California's Supreme Court upholds Proposition 8, but leaves 18,000 gay marriages in force.
On Tuesday the California Supreme Court voted to uphold the ban on same-sex marriage approved in November of last year by a referendum of California voters on Proposition 8. Softening the blow slightly, they ruled that about 18,000 gay couples who were married before the law took effect will remain legally married.…
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— go to most recent comments26 - Cindy
#22
Most psychiatrists are crazy.
27 - roger nowosielski
I'm trying to inject some humor into the American tragedy - picturing as we speak the bulk of society, including the shrinks, as mental defectives. For some reason, it cuts a funny picture.
28 - roger nowosielski
"It is a sad fact that so many gay marriage activist would be so hatefully retrograde as to support the denial of sexual expression between men and boys."
A perfect example of ideology getting in the way of common sense.
29 - Dan
"Most psychiatrists are crazy."---Cindy
Many are gay as well.
30 - roger nowosielski
Well, that explains it then.
I know Jet is going to shoot me for having said that.
31 - Dan
"A perfect example of ideology getting in the way of common sense."
I agree, but society has not even progressed to the point of decriminalizing pedophilia yet. At least gays have that.
32 - roger nowosielski
Suddenly, your #22 makes sense, and I quote:
"The American Psychiatric Association once enlightened us by removing homosexuality from its list of mental disorders."
Since most of them are gay, they declared themselves (and their brethren) well - by way of self-diagnosis.
33 - roger nowosielski
Don't mind #32. Somewhat facetious, but what the hell.
I didn't not though about the point you're making in #31. You mean it's not illegal?
34 - roger nowosielski
"didn't know." I don't really get your point.
35 - Dan
"You mean it's not illegal?"---Roger
The natural sexual expression between adults and children is illegal. Society has a long way to go in shaking off this unenlightened vestige of sexual repression.
36 - Cindy
I'd like a link please Dan, if you would, to anything that supports your assertion that most gay marriage activists would support pedophilia. I'm a gay marriage activist. I don't support it and I know not a single other one who does.
37 - Cindy
Oh am I ever wrong. Dan supports pedophilia. He is miffed that most gay activists do not.
38 - Cindy
#28
Really Roger? You support pedophilia? I think you misread like I did.
39 - Clavos
Cindy #14,
Though I likely wouldn't carry that as far as you would, I find nothing in that comment as written with which I would disagree.
40 - Cindy
"psychiatrists have argued that there is little or no proof that sex with adults is necessarily harmful to minors. Indeed, they have argued that many sexually molested children later look back on their experience as positive..."
Is that like when cigarette companies used to say there was no proof that smoking was harmful to one's health?
And do these perfectly undamaged children who look back on their experiences as positive have warm loving sex lives with adults? Or are those who look back the one's who've gained an interest in becoming abusers themselves?
In other words, are the psychiatrists talking to people whose sense of love has been perverted by the damage done to them and on that basis concluding that these people are happy so no damage must have occurred.
I think you will find that many pedophiles justify their actions. It seems likely they might offer as evidence their own story of how fond they were of their own molester and how it didn't hurt them a bit.
Children do not have the capacity to make decisions about having relationships with adults. That is why children (like other young animals) are reared by parents. They lack experience to determine in many cases what will and will not bring them harm.
Secondly, adults have power that children lack. It is never ever okay to either seduce or to accept seduction from a child. It is always an abuse of power.
Look at your words Dan.
No proof that it is necessarily harmful.
I mean, really is that good enough for you? It may not be harmful is a good enough justification for using children for sexual gratification?
I feel like I am in an insane asylum. First, I am arguing with people about whether drowning is torture...as if this is a reasonable thing to be doing. And now I suppose I will be arguing with child molesters as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Any axe murderers, out there who'd like to have a chat while I'm on a roll?
41 - Cindy
Secondly, adults have power that children lack. It is never ever okay to either seduce or to accept seduction from a child. It is always an abuse of power.
I just have to go one step farther. Any adult who thinks otherwise is a seriously damaged person. Ipso facto.
42 - Dr Dreadful
Cindy, I think it helps if you start from the working assumption that Dan is playing devil's advocate.
43 - Cindy
Dr.D,
I have no idea what anyone thinks any more. There is a pedophile on twitter. I've never spoken to him, but it freaks me out that he is there. He's using his right to free speech. I just hope he's not doing more than that.
You think Dan is just being a devil's advocate? I have been so shocked by people lately, maybe I can't tell the difference. It seems they are likely to think or do any insane thing as if it's perfectly natural.
Today there was a very disturbing article in a UK paper that says the Abu Ghraib photos that weren't released show prisoners being raped by Americans.
44 - Dr Dreadful
Cindy, I'm not sure, but if this is the same Dan* I think it is, then I've crossed swords with him a number of times before. He opposes gay marriage and my guess is that he's trying to trap you into making a logical error.
* It's not Dan Miller, of course, but then you and I both knew that!
45 - roger nowosielski
Cindy #38,
Dan is being facetious since he speak of "the natural sexual expression between adults and children." That's the only way I can understand him. What I don't understand it the second paragraph of his #31.
46 - roger nowosielski
Doc's got it right in #42; don't forget, too, that Dan is a conservative.
47 - roger nowosielski
Cindy, #43
"I have no idea what anyone thinks any more."
Yes, it can be depressing, especially when hearing all kinds of voices, even on BC.
48 - Cindy
Hi Roger,
You were laughing yesterday. I saw those posts. It was a good thing to see. :-)
49 - Doug Hunter
I for one support gay marriage and have voted in favor of it every time available. I don't understand why prostitution is a crime in the first place. I don't care for pedophilia or any of those other things, they disgust me (although that's not a logical response).
What gets my goat is everyone else who thinks they have some special insight into what is morally 'right' or 'wrong'. From the Taliban, to Christians, Liberals, Conservatives almost everyone thinks they know what is right and seeks to force that on other people. I don't believe the government should be the vehicle to enforce those beliefs or that anyone should hate or otherwise look down on people who don't share their particular moral code. Your 'morality' is just as abhorrent to someone else as theirs is to yours.
50 - roger nowosielski
Well, can't be serious all the time. Men, too, have moods.
I was a little concerned (#47). Try not to let those feelings overcome you.
51 - roger nowosielski
So are you making all your decisions, then, on a logical basis. Like gay-marriage is logical and pedophilia is not?
Just wonder.
52 - roger nowosielski
Take #50 back. I'm not giving you any advice.
53 - Doug Hunter
Roger,
Certainly not. I don't think logic is even applicable to one's true underlying morals in most cases. First you have basic morals then you build logical extensions from there that sometimes lead you to other positions of morality. If someone starts from a different base then all your 'logic' is meaningless.
54 - roger nowosielski
There you go! You've got that part right. And so is the case for other values - like freedom, liberty and personal responsibility - which you definitely believe in.
Why then do you vacillate when it comes to morals?
55 - Cindy
Well, you wear 'amused' very well Roger. I hope you let the world strike you as funny more often.
The rest: The Abu Ghraib photos got to me. I'll learn to cope.
56 - roger nowosielski
Too many hard knocks, Cindy, to be shocked anymore. But what options are there?
You gotta believe.
57 - Cindy
Roger, It's quite alright to wish me well and make kind suggestions. That actually a very nice thing. Thanks. :-)
It's only when I get news such as my opinions are based on emotion and not reason that I get fired up.
58 - roger nowosielski
But your opinions should be based on emotions more often (or at least be informed by them). Everyone's are. There's nothing to be ashamed of here; it's the human condition.
It's got to be the right emotions, though. And I never faulted you for your motives.
59 - Jeannie Danna
Cindy, I was hoping you would read my first attempt to write something political that wasn't a rant and a rave...:)
60 - Cindy
It has been a very common thing historically for dominating men to proclaim that women were unable to participate in the decisions of society because they were biologically incapable of being logical and rational. It is a sore point. And when I myself know I have studied the problem from prenatal, perinatal, postnatal, developmental, anthropological, historical, sociological, scientific, and just about any way one can...then to be told my opinions are merely preemptive or reactionary or emotional and not rational or logical...well, you can see the problem, I think. :-)
61 - Cindy
Jeannie, I was just on my way! :-)
62 - roger nowosielski
I do. Except that my characterization wasn't of you, your opinions, or person - only of the proposition (and again, only with the idea that you reconsider it).
There is a difference. But I see why you took it that way.
63 - Jeannie Danna
Sorry Cindy, I'm so emotional! it must be my empathy showing..:)
64 - roger nowosielski
Stop it, Jeannie. You're opening the door now to some of the reactionary voices here. Now they'll come clamoring for throwing out "the empathy bit" like the baby with the bathwater. We don't want any regression after the progress we've made.
65 - Jeannie Danna
Dave, I have a view on gay marriage. I say why not! Just because it is not my cup of tea,who am I to say no? Is it the insurance companies that are really opposed to gay marriage and employers who would end up covering more people in their group insurance plans that are really the reason and not religion right? Or am I totally incorrect...
66 - Cindy
It's such a wonderful thing to have Jeannie on BC. :-)
Roger,
About being hardened: You know, it's not just the bad news that I spend all day with that is disturbing. It's that, whether I am right or wrong, in my mind at least, I believe I have an understanding of what causes all these terrible things. To watch the stream of evil on the one hand and then on the other hand--to also watch the stream of the opinion that makes the evil possible--both at the same time--that's what I have to learn to cope with. It's made possible by the internet. It's not something I have ever had to deal with in such volume.
67 - Jeannie Danna
Roger, Sorry..:( I was trying to be light hearted today
68 - roger nowosielski
As they say, follow the money trail.
69 - roger nowosielski
I knew you were. And so was I.
70 - roger nowosielski
#66,
Of course. Evil wouldn't exist (at least on the scale it does) if it didn't have its accomplices - not necessarily active perpetrators and passive ones as well. Lots of the voices have a vested interest (like talk-show hosts); others speak more or less out of ignorance (but that's a vested interest, too - to persist in a state of self-deception). And you see how vested some of these interests are by their recalcitrance and vehement opposition to any idea that runs counter to their dark psyche.
71 - Cindy
#70
What you said there. That is an aspect of what I have been referring to as cultural indoctrination. I agree, it's both active and passive, intentional and ignorant.
For me, its accomplices are certainly those, the visible influences. But if you take your time and look very closely you might find that we have been influenced in the very way we see things. Ways like what variables catch our attention...what is salient, what we cannot see. In my view this comes in from the culture at large through education, media, and the other people of our particular group who serve to pass this on to us thus fashioning a culture.
Sonia Sotomayor spoke, in her speech, about something very similar to this. She didn't analyze how it happens like I am, she simply said it does happen--people in different groups see things differently. They can only see through the eyes of the other with difficult and intentional effort and work. Should they be uninterested, ignorant, or worse--it won't happen. As it takes a great deal of motivated and open effort and is hard to accomplish even with the best intention. If one is resistant, I think it can only happen by accident.
72 - roger nowosielski
Well, maybe I'm not the one to judge then or have a proper perspective on the extent to which cultural influences define one. And because of my own unique experience and history, I may be projecting and thereby minimizing the gravity of the problem.
See, when I came here, it was from a different culture (a number of them). So although I became assimilated and absorbed the American culture, I was always an outsider looking in (as it were) rather than being beholden by the cultural values and unawares. A great deal of it was a conscious decision on my part - I absorbed what I liked, rejected what I did not.
Coupled with a number of paramount teachers I had had, I suppose I started thinking for myself rather early - always as an individual rather than as part of any collective or a group (because I didn't really belong to any). I was always unto myself - except for the relationships I have had with the women in my life.
So for this reason perhaps - because I have such a long history of thinking as an individual and for myself (I was really transplanted and uprooted from my own country), that I have a problem understanding the difficulty others might have in freeing their mind of the cultural influences which are part and parcel of who they are and who they think they are.
And that's the projecting part I spoke of earlier.
73 - Baronius
"I've been surprised at the lack of coverage of both these stories in the press."
"Battle fatigue, I think, at least in the case of Prop 8."
C'mon, Dread. Do you really think that if the court threw out the proposition, that the press would be too "fatigued" to cover it?
74 - zingzing
it may be that this story (or how prop 8 could make it through the voting public and the courts) is so fucking inexplicably stupid and damning of our society and nation that no one wants to point out our collective, ignorant ass to the rest of the world, nor to ourselves, anymore.
75 - Cindy
...that I have a problem understanding the difficulty others might have in freeing their mind of the cultural influences which are part and parcel of who they are and who they think they are.
Yes, more difficult for some than others. However, I think you are hasty in excluding yourself. Neither I, nor anyone else I know is excluded or has conquered what I'm describing. If you do, you don't quite understand the depth of influence I mean. It is not inescapable. Every indoctrinated idea is there, unknown (with the effect of being an idea you believe is your own), until it is specifically examined.
You seem to be referring to the conscious things we see, ideas, influences of culture. I can accept that you are self-examined. So am I. Neither to the degree I mean and that is regardless of effort. Because we cannot know what we don't know.
It is insidious, not necessarily obvious. It is why girls play with dolls and boys play with trucks. Why girls wear pink and like Barbie. Why they want to be princesses and boys fight with action figures.
It's why men bend to a certain idea of what 'male' is and women wear make-up. Why you are attracted to a certain 'looking' woman and not some other look. Why there are bullies at school and why boys can't cry. It's why my niece believes she needs liposuction and breast implants. And why people are addicted to acquiring things. Why we even have a discussion about what torture is. Why pornography is acceptable. Why men don't know enough about female sexuality. Why schools operate the way they do. Why we sometimes fail in parenting.
A child comes into a classroom every day and is told to put her hand over her heart and recite the pledge of allegiance. It has an effect. That the teacher is the leader and holds all the information, has an effect. Everything we do. All the images we see. Even the fact that we see a world through images rather that real life. Guy DeBord called this the society of the spectacle.
Okay, that's enough. Hopefully that gives you a better idea. If not then you'll have to wait until I ever write about it.