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| | Another Straight Californian Against Prop 8! | | | Tuesday, November 4, 2008 (12:23 AM)
(I'm feeling calm) | | Please vote NO on Proposition 8. Proposition 8 would change the California constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage. That would take away fundamental rights from certain of our citizens.
Those who are against same-sex marriage want to impose their beliefs on all the rest of us. Now they would argue that we opponents of this proposition are trying to impose our beliefs on them. But all we are saying is: “Live and Let Live” and “Equal Rights for All.” The legal recognition of same-sex marriage will not require straight people to engage in gay relationships. No heterosexual marriages are dissolved by the state by virtue of last May's court decision allowing same-sex marriages. The rights and responsibilities of heterosexual married couples are not changed one iota. And the churches and clergy that do not believe in same-sex marriage have constitutional rights to not bless such unions.
On the other hand, Prop 8 would deny the fundamental human right to marry and establish a family to certain of our citizens because of the religious beliefs of other citizens. That goes a lot farther than having to tolerate something you don't approve of.
It is interesting to see who some of the biggest contributors to the YES on Prop 8 campaign are. You have the Mormon Church, which used to practice polygamy. (And some of its fundamentalists still do, as we have witnessed in the news within the past year. These fundamentalists are not officially members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but who knows if they might be members today if the Church had not been forced to abandon polygamy as a condition for allowing Utah to become a state). There is all this talk by the YES on 8 people about traditional marriage. (Which, again, is not changed or abolished by the existence of same-sex marriage). What tradition? The Bible, with its story of Jacob and his two wives, the sisters Rachel and Leah, and his two concubines, the maids of Rachel and Leah. And also the story of King Solomon, who had 900 wives and concubines? Are we going back to that?
The Catholic Church is another major contributor to Yes on 8. That Church has celibate men making rules about marriage?! And some of those celibate men have been involved in sex abuse scandals with children, or the cover-up of same. This is the institution that is telling the people of the state of California who should be married and who should not be in the eyes of the civil law? I don't think so.
I really wish that the state did not have anything to say about marriage. But in our legal system, rights and responsibilities are determined by status and relationship. That's true, not only for marriage, but for employer-employee, property holders uphill and downhill, and myriad other ways in which people relate to each other. Therefore, same-sex couples and families need legal recognition, and, thanks to the separation of church and state in this country, they can have that legal recognition without interfering with the religious beliefs of others.
As for teaching about same-sex marriage in the schools, so what? Parents can still tell their children, “Yes, that's legal in this state, but we don't approve of it because...” They should not ask the state to do their parenting for them by sheltering their children from all ideas with which they disagree. True education teaches students how to think; it doesn't program students to accept values handed down by authority figures uncritically. Straight children will grow up to marry the opposite sex no matter what they are taught in school about same-sex marriage. And I hope that we are past the era when gays and lesbians felt pressured to have straight marriages. That sort of thing causes so much pain, as we all saw with the McGreaveys of New Jersey, when the husband, then governor of New Jersey, acknowledged he was gay and left his office and his wife.
We have recognized in this country, at least as long as the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, that “separate but equal is inherently unequal.” So it's not right to say “If gays want to inherit property or visit each other in the hospital, they can have civil unions. But only we, the straight people, can have marriage.” Chances are you don't know all over the rights that come with marriage. I certainly don't. But I know that there are thousands of them on the state and federal levels, which have arisen at different times for different purposes, and that a status such as civil union or domestic partnership misses most of them if the law allowing such unions tries to enumerate them all. So the allegedly “separate but equal” status is nowhere near to being equal. And even legislation that purports to give civil unions the same force of law as marriage without the name still isn't equal, because, by giving that relationship a different name, married people can say, “They are not like us.” The purpose of equality before the law is to say that all similarly-situated people are legally treated the same. There is no stigmatizing one group while rewarding another much like it.
It's ironic that some straight people advocate civil unions/domestic partnerships, “just don't call it marriage,” because in the early days of the gay rights movement, straight people were arguing, “Oh, the gay people don't want equal rights, they want special rights.” Well, now it's the other way around, isn't it? Straight people proclaim that only their relationships deserve the designation “Marriage.”
One of the arguments that is given against same-sex marriage is that “traditional” marriage is “sacred” and somehow same-sex marriage diminishes the sanctity of “traditional” marriage. (How, I don't know). The bottom line is that the government is not in the business of securing the sanctity of marriage or anything else. The government is supposed to be in the business of securing equal rights for all those who are similarly situated. That's the basis of our laws. And so same-sex families should have the same rights and responsibilities under the law as hetero families. Anything less is un-American.
If you want to talk about threats to the sanctity of marriage, talk about the rate of divorce there is in hetero marriages. One would think that if same-sex couples want to get married, that would reiterate the importance of marriage in our society, not weaken it.
So, to be fair, we need to recognize the difference between the civil contract of marriage and the religious bond of marriage, and fact that they should remain separate. I know that there are some people who would like to abolish the separation of church and state. But, no, we have it for a reason. People whose religions say “no gay marriage”can opt to stay with that point of view. They are free to have “traditional” marriage, as they call it. But religious views on marriage are trumped by the principle of equality before the law within the civil sphere.
If we allow Prop 8 to pass, what comes next? “Marriage is sacred, therefore, atheists will no longer be allowed to marry.” If we are allowed to vote on other people's marriages, we could someday be facing that question in the voting booth. Or we could go back to the days when interracial marriage was illegal. Shall we once again say that married women cannot hold property? Or, going farther afield, that immigrants cannot engage in certain occupations? (Ancient Athens forbade freed slaves to be farmers). We would no longer have equal protection of the laws. We would have the tyranny of whatever majority can be cobbled together by prejudice, money, ignorance of what was being voted on, or passions of the moment. The tyranny of the majority was exactly the thing our Founders were afraid of.
People who are against same-sex marriage don't want to have to tolerate it. But why not? I have to tolerate people who do not believe in evolution, who think the war in Iraq is a good thing and that George W. Bush has done a good job as President. I would not vote to intern such people as Japanese-Americans were interned in World War II. And I would not vote against their right to marry.
VOTE NO ON PROP 8! | | | 62 Views | 2  Thumbs Up | 1 Comment |  |
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| | Another Straight Californian Against Prop 8! | | | Tuesday, November 4, 2008 (12:18 AM)
(I'm feeling calm) | | Please vote NO on Proposition 8. Proposition 8 would change the California constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage. That would take away fundamental rights from certain of our citizens.
Those who are against same-sex marriage want to impose their beliefs on all the rest of us. Now they would argue that we opponents of this proposition are trying to impose our beliefs on them. But all we are saying is: “Live and Let Live” and “Equal Rights for All.” The legal recognition of same-sex marriage will not require straight people to engage in gay relationships. No heterosexual marriages are dissolved by the state by virtue of last May's court decision allowing same-sex marriages. The rights and responsibilities of heterosexual married couples are not changed one iota. And the churches and clergy that do not believe in same-sex marriage have constitutional rights to not bless such unions.
On the other hand, Prop 8 would deny the fundamental human right to marry and establish a family to certain of our citizens because of the religious beliefs of other citizens. That goes a lot farther than having to tolerate something you don't approve of.
It is interesting to see who some of the biggest contributors to the YES on Prop 8 campaign are. You have the Mormon Church, which used to practice polygamy. (And some of its fundamentalists still do, as we have witnessed in the news within the past year. These fundamentalists are not officially members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but who knows if they might be members today if the Church had not been forced to abandon polygamy as a condition for allowing Utah to become a state). There is all this talk by the YES on 8 people about traditional marriage. (Which, again, is not changed or abolished by the existence of same-sex marriage). What tradition? The Bible, with its story of Jacob and his two wives, the sisters Rachel and Leah, and his two concubines, the maids of Rachel and Leah. And also the story of King Solomon, who had 900 wives and concubines? Are we going back to that?
The Catholic Church is another major contributor to Yes on 8. That Church has celibate men making rules about marriage?! And some of those celibate men have been involved in sex abuse scandals with children, or the cover-up of same. This is the institution that is telling the people of the state of California who should be married and who should not be in the eyes of the civil law? I don't think so.
I really wish that the state did not have anything to say about marriage. But in our legal system, rights and responsibilities are determined by status and relationship. That's true, not only for marriage, but for employer-employee, property holders uphill and downhill, and myriad other ways in which people relate to each other. Therefore, same-sex couples and families need legal recognition, and, thanks to the separation of church and state in this country, they can have that legal recognition without interfering with the religious beliefs of others.
As for teaching about same-sex marriage in the schools, so what? Parents can still tell their children, “Yes, that's legal in this state, but we don't approve of it because...” They should not ask the state to do their parenting for them by sheltering their children from all ideas with which they disagree. True education teaches students how to think; it doesn't program students to accept values handed down by authority figures uncritically. Straight children will grow up to marry the opposite sex no matter what they are taught in school about same-sex marriage. And I hope that we are past the era when gays and lesbians felt pressured to have straight marriages. That sort of thing causes so much pain, as we all saw with the McGreaveys of New Jersey, when the husband, then governor of New Jersey, acknowledged he was gay and left his office and his wife.
We have recognized in this country, at least as long as the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, that “separate but equal is inherently unequal.” So it's not right to say “If gays want to inherit property or visit each other in the hospital, they can have civil unions. But only we, the straight people, can have marriage.” Chances are you don't know all over the rights that come with marriage. I certainly don't. But I know that there are thousands of them on the state and federal levels, which have arisen at different times for different purposes, and that a status such as civil union or domestic partnership misses most of them if the law allowing such unions tries to enumerate them all. So the allegedly “separate but equal” status is nowhere near to being equal. And even legislation that purports to give civil unions the same force of law as marriage without the name still isn't equal, because, by giving that relationship a different name, married people can say, “They are not like us.” The purpose of equality before the law is to say that all similarly-situated people are legally treated the same. There is no stigmatizing one group while rewarding another much like it.
It's ironic that some straight people advocate civil unions/domestic partnerships, “just don't call it marriage,” because in the early days of the gay rights movement, straight people were arguing, “Oh, the gay people don't want equal rights, they want special rights.” Well, now it's the other way around, isn't it? Straight people proclaim that only their relationships deserve the designation “Marriage.”
One of the arguments that is given against same-sex marriage is that “traditional” marriage is “sacred” and somehow same-sex marriage diminishes the sanctity of “traditional” marriage. (How, I don't know). The bottom line is that the government is not in the business of securing the sanctity of marriage or anything else. The government is supposed to be in the business of securing equal rights for all those who are similarly situated. That's the basis of our laws. And so same-sex families should have the same rights and responsibilities under the law as hetero families. Anything less is un-American.
If you want to talk about threats to the sanctity of marriage, talk about the rate of divorce there is in hetero marriages. One would think that if same-sex couples want to get married, that would reiterate the importance of marriage in our society, not weaken it.
So, to be fair, we need to recognize the difference between the civil contract of marriage and the religious bond of marriage, and fact that they should remain separate. I know that there are some people who would like to abolish the separation of church and state. But, no, we have it for a reason. People whose religions say “no gay marriage”can opt to stay with that point of view. They are free to have “traditional” marriage, as they call it. But religious views on marriage are trumped by the principle of equality before the law within the civil sphere.
If we allow Prop 8 to pass, what comes next? “Marriage is sacred, therefore, atheists will no longer be allowed to marry.” If we are allowed to vote on other people's marriages, we could someday be facing that question in the voting booth. Or we could go back to the days when interracial marriage was illegal. Shall we once again say that married women cannot hold property? Or, going farther afield, that immigrants cannot engage in certain occupations? (Ancient Athens forbade freed slaves to be farmers). We would no longer have equal protection of the laws. We would have the tyranny of whatever majority can be cobbled together by prejudice, money, ignorance of what was being voted on, or passions of the moment. The tyranny of the majority was exactly the thing our Founders were afraid of.
People who are against same-sex marriage don't want to have to tolerate it. But why not? I have to tolerate people who do not believe in evolution, who think the war in Iraq is a good thing and that George W. Bush has done a good job as President. I would not vote to intern such people as Japanese-Americans were interned in World War II. And I would not vote against their right to marry.
VOTE NO ON PROP 8! | | | | 48 Views | 0 Thumbs Up | 0 Comments | |
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| | Challenge Met ... With a Twist | | | Monday, October 27, 2008 (4:52 PM)
(I'm feeling amused) | | Re: NBC's Blog Challenge: With the amount of commercial spam and news sources I get, I have quite a few interesting headlines. So I figure, why not make poetry out of them? The Rules are: A headline per line; the headlines must succeed each other, in other words, I read my list of headlines going down and once I've used a headline, I can't use any ones above it. The headlines don't have to immediately succeed each other, however.
Punctuation is optional. Words such as Re: Fwd: and the names of authors can be omitted. Here goes:
A desperate McCain attacks
The return of manufacturing;
Retirement savings lose 2 Trillion in 15 months.
Is Sarah Palin George Wallace in heels?
ABC won't air our ad.
The fraud of fraud-
The Fannie/Freddie flat earth theory.
Welcome to the Revolution,
Fantom Greendrive 1 TB USB 2.0 and eSATA External Hard Drive – 2 Year Warranty.
Palin Shoots Herself in Foot;
Powell Slams McCain;
What the next President needs to do.
Zombies: Infection in under five minutes.
Androids walk among us.
Frontline kills flea, flea eggs and ticks.
Find your medication in our Internet Pharmacy.
Free online poker,
craps
To get out of debt:
A “Bailout” plan for the rest of us... | | | | 66 Views | 10 Thumbs Up | 5 Comments | |
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| | My contacts | | | Friday, October 10, 2008 (6:37 PM)
(I'm feeling thoughtful) | | | I usually tell people when I am going to be away, and then usually show up anyway. So if I really am gone, it means I'm in a hospital, in a jail, or in a morgue. But if you want, if I disappear, try asking TheShadow or LVbianSynic if they know where I am. | | | | 69 Views | 2 Thumbs Up | 1 Comment | |
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| | LVbianSynic's Questions about Vlogging | | | Tuesday, April 22, 2008 (3:59 PM)
(I'm feeling awake) | | 1. When and how did you come to vlogging?
2. Who were the first few vloggers you watched?
3. How did you decide on a username?
4. About how long did it take before you created your own account?
5. Who was your first subscriber?
6. Were you ever addicted (if so, are you still?)
7. How much time, on average, per day, do you spend on video-sharing sites?
8. Most Memorable Video EVER: What's the first one that pops into your mind?
9. Have other vloggers influenced you in terms of your content, process, or style?
10. If you could meet any other vlogger, who would it be?
Answer in your own blog or as a comment here.
My Answers
1. I came to vlogging in June 2007, when a friend gave me a LiveVideo link to an interview of Eric Byrnes, outfielder for the Arizona Diamondbacks and my favorite baseball player.
2. Eric was the first; I saw Moondog, PDuff and Victor1st (Mananumah) soon thereafter.
3. I've used RadioKellia in other contexts. I work at a radio station.
4. Within days after first arriving here I created an account because it was the only way I could find to save Byrnesie's stuff. I did not have a webcam then and that was my only intention for the account.
5. My first subscriber was Moondog.
6. I'm addicted to the computer in general.
7. Except for a rare visit to stickam to upload radio news stories for yse on my second LV channel--freedomnews--I only come here. It's hard to say how much time I spend here as it is part of my general computer usage. I'll say two hours a day on average but it's broken up throughout the day. It is more on a day when I am putting up stuff like this or attending a live show. I have seen Eric Byrnes live twice and Brad Kronen (Astrology and Tarot) once. I also checked in on Caveman's chats about how things were shaking out since the re-launch, and two of Baron Dixon's photoshop demos.
8. Part 3 Episode 1 of The Eric Byrnes Show, which is not really a vlog. It's his FSN Arizona show posted here. It sticks in my mind because of the stunning shots of the California coast off Half Moon Bay. There is one in particular that I should try to screen-grab and send to Sujah to paint in oils.
9. LVbianSynic's Fear Chronicles make me feel comfortable about making serous vlogs. Baron Dixon and Annelida Films have given me specific technical tips.
10. Tie among TheShadow, LVbianSynic and BaronDixon. (I've already met Eric Byrnes several times). | | | | 164 Views | 2 Thumbs Up | 1 Comment | |
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| | Cactus League Opens Today, Yea! | | | | Thursday, February 28, 2008 (2:12 PM) | | Finally, the long, boring, drug-addled off-season is really, really over! Yeah, I know, the pitchers will go at most two innings. We'll see faces and numbers that will disappear two or three weeks from now. And my player, Diamondbacks left fielder Eric Byrnes, isn't even starting today; he starts tomorrow. (That's OK, I like Jeff Salazar, the D'Backs #4 outfielder). It's just that baseball is finally warming up, as is the weather. It's a warm, sunny day in Oakland--at least as sunny as yesterday's heavy chemtrail spraying will let it be--and the air is full of fly balls and possibilities.
You may have heard or read some baseball fans, including me, celebrate the pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training; it's even worse in Boston, where they observe in literal and figurative senses, Truck Day, the day when the trucks laden with equipment leave Beantown for Spring Training. But the first day of Cactus League takes everything up a notch. The opponents are actually from other teams; they'll play nine innings, and if you're lucky, you may catch a broadcast or two, more if your team is affiliated with a superstation or has its own network.
Before you know it, the games will count! I can't wait. The Snakes have some unfinished business to take care of.
Go, Diamondbacks!
Play ball!
P.S. Visit my baseball blog: Down The Left Field Line: Life, Baseball & Eric Byrnes | | | | 158 Views | 0 Thumbs Up | 0 Comments | |
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| | More Trivia | | | Thursday, February 21, 2008 (10:18 PM)
(I'm feeling sleepy) | | | My Mayan sun sign is Earth. My Galactic Tone is 10. Manifestion. What I think about happens. Think Rich, Kellia! Think Rich! | | | | 135 Views | 0 Thumbs Up | 0 Comments | |
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| | Trivia | | | | Wednesday, February 13, 2008 (9:50 PM) | | | I am most like Rodney McKay of Stargate Atlantis, and Gandalf of Lord of the Rings, and my use of language scores 46%, which is barely Yankee on a Yankee/Dixie scale. | | | | 186 Views | 2 Thumbs Up | 1 Comment | |
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| | To find my blog... | | | | Thursday, February 21, 2008 (10:19 PM) | | RadioKellia in Print, go to http://radiokellia.blogspot.com/
I have read that there are bugs in the HTML editor of the blogging facility on LV, so I will not transfer my blog here at least until those bugs are fixed. I also have questions about whether blogs here can have Google Ad Sense on them--my current one does--and whether you can attach more than one blog to a user name--I may want to do that for organizational purposes. I know I can create several blogspot blogs. So even if the bugs are fixed, I'm not moving unless those questions are answered to my satisfaction.
RadioKellia in Print contains editorials with links to relelvant videos.
I also write a baseball blog called Down The Left Field Line: Life, Baseball & Eric Byrnes. It is at http://byrnesblog.azsportshub.com/ That one is not moving anywhere. Please visit it, baseball fans! | | | | 137 Views | 2 Thumbs Up | 1 Comment | |
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