ok, correction, bad moderation in general...

i'll take a more optimistic stance then Justinian. We have all grown older, and in older age have become more willing to accept differences in opinion and less motivated to debate with people that hold those differences in opinion.

i also blame over-moderation for scaring off productive members of the community and limiting the content that we can debate.

finally lol @ Justinian for calling me offensive.... i think many people find him far more offensive. I try to look at things from different perspectives, to get a better look at a feel for an issue and sometimes try to push debates we have had a thousand times to new areas.

i don't see why fat people don't get the same respect fags do. Fat people are expected to give up everything they like, and if they don't its their fault and every disadvantage that comes from being fat is their fault, but if someone wants to be gay, everyone better bend over backwards so gays are no way disadvantaged for being gay. And before someone says "no one wants to be gay" no one wants to be fat either.

you want to eat 2 lbs of food, ok, but i'm going to charge you 5 times as much as the skinny person eating a 5th of what you're eating, i'm going to charge you extra when you take public transportation, and i'm going to design amusement park rides so that you can't fit on them; and none of that is discrimination; but i have to change me religious view of marriage because people choosing to live the gay lifestyle would be disadvantaged if i didn't?

> DPS wrote:

> "dps, so if blacks could change the color of their skin, it would be ok to discriminate against blacks?"

Hmm interesting question.  If race and ethnicity were choices we made rather than accidents of birth I'd have to say yes, discriminating based on those would be ok. Whenever we make a choice we have to accept the consequences of that choice.  If I get a tattoo that covers my whole arm I accept that I can't where short sleeves to the office.  If I dress in a style associated with criminals I accept that people are going to be watching me more closely.  If I have the option to change my race/ethnicity and don't I'm still making a choice (the choice not to act) and again have to accept the consequences.

I do however feel a small amount of sympathy for those who have choices forced upon them (people who dress like gangbangers cause they can't afford clothes that fit properly for example).  However this sympathy does not extend very far.

so you have no problem with cops raiding the houses of muslims because they're muslims and being muslim is a choice...?

blacks have higher criminal rates then other races, creating a stigma of criminal tendencies for blacks in general, so its cool treating all blacks as criminals?

ok, theoretically, lets say the US government did not bail out any companies, multiple banks went bankrupt, GM and chrysler at least went bankrupt (i dont think Ford ended up borrowing any money from government, correct me if i'm wrong). millions more people lose their jobs then they did, car part manufacuers go bankrupt with GM and Chrysler gone, and zero cars can be manufactured in the US for a decade. The stock market crashes, the government isn't bailing out anyone, so they aren't backing people's investments, so everyone who owned an account in any bank that goes bankrupt loses everything, which is a huge percent of the country. the value of the dollar is a tiny fraction of what it used to be because there is no stability in the US because the government isn't backing their businesses.  how does that benefit the US?  it would take multiple generations for the US to get up to where we are now...

also, giving companies money that are losing money isn't throwing money away. what does the company do with the money? they are giving that money to other business and employees most of whom are probably in the US. and what are those other busninesses and employees doing with the money? they are giving it to other businesses and other employees and it keeps being given and used by more and more people, primarily in the US. a company losing money, doesn't mean that money magically disappears, its being spent and that money being spent is giving money to other people...

its perfectly understandable that a company doesn't want criminal looking people seen entering or exiting their building, even if they don't chat with their customers...

"which boils down to you arguing that you don't want gay people to be able marry because you feel it is destructive to society."

i have provided pletny of arguments showing it is destructive to society, and you have yet to dispute any of them...

"The fact that your society has never allowed gay marriage so far is just a matter of practical convenience where you don't have to take any initiative to see your wish become law."

thats the equivalent of saying that you wish great britain to not be a part of france because its a matter of practical convenience that at this moment it is not a part of france. or you can substitute any 2 countries in this comparison. my argument is basically Great Britian shouldn't become part of another country that is only going to be detrimental to great britain, but if a part of great britain is detrimental to the whole, i would be less willing to get rid of that part of great britain.  you are basically saying you don't give a damn about the people in the country, you just want your ideals forced on everyone and if you want great britain to be part of france, [apox on] everyone that thinks it will be detrimental or don't want to be part of france, they are just saying that because we currently aren't part of france.

"Your basic argument, to put rather bluntly, is wanting your government to be lazy by not handing out new rights which you personally dislike while keeping around the mistakes of the past so to speak by allowing infertile people to marry."

my argument is that i want rights sacred. that means few are removed and few are added. if rights can be added or subtracted like nothing happened, then rights mean nothing and are worthless. gay rights is destructive to society and the only reason to add it is to fulfill the desires of a minority; but infertile people have always had the rigtht to marry, and if that right was taken from them, then whats keeping the government from taking away the freedom of speech?

"None of the younger generations of gay people I know would ever marry a woman just out of some past form of peer pressure"

there are young gay people killing themselves because they think society doesn't accept them, so i think the claim that there are no gays right now that would not live a straight lifestyle unrealistic.

"My comment was a response to the assertion that gay people should not be able to marry because they can't knock eachother up and are thus living a destructive lifestyle for society, reducing the overal fertility of society"

no one ever made that assertion, you just make up your own assertions to respond to.

> East wrote:

> no I've only seen you cling to arbitrary and outdated distinctions

its simple. there are two very clear distinctions. #1 living a lifestyle where you date people of the same sex, [engage in sexual intercourse with] people of the same sex, and eventually want marry people of the same sex is indisputably a choice. While under most circumstances people don't choose to be infertile. #2 I am against the action of legalizing gay marriage, there is no action needed to legalize marrying infertile people because it has always been legal, so even if being infertile was a choice, i would still be for infertile people marrying because the state would have to take that right away, not establish that right. it is one thing not wanting the state to take established rights away from people even if they are destructive to the society, especially when the people have no control over whether they're being destructive to society; and its a completely different thing pushing for the government to give new rights that are destructive to the society to people that are choosing to be destructive to society.   so yes, i can support infertile people being able to marry without supporting the legalization of gay marriage, without contradicting myself, and without clinging to arbitrary or outdated distinctions...

if you turn the lights out and look into a mirror and say Osama Bin Laden 3 times, he appears