posted May 09, 2012 04:05 PM            

"I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don't Ask Don't Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married." (President B. Obama) http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/05/obama-gay-marriage-video.html

posted May 10, 2012 08:15 PM            

..this could become more like Roe v Wade, in which a right is more or less codified by the Supreme Court, but the US congress immediately signals that it will remain contentious by passing restrictions (as they did with the Hyde Amendment.)

and add a quote from something I was just reading...

quote:

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the Republican House took another tact-- a typical display of vicious homophobia. The House passed a gratuitously anti-gay amendment by Kansas' fanatic hate-monger Tim Huelskamp, who is so hung up on gay issues that psychologists just assume he's either gay himself or spending a great deal of time repressing his homosexual desires. His amendment would prohibit the Justice Department from actively opposing DOMA in the courts. Nancy Pelosi led almost all Democrats in opposition to the GOP ploy. “On an historic day and in the dark of night, House Republicans have voted to tie the hands of the Obama administration with respect to their efforts to end discrimination against America’s families. House Republicans continue to plant their feet firmly on the wrong side of history.” But, depending on how you define "Democrat," not every "Democrat" agreed with her. The viciously homophobic Blue Dog caucus-- and a few of their fellow travelers-- hid behind Cantor's skirts and voted with the Republicans. The amendment passed 245-171, all but 7 Republicans vote with the hatemongers. Sixteen anti-LGBT "Democrats" voted with the Republicans:

John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA)
Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)
Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK)
Ben Chandler (Blue Dog-KY)
Jerry Costello (IL)
Mark Critz (PA)
Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
Tim Holden (Blue Dog-PA)
Larry Kissell (Blue Dog-NC)
Dan Lipinski (IL)
Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)
Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC)
Colin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
Nick Rahall (WV)
Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR)
Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC)

....
Blue America has a page dedicated to replacing the worst of the delusional homophobes in Congress, from the self-loathing, sniveling little Patrick McHenry and screeching bigots like Steve King, right through to the deadly-but-quieter hatemongers like Paul Ryan. Please pay it a visit and consider helping the pro-equality candidates running against them.

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http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2012/05/nobody-likes-bully-except-republican.html

http://secure.actblue.com/page/homophobes

------------------
corporations run our government for profit.

posted May 11, 2012 10:11 AM            

The House just passed a spending bill that includes an amendment by Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kansas, that bars the Department of Justice from using funds to undermine the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

That spending bill was passed by a margin of 245-171, with a hot, rigorous, passionate debate.

16 Democrats sided with 229 Republicans to pass it. 7 Republicans sided with 164 Democrats in opposition.

The sharp divide could not have been more apparent, and also reflects divergent public sentiment.

posted May 11, 2012 10:46 AM            

Personally, I don't care what they call it...so long as they don't call it "marriage". Nor do I care what they do in the privacy of their own homes.

posted May 11, 2012 11:50 AM            

people who claim they are upholding the "traditional value" of marriage seem to have no idea that marriage is a legal contract which is all about PROPERTY RIGHTS...that gay people raise perfectly functioning human beings (not all of whom are gay by any means),

and that the tenet of this country is that ALL men are created equal.

once upon a time that meant ONLY white men who owned property. like to go back there, YTA? we were recently treated to a diatribe on fox from a black man who believes that the founding fathers, who lived when "men were men" were absolutely right in denying women the vote. because women are "crazy" as a matter of course...

he seems not to realize that back then "when men were men" BLACK MEN WERE NOT(they were "boys") and he would not be allowed to speak on tv let alone challenge the powers that be.

the first yellow-skinned man to be ALLOWED citizenship was in the 1920s.

if women had not had the right to vote, would black men have ever achieved that right?

obama has endorsed EQUAL RIGHTS for all adults regardless of their sex, race, creed, orientation or religion. not MORE EQUAL rights for white male christians or any other group. what a coward! in the face of obvious bigotry he has chosen to stand up.

rush limbaugh accused him of LEADING THE WAR ON MARRIAGE, so much for the "war on" thing being a leftist creation...and in so doing he has, finally, acknowledged that obama is the LEADER - duly elected - of this country at this point in time.

this is so far from a WAR on marriage it's ludicrous. it is a fight to PRESERVE the RIGHT to marry whom one chooses. as consenting adults, we should all have that choice.

gays are good enough to die for their country, when will people consent they have the right to LIVE full lives?

posted May 11, 2012 12:28 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by katatonic:
this is so far from a WAR on marriage it's ludicrous. it is a fight to PRESERVE the RIGHT to marry whom one chooses. as consenting adults, we should all have that choice.

gays are good enough to die for their country, when will people consent they have the right to LIVE full lives?

---

posted May 11, 2012 12:43 PM            

can you explain to me why a constitution that already banned gay marriage needed a NEW AMENDMENT to the same purpose? could it be there is a little MORE to this amendment than the popular understanding lets on?

posted May 11, 2012 01:25 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by katatonic:

the first yellow-skinned man to be ALLOWED citizenship was in the 1920s.

---

The Chinese Exclusion Act was enforced until the Magnuson Act was legislated on December 17, 1943, and that was *only* because the US needed China as an ally in the war against the Japanese.

Even then, Chinese immigration was limited to 105 a year until the Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965. So the naturalization of Chinese Americans did not begin occurring in earnest until the middle of 1965.

No ethnic group has a monopoly on sufferring, and this isn't some convulted pity party.

I rather not that lump me into "yellow" because I have zero empathy for the damn Japanese.

Should Caucasian men only be able to own property, I wouldn't have come to America, or stayed in the UK or where ever else I lived.

Anyway, I don't view people by skin color. I am color blind. Show me achievement and I will be impressed. I don't like people who make excuses for failure regardless of background. I don't accept anything less than success in life. Doesn't matter whose butt gets kicked, but the winners will always kick the butts of the losers.

posted May 11, 2012 01:33 PM            

i wasn't thinking of you, but the first oriental allowed naturalization was a japanese born man. i believe the year was 1923 but i will check it and return.

interesting, isn't it, that we STILL have a problem with immigrants although at every step along the way it has been immigrants who did the gruntwork to create the empires of those with capital AND CITIZENSHIP, all the while most of them were DENIED citizenship.

just as in arizona undocumented immigrant labour saves a pretty penny for the very same folk who pass laws to humiliate and harass those with the "look" of an "illegal" "alien".

posted May 11, 2012 01:37 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by katatonic:
very highminded of you YTA, not to see the colour of someone's skin but to place all japanese in the same box.

---

You don't know my background. Those people slaughtered 85% of my extended family, all of whom were just hardworking innocent civilians. It would have been different if my relatives were uniformed soldiers, but the Japanese took my infant uncles and aunts for live target practice for their snipers. My granduncles were be-headed in front of their parents simply because they were educated and spoke English fluently. They raped my grandmother and killed my grandfather in front of her.

posted May 11, 2012 01:37 PM            

once upon a time it was women, blacks, natives, nonwhites in general and indentured servants..then it was religious exclusion, many here are too young to remember the heavy duty antisemitism that led many jews to assume "gentile" names just to get a foot in the workplace...now it is gays and hispanics.

posted May 11, 2012 01:39 PM            

i also have japanese inlaws, they have NOTHING to do with YOU or your family. as i said, highminded indeed.

as far as "105 a year" do you really think the railroads were built with just a few chinese workers? no they weren't citizens but they were here in large numbers way before 1900.

posted May 11, 2012 02:11 PM            

I'm not the equivalent of a Persian floor rug. On second thoughts, I'm not "yellow" either. That is also offensive to me.

posted May 11, 2012 03:18 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by YoursTrulyAlways:
Get off the damn word "oriental." Don't you dare use "oriental," noting that you were once British yourself. How would like someone to use the equally offensive term, "negro?"

I'm not the equivalent of a Persian floor rug. On second thoughts, I'm not "yellow" either. That is also offensive to me.

How dare you!

---

posted May 11, 2012 04:40 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by katatonic:
and now, bristol palin, the unwed mother estranged from her baby-daddy, is correcting obama for listening to his children's views, which include friends who are children of same sex couples...saying he should be instructing them of the sanctity of the mother/father traditional family (which includes marriage of course)..and that we shouldn't encourage departure from "thousands of years" of tradition.
http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/entertainment-eonline/20120511/b315409/?cid=hero _media

oops! irony seems to be totally outside the scope of the palin family.

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posted May 11, 2012 05:11 PM            

oriental refers to people who come from the orient, just as french refers to people from france. i wasn't talking about ALL ORIENTALS but about the exclusion of orientals from citizenship here. spot the diff!

and though i never was british, as you suggest, i don't understand why i would object to your calling me so if i were...even though ONCE MORE you are calling EVERY MEMBER of a group the same thing which is ludicrous, sweetie.

posted May 11, 2012 05:40 PM            

now that it is taboo to segregate blacks, we have the "separate but equal" treatment of people for their sexual orientation...charming but very thinly disguised relegation to the "inferior" door, the back of the church, etc.

posted May 11, 2012 08:02 PM            

I used to live with someone who grew up a blasian "mutt" in a Korean American family (after her mom of mixed ethnicity married into one having already had her as a child of a black man) and she told me some interesting things they had to say to her (it's a sad story as though she endured prejudice from all races at one time or another for her mixed racial heritage she suffered the most from her Korean family, including a broken arm), especially about how they hated the term "Asian American" as that lumped them with so many cultures and countries they despise (including the Japanese, btw).