Disabled Children are God's punishmentFollow

so an insult then

Remember, I don't acknowledge the value of fetal life prior to the 3rd trimester. I believe the soul enters the body at first breath. Before then, it's a block of cancer cells as far as I'm concerned.

Kittens.

Unless we catch one eating a fetus.

Perhaps the most telling symbol of the dramatic shift of the Republican party on this question is what happened during the Briggs initiative in California as long ago as 1978. The initiative proposed banning all gay people from being teachers in state schools. It is memorialised in the recent film on Harvey Milk, the gay rights pioneer. Reagan, a former California governor, was about to launch his presidential campaign and needed every evangelical vote he could get. Nonetheless, he opposed the initiative, writing a formal letter explaining why, and a week before the vote wrote an article against it: “Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual’s sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child’s teachers do not really influence this.” Reagan’s intervention helped shift what was predicted as a landslide victory for the initiative to a landslide defeat. Last month, a poll of more than 2,000 self-identified Republicans asked: “Should openly gay men and women be allowed to teach in [state] schools?” Eight per cent said yes, and 73% said no. Sixty-eight per cent said gay couples should be barred from receiving any state or federal benefits. And this month, Bob McDonnell, the newly elected governor of Virginia, as one of his first acts in office, rescinded a non-discrimination clause protecting government employees from being fired because they are gay.

In all of this, of course, the Republican leadership — and the Christian base of the party — is moving in the opposite direction to the country as a whole. Depending on how you phrase the question, 60-70% now favour allowing gays to serve openly in the military (up from about 40% in 1993); two-thirds favour giving gay couples the same rights and responsibilities as heterosexual couples (up from 40% in 1993); 47% now favour full civil marriage rights (up from 37% in 1993). And in the under-30 generation, 65% favour full marriage equality. In contrast, among all Republicans in a recent Washington Post poll, 69% opposed it.

What I want to know is . . . if they hate the government so much, and think it should be dissolved, why do they accept paid positions within it?

It's my understanding that it is a dislike for a large federal government that is at the core of Republican ideals, not government itself. They'd like to see the majority of the power held by the state government. At least, that is what it used to be. With agendas such as a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage, I'm lost as to where their priorities lie.

Are you kidding? Independents are distancing themselves from Obama and the Democrats even to the point of the GOP gaining Mass. and you think the independents are going to the Dems?

I can feed a 8ft boa a mouse and no one gives a sh*t.