Zixar

Rocky: No, that's insufficient reason for opening marriage to any two individuals. The reason why I say that is that the same argument can be used for polygamy and consensual incest, all of whose downsides to society outweigh any personal upside.

Rocky: I should have been more clear. The context was two heterosexuals of the same gender entering into a marriage of convenience. Currently, they are prohibited under the same restrictions as homosexuals from doing so.

(resolving a cross-post) Trefor: With respect, that's the same dodge you used the last time I asked this question. I know you must keep seeing it as snide or accusatory because of the indignance of your replies, but I'm being totally serious--give me a REASON why I should fight as hard to protect homosexuality as I would to protect any other concept. As I outlined above, homosexuals already have the right to marry in this country, according to the definition of marriage that has persisted for the past three thousand years. If government were a restaurant, the fact that certain people don't particularly like what's on the menu does not obligate the chef to cook something special for them, nor does it give them any right to sue for redress.

Datway: I know you were joking, but the question is dead serious. No one has yet given me any reason at all to protect, respect, or advocate the recognition of homosexuality by the state. It's entirely a question of behavioral choice. While it's frequently purported that homosexuality is not a choice, the engaging in homosexual behavior certainly is a choice. Roman Catholic priests and nuns are (usually) completely capable of performing heterosexual acts, yet deliberately choose not to, despite what their biological make-up might be. One might argue that they were "born" to feel that way about their religion; to be able to commit enough to make the conscious decision to remain celibate. Since there's no true physical handicap or disability preventing homosexual men from engaging in intercourse with heterosexual women, they are in no way prohibited from being joined in marriage NOW. They have the same right to marry a woman as any other man. In that light, gay marriage is very much a special privilege, and not an inequity to resolve via legislation. For those who think it's all just about some religious edict against homosexual acts, consider this: Why can't two STRAIGHT men, (friends, roommates, whatever) get "married" in order to get tax breaks, insurance breaks, group health insurance, etc., etc., WITHOUT engaging in any mutual sexual activity? If the law were truly discriminatory against sodomy alone, then two heterosexuals could "marry" for the benefits, and "divorce" when no longer mutually beneficial. As I said above, I actually do think that each person should be able to designate a sole beneficiary with power of attorney. But that's hardly all there is to marriage. Perhaps the whole thing could be resolved rationally if there were no particular governmental benefit (or penalty) for marriage, rather than claiming injustice when there really is none.

JL: I'm sorry that happened to you, but assault is not unique to homosexuals. In this matter, the crimes of an individual are as irrelevant as the contributions of an individual. That's why I said I wasn't talking about eliminating individual homosexuals. There's no guarantee that your assaulter wouldn't have assaulted a teenage girl instead, were he heterosexual, just like there's no guarantee Elton John or Oscar Wilde would have been any less successful had they NOT been homosexual.

Tom: The point is that if there is no positive net effect on society, why should society recognize homosexuality as requiring legal steps to protect and advance it?

No, because AIDS is now transmitted primarily between heterosexuals in Africa, and a large percentage of transvestites are heterosexual. Any other answers?

Tom: What would society lose if there were no such thing as homosexuality? I'm not talking about eliminating homosexual individuals, I'm talking about what would we really lose if all homosexuals were heterosexual instead.

I see the whole gay marriage deal as akin to girls wanting to join the Boy Scouts. There's no real advantage to it other than to stir up controversy. I do support the notion that an adult should be able to name a singular other person as his automatic beneficiary, medical decision-maker, and recipient of group health benefits, regardless of the actual relationship. This would cover everybody with the current privileges of marriage without making a sham of the institution. Singles, gays, roommates, best friends, a person should be able to choose someone for their mutual benefit regardless of whether or not they are engaging in any type of sexual activity. Society has a duty to self-perpetuate, sometimes at the cost of certain individual freedoms. The same arguments made for gay "marriage" can be extended to polygamy, incest, and pedophilia as well, but at best there is no net gain to society by allowing any of them. Society cannot self-perpetuate without placing women and children ahead of other marital variations. Incest and pedophilia are directly damaging to children, and polygamy oppresses women, relegating most to nothing more than baby-factories, or worse, objects of gratification. Here's a litmus test. Please fill in the blank in the following sentence to make it true: "Society would lose ___________ if everyone were heterosexual, so homosexuality does serve a vital function."

Really. I liked Bill's performance, when he actually got a chance to perform. Most of the time he's just brooding and moping silently. (Guess Nic Cage wasn't available for this part...that's all he seems to do anymore nowadays, too.)

Here's a link to an article by Card on the problem with courts legislating by decision: Cool New Rights Are Fine, But What About Democracy?

Zixette and I are thinking about driving up that way this spring to check the place out. Or should we not waste our time?

Sudo/Paw: Look again. It says no alcohol in public-use areas. That's the picnic shelters, outdoor areas, etc. If you've rented a cottage or the lodge, though, that's your business until you leave. If you look at the map, the lodge is separated from the other camping/cottage areas, so even a moderate amount of noise probably wouldn't bother any other campers. As for pets, well, is that such a total loss? Were there many at last year's gathering?

Skip it. This is hardly more than a 100-minute long filmed writer's block. It's a shame, too. Bill Murray really gives a nuanced performance, but he's hardly given anything to perform! There are a few excellent scenes, but that's it--no mediocre scenes, no poor scenes! It's all tied together with shot after shot after redundant frickin' shot of the Tokyo skyline or closeups of one actor or another. Coppola can be forgiven this in the first act, when she's setting up the crushing boredom of the two leads, but she keeps it up for the rest of the movie as well when there was so much else to explore between the two. If you take out all the filler shots, this movie would be about half an hour long. The ads for the DVD are hyping this as a comedy, but they are quite misleading, showing only clips from the few scenes where anyone actually MOVES. It's a kernel of a great idea, but it's only a skeleton of what it could have been. Sorry, but it's not really even worth a rental. Wait for cable.

Well, we could always designate one of the bedrooms the "snore room" and put all the offenders in there... Or those who know they're problem-snorers could go for the private cottages overlooking the canyon. Or there's the good ol' tent. The more I read about this place on the net, the more I want to go check it out. They say it's beautiful in the spring and absolutely-not-to-be-missed in the autumn. Hmmm...

From a review on epinions.com: Yet another hmmmm.... :D-->

[in the June issue of Backpacker Magazine] Hmmm.... :)-->

Here's a shot of one of the rooms at a smaller group lodge at Gen. Coffee Park in south Georgia. Presumably Cloudland Canyon's would be slightly larger. lodge bedroom

Here's an interesting idea... Some of the Georgia State Parks have what they call "Group Lodges" which can sleep 12-50 people depending on the park. (see link HERE) Cloudland Canyon Park has one, and is in the North Georgia mountains close to Chattanooga, so it wouldn't be too terribly far away from the old Tim's Ford site. Their group lodge sleeps 40. It includes a large open meeting room, full kitchen (with cooking utensils, fridge, and icemaker) male/female bathrooms, and four separate 10-bunk bedrooms. The site lists the nightly price at $225/night, and that's for the whole lodge, not per person. That is dirt cheap (when split) to have an indoor place to hang out, party, and have private bathrooms. You do have to provide bed linens. Here's the Cloudland Canyon main site: Cloudland Canyon We'd have to reserve several months in advance, but even if only 10 people wanted to sleep in the lodge, that works out to only $67.50 per person for all 3 nights total. There's also a campground for the die-hard tenters, of course. Sounds fun to me, and no pesky park rangers coming up to eighty-six the alcohol. (unless we got REALLY rowdy...) What do you think?

So, incest is okay, then? ;)-->

oldies: If the ministry truly were God's Special Gift to the 20th century, it would not have mattered. In an ideal TWI, VPW would have confessed his transgressions, stepped down from the pulpit, and made restitution to his victims. The ministry would have gone on unabated, because the MOGFODAT would have shown that he was not above the Word he preached. VPW's pride wouldn't let him salvage any shred of integrity. Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall--Proverbs It seems to me that you keep missing the point. Any good that came out of TWI (and there was quite a lot, in many people's lives) can only be attributed to God, working for and through the faithful and true. It happened in spite of VPW's sins, not because of any particular virtue of his. Bashing VPW is not always bashing those believers who didn't fall prey to the insidious lure. Suppose TWI were a car. I may be happy with mine, and you ecstatic with yours, but unfortunately, others bought a lemon or a dangerous deathtrap. In all cases the salesman was only the salesman--it was the product that counted. Now, most have just junked their TWI "car". Some are still running, but nowhere near like they used to. Others have traded for a different car, some have sworn off driving altogether. There are still a few operating Edsels around, mostly for curiosity's sake, but the more Yugos and Pintos off the road, the better off we all are. Not a perfect analogy by any stretch of the imagination, yet time has told that VPW himself wasn't responsible for much of the direct good done, but bore major responsibility for the bad.

Well, what do you know, Zixar made a mistake! It was WhatTheHay who quoted Koestler's Velikovsky book. Mike only praised Koestler in general. I was wrong. See? That wasn't so hard. Some folks should learn a valuable lesson from that.

George: You can praise Google for that bit. ;)--> Nah, whenever anyone brings up Velikovsky as an authority, it's an automatic Nutbar Alert in the astronomy field. Velikovsky is even less credible than JFK conspiracy theorists and UFO believers. According to Velikovsky, Venus passed so close to the Earth their atmospheres touched, and that's where manna came from. (That's impossible. If those two planets came that close to each other, they would both be destroyed by the gravitational forces.) Velikovsky and his adherents can only kindly be described as nucking futs.

Koestler was a sensationalist kook, and the fact that Mike (ADDED LATER: it wasn't Mike, my mistake. See below.--Zix) would quote from a book about Immanuel Velikovsky is just icing on the crazy cake. From Skepdic.com: Read the rest at http://skepdic.com/velikov.htmlVelikovsky was a psychologist who took it upon himself to draw wild conclusions about astronomy in his 1950 book Worlds In Collision. He theorized that Venus had actually been spun out of Jupiter a few thousand years ago, and that most of the miracles of the Old Testament (parting of the Red Sea, manna from heaven, etc.) could be traced to Venus flying by the Earth before settling into its current orbit. Any competent astronomer can tell you the myriad problems with Velikovsky's ridiculous claims, and Carl Sagan thoroughly debunked this idiot. Read the following entry about a condition called apophenia: http://skepdic.com/apophenia.html Briefly: In other words, you'd pretty much have to have the same psychosis in order to see all the meaningfulness Mike seems to see in PFAL. [This message was edited by Zixar on February 03, 2004 at 22:27.]

It's ERNST Mach, and that was a precursor of general relativity and not special relativity. Now go back and edit your post, like you often do, to cover up your gross negligence.Forget skydiving, just go run your car in the garage with the door closed while you're trying to think up your next new kink in your retroactive continuity.