As much as I know it'd be a losing battle, I'd have to join Xavier. I'm just not ready to give up hope that we will someday find peaceful coexistence like Roddenberry showed us.

I may get proven wrong, but alot of the Founding Fathers were Deists.
just sayin'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism


I guess I'll wade in here, I hope I don't come off as a dick.


Gay Marriage: Any ideas I may have had about the sanctity of marriage were destroyed by heterosexual couples I know long ago, so..don't care. no skin off my ###, as it were. Unless Rob Halford asks me to marry him, I might have to think that over...

Abortion: It's a distasteful practice, particulary in cases like some promiscuous sluts I have known over the years who use it for birth control. but I don't think the state should force any woman to carry a baby to term she doesn't want. especially w/ rape/incest,yadda yadda.. (although if I were emperor, I would force them to then seize the babies to be raised into mindless killing machins for my army of assassins)

I had a debate a long time ago with a few of my pro-life friends. Seems they think I'm pro-death (which I am, but not in terms of abortion, but that is a topic for another time entirely). My claim was that the gov't should not regulate abortion. The gov't job is to protect it's citizens. A citizen is someone with a SS#. A baby gets a SS# when it is born. Therefore, abortion is outside the judisdiction of the gov't's responsibilities. Sure, it's got a couple planet sized loop-holes in it, but I was doing my darnedest to think outside the box and remove the whole morality of it from the argument. You know, force them to think logisitcally for a change that way they couldn't just fall back on the same cut and paste argument every time. It was funny to watch thir heads explode when I started with "Morality aside..." let alone the argument in its entirety. They were so off balance that they couldn't even see the loop holes around citizens of foreign countries and whatnot. I have a few friends whose thoughts and reasoning never evolve, so I enjoy trying to stretch their minds. It never works because they just go all "error...error...error" but it's fun to watch.

FYI, I can't see myself ever condoning my partner having an abortion, but I still don't see it as my right to choose for another woman. For that reason, I'm pro-choice.

Agreed.
I don't want children,at all, but if I sired one (knock on wood) I wouldn't be down with aborting it. But in the end, it's the mother's decision.

Your use of the term mother for a newly pregnant woman reveals a bit about your views on when a fetus becomes a person. IMO, a pregnant woman is more a host than anything. That's a view that my wife yelled at me more than once for voicing. It's scientifically accurate though so I don't shy away from stating the obvious. Fetus=parasite. We kill tape worms, why not human fetusi? Everything after the first sentence is only half serious. You decide which half.

No real revelation there. I used Mother to indicate the pregnant woman. I was too lazy/distracted to think of a more neutral designation.

Fun topic.

Politics: I am a social libertarian and a economic quasi-libertarian. I don't want the government to tell us anything socially and I really don't want to pay for it.

Abortion: Against it personally. Most women who have had abortions are broken up about it. Some are not. I would not make it illegal though. As far as politics go, a person should NEVER vote based on abortion. Simply: abortion is so controlled by the courts, it will never become illegal. Instead, its all a mater of funding, but the people who control funding are clever. Abortion funds are tied up in other types of health care, so if you cut one, you cut the other. By taking away the money for this one thing, you take away the money for all these other really good things. Hard to justify.

Gay Marriage: go for it. I think the only thing you can convincingly say about gay marriage is that it will lead into a high increase of gay divorce. This is one of many things that I don't want my government to control. For hetrosexual marriages, the government creates financial incentive for reproduction--to get more kids and more citizens. The government needs a certain rate of reproduction, otherwise the population becomes unbalanced. With the increased access to adoption, I see no reason to withhold the same financial incentives to homosexual couples. But I don't support people marrying trees--I suppose I am bigoted after all. I am also against mandatory gay marriage.

Politics: all government systems are flawed. Everyone is trying to create a utopia here on earth and it never works because people are flawed. The best thing we can do is minize the damage. Governments should be limited to safety, defense (true defense, mind you, not proactive offense in the name of defense), and law enforcement of the criminal code. Instead we have a bunch of politicians on both sides of the isles creating new laws which are all puppies for orphans--and no one wants to be against that.

Religion: I am so incredibly evangelical Christian that I randomly baptize people. I like Jesus. He hung out with the people who were considered scum in his day, the people that the so-called righteous people wouldn't be seen with. He didn't condone actions, but he didn't condemn either.

Separation of Church and State: mostly it was to stop the government in interfering with religion, but it is totally fine if it goes both ways. I think that any attempt at codifying civil morality is an act of Tyranny. When people change at a grassroots level by being involved in each other's lives, the country changes. When we create a law on the books, nothing changes.

Truth: the universe, God, and existence is one way or another. I can and will disagree about what is true. Doesn't mean we have to fight: we can have a civil discourse or not bother. Either works. I will tolerate another person's belief, but I am not going to celebrate it.

I was strongly pro-choice.

Then my son was born.

I'm now pro-"Look, unless there's a medical reason or other extenuating circumstances..."

One of those life experiences that can change your outlook on things, I guess.

Anyway, the problems with our country.. economic, political, religious, whatever... boil down to the fact that we, as a society, have gotten selfish. It used to be "My rights end where yours begin." Now, it's "Your rights end where mine begin." It's a subtle difference, but it's made all the difference in the world. Instead of, "I have the right to do this, but it would mess yours up so I won't do it," it's now "Screw you, I have a right to do this, I don't care what you say."

Same thing happened to me.

The right of a child to live outweighs the right of a person to do what they want with their body from where I sit. It's not even close. Rape or substantial risk of death to the mother are the only exception I can possibly see being justified.

Religion: As long as you don't try to enforce your belief system on me, we can get along. I believe that everyone should have a spiritual life and believe that there is a God whose nature I cannot fathom but whose miracles I can appreciate. I was raised a Catholic, but I don't consider myself part of the church. My kids have all been baptised Lutheran and I attend Lutheran church occasionally. I cannot properly define my own faith because I tend to borrow concepts that I find valuable in different religions. I tend to focus on the ethical concepts that separate us and bypass the ones that alienate us from one another.

Politics: Non-partisan independent. I like to vote based on aptitude and capability to look after the well-being of the nation. I don't usually have many options when it comes to that, unfortunately.

Gay Marriage: Yes. Let's just call it "marriage", let the state recognize the union of two adults who have decided to commit their lives to each other, and let bigotry stay out of it.

Abortion: I have three little thermodynamic miracles. I can't ever imagine having terminated any of those pregnancies. That having been said, I fully believe that it's a woman's right to make that choice - not the church's, not the state's. There are too many cases where medically the quality of life will be horrible for the child or cases where a very young girl has been raped or forced to do incest. It's a case-by-case situation, and the medical system should be allowed to offer clean, safe, and legal options to women in need. Because let's face it, as with Prohibition, society will find ways around the law of the land.

Well phrased and concieved; I agree.

I've always been pro-choice. Having my child didn't change that. The choice to me has always been the woman's to make. I'd appreciate having input if I'm the sperm donor, but final decision is hers.

so since I just found this I will go trough my opinions quickly, I am for equal rights for all
My wife (a proud fag hag since her teen years (my wife is 31), and the reason I got to know a lot of gay people, and become close friends with them) posted something on her facebook the day president Obama came in favor of gay marriage. Something along the lines of her being proud of him, and the first comment she received was someone saying that president Obama is gay.
and sadly that's the response people have here in south Texas, since we are so close to mexico and Mexican culture, I would say there is a bigger stigma in Mexican culture in being gay or pro gay than american culture.

I am also pro choice

Hoo, yeah. You've got both the cult of machismo and a very strict adherence to traditional gender roles. My wife's family is Mexican, and they get *very* uncomfortable any time we talk about our kid doing something that doesn't conform to their notions of what is proper behavior for a boy. Love 'em to death, but if the notion of a little boy helping in the kitchen freaks them out, I can't imagine how they'd react if, years down the road, we told them that he had a boyfriend.