Posted on 02/13/2012 5:41:39 PM PST by writer33
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum says Washington state's new gay marriage law is not the final word in the debate.
Santorum said Monday that he is encouraging opponents of same-sex marriage to continue to fight. He held a private meeting in Olympia with a group of gay marriage opponents who are now exploring a referendum to block the new law.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattlepi.com ...
Considered unethical by who? The Left and Progressives? There is nothing in the Constitution prohibiting these actions by the states. The quote you cited originally has only to do with the Federal Government establishing a national religion like England. It has nothing to do with the states, which in most cases were founded by religious sects, setting up rules based on religious teachings. There is no separation of church and state in the Constitution either. It was a concept written about in one letter by Thomas Jefferson well after the Constitution was ratified.
>> Considered unethical by who? The Left and Progressives?
What, did you stop reading after the 1st sentence? Like I said, precedent alone does not justify its Constitutionality. Do we really need to make the good/bad law list to prove my point about the validity of precedent?
>> The quote you cited originally has only to do with the Federal Government establishing a national religion like England.
The only things I quoted was the 1st and 10th Amendment. I made no reference to Jefferson’s remarks on ‘Separation of Church and State’ which by the way has absolutely nothing to do with the issue being debated.
FRegards. I’m done for the day.
Longbow, I get your point.
I agree with you that the campaign needs to be about the economy as well as basic morality.
If Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee, President Obama will go on TV saying, “I agree with lots of things Romney has said in the past. He ought to join us in working for those things; he only disagrees with me now because he wanted to get nominated by the Republicans.”
If Newt Gingrich is the Republican nominee, we risk giving up the ability to make family values a campaign issue. Let's give Obama credit where credit is due — he seems to have kept his marriage and family together. I'll almost certainly vote for Gingrich if he's the Republican nominee, but I am not at all sure many of my evangelical friends will do so. I'm trying hard to make the case that conservative Christians can and should vote for Newt Gingrich if he's the nominee, but I'm having a lot of trouble doing so, and I'm getting a lot of attacks as someone who is "soft on sin" or has "gone weak on values." That doesn't bode well for November.
If Santorum is the Republican nominee, I agree that social issues don't motivate everybody, but they **DO** motivate a significant segment of the electorate. Most of the people who are strongly opposed to conservative Christian positions won't vote for any Republican nominee anyway.
The reverse, however, is **NOT** true, especially in key northern industrial states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, as well as certain other places like Florida with large percentages of Roman Catholic Hispanic voters. The old Reagan Democrat coalition could propel Santorum to victory in key states, and might even make places like California competitive if he pushes hard enough on the gay marriage and abortion issues and successfully attracts Hispanic Roman Catholic voters.
An important point here: I have **NEVER** heard Rick Santorum saying he wants to ban birth control for women. If he wants to do that, my opinion of him will change very quickly — my local church has a number of large families which don't practice birth control, but that's an issue where I don't think Scripture is clear enough to view the question as one of sinful behavior. I believe that decision is best left to the choice of a husband and his wife -- and in the real world, most Roman Catholics act that way regardless of what their church teaches.
That means the birth control argument doesn't wash. Santorum ought to be able to say this: “I believe what my church says about the blessings of large families. I'm not trying to impose my church's views on anyone else — I just don't want to government to force my church to pay for things it believes to be sin.”
Of course, the next question is why be pro-choice on birth control and not pro-choice on abortion. From a secular perspective, the legal difference between birth control and abortion is that one prevents life from being conceived; the other kills babies which have already been conceived. Babies have a constitutional right to life. Sperm don't.
That argument will work with most people who are willing to listen to Republican positions. The people who won't listen won't be voting Republican anyway.
Your argument fails to understand that marriage is more than a religious ceremony.
As a Protestant, I believe marriage is fundamentally an act of the state, not the church. I'm fully aware that Rick Santorum, like other Roman Catholics, has a different view. Apparently you do, too. That's your right.
You will not hear me saying that the state should forbid a Unitarian or United Church of Christ or Presbyterian Church (USA) minister from conducting a religious ceremony in their church building blessing the “gay marriage” of two men or two women. That's up to the minister and his church council and the people getting married. The state can and should respect their freedom to practice a false religion.
What you will hear me saying is that sodomy was forbidden under penalty of law in the states at the time the Constitution was ratified. In Massachusetts, sodomy and bestiality were death penalty offenses and while homosexual acts were extremely rare in the 1700s, I'm aware of at least one case in colonial Massachusetts where a man was executed for bestiality.
To argue that there's a federal constitutional right to gay sex is to totally ignore the original intent of the document. I grant that if a state wants to allow gay marriage through its constitution, they have the legal right to do so, but because of the contract clause of the federal constitution and the longstanding precedent of forcing states opposed to easy divorce to recognize divorces granted by other states, we need to either stop gay marriages in every one of the states or get a Supreme Court ruling that no state is required to recognize gay marriages performed in another state. If we can't get the Supreme Court to make that ruling, we have to get the federal Constitution amended, and that is an extremely difficult process.
GeneEric, I'm writing this way because I think you may truly not understand what is at stake. Unless something is done, Supreme Court precedents dating back two generations mean gay marriages performed in Washington and Massachusetts will have to be recognized in Alabama and Texas. Because I believe in federalism, I can live with nut-case leftist states letting their citizens do nut-case liberal things. But I don't want my state forced to recognize gay marriages.
This just helped me make my final decision. Thanks for posting.
If you cannot get DOMA, the RIGHT TO LIFE - or THE MEANS TO DEFEND IT correct, how can you claim to be a conservative?
Santorum never said he wants to ban contraception (that I've heard anyway), but he does say on the campaign trail (with video) that he wants to talk about the issue. Here is one of his statements to this effect:
One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea … Many in the Christian faith have said, “Well, that’s okay … contraception’s okay.”
This is one of Santorum's issues. He doesn't hide from it. He's personally opposed to birth control and will be talking about this. He will not be able to escape this issue. He will not be able to say "I support the Catholic churches position" and walk away. He won't because Rick has already been running around talking about this stuff. He's known for it. With Santorum as our nominee, we are going to spend huge amounts of time on social issues and culture war stuff - precisely what a leftist incumbent President (in this case Hussein) who has driven our economy in the ground would want. If we are arguing about whether birth control is a good or bad idea, we are going to lose and lose badly. And not only because the issue sidetracks us from talking about gov't failure, massive debt, etc, but because most women want their contraception (even most Catholic women) and they don't want to be hassled about it. We are electing a president, not a priest.
With Santorum as our nominee we are going to get blown out in a crushing landslide. We will lose the House, the Dems will keep the Senate, and the the left will railroad through anything they want for the next 4 years. A defining defeat of Santorum (say, 18 points like he lost his home state last time around) will give Hussein exactly the mandate he wants - and it will spell the real defeat of right in the culture wars.
But I think I also see Santorum’s point.
I don't have a problem with a married couple choosing to limit the size of their family. I have people in my own church, including the pastor, most if not all the elders, and a man currently being considered as a candidate for the eldership, who know my views and don't make it an issue, but if they were going to debate me, would respond to me with something like this: “Do you believe children are blessings from God? If so, why would you want to limit the blessings of God?” My niece is currently in college living with a family of more than a dozen children who prove that it's not just Roman Catholics who oppose birth control.
If we're going to argue about whether married couples should use birth control (as opposed to saying that's a choice that a husband and wife should make for themselves), I agree we're going to have a big problem this fall.
But what I hear Rick Santorum saying is something different — he's saying that the use of birth control led to the sexual liberation of the 1960s and wild libertinism, and when birth control fails, it leads to abortions.
As conservatives, do we really want to disagree with him on that?
I know more than a little bit about how a lot of politicians led their lives in college and as young adults. For an example of the kind of stuff in my files or memory banks, go google congressional candidate Krystal Ball for her comments on the sexual lives of women who run for office getting exposed. I had nothing to do with exposing Krystal Ball, but I have been fed lots of that kind of stuff over the years and it's torpedoed campaigns before they got off the ground when I called the candidates asking for comment on things they did in their past. Let's just say you can't run for office in the Bible Belt with stuff like that in your history.
But it's not just a Democratic Party problem — too many Republicans have our own bad moral past as well, a past enabled by the widespread availability of birth control not just inside but also outside of marriage.
Maybe we ought to be teaching our young up-and-coming Republican young men and young women that what they do in high school or college can and very often will come back to bite. Discussing birth control may be a losing issue for Republicans, but discussing sexual morality is not a winning issue for Democrats if it turns into defending sexual promiscuity.
You are arguing that Gay Marriage is a good thing and that states have no right to outlaw it. That outlawing it would be unethical. They most certainly do have a right to stop it. There is nothing in the Constitution to prohibit them from doing so.
So you are arguing not fighting the culture war will keep us from losing the war. Makes sense to me. I guess if we never fight it, we will never lose it.
ping me
He is free to think and have that as his opinion. In many ways I agree with him. The problem is, this isn't just a personal opinion he has and mostly keeps to himself - Santorum has a long record of wanting to discuss the evils of contraception. He talks about it, he pushes it. He will be asked and pressed on it, and when he is, Rick is going to enlighten us endlessly on his views of why birth control is bad. I'm sorry, women like their birth control, they don't want to be lectured to, they don't want to feel they are getting a sermon from a presidential candidate, most Catholic women simply ignore their church on this one, and we will lose if this is a major topic of campaign conversation - and it will be.
Santorum will be portrayed as a fundie. And because he is well known as a champion of social values, there is no way he will be able to avoid talking about these issues endlessly. Even if he could mostly avoid it, Santorum wouldn't because they are too important to him.
It's not that I necessarily disagree with Santorum, but turning an election that should be about the horrendous state of the economy into a discussion of contraception, whether women are better off at home or work, etc, is simply a gigantic loser. If Santorum is nominated, we are going to get destroyed. Most Americans are not only going to disagree with Santorum over contraception, but the Democrats and media will twist things in such as a way as to have the public resent Rick over it. We will hear this over and over again, "we need to elect a President, not a priest."
Doesn't mean I don't like Santorum, I do. I'd trust him as President. Of all the candidates, I'd probably trust him to do the right thing, appoint the right judges, handle foreign policy, etc, better than the rest. The problem is with him as our candidate the election will be about stuff like contraception and the loss we will suffer will deliver a commanding mandate to Obama. Think these 4 years have been bad? Imagine Obama winning in a massive landslide, sweeping the House away and holding the Senate. There would be nothing to stop him from packing the courts, implementing much worse economic policies than even now, etc, over the next 4 years at that point.
Dunno, you'd have to ask your boy, Newt...he seems to be the expert on the subject.
I oppose federal government involvement in marriage in any way, shape form or fashion.
This includes the favorable tax treatment.
For 150 years this country did just fine without federal government involvement in marriage.
The states are best suited to manage this and constitutionally it's the only valid approach.
Call me dumb but can you clarify your position? Are you for gay marriage or against it?
Why do I need to dumb down the notion that govt should have no right to define marriage? My position is that marriage is a function of religion and, as some describe, natural law.
There’s no such thing as ‘homosexual marriage’ in my view. Any laws pretending to define such a thing are laws designed to prosecute those that object and refuse to support the behavior it’s harboring.
Dumb as you may be, it should be clear that I don’t recognize the term ‘gay marriage’ as a legitimate classification of anything. To support, or not support ‘gay marriage’ requires that one accepts the desecration of the term marriage. The Country has been manipulated into accepting the premise of ‘gay marriage’; a critical step in the ongoing destruction of marriage.
The govt should have no right to define marriage. I entrust that definition with God, our heritage, our common sense.
Feel free to ask if I support the persecution of those that refuse to support homosexual behavior. But don’t ask me to justify the fallacy of the term ‘gay marriage’.
Marriage is already defined in tradition and Law, the attempt to redefine it is the issue, not whether you can make an a$$ of yourself.
isahoot @ #75: Call me dumb but can you clarify your position?
isahoot @ #77: 1, 037 characters to say “NO” and you call me dumb?
Make up your mind.
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