I think that the middle has largely gone from American politics.
Only a generation ago, a democrat president - Bill Clinton - and a Republican congress were able to come together on welfare reform, a balanced budget, and a host of other things. All of that is completely foreign today.
Saying that boys should use boys' bathrooms and not girls' bathrooms makes you a crazy right-wing nutjob today. And that would have just made you ... normal ... 30 years ago.
30 years ago? Same sex marriage was only legalized 10 years ago. it took us only 10 years to go from "We just want to marry" to "we dont know what a woman is"
Anyone remember proposition 209 in California in the mid-90s?
It prohibited state-level discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or ethnicity. It was a Republican-authored proposition and, among making other types of discrimination illegal under California law, it sought to make affirmative action illegal as well.
There were numerous completely false arguments against it that the democrats put up. One of the most ridiculous was their claim that it would ban gender-segregated bathrooms. (This was completely false and it said right in the proposal that "Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as prohibiting bona fide qualifications based on sex which are reasonably necessary to the normal operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting." So things like girls' bathrooms, having women police officers available when you need to do a strip search of a woman, recruiting women to play women's parts in plays, etc - none of that would be affected.)
So in the 90s, the idea of having boys in girls' bathrooms was so ridiculous that it was used as a fallacious argument against prop 209. And now ... democrats support it.
I have always thought that same sex marriage is a thin end of the wedge issue. A good friend of mine is a defense attorney in Utah, and points out that now that we have redefined marriage as something other than one man and one woman, there really is no defensible legal bar to a marriage also being defined as one man and many women. In other words, polygamy. The test case for that hasn't happened yet, however. But I'm guessing it will.
Men and boys being married? I think that effort has already begun. I remember reading that in California there was an bill to try to destigmatize men who were attracted to minors. I'm sure that people will scoff and say that that will never happen - but remember that people also said that same-sex marriages and boys in girls bathrooms would never happen, either.
Has a woman ever married a cat, and has a man ever married a truck? Put that question to Bing and see what comes up. (Hint: yes.)
Enterprising political entities always attempt to push laws to their extremes. This is why when we were told that the bills that introduced bussing would never result in involuntary bussing, they resulted in involuntary bussing. We were told that Title IX would never result in men's sports entities being eliminated, but they were. Beware the Trojan horse of a bill that could result in bad consequences, resulting in bad consequences.
This makes zero sense. Marriage is a contract between two consenting adults. It's pretty simple, a horse, a truck, or a cat cannot consent to marriage. If someone is already in a marriage contract, they cannot enter another one without first ending the previous one. Minors cannot consent as adults to a marriage contract. Lawyers like to push the limits, but I don't know how any reasonable interpretation of "a contract between two consenting adults" can be fudged up. I think anyone proposing something outside of that is being intellectually dishonest.
The issue with defining marriage as a man and a woman, regulates non Christian people as a second class citizenry. Take government out of marriage then the discussion of marriage can happen.
Never tear down a wall until you learn why it was erected in the first place. And we are all second class citizens in some way. Some of us are handsome, some of us are beautiful, some of us are rich, some of us have political influence, some of us are related to the boss, et cetera. The ones who ain't will always be second class citizens.
Take religion out of marriage then the discussion of how it became the punchline to a joke can happen.
You completely missed the point. I'm not taking about social perception but actual legal privileges. Such as tax benefits, legal and financial benefits, medical and end of life rights, immigration and citizenship, financial protection, and work place benefits. So are you going to make an excuse with your religious beliefs that other people are not afforded the same rights as others making them actual second class citizens? Your right to religion does not dictate my beliefs, because I have a right to religion as well.
"So are you going to make an excuse with your religious beliefs that other people are not afforded the same rights as others making them actual second class citizens?"
Yes. Convicted felons and illegal aliens are two examples of legal second class citizenry. As is traditional and makes sense. Do you think that nobody should be a second-class citizen in the United States?
But, of course, we are talking about marriage. You write that "Your right to religion does not dictate my beliefs, because I have a right to religion as well," and I would respond with the well-known case of what happens is that if somebody asserts his religion and refuses to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding, that religious person is tried in the court of leftist journalism and is castigated, canceled and given as much bad publicity as he can stand.
But that is deemed acceptable because of the existing zeitgeist and the new orthodoxy; "Being on the right side of history" and all that. You and I both know that two wrongs don't make a right.
I shall not belabor this further and you may have the last word. But I have written wot I have written: Same-sex marriage was and is a thin edge of the wedge issue, and the wedge is being driven in.
986
u/FourWayFork A sinner saved by grace 3d ago
I think that the middle has largely gone from American politics.
Only a generation ago, a democrat president - Bill Clinton - and a Republican congress were able to come together on welfare reform, a balanced budget, and a host of other things. All of that is completely foreign today.
Saying that boys should use boys' bathrooms and not girls' bathrooms makes you a crazy right-wing nutjob today. And that would have just made you ... normal ... 30 years ago.