As for police, I truly do not know what their hiring practices are, but my understanding is that they have a minimum age (as many jobs do) and a physical requirement. I know quite a few cops over 50.

I enjoy your thoughts.

Craig: “Race, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, and political view point are not valid reasons to discriminate.” I disagree.

Police departments discriminate against the elderly everyday when they only hire people under 30 for example. What Republican politician is going to hire a Democrat political consultant? Why aren’t there any lawsuits from the Democrats about lost work? What NBA team is going to hire a woman to play on their team? Where are the lawsuits about that? There are plenty of (good) reasons to discriminate against the “golden cows” that you think should never be a basis of discrimination (race, gender, age, etc. ). What does that mean? I think it means that the idea of injustice linked to discrimination has been far overextended.

More later…

@Nathan #1:

Oppressive discrimination is never right. There is no “right” definition of discrimination against gays that is right in our secular society that has anything to do with the “right and wrong” of homosexuality or gay rights. Those who believe their discrimination of gays is moral do NOT have the right in this secular society to have their definition given equal weight.

No one is saying that there is no difference between right and wrong, in fact we are saying it is WRONG (since you love capitalisation so much) to discriminate against someone because of their sexual orientation, gender identity, sex, race, etc., for ANY reason whatsoever. There are many things that are not “ok”, which is anything that violates the rights of another human. Gay marriage does not. Interracial marriage does not. Gays serving openly in a military does not. Women being treated the same as men does not. Rape does, murder does, theft does, telling a gay man he can’t marry his partner does.

There is a vast difference between secular and (inherently variable and contradictory) religious morality. Religious morality has no place outside the church or your house. It has no place in secular society. It is religious morality that claims that gays are immoral, but to give that religious morality secular credence infringes on rights, and that must not happen in a secular society.

You, along with many others, use the same failed arguments as were used to argue against interracial marriage being legal.
You are arguing against a straw man. No one is advocating for sibling sexual relationships, and in no way is incest comparable to gay rights.

The Yes on 8 side has no need of sexual innuendo since they are explicitly concerned with legislating sex. There’s no innuendo there.

It is true that I discriminate between food on my plate that is healthy and food on my plate that is not. I even discriminate among banks that I want to keep my money in, based upon their performance. These are completely valid reasons to discriminate. In fact, I expect that all employers, past and future discriminate on the basis of education and experience. As they should. These are factors that affect the potential employee’s ability to perform adequately. Race, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, and political view point are not valid reasons to discriminate.

The major reason that siblings are not allowed to marry is for biological reasons. In fact, in many states, siblings can marry—as long as they don’t know they are siblings. This is a complete red herring to the argument. Consenting adults are consenting adults and if the only reason that the Yes on 8 side has for excluding homosexuals from marriage is that “then siblings will be able to marry!!!111!!! OMGWTFBBQ”, then they really need to rethink their argument.

Incidentally—if “one man and one woman” carries the day, where will transgender people be?

Here’s a “sexy” girl (tight shirt, short skirt) who’s also untouchably “smart” (glasses and book) that the “unsexy” (overweight, sloppily if conservatively dressed, socially awkward, balding) man wants to “amend” (with obvious sexual overtones) regardless of her say in the matter.

I think these are the more important “metasexual” issues that the commercial brings up. Hopefully, it will play to its crowd and be watched by conservatives or fence-sitters.

The fact that someone’s world-view is colored by the fact that he or she is GLBTQ is hardly surprising given the fact that these are extremely marginalized members of society. You don’t need someone of color to tell you that they are a person of color to know that this has affected their world-view. Nor do you need a woman to tell you she is a woman. These are superficial differences that, unfortunately, continue to have a great impact upon society. GLBTQ people who tell you that they are are (a) making themselves extremely vulnerable, since they don’t know that your response won’t be violent (physically or emotionally) and (b) paving the way for those GLBTQ people who are not strong enough to tell you that they are. I view “coming out” as a profound act of courage in a world that is still very GLBTQ unfriendly. Perhaps the people who come out to you think you’re a GLBTQ-friend, and want to thank you; or maybe they think you’re not friendly to such people and want to remind you that they exist. I think the last thing on their minds is that they want to start talking about sex with you.

I have to say that I did not encounter this in Europe. I routinely saw naked bodies, naked friends, and naked opposite-sex people in completely non-sexual ways. I wonder if “coming out” is a different experience in a culture that is not swathed in post-Puritanical fear of the body.

P.S. So far, we’ve never censored someone for simply being offensive or having a different view-point. I censor at the request of the censoree (to fix grammar/links/repeated comments) and obvious spam (linking with no substantive discussion, or completely off topic). I have also edited without request to fix links &c.

However, I don’t think that gays are necessarily more sexual than heterosexuals, inherently. We generally just don’t have the inhibitions many others do as a result of being totally outcast by mainstream society, we often don’t feel the need to conform to its espectations regarding sexuality. Being gay is no more about what kind of sex we have than being straight is.

I guess that should not be surprising. It seems that the entire homosexual experience is characterized primarily by the way that they engage in sexual activity.

The “homosexual experience” is about so very much more than just sex, just as your heterosexual experience is about more than just sex. It is indicative of the inherent heterosexism in society that people don’t realise that heterosexual sex is absolutely everywhere, and is far more blatant and obvious than any portrayal of gay sex. The reason you probably are jarred when you see something gay, or by gay sexuality is because it is not normalised, unlike your own sexuality. Heterosexuality is so normal and common that you often don’t realise how silly it sounds to talk about how sexual gays are when your own straight culture is so much more graphic and intense and widespread than gay culture could ever hope to be.

There are also many things I describe myself as besides being gay, and certainly before I use the word “homosexual”. That word is often used to distance, dehumanise and discriminate, and whereas it is not an inherently derisive term, most members of the GLBTQ community don’t use it because it 1) excludes, and 2) often sounds judgemental or impersonal.

You are, I think, entirely right to say that those who oppose prop 8 are likely to be much more relaxed about sex and as it is a normal and ubiquitous part of life, it seems silly to not include it in humour.

But it makes me wonder if the meta-sexual references reflect a common underlying mentality of the No on 8 campaign supporters. I think that it does. It seems that the mindset of the No campaign inherently requires a more relaxed sexual approach to life that seems to include sexual references in political humor.

I guess that should not be surprising. It seems that the entire homosexual experience is characterized primarily by the way that they engage in sexual activity. After all, heterosexual is an adjective that I would probably never use to describe myself in any type of serious context. There are endless adjectives/roles/characteristics that I would use before ‘heterosexual’. On the other hand, it seems that a good number of (out) homosexuals include that information as early as possible. I guess it is reasonable that with the increased importance of sexual identity would necessarily come increased sexual dialogue–in this case in the form of a polemic on political ideology.

Any thoughts?

This is a sincere post, I hope it doesn’t get censored.

Shana,

You have to remember that there are two meanings of the word discrimination. The great majority of society has conflated these two meanings (one a tool of discernment and one a tool of oppression).

The result is that it is no longer acceptable for individuals to ‘discriminate’ between right and wrong, and, as a result of political correctness and not wanting to offend anyone that might be doing something ‘wrong’ you have adefault setting of (almost) everything is ok.

What you call ‘oppressive’ discrimination is equally called ‘discerning’ discrimination by others. You can’t just drop a buzzword like discrimination and think that you cover your argumentative bases.

There is PLENTY of discrimination in our constitution and laws. Isn’t telling siblings that they can’t marry discrimination?? WHERE’S THE JUSTICE?! WHERE’S THE EQUALITY?! Someone loves his/her sister and can’t marry her?! WHAT!? THAT’S DISCRIMINATION!!! Exactly, and who would say that marrying your sibling was ok?!

But, that is exactly the type of legal result that becomes a possibility by an extension of the logic of the California Supreme Court and the No on 8 campaign.

The number 1 reason to vote against Prop 8 is because it writes discrimination into our constitution.