Well, we can't marry each other but at least we can die for the cause...

[Deja Q]

the cause of being discriminated against:

http://www.gay.com/news/article.html?2003/12/30/2


A new poll measuring Americans' attitudes towards gays in the military reveals significant support for allowing lesbians and gay men to serve openly. Seventy-nine percent of the 1,004 adults surveyed said they believe people who are openly gay should be allowed to serve.

The CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll, conducted December 5-7, found that 91 percent of people aged 18-29 were supportive of allowing gays to serve openly, as were 85 percent of all women, and 73 percent of all men. These numbers represent a significant increase in Americans' support for gay and lesbian servicemembers in recent years.

In August 2003, a poll by Fox News found 64 percent of the public supported gays serving openly in the military, and a 2001 MIT poll placed the figure at 56 percent.


The people don't mind us dying for our (read "their") country, even though the majority of people think we're a bunch of sinners and that same sex marriage is wrong and evil and everything else... it seems we get equal treatment ONLY when it benefits THEMSELVES.

I will not fight and die for this country until I (not to forget ALL American citizens) am treated as an equal on ALL COUNTS. Otherwise I am nothing more than a tool to be exploited for their benefit and to be stepped on and abused when not seen as a tool to help out their whims. Uh-uh. Ain't gonna work that way and all GLBT and allies have to work together on this.

Sorry to rant.

Please prove me wrong. Why should I fight for a country whose intentions over the last 3 years has been to make GLBT folk even more marginalized and discriminated against compared to recent history?

In other words, why should I help them commit my own murder?

[Indiana_Dem]

1. Good post

I never thought of it this way.....this ought to be brought to light to the people who advocate the war. This needs to be shouted to the rooftops!!!!!!!

[kodi]

2. oh, good grief, putting on your pity hat doesn't solve anything

frankly i don't care if you fuck a goat (an adult goat, mind you, no kids) in the privacy of your own home, but you want to insist that unless everyone abides by your definition of marriage which includes partners of the same sex, they are discriminating against you.

they won't, they aren't, and you had better get used to it.

you want the same civil and economic rights which marriage endows, no problem, but if you think that people are going to change what they believe is the definition of marriage, and one which has been recognized world-wide for several millennia simply because you want them to you are very mistaken.

as to fighting for your country while being a homosexual, do whatever you want. arlington national cemetery has hundreds of graves of black men who served this nation when they were still being lynched in the nation they defended.

if words and their meaning mean so much to you that you bicker about the term "marriage" versus "civil union" you might want to be at least honest enough to stop using the euphemism "gay" and call yourself what you are, a homosexual.

[foreigncorrespondent]

3. Why should heterosexual...

...people be the only ones allowed to make a full commitment to the one person they have chosen to spend the rest of their lives with?

I am not trying to force my ways on you. I do not tell you, who you can and can't sleep with, and I certainly don't tell you, who you can and can't marry.

I want the simple right to make the ultimate commitment to Sapphocrat, nothing more, nothing less.

And anything they give us apart from marriage, is LESS, and hence DISCRIMINATION.

And BTW, I am a LESBIAN!

[Solon]

5. I find your attitude disgusting...

I am going to be the best man in the wedding of two of my best friends. We all live in the U.S. and we are calling it marriage. I for one am disgusted by this attitude that you should define marriage for them. You do not have that right, and neither does the government. It will not be recognized, unfortunately, in this country, only to themselves and to God.

[xchrom]

6. culture changes whether

you like it or not.
we've passed the millenium mark -- and much of the ''mariage'' thing you are talking about doesn't bother a significant number of people -- who realize a marriage is between two individuals and not about the whole wide damn world.
that's what peole are supporting -- and defending, i might add.

[Le Taz Hot]

7. My my my

wasn't THAT quite the homophobic diatribe. Don't see that much here on DU -- well, at least not openly anyway.

People in this country widely believed that blacks were only part of a whole person. People in this country believed that women were too stupid to vote, too. Popular culture, my dear, is many times, WRONG, just as it is here and often times it takes the LAW to make the necessary social changes.

Let me ask you something. Do you remember the reason 18-year-olds were allowed to vote? Remember, during most of Viet Nam, we could send our 18-year-olds to fight and die in a war but they did not have the privilege of determining their elected officials. Consequently, we lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. The EXACT same argument can be used here. If it was correct for the 18-year-then, it's correct for the GBLT community now.

And I would mention that your comments about goats and children as they may or may not relate to homosexuality was -- interesting.

On edit: Speeling

[jonnyblitz]

8. we love you too kodi

SMOOOOOCH. :puke:

[Cronus Protagonist]

9. The people changing the definition are the OPPOSERS of it

Because there's nothing in the original and long-used definition of marriage that would prevent a same-gender couple from marrying.

Hence you see the mad scramble by bigots to change the definition to exclude same-gender couples and to deny rights to and disenfranchise an entire group of people with completely valid and normal love lives of their own.

It's bigotry, plain and simple. Just because you cannot see that in yourself, doesn't mean it's not bigotry.

What part of "We the people" don't you understand? We the people are more than just strait-laced bigots, as I'm sure you are aware.

"Lick Bush" Buttons, Stickers & Magnets

[kodi]

12. I might as well respond to all of you at once.

foreigncorrespondent

“Why should heterosexual....people be the only ones allowed to make a full commitment to the one person they have chosen to spend the rest of their lives with? I want the simple right to make the ultimate commitment to Sapphocrat, nothing more, nothing less.”

”And anything they give us apart from marriage, is LESS, and hence DISCRIMINATION.”

I made no moral or ethical judgment on your lifestyle, nor did I impugn your humanity or side with those who would deny you your human rights, note what I did post.

“You want the same civil and economic rights which marriage endows, no problem”

But I did, honestly attempt to lay out the problems homosexuals face when trying to change the culture, and not simply a transient feature of culture, i.e., how marriage has been and still is identified by the overwhelming majority, but one which has been the standard for thousands of years.

As to your insistence to define yourself by using the term “lesbian” you are by standard linguistic definition still a female homosexual, just as males who are “gay” are male homosexuals.

By attempting to run from that word shows that you still fear accepting the term, and that is really saddening. When you define yourself in terms that are a cultural linguistic derivative to that fact you are actually abetting your foes by admitting that the term “homosexual” has negative connotations. It doesn’t, at least in my eyes.


Solon

If I had but meager respect for your intellectual capabilities before your tirade, I have none at all now.

Your

“I find your attitude disgusting... I am going to be the best man in the wedding of two of my best friends. We all live in the U.S. and we are calling it marriage. I for one am disgusted by this attitude that you should define marriage for them. You do not have that right, and neither does the government. It will not be recognized, unfortunately, in this country, only to themselves and to God.”

Shows that you did not understand what I was stating, and that you interpreted my observations on the culture as personal philosophy. (Unless you were disgusted because I don’t care if you fuck a goat, and if you do, send some pix, I can sell them on the net).

Here’s some news for you, I have many homosexual friends of each sex, 2 cousins and an aunt who are homosexual and I have hired homosexuals over the objections of my bosses. I have testified in court in support of one’s discrimination suit in 1990, and it cost me my job. I marched in a homosexual rally supporting their cause of equal rights after the murder of mark shephard. I have personally defended with my fists homosexual friends when violence was perpetrated upon them on more than occasion when we were out partying, and I kicked out of my house a roommate who insulted one of my homosexual friends.

You may speak grandly about supporting the rights of homosexuals, but I have actually done some things supporting their righteous causes.


xchrom

“you like it or not. we've passed the millenium mark -- and much of the ''mariage'' thing you are talking about doesn't bother a significant number of people -- who realize a marriage is between two individuals and not about the whole wide damn world.

”that's what peole are supporting -- and defending, i might add.”

While I am in complete agreement that homosexual marriage is fine by me, I stated clearly that it is not for the majority of the American people. All one need do is check the latest polling on this subject.

But I want you to know that marriage is not and has never been just “between two individuals.”

It has been a social accoutrement of cultures world-wide, Aristotle mentions it as a foundation of the state in his “Politics” over 2,400 years ago, and dismissing this fact is absurd, whether I like the fact or not.

Le Taz Hot

Well, J'accuse to you too.

“wasn't THAT quite the homophobic diatribe. Don't see that much here on DU -- well, at least not openly anyway.”

See my remarks to both solon and foreigncorrespondent

as to your off the mark and non-sequiter essay on the rights of blacks:

“People in this country widely believed that blacks were only part of a whole person. People in this country believed that women were too stupid to vote, too. Popular culture, my dear, is many times, WRONG, just as it is here and often times it takes the LAW to make the necessary social changes.”

You should note that one of the reasons the right wing has recently acquired and held the power in the US has been by exploiting the reaction to the attitude of many liberals who think that cultural changes can be directed from above by judicial fiat, instead of having the changes occur organically and naturally. The civil rights movement for blacks and the women’s suffragette movement were as much movements for economic rights as civil rights (note, the Birmingham boycott Dr King advocated really got things moving to bring the economic realities of segregation to white people). So it is hard to equate and argue the demand that homosexuals be “married” if civil unions afford all the economic rights that marriage provide with either the civil rights or women’s suffragette movement.

As to your

“And I would mention that your comments about goats and children as they may or may not relate to homosexuality was -- interesting.”


Note that I was the first on DU to call that nut bag Rick Santorum “the man-on-dog” senator from Pennsylvania… and a goat that is not an adult is a “kid,” so it was a play on words perhaps too subtle for you..


jonnyblitz

Love you too, and try to separate another’s observations from their personal philosophies, adolescent emotionalism is useless in achieving political and civil rights, but keep trying, some day you might just act and think like an adult.


cronus

“The people changing the definition are the OPPOSERS of it”

“Because there's nothing in the original and long-used definition of marriage that would prevent a same-gender couple from marrying.”

Not really, none until recently ever considered or conceived of the term marriage to include same-sex partners. If you have evidence to the contrary I would be happy to get it, because then I can show it to those I argue with who oppose same-sex marriages. Which, by the way, if you haven’t read the entirety of this post, I don’t.


”Hence you see the mad scramble by bigots to change the definition to exclude same-gender couples and to deny rights to and disenfranchise an entire group of people with completely valid and normal love lives of their own.

You get no brook from me with that analysis.

”It's bigotry, plain and simple. Just because you cannot see that in yourself, doesn't mean it's not bigotry.”

As to that indefensible remark, see above response to solon.

[foreigncorrespondent]

4. Hypno...

...I wouldn't risk my life for any country that deemed it ok to discriminate against me. That constitutional marriage amendment is nothing more than a permission slip to discriminate against our kind in the United States with the blessing of the government.

If all the queers serving were to pull out, guess what? They wouldn't have much of a military left.

[populistmom]

10. Exactly

They're just looking for more cannon fodder. If I were gay in this country, I'd be pretty pissed off. Why do people think it's okay to legally dictate who a person can love? The freakin' Bible! Last time I checked the Constitution, this wasn't a Theocracy.

[truthspeaker]

11. while I agree with your overall point

I don't think a "majority" of Americans think gays are all "sinners". A noisy fanatic minority thinks you're "sinners", and then there's a sizable population that is uncomfortable with homosexuality without being rabid haters. The latter group can be brought around. I'm not gay myself, but I think civil unions are a good compromise for now; once they've gone on for a while and people realize society is not deteriorating into sexual anarchy (and as more young people reach voting age and Baby Boomers start to die off) we'll just start calling it marriage.