“There is no federal constitutional right
to same sex marriage. There isn’t such a right. You have to have a
ridiculous reading of the U.S. constitution to reach the conclusion that
people have a right to marry someone of the same sex. . . ."
Okay, technically that is true. There is no right to same-sex marriage in the Constitution. There also is no Constitutional right to opposite-sex marriage. There is no Constitutional right to drive a car or walk your dog or wear white after Labor Day.
What there is is an "Equal Protection" clause, which means that if I'm allowed to drive my car, you're allowed to drive yours. You can't say my next door neighbor is allowed to walk his dog because he has a cool German Shepherd but the guy across the street with an ugly rat-dog is not. And if Bob and Jane are allowed to get married, so are Jim and Hank.
The Republican-led House Judiciary just approved a bill that would make it easier for immigrants to stay in the U.S. Not all immigrants, of course, but some. What makes these particular immigrants different than, say the children from Central America fleeing certain death?
Well, for starters, they're white.
In fact, there about as white as white can be, they're German.
And they're fleeing the "persecution" of having to give their children a proper education.
In other words, future Republican voters!
House panel approves asylum bill for homeschoolers
Erin Kelly, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill Wednesday that
would allow people to seek asylum in the USA if they are persecuted by
their governments for homeschooling their children. At the same time,
the bill would make it tougher for children fleeing gang and drug
violence in Central America to gain refuge here.
Yes, apparently in Germany and other sensible countries, it is not legal to homeschool your children. And in the spirit of that great lady who said "give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses of people who don't feel like they should have to obey their nation's laws. . ." House Republicans are proposing granting "asylum" to German parents who would prefer that their children not learn from qualified professionals.
The Asylum Reform and Border Protection Act, sponsored by Rep. Jason Chaffetz,
R-Utah, would make it more difficult overall for refugees to win their
asylum cases, while opening a category of relief for families who live
in countries that outlaw homeschooling. The bill would allow up to 500
grants of asylum per year to families fleeing persecution for
homeschooling their children.
Supporters of the bill point to cases in Europe where parents have faced
fines and imprisonment for refusing to send their children to schools
outside the home.
Or, and I'm just spitballing here, but maybe they could just obey the fucking law and send their kids to school. It's really not that hard a problem to solve. Insisting on enforcing a simple law is not really what "persecution" means.
Some people really are persecuted. Gay people in Russia, for example. They face jail time and violence for being who they are. There are countries in which people are jailed for their religious beliefs. That's persecution. The government not giving you an exception to the law because you don't feel like following it is not persecution. I mean, am I being persecuted because the stupid government won't let me drive 90 miles an hour when I'm late for work?
You wanna know how offensive this bill is?
Rep. Raúl Labrador, R-Idaho, said asylum has always been reserved for refugees persecuted by their governments. "Asylum law is not there to protect crime victims, it is there to protect those persecuted by government," Labrador said.
Tea Party favorite Raul Labrador is bothered by it.
Do you have any idea how far beyond the pale you have to be to offend a teabagger?
If the law was changed to allow victims of crime-ridden nations to gain
asylum, the USA would be unable to absorb the millions of refugees who
would flee from countries where gangs run rampant, Chaffetz said. Chaffetz's bill would make it more difficult for refugees to prove a
"credible fear of persecution" to gain asylum in the USA. It would bar
taxpayer funds from being used to pay for attorneys to represent
children as they seek asylum in immigration court. The bill would give the Department of Homeland Security the power to make refugees wait in other "safe countries" such as Mexico while applying for asylum in the USA.
Jeezus! Going out of your way to fuck over desperate children so you have room for anti-government nuts from an affluent, peaceful country? That's pretty much the definition of pure evil.
Oh, Marco, Marco, Marco! You had a shot. I mean, sorta. You at least could've been a player in the primaries. But then you made a mistake. You decided to try not being a complete asshole. You decided to try tracking towards the center waaaaayyy too early. And you said, out loud, that maybe we could try treating immigrants like human beings. How did that work out for ya?
Rand Paul wins CPAC straw poll, Jeb Bush 5th, Marco Rubio 7th
Seventh!
At C-Pac! That's your base right there. The people who vote in Republican primaries. You know, the lunatic fringe. And you finished seventh. It's over for you and you haven't even declared yet! You're polling just below "what if we ran Romney again?" and just above "ah, fuck it, let Hillary have it."
Why are you even bothering to try and run? Are you angling to be someone's running mate? Try and ethnic-up the ticket? Because I think your numbers are too low even for that.
Because you forgot the first rule of Republican politics. A. B. C. Always be crazy. And always be a dick. Until you have the nomination sewn up. THEN you try to seem like a human being.
It's too late now, and you will never be President.
Um, honestly, I guess I'm just looking at the surface here, but the two seem completely unrelated.
On the surface, abortion and same-sex marriage may seem unrelated.
However, as explained in an amicus brief of 100 scholars of marriage, filed in the pending Supreme Court marriage cases and summarized here, the two are closely linked in a short and simple causal chain that the Supreme Court would be wise not to set in motion.
Really? 100 "scholars of marriage?"
What University has a department of marital studies?
What kind of degree would one have were one a "scholar of marriage?"
I clicked on your link to see who these scholars were. The first marriage expert cited (for 3 seperate papers) is a professor of ECONOMICS at Simon Fraser University.
The next is Helen M. Alvare, a professor of Family Law at George Mason, who probably knows a thing or two about marriage, divorce, and custody. Of course, she's also one of the founders of "Women Speak For Themselves," a group whose mission statement claims: "We are women who support the competing voice offered by religious
organizations and individuals about women, sex, marriage and family
life. " And claim to supoport completely debunked hack "research" - "Even setting aside their simplistic equation of “costless” birth control
or abortion with “equality,” note that they have never responded to
scholarly research indicating that abortion harms women as well as their
children,"
So, I'd take her expertise with a grain of salt. If your scholarship on the subject of marriage includes the phrase "well, the Bible says. . ." you're probably not a serious scholar.
You also include " Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII, which means you're getting marriage advice from someone in whose time it was considered perfvectly normal for marriage to be between one man and one woman, but the man could also fuck boys on the side.
But anyways. . . Let's just go ahead and stipulate that your 100 "Marriage scholars" have the necessary level of expertise. What's their argument? Just give it to me in a nutshell.
In a nutshell: A reduction in the opposite-sex marriage rate means an
increase in the percentage of women who are unmarried and who, according
to all available data, have much higher abortion rates than married
women. And based on past experience, institutionalizing same-sex
marriage poses an enormous risk of reduced opposite-sex marriage rates.
Jeez, where to begin?
I guess I would start with "what past experience?" How many examples do you have of places where same-sex marriage has been institutionalized?
And let's assume that you're right. Let's assume that if gay marriage is legalized, that for some unknown reason, hetero marriage rates were to decline. So what? How is that an issue? Bob and Jim can't get married because by some weird logic, it will discourage John and Susan from getting married? So what? How is that Bob and Jim's problem?
Why do you assume that John and Susan's relationship is somehow more valuable than Bob and Jim's? And even if you do make that assumption - which you clearly, unabashedly do - John and Susan are still perfectly free to marry or not marry or do whatever they want with their lives. No one's stopping them, certainly Bob and Jim aren't.
And yes, I'm sure that single women are more likely to have abortions than married ones, most women probably want to wait until they are in a stable relationship before taking on the burden of child-rearing. (did I say "burden?' I meant "blessing." No, wait, I was right the first time) Anyway, so what? First of all, abortion is a perfectly legal procedure that single or married women have every right to avail themselves of should the need arise. And if more abortions start happening, how is that Bob and Jim's fault?
They get blamed for everything!
The metamorphosis of marriage from a gendered to a genderless
institution would send the message that society no longer needs men to
bond to women to form well-functioning families or to raise happy,
well-adjusted children. That would be bad news for children of
heterosexuals on the margins: the poor, the relatively uneducated, the
irreligious, and others who are susceptible to cultural messages
promoting casual or uncommitted sex.
Seriously? If same-sex couples can legally tie the knot, suddenly hetero parents are going to abandon their kids, because of some sort of societal message that says that. . .um . . . somehow these people have been unaware that casual sex is a thing? And allowing gay couples to marry will let that cat out of the bag? "Gee, dear, now that two women can marry each other, I suddenly realize that non-marital sex exists, and so I would like a divorce because even though I love you and little Junior, I just received this message from society that told me, um . . . something about not bonding? Or something? I don't know, I'm poor and uneducated, and also irreligious so I'm easily influenced by, um, things. . . "
Sorry, I was trying to follow the logic there, but I got lost in the weeds pretty quickly. And I think that if I put any more thought into trying to understand this argument, I'll probably go quite mad.
1. Just finished binge-watching Broadchurch on Netflix.
This is a British show that I had not heard of, but stumbled onto somehow. Anyway, it's a murder mystery spanning 8 one-hour episodes. It reminds me a bit of the first 2 years of AMC's The Killing. Multiple suspects, suspicion shifting from one to another and then back again, always keeping you guessing. The show deals with with the nuts and bolts of the police investigation, but also with the family of the dead boy trying to cope and the reaction of the townspeople fearful of the murderer among them. Sometimes, the emotions can get pretty intense, as you might imagine.
There is apparently a second season that just started airing somewhere, I'll try to find it on demand, but these 8 episodes function as a stand-alone story that (spoiler alert) does finally get resolved in the end.
2. The Last Man on Earth
I don't know how this show is doing, ratings-wise. Fox has been running two episodes back-to-back each Sunday, and I don't know if that's because it's doing so well, or if it's an attempt to drum up interest, or if they're just dumping as many episodes as they can because it's doing poorly. I don't know.
What I do know is that Will Forte and Kristen Scall are two of the funniest people on Earth, and if you're not watching this because the promos looked a bit dull or silly, you're missing out on some really funny stuff.
Episode 1 does drag abit, definitely, because the only person in it until the very end is Will Forte. Will Forte is great, but there's only so much of him talking to mannequins and yelling at God that's going to work. Once Kristen Schall shows up, it really takes off. They've added a few more people including January Jones and Mary Steenburgen and it's just really funny and clever, and it's not "Arrested Development" or "The Simpsons" in terms of inventiveness but it's pretty damn good. And I'm happy that Kristen Schall seems to be finally becoming something of a star. She's been so funny on the Daily Show and as the voice of Louise on Bob's Burgers, it's about time she got a starring role.
3. The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
This is anew Netflix exclusive that has been getting a fair amount of buzz. It stars Ellie Klemper (The Office, Bridesmaids) as a woman who has just escaped from an underground bunker after 15 years in captivity. So, besides knowing nothing of the modern world (a la Brendan Frazier in Blast From the Past) she's also in a lot of ways still a naive 15-year-old girl living as an adult.
Klemper is terrific in this role. I liked her on The Office, but I never would have thought she could carry a show like she does. Just her facial expressions alone are amazing. The sheer joy she exudes is infectuous. It would be so easy to play Kimmy as over-the-top ditzy or nutty, but she knows exactly where the line is.
There are a couple of problems with this show. First, Carol Kane, whom I usually love, is wasted as Kimmy's landlady. It's just not a well-written character, her jokes fall flat and it just doesn't work.
The bigger problem is that Kimmy was kidnapped at 15 and forced to live in a bunker with a cult-leader and three other women where, as she tells her new roommate, "there was weird sex stuff," and that ordeal is sometimes played for laughs. As is Kimmy's PTSD. Her roommate once tells her she needs to get therapy because she wakes up screaming and she bites his nails. Which isn't a bad line, but it's kind of offensive that they treat her ordeal as a source of humor.
I've only seen a few episodes, so hopefully that isn't something that's going to re-occur.
Also, Jane Krakowski is terrific as Kimmy's employer. She's used a lot better here than she was on 30 Rock, which is odd because Kimmy Schmidt is also a Tina Fey production.
