Smoothrich posted:

I am very progressive, though I don't think that means going left or right, but forward.

Smoothrich posted:

because I am very progressive, though I don't think that means going left or right, but forward.

Jerry Manderbilt posted:

sure, whatever

to the rest of us you'll never be anything but the blithering moron who apologizes for psychopaths bragging about how many black people they shot in post-katrina new orleans and thinks that the fall of the roman empire is linked to present-day corruption in new jersey because 'italian corruption'

Obdicut posted:

Oh man how did I forget that so quickly, that was one of the stupidest things I've ever read in my life, and I've read a lot of Bill Kristol.

Smoothrich posted:

I am very progressive, though I don't think that means going left or right, but forward.

beatlegs posted:

So the solution is for the left to act more like conservatives. Boy, that's been such a successful strategy in the past.

Shbobdb posted:

Arguments against the 1st are already being presented. You just have to look for the language. America was a founded as a Christian country, so . . . And it goes from there.

Gay marriage is like shouting fire in a theater.

Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:

Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:

FuzzySkinner posted:

"WELL YOU SEE, THE SECULAR CULTURE..."

Is an argument I hear all that time.

Which I don't get. I don't see a lot of entertainers or politicians that are avowed atheists. I mean, take the supreme court justices for example. All of them are either Catholic or Jewish. Guys like Martin Scorsese for example are indeed Catholic.

Darkman Fanpage posted:

It's almost as if they realize how lovely they've treated people and now fear the same in return.

Smoothrich posted:

I just replaced the political persuasion of the gross generalization.

FuzzySkinner posted:

"WELL YOU SEE, THE SECULAR CULTURE..."

Is an argument I hear all that time.

Which I don't get. I don't see a lot of entertainers or politicians that are avowed atheists. I mean, take the supreme court justices for example. All of them are either Catholic or Jewish. Guys like Martin Scorsese for example are indeed Catholic.

Yet they're always presenting as America as the un-christian, unfriendly place outside of their small little bubble of outdated theology and beliefs that they all seem to hold onto.

I also don't see why something being "secular" is naturally terrible. God created the world, correct? There's some matters that are very much worth exploring in it.

Caerulius posted:

Its relative. The Romans hated the early Christians because they only worshipped one god to the exclusion of all others. They actually called the Christians atheists, because only worshipping one god is pretty much as bad as not believing in any god. Which seems crazy from the outside. To evangelicals, subscribing to a reasonable form of religion is tantamount to being secular. Which seems crazy from the outside, and also because it is.

Mister Macys posted:

You shouldn't do it unless it's true?

Mister Macys posted:

I know he's not exactly big news, but has Alex Jones weighed in recently?

FuzzySkinner posted:

BTW, I found the story that Janet Parshall was talking about

http://abc7news.com/society/girl-scouts-return-$100k-donation-after-donor-says-it-cant-be-used-for-transgender-girls/818905/

.

How do...you even call yourself a christian when you pull this poo poo?

And this women was PRAISING HER for taking back the money, and encouraging those to send their kids to evangelical versions of the girl scouts instead.

Nintendo Kid posted:

There's also a loony hardcore conservative knockoff of the boy scouts now for the people all mad about how gay scouts were let in recently and they're supposed to be letting in gay adults any time now.

Sir Tonk posted:

On what?

Perhaps the TPP:
http://www.infowars.com/obama-removes-tpps-anti-slavery-clause-then-attacks-confederate-flag-as-symbol-of-slavery/

Or black youths threatening the security and existence of our people and a future for White Children:
http://www.infowars.com/the-new-knockout-game-nearly-50-black-teens-raid-wal-mart-assault-shoppers-destroy-merchandise/

Maybe you'd like to hear about this photo of the First Lady without makeup:
http://www.infowars.com/found-picture-of-michelle-obama-without-makeup/

Mel Mudkiper posted:

I can only gleefully embrace the further complete marginalization of the Religious Right in mainstream culture

Nintendo Kid posted:

Here's the group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_Life_USA

The best part? A lot of them whined upa storm over the fact that actual Boy Scouts owned facilities they wanted to use were either refusing themaccess for not being scouts, or charging much higher prices to camp/do whatever than they would the boy scouts.

Free market hurts, don't it!

FuzzySkinner posted:

BTW, I found the story that Janet Parshall was talking about

http://abc7news.com/society/girl-scouts-return-$100k-donation-after-donor-says-it-cant-be-used-for-transgender-girls/818905/

.

How do...you even call yourself a christian when you pull this poo poo?

And this women was PRAISING HER for taking back the money, and encouraging those to send their kids to evangelical versions of the girl scouts instead.

Mister Macys posted:

Mainly the SCOTUS rulings as of late.

Shbobdb posted:

Yeah, but there is a more nuanced discussion behind that.

Like how reasonable paleocon Buckley literally proposed tattooing people with aids and forcibly relocating them to an island.

Intellectual conservativism *cymbal clash*

Shbobdb posted:

Not being able to shout fire relies on an old fighting words restriction.

Mister Macys posted:

I know he's not exactly big news, but has Alex Jones weighed in recently?

Crowsbeak posted:

Well he and co are just asking questions.
http://www.infowars.com/false-flag-dylann-roofs-barely-used-facebook-page-likely-created-in-2015/

BTW I have checked in with the full on nazi right and their crying over the confederate flag. Not one tear for the victims of the terrorist attack, but now this assault on "southern culture" is a real tragedy.

Klaus88 posted:

Can we have a source? I want to see this proposal for jumping off the rocky moral ground we're already on as a country.

quote:

March 18, 1986


OP-ED

Crucial Steps in Combating the Aids Epidemic; Identify All the Carriers
By WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.

I have read and listened, and I think now that I can convincingly crystallize the thoughts chasing about in the minds of, first, those whose concern with AIDS victims is based primarily on a concern for them and for the maintenance of the most rigid standards of civil liberties and personal privacy, and, second, those whose anxiety to protect the public impels them to give subordinate attention to the civil amenities of those who suffer from AIDS and primary attention to the safety of those who do not.

Arguments used by both sides are sometimes utilitarian, sometimes moral, sometimes a little of each -and almost always a little elusive. Most readers will locate their own inclinations and priorities somewhere other than in the polar positions here put forward by design.

School A suspects, in the array of arguments of School B, a venture in ethical opportunism. Look, they say, we have made enormous headway in the matter of civil rights for all, dislodging the straight-laced from mummified positions they inherited through eclectic superstitions ranging from the Bible's to Freud's. A generation ago, homosexuals lived mostly in the closet. Nowadays they take over cities and parade on Halloween and demand equal rights for themselves qua homosexuals, not merely as apparently disinterested civil libertarians.

Along comes AIDS, School A continues, and even though it is well known that the virus can be communicated by infected needles, known also that heterosexuals can transmit the virus, still it is both a fact and the popular perception that AIDS is the special curse of the homosexual, transmitted through anal sex between males. And if you look hard, you will discern that little smirk on the face of the man oh-so-concerned about public health. He is looking for ways to safeguard the public, sure, but he is by no means reluctant, in the course of doing so, to sound an invidious tocsin whose clamor is a call to undo all the understanding so painfully cultivated over a generation by those who have fought for the privacy of their bedroom. What School B is really complaining about is the extension of civil rights to homosexuals.

School A will not say all that in words quite so jut-jawed, but it plainly feels that no laws or regulations should be passed that have the effect of identifying the AIDS carrier. It isn't, School A concedes, as if AIDS were transmitted via public drinking fountains. But any attempt to segregate the AIDS carrier is primarily an act of moral ostracism.

School B does in fact tend to disapprove forcefully of homosexuality, but tends to approach the problem of AIDS empirically. It argues that acquired immune deficiency syndrome is potentially the most serious epidemic to have shown its face in this century. Summarizing currently accepted statistics, the Economist recently raised the possibility ''that the AIDS virus will have killed more than 250,000 Americans in eight years' time.'' Moreover, if the epidemic extended to that point, it would burst through existing boundaries. There would then be ''no guarantee that the disease will remain largely confined to groups at special risk, such as homosexuals, hemophiliacs and people who inject drugs intravenously. If AIDS were to spread through the general population, it would become a catastrophe.'' Accordingly, School B says, we face a utilitarian imperative, and this requires absolutely nothing less than the identification of the million-odd people who, the doctors estimate, are carriers. How? Well, the military has taken the first concrete step. Two million soldiers will be given the blood test, and those who have AIDS will be discreetly discharged Discreetly, you say!

Hold on. I'm coming to that. You have the military making the first massive move designed to identify AIDS sufferers - and, bear in mind, an AIDS carrier today is an AIDS carrier on the day of his death, which day, depending on the viral strain, will be two years from now or when he is threescore and 10. The next logical step would be to require of anyone who seeks a marriage license that he present himself not only with a Wassermann test but also an AIDS test.

But if he has AIDS, should he then be free to marry?

Only after the intended spouse is advised that her intended husband has AIDS, and agrees to sterilization. We know already of children born with the disease, transmitted by the mother, who contracted it from the father.

What then would School B suggest for those who are not in the military and who do not set out to get a marriage license? Universal testing?

Yes, in stages. But in rapid stages. The next logical enforcer is the insurance company. Blue Cross, for instance, can reasonably require of those who wish to join it a physical examination that requires tests. Almost every American, making his way from infancy to maturity, needs to pass by one or another institutional turnstile. Here the lady will spring out, her right hand on a needle, her left on a computer, to capture a blood specimen.

Is it then proposed by School B that AIDS carriers should be publicly identified as such?

The evidence is not completely in as to the communicability of the disease. But while much has been said that is reassuring, the moment has not yet come when men and women of science are unanimously agreed that AIDS cannot be casually communicated. Let us be patient on that score, pending any tilt in the evidence: If the news is progressively reassuring, public identification would not be necessary. If it turns in the other direction and AIDS develops among, say, children who have merely roughhoused with other children who suffer from AIDS, then more drastic segregation measures would be called for.

But if the time has not come, and may never come, for public identification, what then of private identification?

Everyone detected with AIDS should be tatooed in the upper forearm, to protect common-needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals.

You have got to be kidding! That's exactly what we suspected all along! You are calling for the return of the Scarlet Letter, but only for homosexuals!

Answer: The Scarlet Letter was designed to stimulate public obloquy. The AIDS tattoo is designed for private protection. And the whole point of this is that we are not talking about a kidding matter. Our society is generally threatened, and in order to fight AIDS, we need the civil equivalent of universal military training.

William F. Buckley Jr., editor of the National Review, is author, most recently, of ''Right Reason.'' His syndicated column appears locally in The New York Daily News.

Darkman Fanpage posted:

Oklahoma Supreme Court ordered the Ten Commandments monument removed from State Capitol grounds. Get ready for more whining.