[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman;402626]I strongly believe in equal rights for everyone.

A lot of people prattle and complain that they do not have "religious freedom". This is a lie.
They do have religious freedom. However, the right to believe what you want and worship as you please
does [B]NOT[/B] include the right to discriminate against others, cause harm to others, or to spew hatred
towards those people whose behavior you disapprove of.

Nor does it give you the right to pass laws favoring your particular religious views simply because
you happen to be in the current majority or otherwise have political control.[/QUOTE]
Fortunately there are plenty of deeply religious people who understand what you're saying too.

Here's a 90-year-old great grandmother, a devout Catholic who never misses Mass, voicing her support for equal marriage in Ireland ahead of the referendum there on Friday.

[YOUTUBE]NkGPYuz2yHQ[/YOUTUBE]

[QUOTE=Brian-E;402628]Fortunately there are plenty of deeply religious people who understand what you're saying too.

Here's a 90-year-old great grandmother, a devout Catholic who never misses Mass, voicing her support for equal marriage in Ireland ahead of the referendum there on Friday.

[YOUTUBE]NkGPYuz2yHQ[/YOUTUBE][/QUOTE]

Denial of rights for a minority is NOT something that people should be allowed to vote on.

[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman;402626]I strongly believe in equal rights for everyone.[/QUOTE]Support the morally disabled! Send your donations to the address below.

(Bob, I hope you've had your irony detector recalibrated since I last responded to one of your posts. Otherwise I'm in deep :poop:)

I credit Vice President Joe Biden for his timely honest answer that advanced the gay marriage dialog.

[URL="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/joe-biden-gay-marriage-white-house-response-105744.html"]Book: White House scrambled after Joe Biden's gay marriage comments[/URL]
[QUOTE]In a private lunch at the White House, Mehlman advised Obama that backing gay marriage could reassert his character strength from 2008, appealing to young people, Republicans and independents and beyond by seeming to take a bold stand without regard to the political consequences. On Nov. 10, 2011, Mehlman sent Plouffe a full write-up of how the president should announce his support — in a joint interview with the first lady, conducted by a female journalist and “all 3 should be sitting. Soft lighting” — as well as a full suggested script for the president to use.

That script wasn’t far off from what Obama eventually said as he went public with his “evolution,” and though he did the interview solo, he did do it with as Mehlman advised, with a female interviewer (ABC’s Robin Roberts).

But he did it six months after Mehlman sent Plouffe the email, and only after Biden forced him. The first lady and Jarrett, Becker writes, were pressuring Obama to pull the trigger, but his own personal and political anxieties held him back.

Then came Biden. “I think you may have just gotten in front of the president on gay marriage,” his communications director, Shailagh Murray, told him on the car ride back from the studio.

Reflecting on the moment in an interview a year later, the vice president said, “I didn’t go out volunteering a position, but when asked a question … I had to respond to it.”

That, followed by Education Secretary Arne Duncan saying when asked in a “Morning Joe” interview that he also backed gay marriage, made the White House realize it was going to get caught in an inquisition that wouldn’t stop until the president went public.

After spending months waiting, the White House moved very quickly. Robin Roberts was invited to Washington. David Axelrod put the first lady’s communications director, Kristina Schake, in charge of prepping the president. He did the interview, hedging enough to say he was “probably” going to come out for gay marriage before the election anyway.

After all that, several top Obama advisers wanted him to come down hard on Biden. He refused.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman;402626]I strongly believe in equal rights for everyone.

A lot of people prattle and complain that they do not have "religious freedom". This is a lie.
They do have religious freedom. However, the right to believe what you want and worship as you please
does [B]NOT[/B] include the right to discriminate against others, cause harm to others, or to spew hatred
towards those people whose behavior you disapprove of.

Nor does it give you the right to pass laws favoring your particular religious views simply because
you happen to be in the current majority or otherwise have political control.[/QUOTE]
+1 :goodposting: :tu:
(one of the best "out_of_the_number_theory_domain" posts of Mr. Silverman here! I totally subscribe to this view)

[QUOTE=only_human;402644]I credit Vice President Joe Biden for his timely honest answer that advanced the gay marriage dialog.

[URL="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/joe-biden-gay-marriage-white-house-response-105744.html"]Book: White House scrambled after Joe Biden's gay marriage comments[/URL][/QUOTE]
Well, yeah.... but I hope Joe Biden (and Barack Obama) aren't going to go down in history as the great heroes who showed that same sex relationships can be given equal status with opposite sex ones. They may have exercised political courage, but they aren't pioneers.

I like to go back to 1985 when the lawyer Jan Wolter Wabeke, and the activist, journalist and politician Henk Krol, first started working together to effect equal marriage in The Netherlands and achieved it 16 years later.

[QUOTE=LaurV;402673]+1 :goodposting: :tu:
(one of the best "out_of_the_number_theory_domain" posts of Mr. Silverman here! I totally subscribe to this view)[/QUOTE]

Thank you.

Unfortunately, many people seem to believe that 'religious freedom' means that they [I]can[/I]
practice discrimination and spew hatred according to their religion. They believe that their
'religious freedom' takes precedence over everyone else's rights.

I suspect, but can not prove, that many of these people simply want to hate others and
are using religion as an [b]excuse[/b]. They are uneducated, have not accomplished anything in life,
and live a meaningless day-to-day existence. They realize this and the only way they can live
with themselves is by feeling "superior" to others whom they dislike. That is, they make themselves
feel better in their own eyes by finding an excuse to put down others that they deem "inferior".

[QUOTE=Brian-E;402690]Well, yeah.... but I hope Joe Biden (and Barack Obama) aren't going to go down in history as the great heroes who showed that same sex relationships can be given equal status with opposite sex ones. They may have exercised political courage, but they aren't pioneers.

I like to go back to 1985 when the lawyer Jan Wolter Wabeke, and the activist, journalist and politician Henk Krol, first started working together to effect equal marriage in The Netherlands and achieved it 16 years later.[/QUOTE]
I doubt that Joe Biden will get much credit beyond that he answered a question honestly when Obama needed to make a public move on the issue. In fact when looking for this incident I read the clickbait title published in [I]The Atlantic[/I] "[URL="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/12/joe-biden-the-most-influential-vice-president-in-history/266729/"]Joe Biden: The Most Influential Vice President in History?[/URL].

Nowhere in that article is any gay issue mentioned whatsoever. So when I credited Joe Biden, [B][I]I[/I][/B] credited Joe Biden. And that merely for answering a question honestly.

I didn't say anything about pioneering or legacies.

As for what politicians are remembered for in history, that is a very biased and partisan revisionist drama in the grand old US of A at the moment and probably always has been. I don't care if a bunch of politicians earn underserved acclaim the partially upstages the more deserving. That is an eternal sociopolitical effect.

[QUOTE=only_human;402710]I doubt that Joe Biden will get much credit beyond that he answered a question honestly when Obama needed to make a public move on the issue. In fact when looking for this incident I read the clickbait title published in [I]The Atlantic[/I] "[URL="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/12/joe-biden-the-most-influential-vice-president-in-history/266729/"]Joe Biden: The Most Influential Vice President in History?[/URL].

Nowhere in that article is any gay issue mentioned whatsoever. So when I credited Joe Biden, [B][I]I[/I][/B] credited Joe Biden. And that merely for answering a question honestly.

I didn't say anything about pioneering or legacies.

As for what politicians are remembered for in history, that is a very biased and partisan revisionist drama in the grand old US of A at the moment and probably always has been. I don't care if a bunch of politicians earn underserved acclaim the partially upstages the more deserving. That is an eternal sociopolitical effect.[/QUOTE]
Yes, historical credit for progress is a subjective and relatively unimportant issue.

I didn't really mean to highlight it actually, though I accept that it is the gist of what I wrote.

The main point I really want to make is that all the different countries of the world seem to be tackling equality issues like equal marriage as if it's never been thought of before. Experience outside national boundaries might as well be on another planet as far as the discussion is concerned. There are countries in Europe (also Canada) where equal marriage has been a fact for a decade or more, yet countries like the USA, Ireland, Australia, and so on, all seem to be handling it as if it's a new phenomenon with all sorts of scary unknown consequences. That's the rant I really wanted to make.:smile:

[url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/05/21/josh-duggar-apologizes-resigns-from-family-research-council-amid-molestation-allegations/[/url]

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;402818][url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/05/21/josh-duggar-apologizes-resigns-from-family-research-council-amid-molestation-allegations/[/url][/QUOTE]

Typical right wing retarded religious hypocrisy.