10-year old Arkansas boy refuses to say pledgeFollow

They apparently think so. Maybe you shouldn't presume to answer for them.

I have a ten year old in fifth grade. He actually had independent thoughts and everything. Sometimes he even has opinions I disagree with. It's fuckin' amazing.

Easier to just say "It's his parents" though. That way you can dismiss the kid and focus on some strawman parents we know nothing about and write them off as a bunch of kid-brainwashing liberal beatniks.

My argument is a bit more than that, though. It's not just the dollar amount (although you're correct that I do consider that relevant). It's the social effect of removing the current targeted nature of those benefits that is more important in the long run. I've stated many times that the objective is to get as many heterosexual couples to marry as possible (not going to argue the entire reason here). If any and every type of couple can get the same benefits, then it's not going to have as much effect on heterosexual couples.

But even if that were the only issue, it would still be a minor one. The bigger concern is the reaction to this change. We've already seen hints of this. As the push for expanding those benefits has gone on, we've increasingly seen the "reasonable compromise" of simply not having the government provide benefits to married couples at all raised. Both sides have offered this up as a solution, and it's quite likely that if the laws do change sufficiently to affect those benefits nation-wide, that the removal of those benefits will soon follow.

And that *does* eliminate the only remaining thing in our society which encourages heterosexual couples to marry. By itself, that's bad. But we've also got economic pressures which encourage them *not* to marry. Things like the EITC punish poor married couples. Additionally, it's pretty easy for a single mother to not name a father, effectively letting the guy off, while she gets all the public assistance the state has to offer. The result is that a young sexually active couple, if they should find themselves pregnant have some pretty strong and compelling reasons to not only stay unmarried, but for the father to not involve himself openly with the child. IMO, this is the opposite of what we ought to be doing and it's bad enough that these things are present right now, but if the only thing providing any counter at all (the state marriage benefits) are also eliminated, we'll see poverty grow even more as more children than ever are raised by single mothers with the state as their only family.



Which, as I've suggested before, is the exact goal the Left is pursuing. But that's just crazy tinfoil hat speak, right?

Yup. That's my goal. got it in one, you sly fox, you.

So you think that our push to legalize homosexual marriage is all part of the leftist Master Plan to bring about the downfall of civilization? Seriously?

No, you don't. Stop trolling.

Right. Healthcare and equal rights to all equals slavery. Gotcha.

yeah, it'd suck to be able to trust/rely on our government

I don't have to. It's nice to be able to. Yay me!

What?

They already tried this. "Civil unions" ring a bell? The religious still complain about it because it's "just like marriage".

And then it ushers in problems where hospitals don't recognize civil unions as being equivalent to marriage, and a gay man has to cry in his car alone as his partner dies because his partner's family never accepted their son was gay and won't allow his lifemate in to say goodbye.

If the gay couple had had a marriage, and had all the full legal rights of marriage, instead of the civil union, which means businesses don't necessarily have to follow the rules of marriage and can discriminate (as actually happened to someone in the example above), then hospitals and other places of business couldn't deny someone visitation rights because a bigoted family decreed him unwelcome.

As the Supreme Court so firmly pointed out, separate is inherently unequal. And it's @#%^ing stupid to separate gay couples out for civil unions when marriage, and all the rights they entail, already has the mechanism and legal framework in place. Just as @#%^ing stupid as it was to have two separate water fountains 70 years ago.

Edited, Nov 13th 2009 11:11pm by catwho

I suppose he would need to buy them by the pack.

The same way it 'hurt' blacks to be told they had to drink from their own special water fountains. "Separate but equal is not equal."


What counts as "valid"? Give me a "valid" example of how it hurts anyone to have it called "marriage".

Sure. But to be fair, the gay rights folks argue that it's not enough like marriage, don't they? California has the most expansive domestic partnership laws in the country, yet that didn't stop the gay rights folks from getting a judge to rule that it was unconstitutional to create a status that gave them every single thing they ever asked for.


That act alone sorta justifies the position that it's more about making sure we change marriage than it is about making sure gay couples have what they need. Hence, the tin foil hat angle...


It kinda makes one think of a child in a sandbox fighting with another child over a toy truck. When handed an exactly identical toy truck, the child drops it and continues to grab at the one the other child is playing it. The motivation isn't to have the toy, but to have the toy the other child is playing with. It's childish but excusable for pre-schoolers to do this. I have to wonder why grown adults exhibit the same behavior sometimes.

Edited, Nov 13th 2009 8:56pm by gbaji