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Mormon Church to Lose Tax Exempt Status by Campaigning for Yes on Prop 8? (pg. 4)
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| selfEvolution |
| quote: | Originally posted by sugar&ice
I was just curious about his friend.
I don't judge people, or groups of people.
:rolleyes: |
? My apologies, I didn't mean to imply that you judge in the slightest. I understand the curiosity, I'm just making the point that it's a lame argument for him or anyone to single out one, two or even three couples - because then all we're left with are sweeping generalizations and blanket stereotypes.
But I do judge and honestly think no one is immune to judging. I judge people who hate, people who fear innocent couplings, people who lie and distort in order to support their pet prejudices. And if I lie or hate without foundation, I expect people to judge me as well. It's called ethics. |
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| selfEvolution |
To add a few more things from the perspective of Psychology and Sociology:
In interviewing case studies on "homophobia" and hatred towards NONheterosexuals, including interviews with my own brothers and friends on the matter. When I question them about why they have little tolerance for people who are sexually different from themselves, the word "disgusting" often pops up.
But of course "disgust" comes only from our thoughts and our thinking about what others do in the privacy of their own sexual lives. We don't have to think about it. Either we have sovereignty over our own thoughts and feelings or we give it up to others. That's emotionally and intellectually weak. Short of physical force, no one's exterior can effect our interior without our permission.
We have to remember that one of the reasons it was against the law for "blacks" to marry "whites" was because of hatred born in part from disgust, fear and prejudice. Human emotions are often far more complex then they seem, even to the point that many humans don't know exactly why they feel certain ways about certain things.
Even if a couple kisses in public, it's still a matter of whether we allow an exterior to effect our interior. There are a lot of "disgusting" things that Heterosexuals do in their bedrooms (I've read Hustler and Playboy most of my adult life)and some people might find obese or old people "kissing in public" to be disgusting. I find it beautiful - but either way I take responsibility for my feelings and I don't blame them on minorities just for being "different" than an often cruel majority.
As often the case, Keith Olbermann took the words right out of my mouth:
"This is about the human heart, and if that sounds corny, so be it.
If you voted for Proposition 8 or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want—a chance to be a little less alone in the world.
Only now you are saying to them—no. You can't have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don't cause too much trouble. You'll even give them all the same legal rights—even as you're taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can't marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn't marry?
I keep hearing this term "re-defining" marriage. If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black people still couldn't marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal in 1967. 1967.
The parents of the President-Elect of the United States couldn't have married in nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to lead. But it's worse than that. If this country had not "re-defined" marriage, some black people still couldn't marry black people. It is one of the most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery. Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally be husband and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage vows were different: not "Until Death, Do You Part," but "Until Death or Distance, Do You Part." Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized.
You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized, if the people are gay.
And uncountable in our history are the number of men and women, forced by society into marrying the opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages of convenience, or just marriages of not knowing, centuries of men and women who have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness, and who have, through a lie to themselves or others, broken countless other lives, of spouses and children, all because we said a man couldn't marry another man, or a woman couldn't marry another woman. The sanctity of marriage.
How many marriages like that have there been and how on earth do they increase the "sanctity" of marriage rather than render the term, meaningless?
What is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to embrace their expression of love. But don't you, as human beings, have to embrace... that love? The world is barren enough.
It is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those very few and precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you feel and how hard you work.
And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that chance, and that work, just for the hope of having that feeling. With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?
With your knowledge that life, with endless vigor, seems to tilt the playing field on which we all live, in favor of unhappiness and hate... this is what your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God and the universal love you believe he represents? Then Spread happiness—this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of happiness—share it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement and another statement, another one which reads only "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
You are asked now, by your country, and perhaps by your creator, to stand on one side or another. You are asked now to stand, not on a question of politics, not on a question of religion, not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to stand, on a question of love. All you need do is stand, and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate.
You don't have to help it, you don't have it applaud it, you don't have to fight for it. Just don't put it out. Just don't extinguish it. Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don't know and you don't understand and maybe you don't even want to know. It is, in fact, the ember of your love, for your fellow person just because this is the only world we have. And the other guy counts, too."
- Keith Olbermann, MSNBC
And to quote myself (because usually the only other person who will is my Mommy) -
"Throughout history, those majorities who beat down equality like a bunch of thugs with cavemen clubs, often find it's a matter of time before minorities band together with bigger clubs of truth and justice. If that was not so, civilization would not be here today."
- Chris Aable "What is Self-Evolution?" |
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| S Nate Faulkner |
| I haven't been following all these threads, but I have to point out that I WANT school kids to be taught about gays & gay marriage. Of course that is only after the kids are allowed to exist. I'm very much pro-abortion, anti-life, and anti-choice when it comes to reproduction. Also there should be state-sponsored sterilization programs. Just my 4am drunken $.02... |
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| djjoshuaallen |
| quote: | Originally posted by sugar&ice
Are they still happily married? |
No, He finally decided that the marriage wasnt right and they divorced. That was a few years ago, not sure what the status of their relationship is at the moment |
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| gehzumteufel |
| quote: | Originally posted by S Nate Faulkner
I haven't been following all these threads, but I have to point out that I WANT school kids to be taught about gays & gay marriage. Of course that is only after the kids are allowed to exist. I'm very much pro-abortion, anti-life, and anti-choice when it comes to reproduction. Also there should be state-sponsored sterilization programs. Just my 4am drunken $.02... |
So when are you going to abort yourself?
Seriously, this is such a dumb outlook on life. I understand pro-abortion (as I am) and pro state-sponsored sterilization (as there are many people that should NOT be allowed to have kids), but hating life is the biggest waste.
Also, on the topic. I am not for the LDS church to lose their 501C3 status. This would undermine the very thing that this country was founded on. Religions can't really operate with out it very easily (not that I am not a fan of this anyways.) On the other hand, a mighty fine would be a pretty invaluable resource to exact the proper regulation on this. |
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| S Nate Faulkner |
| quote: | Originally posted by gehzumteufel
So when are you going to abort yourself?
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I'm too big of a wuss. That and I'm too curious to see how much worse it can get. Plus they'd make my wife explain things and I don't think she's up to it. |
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| R!CH |
i haven't followed this issue since election day and still haven't read the last few pages on this thread, but i thought i'd point out that old age, religion, low education and low cultural integration are prominent symptoms of yes on 8 voters. supporters have less formal education, are recent immigrants, religious and/or elderly... all types easily manipulated by fear and lies. there is no correlation with wealth/income.
| quote: | Some areas of S.F. voted to ban same-sex marriage
Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, November 14, 2008
For all the talk of San Francisco values, a Chronicle analysis of how the city voted on the state's same-sex marriage ban shows a city geographically divided on the issue - and voting trends that turn San Francisco's typical political spectrum on its head.
One in 4 San Franciscans voted in favor of Proposition 8, far fewer than the 52 percent who voted to ban same-sex marriage statewide. But a closer look shows race, age and education influenced voters more than anything else - even among those living in one of the world's most gay-friendly cities.
Voters in 54 of San Francisco's 580 precincts supported the ban, with a high of 65 percent of voters favoring it in parts of Chinatown and downtown. More than half of voters in large swaths of Bayview-Hunters Point, Visitacion Valley, the Excelsior and areas around Lake Merced also voted to ban same-sex marriage.
Neighborhoods including the Marina, Laurel Heights and Mission Bay - which almost always vote more conservatively than neighborhoods such as Bayview and Chinatown - voted overwhelmingly against Prop. 8.
"With the racial and religious overprint that we're seeing, the standard San Francisco politics get thrown out the window on this one," said political consultant David Latterman, who further crunched the precinct-by-precinct voting results that The Chronicle obtained this week from the Department of Elections.
"This issue is very separate from what we usually think of as liberal and conservative," he said.
The trends
Latterman said the issue played out in San Francisco the same way it plays out everywhere else: Race, age and education were big influences in one's vote on Prop. 8. Latterman did not factor in religion, but exit polls throughout California showed a strong church affiliation correlated with a vote in favor of the ban among all racial groups.
In San Francisco, the more white people living in a precinct, the more likely it was to vote against the proposition. The opposite was true for precincts with many Asian or African American residents.
Voters ages 18 to 29 were overwhelmingly against the measure, while those older 60 were overwhelmingly for it. And those with only a high school education mostly voted for the measure, while those who graduated from college were largely against it.
Income did not correlate with San Franciscans' votes on Prop. 8, Latterman said. For example, 65 percent of voters living in the few blocks around Bloomingdale's downtown - including posh condos inside the Four Seasons and St. Regis Hotel - voted to ban same-sex marriage.
But only 35 percent of those living in the stately mansions of St. Francis Wood and 24 percent of those in Sea Cliff voted for the ban. Latterman guessed that businesspeople moving downtown are newly arrived from other places, whereas the others have been "part of the city's fabric for a long time."
Speaking of St. Francis Wood, the neighborhood was the most conservative of any in the city, according to Latterman's Progressive Voting Index, which looks at how the city's precincts have voted on a variety of controversial ballot measures. That includes a measure that called for impeaching President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and an initiative to ban firearms.
Where a precinct fell on Latterman's index had very little correlation with how it voted on Prop. 8.
Only 35 percent of St. Francis Wood voters favored the same-sex marriage ban, which is not too far off from the precinct around BART's 24th Street Station. That Mission District precinct is considered the city's most liberal, and 1 in 5 voters there supported the ban.
Campaign smarts
Chinatown also voted differently than its usual politics might suggest, said David Lee, executive director of the Chinese American Voter Education Committee, which has done its own analysis of the results. The neighborhood voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama for president and left-leaning David Chiu for supervisor, but also voted most heavily for Prop. 8.
Lee said immigrants who've been in the city for less than 10 years tended to vote for the ban, while those who've been here longer tended to vote against it. He said the Yes on 8 campaign took out full-page ads in Chinese-language newspapers, which influenced a lot of voters.
"It shaped the opinion of this population that wasn't being communicated to by the No on 8 campaign until very late," he said.
In Visitacion Valley, where more than half of voters supported Prop. 8, many residents told The Chronicle they voted that way for one of two reasons: their religious beliefs or fear that children would learn about gay marriage in school, which was played up in Yes on 8 television commercials. Some in the neighborhood wrongly believed it was written into the measure.
"I don't have anything against gays, but I don't think it's right teaching kids about it in school," said Terrance Powell, 32, who was cutting hair in a barbershop on Leland Avenue. "I have a son, and I'd rather teach him that at home."
Joe Tan, a 40-year-old taxi driver who was picking up his son from the nearby Busy Bee Child Care Center, said his priest told the congregation repeatedly that marriage was between one man and one woman.
"I'm Catholic, and I follow my religion," he said.
Not surprisingly, the precincts with the least amount of support for Prop. 8 - 3 percent yes - were concentrated around the Castro. Steve Gibson, 42 and the director of a gay men's health center, was sipping coffee outside Spike's Coffees and Teas and said he was surprised that a quarter of his fellow San Franciscans voted to take away his right to marry.
"I live in a bubble," he said, shaking his head. He campaigned with the No on 8 side in Albany on election day, but hadn't considered going to neighborhoods in the city. "I wasn't focused on San Francisco."
All of this demographic information can be useful in strengthening outreach for the next time around, but shouldn't be used to blame anybody for Prop. 8's passage, said Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.
"Our natural impulse when something happens that really hurts us and wounds us deeply is to lash out," she said. "However, there's no one group that can be blamed for that, and there's nothing productive in attempting to assign blame. ... A conversation that blames is a conversation that looks backward and does nothing to build bridges." |
this was never a surprise to me, but if you weren't aware of your alignment on the issue, here it is. if you have a problem with same sex marriage, then you think like an elderly, religious, low-education recent immigrant. |
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| DaveT |
An interesting thing I heard tonight on Larry King Live (had Mayor Newsom on it) that holds more evidence of the church's having influence.
When doing prelim polls, if they did them at the beginning of the week, the majority of people polled would consistently come out supporting prop 8. But when doing the polls at the end of the week, the majority of people polled would vote NO.
The belief is that people going to church on Sunday are being told about it at church and it's fresh on their minds at the beginning of the week...but by the end of the week they whole religion attachment is out of their head and people make the choice themselves and without church influence. It's believed that if the polls were on Thursday instead of Tuesday, it might've lost.
Dave |
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| in2muzikk |
| quote: | Originally posted by DaveT
An interesting thing I heard tonight on Larry King Live (had Mayor Newsom on it) that holds more evidence of the church's having influence.
When doing prelim polls, if they did them at the beginning of the week, the majority of people polled would consistently come out supporting prop 8. But when doing the polls at the end of the week, the majority of people polled would vote NO.
The belief is that people going to church on Sunday are being told about it at church and it's fresh on their minds at the beginning of the week...but by the end of the week they whole religion attachment is out of their head and people make the choice themselves and without church influence. It's believed that if the polls were on Thursday instead of Tuesday, it might've lost.
Dave |
So much for deeply ingrained beliefs, ey? :conf: |
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| R!CH |
| quote: | Originally posted by in2muzikk
So much for deeply ingrained beliefs, ey? :conf: |
well i'm not surprised by this either. ignorance, fear and religion are inseparable concepts. ignorance of a true moral compass is a common trait amongst those who share a warped morality based on dogmatic mysticism rather than rational, humanistic reflection. fear of acceptance plays an integral role in the lives of followers who meet every sunday at a house of indoctrination to fulfill their need to belong. from a group of people who surrendered their freedom of thought to the idea of eternal reward through blind faith, do you really expect them to voice their disagreement from "that which was mandated by god"? no, they're conditioned to be agreeable for the reassurance it brings. |
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| DaveT |
Rich whole uneducated argument is very true, IMO.
But I don't think it's more of being educated from the school system, but rather being educated on learning things on their own or from the media.
I grew up in Florida. I have a VERY Republican family. Hell, growing up if I said I was anything, it was republican...mainly because that's what I grew up with. Although, I've always though the whole party thing is flat our retarded. Why does everyone seemingly have to think one way or the other? And if you disagree on one thing with the rest of your party, it's like a sin and could hinder any movement up the government chain. Just think about each topic on its own and go with what you think is the right thing to do.
Continuing, Obama is against gay marraige (he and Biden believe that gay couples should have the same rights as married people, but beyond that they want to keep marraige between a man & a woman), I am amazed people around here haven't slammed him for that, knowing this area, hehe. I was shocked that the No for 8 commercials said Obama suppported the measure, when he supported half of it (the equal rights, but not the marriage part) and it's well known that he is against gay marraige in itself. I am sure he had an influence on some people.
Anyhow, back to the education part, when living in Florida, being on the outskirts of Orlando (was only 15 mintues from downtown on the highway, but still in the suburbs, away from the main city area) forced me to be around republicans. Growing up, I recount basically being told what I should believe. And not knowing any better, that was my mindset for most things. You were never educated about both sides of the equation...you were taught one side of everything and went on with life with those beliefs.
The media in Orlando doesn't help either. Both TV and the newspaper. I _HATE_ The local news here in SF. Mainly because it's full of interest stories and what not. I like the violent news: murders, crazy people, insane events, etc. The news in Florida was full of this and had few interest stories.
This totally plays in the mindset of a republican because security is such a big thing to him or her and when they see violent material ont he news, it makes you think about safety.
Yet, you rarely hear about any murders that happen in SF. You only really hear about them if it's a bizarre situation....or if it's Oakland or Richmond. Outside of that, the news is laregely interest storeis, whether about persons or about a company.
My move to SF has had a huge influence on me. But not in regards to people here influencing my thoughts. No one has. But I have been able to learn a lot of thigns, or different ways to view things instead of the single-stance approach that you get where I grew up. I guarantee you that I would not learn 1/3rd of the stuff I've learned here back in Orlando.
The info I have learned has let me rethink a lot of things and I've changed my stance on a number of them. I'm sure if I was in orlando, I would be for Prop 8...but after being educated on thigns since moving here, I am against it.
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Onto something else,
A survey was done that asked people that supported Prop 8 of what they though of gay marraige (as a alrge majority of them voted Yes on Prop 8), and the most common word used in resposne was "disgusting."
The most common response wasn't even about religion....believe that was second.
This is an element of fear. They are taking their personal thought on something and making it so others don't have the same rights they do because they find it "disgusting."
The majority isn't always right. In 1967 (believe) when the goverment changed it so interacial marraiges were legal, over 70% of the country would have voted against it if it were up to the public. Yes, over 70%!!! But who did the right thing int he end....the public would have done the wrong thing. Supporter of Prop 8 (Priests) keep using the argument that it was OK to do that back then because int he end, it still defined a marraige between a man and a woman. Which doesn't hold water because they keep using "the majority has spoken" argument regarding this...yet they agree with the Legislator making the choice in 1967 when the public would have been against it...majority wouldn't have spoken there.
Fear is common. It's expected. I am not surprised Prop 8 passed....if you fail, try again...and just keep trying, because once they get over the top of the hill, there will probably never be enough support to reverse it. Gay marraige will be legalized in California in the future. It's not a matter of IF, but WHEN.
22% more of the public support gay marraige compared to 8 years ago. That's a HUGE increase in supporters in that short of a span. They only need to get another 2% of the public to support gay marraige...it's not that far off. |
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| in2muzikk |
This one sums it up well too...
| quote: | Originally posted by selfEvolution
"Don't tell me what the majority wants. If you were in Vienna in March 1938, you would have seen hundreds of thousands of people hollering "SIG HEIL" Every one of those people was wrong."
-- John Ford |
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