One of my favorite perks of being a progressive blogger is my annual invitation to serve as a VIP judge at one of my favorite events, NARAL/Pro-Choice Washington’s annual Chocolate for Choice.
This year’s celebration of the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision will be held this Thursday, January 21, from 7PM to 9PM at the First Base Club at Safeco Field (take the pedestrian bridge from 5th floor of the garage across Edgar Martinez Drive), and features generous samplings from 40 of Seattle’s finest bakers, pastry chefs and chocolatiers. Admission starts at $40 ($45 at the door).
It’s also one of my daughter’s favorite events; no doubt as I’m filling out my scorecard, Katie will be busy filling up my carry-out box with chocolaty treats. Hope to see you all there.
Why do I get the feeling that there won’t be a single hot looking gal there. Grey haired, overweight women with moustaches is likely much more accurate.
While you’re instructing your daughter in the joys of infanticide, do you also praise Stalins’ imaginative solutions to political dissidence?
goldstein, too bad the unborn babies that get murdered will never taste chocolate. eat for murder.
Celebrating the right to kill unborn children by eating chocolate?
hhmm….strange indeed.
Hitler and his medical goons did the same thing, and are rightfully considered the monsters of mankind.
oh well, at least all the “almost” moms wont be inconvenienced by an unexpected child.
#3 Don’t forgot, the Roman Catholic Church is the only real church and yours (unless you’re catholic) is false and you’re going to hell. More importantly, every case of masturbation or using birth control is wasting ‘potential’ life and just as much of a sin. Sure hippie liberals like “manoftruth” don’t believe this, but he’s going to hell anyway, so who cares. Every time “manoftruth” jerked off as a sad lonely teenager, he murdered millions of babies. You’ll have a FUN time in hell baby killer!
(sarcasm obviously, but just mentioning it in case some of your are really dense)
I’m tired of religious freak nutball Republicans trying to tell me what I can eat, who I can marry, what kind of sex I can have, what drugs I can take…all by the power of the government, while whining about intrusive ‘too large’ government. They should leave the choice of abortion to only a vote by women. I’m never going to get pregnant, neither is “manoftruth” so it’s EASY to sit back and make blowhard judgments about things you never have to deal with.
Liberals usually are the ones telling you what you can eat.
Sodomy laws were declared unconstitutional a long time ago, so I don’t know who’s telling you with whom you can have sex…
Marraige is a word with a specific meaning. Anyone can marry anyone they like, providing they are of the opposite sex.
You’re right about consensual crimes of all sorts. If I hurt myself and/or other consenting adults it really isn’t the governments business. If I hurt someone else or ask taxpayers to take care of me after I’ve fried my brain and can’t work it is.
The ‘right’ to murder babies. Yeah, can’t go with you on that one. Some niggling little concern… Oh yeah, IT”S MURDERING BABIES. I don’t have to have committed adultery to know it’s wrong and disrespectful to my wife. I don’t have to have killed a man to know that’s wrong and violates the social contract. But tell me, why is a welcomed child a baby in utero, and an unplanned one a fetus without the bare right to be murdered?
@1-4
So much for freedom of choice and the sovereignty of the individual.
@1-4
You’re the folks always yowling about having to pay taxes. Think of all the taxes you’d have to pay if those kids were born.
@1-4
The Right are also the people always yowling about the horrors of sex ed. But, lack of sex ed. leads to more abortions and more taxes paid for the children born from unplanned pregnancies.
@1-4
We tried it your way with abstinence only sex ed and the teen pregnancy rate and the abortion rate went up. So, please shut the fuck up unless you have a way to lower and solve the problems related to unintended pregnancies.
@5
Exactly!
Re 7
Freedom of choice and sovereignty of the indivudual not unfortunate enough to be a baby, you mean?
Any person who could sanction abortion would have sanctioned Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot. When we’re talking about goofy liberal theories about taxation that’s not personal. It’s just money. When you want to wholesale slaughter babies on the thin pretext that the mother didn’t want them that is abominable.
@6
Last time I was in the grocery store I didn’t have to get any of my purchases approved by a committee.
Your definition of marriage is a theocratic one, not a legal one. We don’t live in a theocracy.
Take a look at the # of abortions performed and the # of years Wade v. Roe has been the law of the land. If the Right to Life folks were anything other than a small fringe movement would Roe V. Wade be on the books 37 years later?
@8
Sorry, no.
One of the reasons Obama won the election in 2008 is that most of the criticisms and characterizations of the left by the right were false to the point of being laughable parodies.
Chances are you know a few died in the wool conservative women that claim to be anti-choice, but who have had abortions. The numbers tell the true story.
Pre-Roe v. Wade plenty of women died either in childbirth or from botched abortions. You’d have us go back to women dying. Sorry, we’re not going back to that.
And again, your viewpoint is a theocratic one, not a legal one, and we don’t live in a theocracy.
Re 9
My definition of marraige is a social one that has been in place for thousands of years. If the people who want to change it were anything other than a small fringe movement wouldn’t it have changed?
You ignore the moral argument and take the legal one. There’s a reason for this. I assume you wouldn’t be able to look at yourself while shaving if you had to admit you sanctioned the murder of children. So you build a layer of specious reasoning around yourself to justify this disgusting practice. Sleep well, though God knows how you can.
Re 10
Simple solution to women dying- Don’t have abortions.
And again my argument is a social and a human one and not a theocratic one. Murdering babies is wrong. If the woman wants her child killing her and her unborn baby is a double murder. If she doesn’t her choice to murder that baby isn’t? How’s that work, exactly?
@11
Your definition of marriage is a theocratic one. It is a theocratic one that not even all Christian churches agree on and is one that more and more churches disagree with.
The definition of marriage has changed over time, in society, in the eyes of churches, and legally. For example a woman used to be considered the property of her husband.
Last I checked approval of gay marriage was running about 50-50% in America with the approving half weighted heavily towards those under the age of 40. Half the population is not a fringe. The way the demographics break down in another 10 years those that approve of gay marriage will be a solid majority.
Nope! I think it’s immoral to bring children into this world when the parents of those children and the society those children would live in are incapable of caring for them. I think it’s is immoral to force a woman to have to place her life at risk carrying a high-risk pregnancy to term against that woman’s will. Abortions will happen regardless of what laws you pass. I think it is immoral to place the women who will be having those abortions lives at risk.
@12
And the women that die do to being forced to carry a high risk pregnancy to term?
Re 13
I’ll have an ongoing debate with someone over poor social policy. I’ll discuss at length the inanities of liberal fiscal policy.
I won’t attempt to convince someone so morally depraved as to sanction infancticide of anything. All anyone can do with someone of that type is consign them to God and hope for the best. Good luck to you.
Regarding marraige you seem to want it both ways. You want to claim the sanction of the ‘Christian Church.’ But you want it not to be theocratic.
For my part, no christian church sanctions gay marraige. Some that claim to be Christian might. No Christian church sanctions what they would define as sin without repentance. This would be true whether the sin were homosesuality or cheating at tiddleywinks.
But the issue is a social one, again not worth arguing with you. You believe one thing, I another.
Nope! Just pointing out that some Christian churches approve of it.
There are (at least) 3 aspects to marriage, social, theocratic for those who choose to go to church and legal. The legal end of marriage is a contract that forms kinship between to people that are otherwise unrelated, nothing more.
As to the theocratic end of things, I’d defend your (or any) churches right to not recognize gay marriage. What you’re church want to do is it’s business, but it has no business poking its nose into other business or the legal functions of our country or people that choose to not be a part of it.
Oops, your not you’re. I’m typo central tonight.
Time for dinner, see ya.
lost @ 11: “My definition of marraige [sic] is a social one that has been in place for thousands of years.”
You are quite wrong, lost. “Marriage” as you conceive of it, together with its attendant social, political, and financial benefits, is a rather recent development. Many states still recognize common law marriage. Polygamy was practiced until recently by Mormons, and is still practiced in many parts of the world by people of various faiths. With regard to Christians, did you know that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has voted to ordain gay ministers who are involved in committed relationships (the same standard applied to heterosexual ministers)? Yet, you have the gall to claim to speak for all Christians with your judgmentalism? And, dimwit, did you know Ted Olson believes marriage for gays is a constitutional right? I never thought I’d agree with Ted Olson on such an issue, but I do. Read this:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/229957
You’re going to lose this battle, lost.
Re 17
The legal end of marraige is subordinate to the social one. All law is in some form an expression of the prevalent ideas of morality and social utility.
Societally we choose to sanction those marriages conducive to social stability. That is, a hetorosexual couple marry, have progeny and educate their offspring in the predominant social norms. Society carries the basic ways of doing things on to the next generation is stable accordingly. Don’t bother with all the nonsense about ‘what if a 90 year old woman marries?’ I’m tallking about the rule, not the exception.
As for whether a homosexual couple could accomplish the same thing, they couldn’t. A child learns how socially to interact with others from his or her parents. They learn how to interact with the opposite sex from the example set by their parents. This isn’t to say all marriages or families are perfect examples. Just that this is the best recipe for creating a well adjusted future citizen.
Not theocratic, not moral. Just social utility.
Re 19
Some you win, some you lose. Some you fight because it is right to fight whether you think you’ll lose or not.
The Episcopal or Lutheran churches can do what they like. What they can’t do is call a person living a life of open and unrepentant sin a Christian. He or she may be religious. They may be well intentioned. But they are not practicing the tenets of Christianity.
Re 19
As for the evolution of marriage I won’t argue. But the basic unit has ALWAYS been a man and a woman raising children together. What you want isn’t evolution. It’s a new species.
lost: “The Episcopal or Lutheran churches can do what they like. What they can’t do is call a person living a life of open and unrepentant sin a Christian. He or she may be religious. They may be well intentioned. But they are not practicing the tenets of Christianity.”
And this: “Societally we choose to sanction those marriages conducive to social stability. That is, a hetorosexual couple marry, have progeny and educate their offspring in the predominant social norms. Society carries the basic ways of doing things on to the next generation is stable accordingly.”
Your arrogance is really mindboggling. You are certain what Christian doctrine requires and you are certain about what is the best social policy. You apparently have a firm grasp on the “predominant social norms.” Let me assure you that you and I would not agree on what those norms are.
Did you read that Ted Olson piece I linked for you? One of the arguments Ted destroys with regard to those who are anti-gay marriage is that, “well, this is the way we’ve always done it.” That is your argument, lost, and it really doesn’t work. You remember who Ted Olson is, don’t you, lost? He’s the guy who argued for Bush in Bush v. Gore and saddled us with the worst president ever. Bush rewarded him with the Solicitor General position. Open up your mind, lost. You see yourself as an intellectual, but, um, uh, let me suggest to you that you need to be able to think a helluva lot more clearly before you reach that status.
Re 23
I don’t see myself as an intellectual. I know people who’ve earned that distinction, and I ain’t one of them.
I don’t see myself as the arbiter of Christianity for anyone else, and apologize for that remark. It is judgemental. One thing Christ clearly says is not to judge, lest you be judged. But to live a life of open and unrepentant sin would corrode and eventually destroy anyones’ christianity. This is not a judgement on homosexuality specifically, but on any sin that a person refuses to give up.
2, 3, 4 — But it’s okay to kill foreigners with telescopic sights inscribed with references to Bible verses, right? Especially if they live on top of big oilfields.
http://news.aol.com/article/mi.....-in/863045
@25…strawman fail
lost @ 24
Again, you are deflecting. “But to live a life of open and unrepentant sin would corrode and eventually destroy anyones’ [sic] christianity.[sic]”
Did you read that link I gave you, lost? I doubt it. Those like you don’t like to be challenged. You, lost, live a life of “open and unrepentant sin.” I am most confident of that. Your sins, however, don’t register on your own personal sin board. Please don’t profess your Christianity when you are, in fact, a hater. Read that link to Newsweek, dweeb.
Re 27
I did read the link and found much in it persuasive. I think you find in it moral argument I don’t. I found it more a legal and ethical point of view, which brushed the moral and resulting social argument aside as prejudiced etc. I also found a false equivalence between inter-racial and gay marriage. But I can respect your different take on it.
I’ve never advocated denial of the same protections marriage affords a heterosexual couple to that of a gay union. State and Federal governments can’t discriminate based on personal sexual choice as to who gains the legal benefits of marriage, and I’d even support a federal approach. Otherwise the patchwork of protection through the states will make a mockery of the rights gay couples ought to have. A couple in a civil union ought to be able to move from Seattle to Billings and rely on the same basic rights.
Having said that, marriage is a word that has deep social meaning, and persuasive as the article was it didn’t convince me that thousands of years of stable social understandings should be sent to the dustbin of history. Sorry if this makes me a terrible human being.
The role of the Church is a distraction, but I don’t back down from the comment. I don’t say that homosexuals don’t have a place in the church, or gambling addicts, or alchoholics. What better place for the sick than in a doctors office? I certainly don’t say that I don’t have issues in my own life on which to work. ALL that I say is that without the recognition that some aspect of my life is negatively affecting my relationship with God I have no chance of addressing that problem. What I can’t do is know that I’m in a life of sin and rather than attempting to fix this situation ask the church to redefine sin to ease my conscience.
“I don’t say that homosexuals don’t have a place in the church, or gambling addicts, or alchoholics. What better place for the sick than in a doctors office?”
Are you saying that you believe homosexuals are ill? If so, do you have anything to back that up?
29 – Yep, he’s saying exactly that.
I pity the poor fool. I cited the psychological research that led to the removal of homosexuality as a mental illness, that changed the professions’ attitudes.
Makes not a dent. He clings to the right wing myths that it’s some kind of political/PC conspiracy.
Re 30
You can cite whatever you like. Psychology is at best a soft science, which is to say no science.
If a man says that he is a badger stuck in a mans’ body we say he has a mental illness. If he says he’s a woman stuck in a mans’ body he is ‘transgender.’ A person who can’t come to grips with reality is to some degree mentally ill, and that is what all homosexuals are. They can’t reconcile their personal view of sexuality with what everything about the human organism should tell them is real.
I never have and never will advocate prejudice, discrimination or hatred for gays. I never have and never will call that perversion of human sexuality anything other than a mental illness. It hurts only the victim who chooses not to seek treatment, but it is an illness.
31 – You make something of a pantomime of tolerance and then you call it perversion..
What’s perverted about it? Name one thing homosexuals do in the bedroom or out in public than isn’t practiced by heterosexuals? For ages and ages..
Perverted to me is non-consensual.
People just come out into the world differently at times but it certainly doesn’t mean they are by definition not well-adjusted and unable to thrive and function and contribute in society like a truly mentally ill person.
It’s pretty apparent to me like many right wingers you’ll go to the grave clinging to these myths and falsehoods with your last breath. But such is the way of world.. Doesn’t have to be that way, but if that’s the way you want it I’d recommend to do as little as harm as possible..
Re 32
“You make something of a pantomime of tolerance and then you call it perversion.”
No, tolerance doesn’t mean we have to approve of another persons’ behavior. Just that we have to allow them to pursue their own path, so long as that pursuit hurts no-one else.
‘Perversion’ has come to mean in popular speech something other than it means in definition. Now people think of leather lingerie and buggy whips. I simply mean that it isn’t the way human sexuality was designed to work. To take the emotion out of it, it would be a perversion of my Spitfire to drive it down a 4 wheel drive track. It simply exceeds or ignores the operational perameters of the vehicle. Homosexuality is the same. It ignores what sexuality was designed for.
So what??? As if this planet is in trouble of running out of people. Actually there’s a far greater threat, many orders of magnitude greater to human fertility from environmental pollution than any wrongheaded fantasies about homosexuality.
Back to perversion..
Hmmm. A homosexual CEO, military commander, soldier, politician, police officer, scientist, engineer, mother, father, brother, sister.
Yep, believe it or not.. many of those categories include homosexuals in their midst.
Perverts.. Niiice choice of words..
“Psychology is at best a soft science, which is to say no science.”
“I never have and never will call that perversion of human sexuality anything other than a mental illness.”
So says the home flipper. Yeah, that seals it, alright.
“it would be a perversion of my Spitfire to drive it down a 4 wheel drive track”
You name dropped a fucking Spitfire? What a loser.
Re 35
Umm Steve, I didn’t ‘name drop’ an anything. I don’t know any of you and could care less what you think of my vehicles, choice of words, or really anything else.
Frankly this whole HA thing is kind of like playing Tetris used to be. It’s a sort of mindless activity I use while thinking about more important things to focus my mind.
But to educate you…
Psychology and Sociology are soft sciences. I didn’t come up with this very useful term. It’s just what you call an academic pursuit whose conclusions can’t be tested or generally peer reviewed. Hence, not really science. Some people call it ‘naval gazing’ as well, but soft science makes it sound sort of valid. It also helps to give a veneer of justification to wasting students’ time studying these ‘disciplines.’
Re 34
No so what. I don’t really care what someone does in the privacy of their bedroom with a consenting adult (or alone come to that, Steve.) It’s when they want universal social acclamation for these activities I get a little hesitant.
I agree, there are bigger problems. I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about gay marriage unless someone makes preposterous claims about it.
“Hmmm. A homosexual CEO, military commander, soldier, politician, police officer, scientist, engineer, mother, father, brother, sister” You could fill in embezzler, adulterer or any other category of behavior in that. Just because some people make poor choices and are represented in your group of professions or roles doesn’t make the choice a good or helpful one.
Yet another myth…
In general they don’t. There’s gay pride but there’s also black pride. That kind of thing goes hand in hand with being in a minority.
They just want to be left alone and be able to have the same freedoms that heterosexuals have.
Deeming them “mentally ill” is NOT leaving them alone. Ok? It’s really tragic when families send their gay kids or relations to these terrible places to be “fixed”.
I’m straight but for me this is a human rights issue. It’s that simple.
I work at Safeco and passed through the 1st Base Terrace where NARAL was setting up for this event yesterday. I found it ironic that there were several children (about 10 and under) present. As I was walking through, I saw a prize for a childrens birthday party, I didn’t catch where, though. But I thought it strange that NARAL would involve kids in this event– well, just those they see fit to live.