This is hilarious, but maybe the way Benson intended. So many philandering, divorcing Republicans… not to mention the ones that are married but closeted homosexuals.Who is threatening traditional marriage values again?
@ Uncle Joe, I don’t think Lisa knows how good the cartoon is. The Republican Party is deeply divided, but also in deep denial. The denial is all that holds their voters in line. Democrats are divided too, but not so deep and not in denial about it. Republicans have old line (limited government, except on social issues – where the meddling should be done “locally”) and Neoconservative (new world order folks who want corporations to supersede democracy). What would help both parties (to the extent that they want democracy to succeed and their goals actually embraced by the American people, would be to do away with winner take all elections for the House and local government. (Yes more like a Parliament.) Unfortunately, I don’t see a way to move in that direction, but without it there will never be more than two parties and they will always be internally at odds.
Wow. “Father knows best” is alive and well. At least you guys didn’t pull the old slippery slope to bestiality and the, I wouldn’t want my sister to marry one. As long as we are trotting out platitudes, how about, Live and let live, or MYOB. I personally don’t care if my neighbors are gay or inclined to collect tea cozies, so long as they trim their hedges and keep their yards clean.
Actually, homosexuals have a lower fidelity rate on a massive magnitude than straight couples (males are 4.5% gay compared to 75% hetero). Try again Wolf."try comparing straight het males with homosexuals. then couples to couples.not sure where you would get objective numbers about this. not likely people would answer, or answer truthfully, even if you had a study.
You make a very compelling argument. I won’t deny your question raises a very valid point. Of course not, would be the answer. My comments above were simply pointing out the unintended consequences of those actions. For example, it is the right of any woman to have a child at any age of her choosing. However, women over 40 who do have children frequently have either birth defects in those children or they have a much more difficult pregnancy. It is their right to have that child, but with it comes consequences. That’s what I’m getting at with the idea that same-sex couples are raising children. It may be their right to have a child, but its impact on those children is still unknown, and we don’t know what will happen next. But what we do know is that nature designed us (god or not) to have male + female to create life. Male + Male or Female + Female = genetic dead end.@ Bruce:Fair arguments as well. I guess I look at another piece of culture when I’m making my comments. The black community has a notoriously high illegitimacy rate (bear with me on this one), and most of those are single mothers. What we have seen happen is that daughters raised by single mothers (especially young single mothers) perpetuate the cycle and become single mothers themselves. This wreaks havoc on the social structure of our country. There is a statistic that (yes, even) Bloomberg is trying to leverage in New York that if you graduate high school and get married before you have children, you only have a 3% chance of ever touching the poverty line. We have also seen that males raised by single mothers are very in-touch with how a female acts, but when it comes to fidelity and supporting their dependents, the fathers of these children are missing. They are missing because they don’t have solid “father” figures in their lives telling them what is right and wrong, and providing a solid and firm structure for those boys.So when you combine the social morays stated above, you get a volatile combination of lax control by the girls and lax discipline in the boys that creates a 70% illegitimacy rate inside a community.So how does this tie into the same-sex parent discussion? Well, it’s because the absence of a gender role in a specific group has already proven to cause problems for that group. So we very likely could see the same problems (or similar problems) in another group with the same lack of gender roles. While it’s not certain, it’s hard to argue that it can’t happen.
“Have you noticed,the only ones who care about philandering,divorcing republicans are philandering divorcing democrats?”No, but I’ve noticed the only ones trying to legislate their sexual morals, are Republicans who can’t even abide by those morals themselves. Ancient Rome had very different morals than we do, long before they went into decline. The lavish & decadent rich were running the show before Julius Cesar. Behavior we would find appalling was routine. Homosexual behavior was fairly acceptable.Rome didn’t really start declining until the Empire become Christian, but only an idiot would think that was the primary cause. The rise of Christianity did come at the expense of Imperial power, though.Rome failed in part because of internal decay & the halt of expansion which was their main source of government revenue. Rome lacked an efficient tax policy to fund the cost of defending the Empire. The main reason why Rome fell, was that they were overrun by Germans fleeing from the Huns.There is little useful comparison between the Fall of Rome & the state of our nation.
“traditional marriage” began with God’s wedding service for Adam and Eve.-I saw a quote of Martin Luther King recently, to paraphrase=government laws should square with God’s Law.I agree.-The GOP will commit political party suicide if they approve of this evil movement to change the United States of America’s system into a legalized United Sodom States of America!-just because a few radicals monopolize the MSM and internet social sites, does not alter the fact that the majority of Americans still support one man/one woman in legal marriage. What happened to “the majority wins”???
“No, that would be God who says what God’s morality is. And if you can see no difference between Christianity and Islam, you obviously have little understanding of either.so you speak for god too.
There have been some good comments here. There are others that forget the founders had good reason to keep religious requirements from being a part of gov’t policy. The founders may have found the gay culture improper, but we’ll never know and the Constitution permitted more freedoms than restrictions.^I agree with Chief Justice Roberts. This is about a label. A civil wedding is a civil marriage and is therefore a marriage. A Catholic wedding where the priest says, "by the power granted to me by the state of (confusion?) Virginia, New York, etc etc. is a religious wedding with civil validation and is also a civil union of sorts. ^Homosexuals do NOT have the right to force a church to allow them to marry in a specific church unless that church, its congregation, and its doctrine allows gays to marry. ^Does a justice of the peace have the right to decline to marry a gay couple? A judge can recluse himself from a case where he feels there is a conflict of interest.^This is a complicated issue for people whose religious ideology is more important than separation of church and state. But for those who recognize gov’t has a duty to all voters, and not just the ones with religious convictions, there is no conflict. The opinions of the majority do not dictate the behavior and quality of life of the minority.Respectfully,C.
Then I apologize… I didn’t know that. I would never intentionally link to a hate group.Instead, I’ve found this, specifically the last post. There is a lot of data to sort there, but basically the summary is this:Hetero couples show roughly an 80% fidelity rate.Homo couples (at least males) show roughly a 3% fidelity rate. I don’t know about numbers for females, but this proves that while the FRC is labeled a “hate group,” it doesn’t invalidate their findings.
“Evolution, to professionals, is adaptation to changing environments, not progress.” Don’t argue with me, argue with Gould. I’m no authority, but he certainly is.+Your comment about DrC shows that you cling to your error. Are you not at all curious to know why I say that you misunderstand him? Evidently it’s more important to you to maintain your position than to ask a simple question.
Well, I’m not sure where to go in this conversation. I fear our disagreements run too deep for profitable discussion.+I will say, however, that I firmly believe that people have a good deal of freedom to make moral decisions. I work pretty hard to try to be a moral person. I don’t always claim to know what’s right and what’s wrong, but I do my best to figure it out and to act morally. If you say that I can’t believe that people have the kind of freedom to make moral decisions, well, I would simply say that you’re wrong, because I do believe that people have that freedom.
No, no, no — she was an atheist, therefore she was Jeffrey Dahmer’s aunt. I mean, she thought that people are little billiard balls, and there is no such thing as choice or morality. That’s the objective truth.
"Frida und ich lesen Witze. “Zwei Kinder stehen vor dem Standesamt und betrachten das Brautpaar…” Ich frage zur Sicherheit nach: “Weißt du, was ein Brautpaar ist?” – “Ja, das ist wenn ein Mann und eine Frau oder zwei Männer oder zwei Frauen…”
Frida and I were reading jokes. “Two children stand in front of the registrar’s office and look at the bridal-pair …”Just in case I ask her, “Do you know what a bridal-pair is?” – “Yes, that is when a man and a woman or two men or two women …”
Hi DrC — well, I just have to do it. I have an idea I know your reasoning, but if you’re willing, I’d be curious to see the details. I’m sure I’ll learn something.
How else? Have you read Roldolfo Llinas, “I of the Vortex”? A mix of evolution and neuroscience. Pretty interesting. But do you believe in a “will” that can be “free”? I would be happy to jettison the “will” and just say that people can “choose” — for that matter, so can dogs and cats. But the emphasis is on the verbal quality of the act of choosing rather than on the nominal aspect of a thing-like will.+It’s true that we have an extra kind of self awareness that dogs and cats don’t have; but chimps probably do have some self-awareness. As always, I would note how we emerge from the non-human without sharp breaks — though the disappearance of the other species in the genus Homo makes it look as if the breaks were sharper than they were. (Here I also refer to Jerad Diamond’s “The Third Chimpanzee”.) I would also say that language increases the potential for self-awareness, partly through interior dialogue: “I talk to myself, therefore I am”.+And morals, of course, evolve as well. Different circumstances call for different moral codes. But at the basis is survival — a group with a moral code that doesn’t contribute to survival is not going to hang around. But as the environment changes, what moral code promotes survival also changes.+Here I would also note the “emic” v. “etic” distinction pioneered by Kenneth Pike — those who want an absolute and universal moral code would be in the same position as someone who insists that there should be one sound system for all languages. Linguists can fruitfully look for language universals at a certain level of abstraction, but the speakers of a language have to use the sound system they are handed by the culture.
Well, you’ve created an artificial environment and an artificial problem for the dog — like Skinner’s pigeons. I don’t think that gives a fair result. My dog has two favorite toys — Lil and Lambchop. When she goes into her crate, she picks one or the other for company — we can’t predict which she will pick, and I don’t have any reason to believe that given more information we could predict. I think she’s making a choice. But I see your point about the lower faculty. The question is, does it suffice? Or do you simply rule that it will suffice even though you can’t in practice make it suffice?
Hmm. I think we’re in Dennett territory here. I should go back and remind myself of what he has to say. But you’ll do as well, so tell me where I go wrong and how I should correct the argument. As you know, this is not what I spend my time on, and I am not committed to my positions here. Teach me.
First, I’m not sure how much importance I want to give to consciousness here. I’m not sure that consciousness and choices are co-extensive. In general my feeling is that conscious comes late and contributes little. But it makes a disproportionate amount of noise, and therefore people pay more attention to it than it deserves. One of the most important decisions I ever made (I can tell you about it privately) I made after much study and long thought, but when the decision came, it didn’t come from any conscious thought process – it just felt right. Conscious thought ratified it later. As a performing artist (at times), I generally first spend a lot of moderately conscious effort gaining a complex physical skill, then as soon as I have it, I park it in some part of my brain that isn’t conscious, and I depend on that part of me to do the job. If I had to devote conscious to the artistic tasks, I would flub all the time. And other performers I know report the same. So I’m less interested in consciousness than some people are.
Even so, I hold that people can choose, sometimes consciously, sometimes not. So first I guess I would ask, “Do you hold that people can choose?” (I could say “make choices”, but again I’m trying to avoid nouns where I think verbs are more appropriate – perhaps not worth the trouble.) Note that I’m not talking about frequency or importance, just capacity. Just laying groundwork here for the next question.
A further thought: I can imagine that a psychologist might say, Of course I grant that most people can see, and of course I know the difference between a person who can see and a person who can’t see (who is blind), but I also know that the physiology and the psychology of vision is very different from what most people imagine it is; here is an account of how vision works (and a large book follows). Is it the case that the same psychologist might say, Of course I grant that most people make decisions, and of course I know the difference between a person who can make decisions and a person who can’t make decisions (say, a person with advanced dementia). but I also know that the physiology and the psychology of making decisions is very different from what most people imagine it is; here is an account of how decision making works: (my first question is, would you be such a psychologist? and my second question is, Does this account exist? I guess “Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow” would be part of the answer.)
I certainly don’t speak for all atheists (and actually I don’t call myself an atheist, anyway), but I do agree that I don’t claim to have an “absolute” and “objective” moral theory — I freely admit that I’m a moral relativist, but I rather expect that everyone is, so to me that’s no big deal. So long as I can work out what is moral when and where I am and try to do what’s right in my own time and place, that’s enough for me.
Uncle Joe Premium Member about 11 years ago
This is hilarious, but maybe the way Benson intended. So many philandering, divorcing Republicans… not to mention the ones that are married but closeted homosexuals.Who is threatening traditional marriage values again?
braindead Premium Member about 11 years ago
^ Shhh. Don’t tell the ‘conservatives’. They want to elect Sanford to Congress.
Yontrop about 11 years ago
@ Uncle Joe, I don’t think Lisa knows how good the cartoon is. The Republican Party is deeply divided, but also in deep denial. The denial is all that holds their voters in line. Democrats are divided too, but not so deep and not in denial about it. Republicans have old line (limited government, except on social issues – where the meddling should be done “locally”) and Neoconservative (new world order folks who want corporations to supersede democracy). What would help both parties (to the extent that they want democracy to succeed and their goals actually embraced by the American people, would be to do away with winner take all elections for the House and local government. (Yes more like a Parliament.) Unfortunately, I don’t see a way to move in that direction, but without it there will never be more than two parties and they will always be internally at odds.
alc7 Premium Member about 11 years ago
dannysixpack about 11 years ago
Wraithkin said, 40 minutes ago
“@Bruce4671
Actually, homosexuals have a lower fidelity rate on a massive magnitude than straight couples (males are 4.5% gay compared to 75% hetero). Try again Wolf."try comparing straight het males with homosexuals. then couples to couples.not sure where you would get objective numbers about this. not likely people would answer, or answer truthfully, even if you had a study.
Wraithkin about 11 years ago
You make a very compelling argument. I won’t deny your question raises a very valid point. Of course not, would be the answer. My comments above were simply pointing out the unintended consequences of those actions. For example, it is the right of any woman to have a child at any age of her choosing. However, women over 40 who do have children frequently have either birth defects in those children or they have a much more difficult pregnancy. It is their right to have that child, but with it comes consequences. That’s what I’m getting at with the idea that same-sex couples are raising children. It may be their right to have a child, but its impact on those children is still unknown, and we don’t know what will happen next. But what we do know is that nature designed us (god or not) to have male + female to create life. Male + Male or Female + Female = genetic dead end.@ Bruce:Fair arguments as well. I guess I look at another piece of culture when I’m making my comments. The black community has a notoriously high illegitimacy rate (bear with me on this one), and most of those are single mothers. What we have seen happen is that daughters raised by single mothers (especially young single mothers) perpetuate the cycle and become single mothers themselves. This wreaks havoc on the social structure of our country. There is a statistic that (yes, even) Bloomberg is trying to leverage in New York that if you graduate high school and get married before you have children, you only have a 3% chance of ever touching the poverty line. We have also seen that males raised by single mothers are very in-touch with how a female acts, but when it comes to fidelity and supporting their dependents, the fathers of these children are missing. They are missing because they don’t have solid “father” figures in their lives telling them what is right and wrong, and providing a solid and firm structure for those boys.So when you combine the social morays stated above, you get a volatile combination of lax control by the girls and lax discipline in the boys that creates a 70% illegitimacy rate inside a community.So how does this tie into the same-sex parent discussion? Well, it’s because the absence of a gender role in a specific group has already proven to cause problems for that group. So we very likely could see the same problems (or similar problems) in another group with the same lack of gender roles. While it’s not certain, it’s hard to argue that it can’t happen.
Uncle Joe Premium Member about 11 years ago
“Have you noticed,the only ones who care about philandering,divorcing republicans are philandering divorcing democrats?”No, but I’ve noticed the only ones trying to legislate their sexual morals, are Republicans who can’t even abide by those morals themselves. Ancient Rome had very different morals than we do, long before they went into decline. The lavish & decadent rich were running the show before Julius Cesar. Behavior we would find appalling was routine. Homosexual behavior was fairly acceptable.Rome didn’t really start declining until the Empire become Christian, but only an idiot would think that was the primary cause. The rise of Christianity did come at the expense of Imperial power, though.Rome failed in part because of internal decay & the halt of expansion which was their main source of government revenue. Rome lacked an efficient tax policy to fund the cost of defending the Empire. The main reason why Rome fell, was that they were overrun by Germans fleeing from the Huns.There is little useful comparison between the Fall of Rome & the state of our nation.
disgustedtaxpayer about 11 years ago
“traditional marriage” began with God’s wedding service for Adam and Eve.-I saw a quote of Martin Luther King recently, to paraphrase=government laws should square with God’s Law.I agree.-The GOP will commit political party suicide if they approve of this evil movement to change the United States of America’s system into a legalized United Sodom States of America!-just because a few radicals monopolize the MSM and internet social sites, does not alter the fact that the majority of Americans still support one man/one woman in legal marriage. What happened to “the majority wins”???
dannysixpack about 11 years ago
exoticdoc2 said, about 5 hours ago
“No, that would be God who says what God’s morality is. And if you can see no difference between Christianity and Islam, you obviously have little understanding of either.so you speak for god too.
chazandru about 11 years ago
There have been some good comments here. There are others that forget the founders had good reason to keep religious requirements from being a part of gov’t policy. The founders may have found the gay culture improper, but we’ll never know and the Constitution permitted more freedoms than restrictions.^I agree with Chief Justice Roberts. This is about a label. A civil wedding is a civil marriage and is therefore a marriage. A Catholic wedding where the priest says, "by the power granted to me by the state of (confusion?) Virginia, New York, etc etc. is a religious wedding with civil validation and is also a civil union of sorts. ^Homosexuals do NOT have the right to force a church to allow them to marry in a specific church unless that church, its congregation, and its doctrine allows gays to marry. ^Does a justice of the peace have the right to decline to marry a gay couple? A judge can recluse himself from a case where he feels there is a conflict of interest.^This is a complicated issue for people whose religious ideology is more important than separation of church and state. But for those who recognize gov’t has a duty to all voters, and not just the ones with religious convictions, there is no conflict. The opinions of the majority do not dictate the behavior and quality of life of the minority.Respectfully,C.
Wraithkin about 11 years ago
Then I apologize… I didn’t know that. I would never intentionally link to a hate group.Instead, I’ve found this, specifically the last post. There is a lot of data to sort there, but basically the summary is this:Hetero couples show roughly an 80% fidelity rate.Homo couples (at least males) show roughly a 3% fidelity rate. I don’t know about numbers for females, but this proves that while the FRC is labeled a “hate group,” it doesn’t invalidate their findings.
lonecat about 11 years ago
Silence.
lonecat about 11 years ago
“Evolution, to professionals, is adaptation to changing environments, not progress.” Don’t argue with me, argue with Gould. I’m no authority, but he certainly is.+Your comment about DrC shows that you cling to your error. Are you not at all curious to know why I say that you misunderstand him? Evidently it’s more important to you to maintain your position than to ask a simple question.
lonecat about 11 years ago
Well, I’m not sure where to go in this conversation. I fear our disagreements run too deep for profitable discussion.+I will say, however, that I firmly believe that people have a good deal of freedom to make moral decisions. I work pretty hard to try to be a moral person. I don’t always claim to know what’s right and what’s wrong, but I do my best to figure it out and to act morally. If you say that I can’t believe that people have the kind of freedom to make moral decisions, well, I would simply say that you’re wrong, because I do believe that people have that freedom.
lonecat about 11 years ago
I wish I’d been there. Congratulations on the end of term.
lonecat about 11 years ago
No, no, no — she was an atheist, therefore she was Jeffrey Dahmer’s aunt. I mean, she thought that people are little billiard balls, and there is no such thing as choice or morality. That’s the objective truth.
OmqR-IV.0 about 11 years ago
Grabbed this off my wife’s facebook:
"Frida und ich lesen Witze. “Zwei Kinder stehen vor dem Standesamt und betrachten das Brautpaar…” Ich frage zur Sicherheit nach: “Weißt du, was ein Brautpaar ist?” – “Ja, das ist wenn ein Mann und eine Frau oder zwei Männer oder zwei Frauen…”
Frida and I were reading jokes. “Two children stand in front of the registrar’s office and look at the bridal-pair …”Just in case I ask her, “Do you know what a bridal-pair is?” – “Yes, that is when a man and a woman or two men or two women …”
Ah, from the mouth of babes (or 5 year olds).
lonecat about 11 years ago
Hi DrC — well, I just have to do it. I have an idea I know your reasoning, but if you’re willing, I’d be curious to see the details. I’m sure I’ll learn something.
lonecat about 11 years ago
How else? Have you read Roldolfo Llinas, “I of the Vortex”? A mix of evolution and neuroscience. Pretty interesting. But do you believe in a “will” that can be “free”? I would be happy to jettison the “will” and just say that people can “choose” — for that matter, so can dogs and cats. But the emphasis is on the verbal quality of the act of choosing rather than on the nominal aspect of a thing-like will.+It’s true that we have an extra kind of self awareness that dogs and cats don’t have; but chimps probably do have some self-awareness. As always, I would note how we emerge from the non-human without sharp breaks — though the disappearance of the other species in the genus Homo makes it look as if the breaks were sharper than they were. (Here I also refer to Jerad Diamond’s “The Third Chimpanzee”.) I would also say that language increases the potential for self-awareness, partly through interior dialogue: “I talk to myself, therefore I am”.+And morals, of course, evolve as well. Different circumstances call for different moral codes. But at the basis is survival — a group with a moral code that doesn’t contribute to survival is not going to hang around. But as the environment changes, what moral code promotes survival also changes.+Here I would also note the “emic” v. “etic” distinction pioneered by Kenneth Pike — those who want an absolute and universal moral code would be in the same position as someone who insists that there should be one sound system for all languages. Linguists can fruitfully look for language universals at a certain level of abstraction, but the speakers of a language have to use the sound system they are handed by the culture.
lonecat about 11 years ago
Well, you’ve created an artificial environment and an artificial problem for the dog — like Skinner’s pigeons. I don’t think that gives a fair result. My dog has two favorite toys — Lil and Lambchop. When she goes into her crate, she picks one or the other for company — we can’t predict which she will pick, and I don’t have any reason to believe that given more information we could predict. I think she’s making a choice. But I see your point about the lower faculty. The question is, does it suffice? Or do you simply rule that it will suffice even though you can’t in practice make it suffice?
lonecat about 11 years ago
Those are good arguments. Let me think.
lonecat about 11 years ago
Hmm. I think we’re in Dennett territory here. I should go back and remind myself of what he has to say. But you’ll do as well, so tell me where I go wrong and how I should correct the argument. As you know, this is not what I spend my time on, and I am not committed to my positions here. Teach me.
First, I’m not sure how much importance I want to give to consciousness here. I’m not sure that consciousness and choices are co-extensive. In general my feeling is that conscious comes late and contributes little. But it makes a disproportionate amount of noise, and therefore people pay more attention to it than it deserves. One of the most important decisions I ever made (I can tell you about it privately) I made after much study and long thought, but when the decision came, it didn’t come from any conscious thought process – it just felt right. Conscious thought ratified it later. As a performing artist (at times), I generally first spend a lot of moderately conscious effort gaining a complex physical skill, then as soon as I have it, I park it in some part of my brain that isn’t conscious, and I depend on that part of me to do the job. If I had to devote conscious to the artistic tasks, I would flub all the time. And other performers I know report the same. So I’m less interested in consciousness than some people are.
Even so, I hold that people can choose, sometimes consciously, sometimes not. So first I guess I would ask, “Do you hold that people can choose?” (I could say “make choices”, but again I’m trying to avoid nouns where I think verbs are more appropriate – perhaps not worth the trouble.) Note that I’m not talking about frequency or importance, just capacity. Just laying groundwork here for the next question.
lonecat about 11 years ago
A further thought: I can imagine that a psychologist might say, Of course I grant that most people can see, and of course I know the difference between a person who can see and a person who can’t see (who is blind), but I also know that the physiology and the psychology of vision is very different from what most people imagine it is; here is an account of how vision works (and a large book follows). Is it the case that the same psychologist might say, Of course I grant that most people make decisions, and of course I know the difference between a person who can make decisions and a person who can’t make decisions (say, a person with advanced dementia). but I also know that the physiology and the psychology of making decisions is very different from what most people imagine it is; here is an account of how decision making works: (my first question is, would you be such a psychologist? and my second question is, Does this account exist? I guess “Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow” would be part of the answer.)
lonecat about 11 years ago
Nicely done. Elegant.
lonecat about 11 years ago
I certainly don’t speak for all atheists (and actually I don’t call myself an atheist, anyway), but I do agree that I don’t claim to have an “absolute” and “objective” moral theory — I freely admit that I’m a moral relativist, but I rather expect that everyone is, so to me that’s no big deal. So long as I can work out what is moral when and where I am and try to do what’s right in my own time and place, that’s enough for me.