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nita
climber
chica from chico, I don't claim to be a daisy
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Jun 26, 2008 - 12:48pm PT
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Rokjox .....* Beautiful Post*.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Jun 26, 2008 - 01:26pm PT
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There was a time when a white and a black person of any combination of sexes could not become legally married.
One of the reasons I so strongly support equality in all aspects of the law for gays is rooted in this. I am a partner in an interracial marriage. Not very long ago we would not have been allowed to marry, and had we chosen to live together we would have faced ostracism and probably violence. Neither of us chose our different racial backgounds, and neither of us can change. We are deeply in love, and see that love as no different than the love of a same-race couple. Should we be denied the right to marry because of the color of our skin or the shape of our noses or eyes?
In much the same way, the love of gay couples is no different than the love of any other couples, and to say to them that they don't have the same right to legal marriage as straight couples, or mixed-race couples, is cruel and unjustifiable.
Let churches bless or deny couplehood in whatever way they see fit. I don't care if some Christian sect doesn't offer its blessings to gays or blacks, or if the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster refuses to bless unions of left-handed people. As long as they don't force their beliefs on others, they can be as crazy as they want. What really matters is that the rights, duties, and protection accorded to married couples under the law be available to all.
D
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nita
climber
chica from chico, I don't claim to be a daisy
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Jun 26, 2008 - 01:45pm PT
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Another *Beautiful post*, Thanks ~ Ghost.......
.........................................
1 Corinthians 13:4. Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy, is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily.
1 Corinthians 13:5. It is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God's love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong].
1 Corinthians 13:6. It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail.
1 Corinthians 13:7. Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening].
1 Corinthians 13:11. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; now that I have become a man, I am done with childish ways and have put them aside.
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nita
climber
chica from chico, I don't claim to be a daisy
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Jun 26, 2008 - 02:52pm PT
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Anders, Thanks for the link, I love the last line in the story......
Mrs. Loving stopped giving interviews, but last year issued a statement on the 40th anniversary of the announcement of the Supreme Court ruling, urging that gay men and lesbians be allowed to marry.
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edit: another well written post~~ raises it's voice up high.. Thanks L.;-)
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L
climber
Eating sand on the shores of Malibu...
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Jun 26, 2008 - 02:52pm PT
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"As you work to define and catalog your unique personal belief system, you may at times reflect upon the condition of the world and the struggles humans have endured throughout time.
Seeing the overall disasterous effects of repression in its many forms and disguises may lead you to understand the importance of allowing intellectual and spiritual freedoms for all. When you become a person who actually defends others’ rights to express their ideas and opinions freely, to pursue self-actualization, and to explore spirituality in a variety of ways, you ensure that your own rights are protected in the future.
Though most people loudly articulate their love of freedom, they may nonetheless consciously or even unconsciously deny others their right to do, say, or live as they please. When you understand that people who think and believe differently than you do should be free to do so and when you are willing to defend their right to do so, you demonstrate your open-mindedness and your commitment to supporting autonomous choice. As you have stood up for others, so will they stand to defend you should your rights be challenged.
The protection you afford the rights of others represents an integral part of bringing about a more conscious, liberated and unified world."
This came to me today from a web site called Daily OM, and it reminded me that even those opinions I don't agree with need to be allowed expression.
There's no other way to challenge and dissipate fear unless you bring it out into the open first.
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L
climber
Eating sand on the shores of Malibu...
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Jun 26, 2008 - 06:58pm PT
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You're welcome, Jody.
My thought is that even if I don't agree with you, unless you're allowed the same freedom to express as I am, then I'm a hypocrite.
Expressing an opinion is different than actively practicing repression and bigotry, however, and cultivating hatred for "others". Like that email said, only when people are truthful about their feelings can we even begin a dialogue...and that's what it's all about--learning to listen with our hearts, and being open enough to empathize with others.
That someone like Bush would attempt to change the Constitution because of their personal fears and prejudices is an act of repression and hatred, though...just to be clear on that.
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Jun 26, 2008 - 07:01pm PT
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Everyone has a right to their opinion and the climbing world is big enough to hold them all. But things can get interesting when you start clarifying what that opinion actually is, or what is implied. For instance, I made the point that most anti-gay advocateds deny the very existence of gay folk, os far as them being naturally born as such and "God created' if you like to think in those terms. These advocates insist there are only us straight folks, and the sexual behavior of every other model is defective, perverted and unnatural, even to them.
This just so happens to be the one point - the most basic of them all - that gets glossed over in "accepting" the person but dismissing their conduct, and all the other dodges of the bottom line. Not that I've ever done anything to help gay folk, but the opinion that these people don't exist as advertised (naturally so) seems an isue that needs to be wrangled and explained by those insisting as much.
JL
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Jun 26, 2008 - 07:19pm PT
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This bares repeating. I wonder who here fully understands this.
"The Bill of Rights was written in part to protect the minority from the tyranny of the masses"
Lois, I am not absolutely certain what post you are referring to, but karl was speaking about a hypothetical situation. What if Jody became the minority? What if Sharia law became the law of the land? Then would Jody be crying for his equal rights to worship as he pleases?
This whole conversation is about equal rights. We give heterosexual couples certain benefits, we should give homosexual couples those same benefits. Nothing more, nothing less.
We aren't ignorant Lois, we understand that much of the country has a right leaning religious belief system. We just ask them to imagine if a different regime came into power, a regime that denied Christianity and forbid the worship of Jesus and they started trying to put into place laws that supported their beliefs. Then what? Would he then hope that the people would rise up and support equal treatment under the law? If so, then he should support it now, or he risks losing it.
Homosexuals simply want equal treatment under the law. Nothing more.
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dirtbag
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 26, 2008 - 08:06pm PT
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Lois Wrote:
"I would like to preserve the institution of marriage for heterosexual couples. I have no problems with establishing a comparable institution for gay persons which protects their rights and well being. Personally, I think, even, it serves the best interest of the gay to have such an arrangement meaning an alternative (but legally equal) institution available."
Why not marriage? There's a problem with separate but equal. Often they are not equal. Even assuming that Civil Unions get 100% of the legal rights of marriages, there is a certain stigma attached without actually being deemed as married. It's seen as a second class status, a runner-up prize. There is an attitude inherent in such classifications that says "Nah, you're not good enough for marriage, we'll give you this instead."
"First of all, when a lot of people hear that gay persons want to "marry" or that they are "married," ridicule ensues. People commonly snicker and sneer and laugh about whether this man is the "wife" of that man or even speculate (with ridicule) as to who is the "wife" and who is the "husband "(snort, snort, snicker, snicker). It seems patently ridiculous on some level and, moreover, it leaves the path wide open for "bull dike" jokes and all the sneering and snickering which goes along with them."
That's not your fight. If people are willing to undergo that, that's their choice, not yours.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jun 26, 2008 - 08:15pm PT
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Drives for constitutional amendments and the Nazis specific targeting of homosexuals in their campaign of genocide are driven by the exact same sad perceptions and intolerances - that homosexuality is somehow 'unnatural', 'evil', or an 'abomination'. Again, homosexuality is completely a natural genetic expression within almost all mammalian species. And yeah, it's abnormal by numbers alone in the same way as left-handedness is. And god knows, allowing left-handed people the same rights and respect as right-handed people would clearly be another case of according 'special rights' and forcing left-handedness on all the rest of us.
That there would be 400 posts on this topic in 2008 just shows you U.S. fundamentalists pose just as great danger to our constitution and society as fundamentalist 'terrorists' of any stripe living abroad.
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dirtbag
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 26, 2008 - 08:18pm PT
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" 'Even assuming that Civil Unions get 100% of the legal rights of marriages,'
That's not an accurate assumption - no state in the land can award 100% of the same rights and privileges afforded to married couples. The Fed does not recognize civil unions."
I realize that Dingus. I'm trying to make the point that there is an issue aside from rights, and that is the dignity that comes with being deemed to be married, instead of being in a second class union.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jun 26, 2008 - 08:58pm PT
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Which part of 'homosexuality is genetically expressed in almost all mammalian species' don't you get...?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jun 26, 2008 - 09:03pm PT
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and the part that implies that homosexuality is 'natural' by any definition of the term. Again, left-handed people aren't normal either by your standard and should have different rights than you.
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crusher
climber
Santa Monica, CA
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Jun 26, 2008 - 09:07pm PT
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I didn't know that nature had laws...
How can something go against the "law" of nature?
Is nature a state? Does it have legislators and senators and congress-people? Does it have a constitution?
Just wondering...
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Jaybro
Social climber
wuz real!
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Jun 26, 2008 - 09:41pm PT
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"Equal rights,
and justice"
-Bob Marley
for everyone
-Jaybro
Why does that offend so many people that it does not effect?
in 1975(?) my top bunk hogging older bro Chasbro, became a judge and justice of the peace in the first state to have a woman governor. His comment on performing marriages was that he insisted that both spouses be of the same species.
Seemed rhetorical at the time...
Have we devo™-ed so much that we, the nation as a whole, can even vaguely have a problem, with things that don't concern many of us?, to the point that we have to dictate the mores of people whose lifestyle/inclination/plumbing/wiring etc, is a bit a skew of what our own might be? To the point that we have failed a standard from Wyoming, thirty odd years ago? How far up our own alimentary tract have we had to recede to get to this point?
People need to do what they do,(this isn't about putting anyone in physical risk, now, is it?) we can always talk about it later.
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
New York, NY
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Jun 26, 2008 - 09:54pm PT
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"..."It(homosexuality) completely deviates from the normal human instinct,..."
..not for those who are homosexual, it doesn't!
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the Fet
Knackered climber
A bivy sack in the secret campground
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Jun 26, 2008 - 10:03pm PT
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Holy crap! I didn't know that since being left handed is "not normal" it's against "the laws of nature"!
My aunt who is left handed was forced to write with her right hand and slapped with a ruler if she wrote with her left. Thankfully by the time I was in school the 'liberals' had allowed us lefties to do what is 'natural' for us.
I wonder what Warren Harding's response would have been if some one told him he couldn't hammer with his left hand anymore, and had to switch to his right? LOL! Actually he must have been able to hammer with his right as well to put the bolts on the rightward traverse on the last pitch of the Nose.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Jun 26, 2008 - 10:12pm PT
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that's pretty weak, Fet.
it's not that they're 'different', it's that accepting that behavior as normal in society and, hence, o.k. It may affect youngsters in a way they wouldn't encounter.
Left handers are kinda freaks, but they don't change the healthy societal mold that has been built up.
It pollutes our society, IMO, much like porn everywhere. I don't really want a ban on it, just not promoted everywhere and put in a childs face in a tv ad. And my face.
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Doug Buchanan
Mountain climber
Fairbanks Alaska
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Jun 26, 2008 - 10:59pm PT
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Yoooo Karl Baba and colleagues of all that is known....
If you were to suggest that the lawyers, verbose lot that they are, who won the gay marriage rights cases present their case within a SuperTopo forum entry, you would be considered by everyone as nuttier than a fruitcake. There is not sufficient space.
But if a person with no titles and credentials suggests the existence of certain knowledge, you consider him nutty as a fruitcake if he cannot present it in the same forum, much to the amusement of the observers, and therein my entertainment.
As I have stated, if you ask for a 1000 word explanation of new knowledge, in 33 words, you will sustain your amusing ignorance for the rest of your life.
The process for gays to get formally married and receive all the benefits available to heterosexual folks getting married has been presented by myself several times online, at different websites including in sum of various comments on various threads on SuperTopo. It is available for the asking, but not by impossible process.
It is a 17 part puzzle. Learn 16 parts, and you hold no knowledge of any utility, analogous to a automobile without the piston arms.
Consider one part. You must learn what the common law is, how it was created, how it functions, and the process to access its protection, wisely for everything you do in this common law nation. No, not that of common law marriages, a phrase to fool fools, but the common law, otherwise described as the prevailing law not contradicted by any superior law, the superior law, or the superior law above any inferior law, etceteras, the law most hated by lawyers and judges because easily understanding it negates any need for lawyers, and eliminates the power of court judges, replacing it with a known legal duty to the existing prevailing law as written with words that hold their meanings, as already stated on SuperTopo. The US Constitution is a common law document. The common law for any human action can be identified in the law library by anyone who learns the simple process of using a law library.
Then, for the 33 word explanation of no value without the rest of the knowledge, get married under the common law of contract, and use its protection for the effect of the contract.
And laugh yourself to tears at all the amusing chaps who say, "you can't do that", for lack of the knowledge they could have learned if they had learned the controlling part of the knowledge puzzle, that of how to ask effective questions of their perceived contradictions, instead of call you a fruitcake and say "you can't do that."
It was not that long ago when I was dumber than even that, and then I started asking questions.
Consider doing the same. It is the process to learn new knowledge, if you actually ask the questions, and answer them.
And if you don't donate your old carabiners or other climbing stuff to the Alaskan Alpine Club's new museum, you will not be allowed to marry a climber. Wait. No one would want to do that anyway. Well, donate your spouse's climbing gear and divorce the individual before you get drug out to the pursuit of the useless.
Off to BarbecueNight.com with wine, moose steaks, cigars and a chalk bag of bizarre knowledge, where things discussed by the end-of-the-roaders who show up make the SuperTopo forum look like the elder ladies Thursday afternoon home doily crochetting tea, as usual.
Doug
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