What's next? The "special rights" propaganda?

I notice r/w, neo-con, "religious" arguments are being debated as though they are fact and that the "logical" result will be the "icky," "feared" polygamists will acquire the same rights that gay couples want. Gee, maybe I'm just being too literal here. Maybe "gay couples" is code for "multiple marriage." Oh wait, it is a dog-whistle if you bought into that reasoning the first time around.

Since it's a recycled piece of propaganda from years gone by, shall we now resurrect the whole "gays want special rights" piece as well?

Maybe we can drudge up a few "if women are allowed to vote then {insert world-ending scenario here}" debates.

We could have a few debates about what will happen if we let white children go to school with non-white children. Maybe we can debate as fact how the military will be destroyed if {insert group} is allowed to integrate; hey, we can even combine the whole "gays want special rights" into this debate as well; a two-fer.

C'mon. Share your favorite r/w, neo-con wet dream created talking point and let's debate it as fact. After all, we wouldn't want to learn from decades of catapulted propaganda and point out fallacies when we can just endlessly debate the same debunked crap from years gone by. Let's be "fair and balanced" and make sure lies are given equal time with truth.

:sarcasm:

:banghead:

...is that "the Gays" have the same rights as anyone else. A gay man can marry a woman, just like a straight one can, and a lesbian can marry a man, just like a straight woman can. Where's the discrimination? Everyone is treated equally! Hallelujah!

I file this under the category of arguments so stupid it's almost impossible to know where to begin to refute them. What's disturbing is that the strategy of countering it by simply replacing "gay" and "straight" with "black" and "white", which used to merely get me accused of "playing the tired old race card again," now often leads to a stream of racist invective. It seems the haters have been given permission to dust off that good ol' bigotry and take it out in public again.

as everyone else to marry a member of their own race to argue for keeping miscegenation laws on the books.

What's changed is that, when I used to say that, I'd get accused of "playing the race card." Now, when I use the same argument, I often get subjected to a stream of racist abuse along the lines of "Well, you got your ni**er President, so what else do you want?"

:sarcasm:

Forty or so years of propaganda has been very effective at presenting some of the craziest crap as "common knowledge." Its power is that it's usually so twisted, it's damned near impossible to de-tangle and point out the various fallacies. As your example shows.

Damn. It just makes me furious that we expose one to have another take its place or that we go a few years without one only to have it rear its ugly head again and need to be addressed again. How many times to we have to kill these things before people quit taking the bait?

It's painful enough when we're debating "them;" but to have to keep debating "our own." *sigh*

...one of the major conclusions I've reached is that many many people simply can't think abstractly. They may be vehemently against racism or sexism, for example, yet perfectly comfortable with banning gay marriage. You see this kind of "specifism" a lot on TV where, long after it was considered offensive to show stereotypical portrayals of African-Americans, it was still fine to see "No tikee no laundlee" Asians kung-fuing up the place. Or head-bobbing Indians.

It seemed, therefore, that we knew racism was wrong in the specific case of African-Americans, but couldn't make the mental leap to seeing it as equally wrong for all racial groups. It's like we needed to be taught the same lesson over again for Asians, Indians, Inuits, "real" Africans...you name it. I found (and find) this very disturbing. If you can't reason from the specific to the abstract, it seems to me that you haven't really understood the underlying argument at all, and are merely paying lip-service to what society wants. If society suddenly condones racism again, they it suddenly becomes OK, and you have the whole arsenal of hate right there, ready to go.

This seems to be some of what's going on with the "gay marriage" issue. The mere fact that such a basic human right has been put up for debate makes it OK for the haters (who have previously felt the need to keep their hatred under thin cover) to get their hate out in the open again. This is what is most wrong about having ballot initiatives on issues of basic rights: by their very nature they argue that it may be OK to take some people's rights away. And if those people, who else?

You put it so well I'm not sure I can add anything of value to your words.

If we allowgays to marry, then people will want to marry their parents, their dogs, horses, and that special ewe...people will want to marry children!

What part of Consenting adults don't they understand?

Apparently the part that begins with "what" and ends with "understand."

I notice you, too, have a problem with the whole idea of "allow." I almost put my feelings about that in my OP but I figured my rant would get really ugly.

is because I don't believe we have the right to ALLOW anything. Basic human/civil rights aren't allowed. ONE HAS THEM, by their birth. And those rights are protected, not voted upon, not to be allowed. They just are.

as to make that clear. If I didn't, I apologize. My intent was to agree with you about the idea that anyone has the right to allow or disallow, what most of us consider inherent rights, to another.

I'm not being particularly eloquent today so I'm sorry if I'm being less than clear.

:hi: dont be so hard on yourself, the problem may be at this end as well.

I seem to be in "beat on myself" mode today.

:hi:

...endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

For those that have forgotten.

:kick:

Once I leave Bi-Baby and buy a toolbox.

Then I realized I don't know you well enough to snark a joke at you.

Then I realized that's never bothered me before.

Then I realized that other thread I hate is back up above this one and so this needs a kick.

Now I have to ask, what did your toolbox ever do to you?

I didn't say it was a good snarky joke.

:hi:

It's Hammer time!

I don't even want to know what you're gonna do with the hammer.

because when you give them an inch, they want the whole yard. As an example, those states who have banned abortion, now are trying to cut women off of contraceptives as well. If they are allowed to make this ban on gay marriage legal, next they will want to make divorce illegal and many other intrusions into the lives of everyone not just their church members. If people don't believe in abortions or gay marriage, don't do it but don't make laws that prevent everyone else from doing it either.

"Religion" has been the guise used by the "dominant society" as a tool for centuries of oppression and control.

We have become so fractured and so ignorant of our history, the tools can be used over and over and over to distract, divide, and thereby, control.

I keep hoping the last 8 years of expedited attacks on the 98% will show people just who it is who benefits from these memes and talking points.

You know, just to get the people's "pulse", no other hidden agenda. :eyes:

I've already seen the "what if the 'arabs' want to have their multiple wives when they come to the US" factoid thrown out there. Yeehaw! Another two-fer. Scary a-rabs and polygamy all rolled into one statement.

Some recycling is NOT good for the environment.

*sigh*

How is it just that certain sorts of ordinary couples deserve these "special rights" of marriage but others don't?

But that's not really the point of this. To the right wing Mormons, Catholics, and the other authoritarian religious fanatics, gay couples are simply being used as a battering ram to break down the barriers between church and state. They deny gay couples their rights as a means of increasing their political power. The leaders of these religious institutions desire more than anything else the power to exert their control upon the lives of those outside their faiths. They want everyone, religious or not, to follow their religious rule.

Justice demands that we oppose them.

The point is to scapegoat whomever happens to be this season's "low hanging fruit" and easily exploitable group.

The LDS church went after women in the 70s in the guise of protecting women from the evils of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).

The Catholic church founded and funded the anti-choice movement that branded itself "pro-life" and denied the humanity of women in favor of the...duh...duh...duh...fetus.

Various "christian" churches used the Bible to justify slavery during the Abolitionist Movements and the separation of the races during the Civil Rights Movement during those points in history.

"Religion" has been used as a tool to justify and maintain the status quo and the power over others used by the "ruling" class(es) since the dawn of recorded history.

Perhaps, just perhaps, we've finally identified, and can agree on, one of the tools and its usage. Perhpas, just perhaps, "religion" is no longer sacrosanct. I'll hope but I won't hold my breath.

"They're ALWAYS 'special rights' when somebody else wants them; it is only when WE want them that they become 'civil rights'."

Then watch as they try to digest the information and create an argument to prove you wrong when they know you're right.

But then, I didn't expect the old r/w canard of gay marriage = polygamy to pop up on this board to be recycled and debunked again.

I guess I'm not such a cynic as I sometimes think I am. I'm still surprised by liberals regurgitating r/w talking points and values as though they are proven facts.

the rw always argued that there was no need for passing laws against hate crimes becasue we already had laws on the books--except, say special laws regarding officers of the law? Either we are all equal or none of us are.

into some form of their own projected madness.

slope wouldn't become "our" validated "fact."

I'm so very tired of debunking and debating these same talking points and straw-men. When do we start remembering what came before and how it was used against us? It's a rhetorical question. Not aimed at you. Just a question to "the universe."

*sigh*

so does this.

:kick:

Where will it end?????!!!

This has been truly enlightening and amazingly sad.