[Steve Mangan]

Great News -- celebrations taking steps back here in Turkey today as Pride March in Istanbul being dispersed by water cannon...

No idea as yet what the official reason is...*

marching
beneath the rainbow:
water cannons

*edited to add, according to lgbtinturkey.com:

The 13th Istanbul LGBTI Pride Parade scheduled to take place at 17:00 in Taksim has suddenly been banned by the Governorate using the month of Ramadan as the reasoning without any announcement.

Police is attacking tens of thousands of people with pepper spray, plastic bullets, and water cannon.

All entrances and exits to and from Taksim and Istiklal Street have been shut down...

[Quincy Lehr]

Originally Posted by Charlie Southerland

When President Obama signed the ACA into law, he made slaves out of the rest of us.

Now this is just stupid and clearly, obviously untrue. Of course, given the source, it is also unsurprising.

[Quincy Lehr]

Originally Posted by Charlie Southerland

There had always been— the "Institution of Marriage" between a man and a woman.

Except that the Bible itself is chockablock with polygamy and concubinage, forcible marriage of widows to brothers-in-law, the forcible taking of conquered women as wives, the forcible assigning of slave spouses to each other, of rapists to their victims, not to mention that half-sibling combo of Abraham and Sarah.

This is fun.

[Charlie Southerland]

Good to see you too, Quincy.


You will define slavery as one human owning another, most likely.

Slavery also may be defined as being forced by (name your favorite Government entity) someone or some 'body' to buy or purchase something that the other person doesn't want to buy. Not only that, but the person forcing the slave to buy something that he doesn't want to buy: can be fined thousands of dollars: The person forcing the slave to buy that which he doesn't want to buy also controls the price at which its bought and regulates how much that person can benefit from the use of that he was just forced to purchase: In some cases, unhealthy slaves can and are refused the complete service they were forced to buy and were guaranteed to benefit from: In many cases, the slave has no choice which help he may get even if he capitulates, buys the Slaveowner controlled service, and seeks treatment. The Slaveowner holds all the cards. He "locks" the slaves up in this prison until they are dead, and in many cases, sells the slave's homes to reimburse the Slaveowner for the initial service the slave never wanted but was forced to buy in the first place.

The Slaveowner gets away with all of this because he changed the rules for it to be implemented, and then one man "a supreme" Slave owner, makes certain that four other supreme Slave owners out of 350 million free people agree that slavery is indeed codified and just.

Yes, some of the slaves are either too ignorant or just don't plain care to become a slave, as long as the Slaveowner is good to them, helps them with a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear, a cell phone. It all sounds so good. How can they resist? This slavery is for their own good, like seat belts and driver's licenses. It's all good. The Slaveowner is colorblind. He doesn't care if the slave is black or white or yellow or red, just so long as they become slaves to his plantation.

He is such a benevolent Slaveowner that how could anyone resist his charms? He doesn't use a whip or stick to beat his slaves. His slaves don't even have to call him Master.

And when the Slaveowner needs more production from his slaves, he raises the price to live on the plantation saying that some of the slaves aren't pulling their fair share out in the fields, and that the other slaves are gonna' have to buck up and take more on.

This mandate excites the slaves who do less to do even less than before which causes the Slaveowner to spend more to keep up the pretense of benevolence so the slaves don't rise up and rebel because they aren't getting what they thought their slavery represented.

In case some slaves do rise up and complain of the burden, watch the reaction of the Slaveowner and his porch slaves and house slaves who have it better than the slaves out in the fields.

To top this all off, the Slaveowner isn't even required to use the same service the slaves are required to purchase. He is exempt from his own edicts. And, the Slaveowner uses the slave's money to buy his own brand independent product because he is the one who came up with the idea of slavery in the first place. Not only that, he opens his borders so that other people can become slaves too. They flock in droves to the Slaveowners siren call. They already work for little in their own slaveowner's fields. Surely this Slaveowner will treat them better.

And if the slaves backs begin to break under the burden of the Slaveowner's benevolence, the Slaveowner tells them that the Corporations are at fault for cheating and laying them off or only working them part time.

All the while, wannabe Slaveowners and the Slaveowner of this plantation wine and dine with the corporate dudes, fly free on their jets, make speeches for gaudy amounts of money, all the while pretending to be as pure as the driven snow and collecting even more money to make their plantation stronger, just in case of insurrection.

And in the end, when nothing more can be extracted from the slaves, and there is nothing left to pay or give to the slaves who overwhelm the plantation, and when the service the slaves thought they were forced to purchase no longer exists, the slaves, in total misery, will look at each other and say: What do we do now?

96 million slaves are out of work in Plantation America, and can't get a job at any price. They've stopped looking. They will continue taking handouts and crumbs until they figure out it was the Slaveowner's fault all along. Too late.

[Shaun J. Russell]

I'm pretty sure I've never, in my life, read a worse analogy than the one above.

Utterly shameful.

[Charlie Southerland]

Oh yeah, I almost forgot the most important thing.

The ACA violates the "equal protection clause" of the 14th amendment.

[Michael Cantor]

Give it up, Quincy. I can't think of a bigger waste of time than trying to discuss politics or religion with Charle. Fortunately, there's this to comfort us.

Originally Posted by Michael Ferris

I'm proud to read the headlines in the paper. I'm referring, of course, to the Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage. I've thought for many years that marriage equality was inevitable, but I didn't expect it this fast.

I must say, it's a nice feeling.

[Charlotte Innes]

I'm not getting involved here. Seriously! But thank you to the humane among you.

And talking of Christians, please let's not tar them all with the same brush. Jesus' message, aside from some era-appropriate weirdness, was basically about truth, justice, equality, love and kindness. He despised greed and hypocrisy, and he cared about the poor.

I am not a Christian, but I grew up drenched in the stuff because of going to school in England where we had scripture twice a week in school, and hymns and a reading from the Bible every morning. (No separation of church and state there.) And I'm glad I carry that knowledge with me for many reasons. As I child I thought of Jesus as an early socialist--of the purest kind, unmessed-up by more recent dogma--and I still do to some degree.

Today, there are many, many faith groups trying to get back to Christian basics. Actually, there are Christians across the board, in mainstream denominations such as Roman Catholicism and the Episcopal church, as well as other organizations, who tirelessly, day in, day out, work for social justice.

And since for some reason I get e-mails from some of these groups, here's a link to one that absolutely believes in the bottomline kindness of Jesus' message.

I need to add, as a member of the poorer class, that if it hadn't been for Obamacare (the ACA), I'd be sunk. The cost of my benefits was cut in half when I signed up for it.

All I can say, finally, is that, when it comes to human rights, equality means equality. Period.

Charlotte

[Mary Meriam]

Marriage Equality is a major civil rights victory. I couldn't be more overjoyed and more proud of my people, who have fought for our rights for a long time. I'm actually surprised at how free and joyful I feel. The more I think about how much suffering this victory will alleviate, the happier I feel. The more I think about the bravery and persistence of my people who have fought for our right to be treated as equal citizens, the prouder I feel.

If you'd like to learn more about my people's history, I highly recommend my muse's new book, forthcoming from Simon & Schuster on September 8: THE GAY REVOLUTION: THE STORY OF THE STRUGGLE, by Lillian Faderman. If you're on Facebook, you can like her page. Here's one of the blurbs:

"I am large, I contain multitudes," sang Whitman, and it's the unprecedented compiling of multitudes of individual stories, journeys, acts of courage, stands of defiance, failures, and advances that distinguishes Faderman's sweeping history of transformation. So many people over so many years, each doing their part and propelling forward the epic change that has turned a despised and often hidden minority into a visible and triumphant engine of America's civil rights promise, claiming the vocabulary of love and marriage and freedom.
–Evan Wolfson, pioneering advocate of same-sex marriage and founder of Freedom to Marry

[Mario Pita]

Originally Posted by Roger Slater

To say that moral precepts did not arise from the ocean's muck is not to say that the only other possibility is that there is an invisible being who said "let it be." You believe in God, who gave us morality. I simply believe in morality. I think eliminating the middle man is more sensible and gets us to the exact same place.

If I understand correctly, Roger, you don't believe there is such a thing as God but you do believe there is such a thing as Good as something absolute, not relative. Most of us here agree that the supreme court ruling was good, but some disagree. We can also agree that some of the previous rulings such as of Citizen's United were not only not good but very bad. This is to be expected because the lawgivers are far from perfect. But though we may disagree about what is Good, we may be able to agree that there is such a thing as absolute Good whether we agree about what it is or not. The idea of there being an absolute good or moral law is at the heart of the Moral Argument for the existence of God which is summarized in this very amusing cartoon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxiAikEk2vU. I know you don't subscribe to what you call the "middleman" as the source for what is Good, but to believe in the Good as something absolute whatever its foundation or source might be, is I think a species of religious belief, and I think that any way we can arrive at the Good (and the true and the beautiful) is good.