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At 6/22/09 12:35 AM, Dekagaru wrote: I think that Dragonmad's post was made before he clearly thought out the issue. I honestly don't think he thought through the implications of forcing religious institutions to hold ceremonies they are against. It would be the same issue as a white supremacist "church" that had a no black policy. While it is distasteful the government shouldn't send police there and make them allow black people to attend. And when it comes down to it why would a gay couple want to get married in a church that is hostile to them?

That is more or less half true, and I didn't think out the issue as much as I should have for what I meant.

We live in an age right now where the issue of marriage involving church and state is so intertwined at this point that most people will consider marriage a function of both, and a lot of them will want it to be either a function of one or the other.

I am not saying force the church to perform ceremonies that it, or at least a majority of it, does not want to perform.

What I am saying is if two gay people want to get married, and for whatever reason, their church is unable to or unwilling to provide a priest for such an event, it would be the duty of the government to locate someone of the qualifications who is willing.

Ideally, this wouldn't need to be the case as church and state would be seperate, but for the most part involving marriage at the current time, this isn't the case, and I was just suggesting an alternative. I didn't mean "force the catholic church to perform gay marriage", but rather something more along the lines of "Help the gay people find a section of their church that will perform the ceremony."

It was really my fault about that since I wrote that post in only a few minutes, and I'm sorry about the confusion/misconception.

At 6/21/09 10:29 PM, Dekagaru wrote:

At 6/21/09 09:40 PM, Dragonmad wrote: This would mean that while the church wouldn't need to recognize gay people as married, they would be required to perform the ceremonies.

I'm actually gonna have to disagree with you there. We shouldn't make a non-government institution do anything they do not want to. There are plenty of churches out there that are open to everyone, and forcing a bigoted church to perform a ceremony they oppose just seems un-American to me.

Sorry, I kind of worded that one wrong. I didn't mean it like that. I meant it as in they would have to allow the ceremonies. I need to start rechecking before I post...

Gay people should have the right to marry.

And instead of falling into the trap of posting my reasons and then having counterarguments put up to which then I will argue against once more, I'm going to put up all three.

Bold is me.
Italics is counter argument.
Normal is my argument to that.

The state has no right to deny gay people marriage, as it is their right as citizens of the united states blah blah blah
Yadda yadda marriage should not be recognized by the state as it is a religious institution.
As much as that is the case, and yes, marriage did begin as a religious institution, it has evolved to a point that it should be incorporated into the legal system as it's own section. This would mean that while the church wouldn't need to recognize gay people as married, they would be required to perform the ceremonies. If necessary, priests who aren't opposed to gay marriage could be supplied by the state if the couple wishes, or they could just sign a marriage license and go about their own means for an actual ceremony.

blah blah blah holy just luviticus blah blah blah god hates gays
It is my firm belief that if there is a god, he created us and all of our lusts, pros and cons, regardless of the bible's teachings, and as such, why would he create something he hates?
Naturally this argument could also be used to support anything so I'll be clear. My idea is that god created us, but that doesn't mean that he caused our decisions. He gave gays, and pardon my French here, I don't mean to offend anyone, the urge to give/take it up the butt, so he must not hate them.

the bible says gays are bad
People wrote the bible, not God, nor any divine being for that matter. That means people believed and still believe gays are bad. Not any omniscient presence that will smite you if you even consider that the bible might not be all true.

Yes. Refusing to vote for someone on the basis that their religion is different than mine, would be the same as refusing to vote for them because they didn't grow up in my town, or if they were of another race or gender, in my opinion.

If you got everything for free, then everyone involved in the creation of that product would lose money.

If you spent $300 to make a robot, then someone took the robot because they believed they deserved it for free, then you'd be out $300 and an awesome robot. Can you see why everything can't be free?

The stupidity of this ploy to get us to look at this video makes me sad.

The amount of ignorance on this thread is just about to make me believe humans are among the most stupid of the creatures on our Earth.

In all, I believe in animal rights, and I believe that while humans are high up on the food chain, we aren't necessarily the top.

I'm not saying that animals should be involved in politics, and have a right to vote and the like, but I am saying that all creatures have three basic rights:
The right to live
The right to survive
and The right not to be tortured or maliciously treated.

Naturally, however, these rights are political only. If we were to get into a natural order view of it, then sure, I'm going to squish a bug if I think it's going to bite me, or if it refuses to fly away if I swat at it.

Animal testing for cosmetic purposes is, to a small extent, okay with me. This doesn't mean I want twenty puppies in tiny cages, starving, and mistreated so I can have freaking dandruff shampoo, though. I mean that if we need to make sure that that shampoo isn't going to make all my hair fall out, and turn my scalp green, so we very carefully test it on twenty apes, and those apes have plenty of room, food, and quality treatment, then I'm not going to go off on anyone. (Hell, this would maybe be size of a high-school gymnasium at most, really.)

And as for the food chain, that was invented by humans to make us feel big. We put ourselves on top because humans can't stand their own weakness. I'd like to see any one of you who claim that humans are naturally on top go up against a grizzly bear without a gun. Am I saying that because I believe this that I could take that bear? Hell no, and am I saying that that makes it okay to stab a kitten and eat it raw because we're bigger? No. I'm saying that when faced with nature, and not PETA, EPA, or any political organization, humans and animals have the same three rights, and it's up to themselves to defend them.

Humans just defend those three rights more adequately than animals, that doesn't mean that animals don't deserve to live freely, but it also doesn't mean that humans have to move out of the way because stray cats want to live in our alleyways.

I'd have to say I'd blow it off, on the simple stance that my opinions haven't changed, just how much people knew about them. If the population at large sees my views and decides that they don't agree with them, then I won't get elected. Oh well. It's not like I'm going to go onto this site and start to create another holocaust or anything, anyway.

And if going on this site in your youth makes you unfit to be president, then doesn't that mean getting into a fight in 2nd grade makes you unfit for presidency(sp?)?

Either way, I have no political ambitions, so I can't see how this would affect me.

At 3/14/09 02:50 AM, aviewaskewed wrote:

At 3/14/09 02:42 AM, JackTipper wrote: The facts in the video are on point. So keep your pity for yourself. You'll need it when you can no longer deny the truth.

Wasn't Bush supposed to enslave us too as part of the ultimate master plan? What'll be the excuse when Obama doesn't?

Don't forget the banks! They're going to put chips in our brains so we're incapable of dissent while they also enslave us all!

Name-Mike
Age- Guess
Party-Democrat
1 Abortion - I'm pro-choice, for my reasoning is that the state defines a living child as a child that has taken it's first breath. If they were to outlaw abortion, that would be the equivalent of saying that you aren't allowed to control something in your body that we don't recognize as a person anyway. If abortion equalled shooting small children in the head, then my opinion would definately be different, but I do feel that it is up to the mother.
2Gay marriage- I have never seen the big deal on this. Gay people should be able to do whatever they want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone.
3Oil vs. Alternative energy- Alternative energy FTW! Oil is killing the environment, and oil companies have a huge hold on anything that threatens them, which shows even more how we need to decrease dependancy on oil.
4War on Terror- Bull. Simply put, we attacked Iraq to point a finger at a random terrorist attack. The fact that Al Queda was in Iraq at the time is irrelevant. We didn't need to topple their government then run off saying our job was done!
5George W. Bush To say I don't like him is to say that the Fat Man (bomb dropped on Hiroshima, I think?) was a firecracker.

At 3/14/09 02:10 AM, Nosferatu-of-Worms wrote: Seeing the way you speak, it certainly does sound like that of a high school freshman, naive and immatured. Longer school days won't do anything, thats not education reform. Thats just longer days of the same education system. Its whats being taught that needs to change. More emphasis on things that can be applied to the real world and less on things not needed. Like more math and science and more business writing, seeing as thats whats actually applied in todays world. I think all else really is nothing more than elective. Do you really need to know a foreign language to work in the business world of the U.S.? Probably not (though that depends on your job), considering most speak english (which needs to be made the official language of our country). History is probably one of the only exceptions, though only an understanding of the American government, along with modern world and American history. Things like poetry and understanding themes and symbolism in books probably isn't needed. We need more emphasis on proper grammar, spelling, and understanding words and their definitions.

I agree with you on some of those points, in that there needs to be an increase on emphasis on things like spelling and grammar, but I DO feel that being able to know at least one foreign language is important. I could get into a whole big debate with you on other sections of what you said but I'm not going to go off topic because of my beliefs or my accepted inability to walk away from a political argument.

If we were to decrease the study of poetry and undertanding themes of books, the country's literacy rate would nosedive because students who might actually enjoy reading suddenly have no clue about it because they were only exposed to text books and a bit of those paragraphs in the grammar books that are either painfully biased or painfully stupid.

Someone wise once also said that if we do not learn from history then we are destined to repeat it. If you take out history class then it is extremely likely that some of the earlier wars of history will be forgotten as well. People will forget all about how if there's a plague, they should be clean, and things like that. History has been an essential part of any school curriculum for hundreds of years, and it needs to stay.

Business writing would only work if you were going into business. Suppose you were going to be an author, or a teacher? What about a journalist? We need to increase emphasis on all education, not just what is generally believed to be necessary in the "real world"

Two words people:
Idiotic Propaganda.

It's one thing to claim that Obama's not working in the best interest of the American people, nay, the world.

It's another thing entirely to try and turn Obama into Hitler, or say that he's trying to cause global slavery! This film's a joke and I seriously pity anyone who believes a word of it.

As far as I can see, this entire topic thus far has been a combination of parents and students arguing about the school system, and liberals and conservatives arguing about the NCLB act.

The entire system of our country's public education is a joke right now, and to blame it on the students or the government alone is just narrow minded.

I'm a freshman highschool student and I'm for increased hours, dispite whatever anyone may say about students choosing the "path with least work" or whatever. The current school system is a joke in general in that it stops being free the moment you become an adult, and most people who want to get into decent colleges have to fight tooth and nail before they even realize their actions are necessary to that magnitude. And it certainly doesn't help that the shool system up until the high school level is painfully dumb, to the point that myself, and several others I know (in different areas, so this isn't just me) drops you into a situation you're totally unprepaired for.

The No Child Left Behind act is even more laughable than the schools. "Oh, let's give the students a ridiculously easy series of standardized tests and then remove funding from the ones who do poorly. Let's make it even harder for those who have trouble (not including those who don't want to work in this) to get a good education and make the school cut sallaries and have to hire unmotivated minimum wage teachers! It's ingenious!"

Was the bill written by a retarted fucking monkey!?

If Obama's school plan is real, I certainly salute it. We need to increase the intelligence of our youth, and stop hurting those of (and I don't mean this in an insulting or arrogant way at all) less aptitude. Longer school days will certainly help, and if that doesn't work, then we try something else. The economy will be fixed by future workers, not just those involved right now. Educating future workers = a faster economic recovery.

As for Obama's re-election, it's a lock no matter what. He deserved it, and still does. However, he got in because of the (and I'm sure I'll end up being flamed for this, but it needs to be said anyway) African american population's vote, and only because of the color of the skin. They picked the right leader for the wrong reasons, but whatever.Liberals and Conservatives can sontinue fighting like fucking three year olds over who gets to stack the alphabet blocks, or we can shut up and fix the problem!

Wind Waker, period