media here.

Latest example was the evening news on Danish national television (state-run) on Nov. 4th. In a 2-minute story on the US election results, which were by the time clear, they started by stating the result for about 15 seconds, adding that opinion polls showed that the re-election of George W. Bush was caused by the voters' emphasis on moral issues and religion. This was stated as a fact, the unmistakeable truth by the news anchor. Not a hypothesis or part of a larger picture, no sir.

They then showed a 15 seconds archive clip from a Bush campaign rally in which a man in the crowd with a microphone talks about how happy he is that for the first time in a long time, he feels like God is present in the White House. Cut to Bush raising both his arms saying "Thank you, I appreciate it." Cut back to news anchor.

A few additional comment from the anchor about how religion dominates American society, then closing with various comments from US "people in the street" appearing to underline what the news anchor just said.

That's it. No other news stories on the election. 2 minutes like this the day after the election was called, basically brainwashing the general public into believing that the agenda in the US was solely about religion (which the ordinary Dane is most suspicious about).

Simply lovely.

And we have only two national Danish TV channels. They both report in much the same vein on American affairs. Day in, day out. No alternative perspective, unless you read the paper. That is, one of the few which will report in a balanced way on the US...

[Ned]

Winston, to the extent that I have seen reports from foreign media on some of our cable channels, they are uniformly insulting and hostile to Bush. Everytime I have raised the issue of bias in European media, I have been assured that there are other media that provides a right wing point of view. But, from my understanding, Europe is hardly the land of a free broadcast media.

[muxec]

Really conservative American states voted Bush. States that voted Kerry are frontend and they already separated from real americanity

I remember Kerry said something about the link between war in Iraq and Bush's oil business. He'd better examine his own sources of income.

Again: USA is the world's police. UN is stupid organization. It's America's duty to keep the whole world as legal as possible. Dictators must not rule. Again - if the war led to dicrease of number of dictatorship regimes it improved the security of the globe. This war is good as each dictatorship regime threatens not only USA but the whole free world.

P.S:In fact conservative Americans use internet less than democrats.

[Imran Siddiqui]

But when 80% of the people want to define marriage as being between a man and a woman (without denying necessary rights to alternative couples), it is wrong.

Do you personally consider something to be right if a majority believe in it, Ned? Would you consider slavery right back in 1800?

[JohnT]

If he grew up in a slave-owning culture in the year 1800, yes, probably.

[Imran Siddiqui]

John, probably so, however... I wonder if he personally, today, would consider slavery in 1800 right because most people did. Also, I never have heard Ned say he was a relativist of any kind.

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Ned
Winston, to the extent that I have seen reports from foreign media on some of our cable channels, they are uniformly insulting and hostile to Bush. Everytime I have raised the issue of bias in European media, I have been assured that there are other media that provides a right wing point of view. But, from my understanding, Europe is hardly the land of a free broadcast media.

If it was just Europe you might have a point but when in just about every country Bush is the least popular American president in memory (Bush is definately the only President that's pissed off Korea in a big way since Carter's troop withdrawl idiocy), then that points to a real failure of diplomacy.

[Dis]

The U.S. should withdraw troops from S. Korea. I fail to see what the problem is.

Another thing Bush has actually done right.

[Winston]

It's not a question of him being unpopular.

The point of my post and Ned's reply was how most of the media try their very best to report on his presidency in the most negative and non-flattering way imaginable. That's not right, especially when you effectively have a monopoly on national news broadcasting.

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
John, probably so, however... I wonder if he personally, today, would consider slavery in 1800 right because most people did. Also, I never have heard Ned say he was a relativist of any kind.

Many believe that a properly detached historian would not apply any subsequently evolved moral biases to earlier cultures... i.e., not villifying slave holding peoples because the anti-slavery cultural meme we are used to today wasn't developed by their day.

So condemning the 1800 slave owner is wrong, if the object is to remain impartial. Therefore, the original question, given that Ned can't actually do a damned thing about 1800-era slavery politics, is irrelevant and a poorly designed trap.

The fact is that today, on this issue, Ned does seem to believe that the majority does rule. So discuss this issue, don't bring strawmen like slavery into a discussion about gay marriage.