The two are linked, I think.  I know lots of gay people, and none of them are flamboyant drag queens.  Well, come to think of it, in the days before society to a long hard look at the gay community that lived invisibly among us, there was a teacher at my high school who used to lead the pep rallies wearing purple leotards.  With 20/20 hindsight, he was flamingly gay, but only donned that persona for the pep rallies.  And, come to think of it, he was easily the star attraction at each home coming pep rally.

But anyway, most gay people are invisible among us.  In a parade, the TV is likely to focus on the ones in drag, because they are a more of a spectacle.  That in turn is likely to promote that behavior from attention seekers (think of people who paint their faces at sporting events).

But I completely agree with your comparison to the Civil Rights movement.  Damn those people were well dressed.  The same goes for any blacks whose occupation required that they mingle in white society, like musicians and actors.  They dressed with great elegance, and that helped ease their way into white America's society.  Then again, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see that, if that was the case, some of the exhibitionism might be a response to the perceived need to appear 'normal', and an intentional thumbed nose at a society that they see as exclusionist.

artie_fufkin wrote:

"It's a pretty big leap for the government to come forward and tell a pretty broad range of people that they have to basically ignore their religious teachings because the government has decided what's in society's best interest."

I'm glad you brought religion in the discussion.

And FWIW, the religions that oppose gays get all the press.  I am Episcopalian, and main stream Anglicans have had no big deal with homosexuality for a generation, and it is just the chapters in backwater places like Africa and Alabama that make an issue of it.

Last edited by Max (12/30/2010 12:50 pm)

"In the case of PETA, when you see a naked model chained to a street lamp, does it make you want to become a greater advocate for animal rights or does it make you think that the people at PETA are a bunch of raving lunatics?  Me personally, I choose the latter."

The PETA people ARE an bunch of raving lunatics. As you know, my dad worked at the New England Aquarium for about 25 years, so he was constantly at odd with the PETA people.
There was one episode when they protested because they believed the aquarium was secretly training its dolphins to swim under enemy ships with explosives strapped to them, which would be detonated at the appropriate moment. Unwitting suicide bombers, as it were.
One of the few times dad ever got interviewed on TV was when the PETA folks held another protest about the allegedly harsh conditions the aquarium had for its Antarctic Fur Seal display, which was partially outdoors. Dad had to look the interviewer in the eye without cracking up to tell him the Antarctic generally has lower air and water temperatures than greater Boston.

APRTW wrote:

artie_fufkin wrote:

I always crack up when I hear Limbaugh talk about how the founders would interpret one of today's issues, of course exactly in the manner that matches his opinion. It's easy to speak for someone when they're dead.
I've always thought that if Benjamin Franklin was somehow resurrected and dropped into the present, the thing that would fascinate him the most is the microwave oven. "I can put popcorn in here and cook it in two minutes?!?" And he'd probably spend a lot of his free time in strip clubs. Franklin was a horny bastard.

This brings to mind a important issue, why dont strip clubs serve popcorn?

Would you eat anything cooked at a strip club?

APRTW wrote:

artie_fufkin wrote:

APRTW wrote:

This brings to mind a important issue, why dont strip clubs serve popcorn?

Would you eat anything cooked at a strip club?

I rather eat something cooked then something raw.

Rec ...

Timing is everything

http://entertainment.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/12/30/lingerie-football-league-players-pose-for-new-peta-poster/?test=faces#

Among the things that Framers never envisioned, I posit, are things like open-heart surgery, gene therapy, nuclear energy, and many others.  They did not know what the future would bring and so they created a document that was malleable, such that future generations could fit it to their needs. 

Among the things that we can all agree that the Framers envisioned was a country where each person had equal rights and responsibilities under the law, a meritocracy where each person was allowed to achieve success commensurate with his or her abilities. 

Since we can easily see the relationship between health and future success, between income and success, we can also see that realization of the Framers vision is very difficult when one little baby receives open heart surgery while another perishes from allergies, one little baby receives elite education and another little baby goes to school where drugs and gangs prevail. 

Redistributing wealth from one generation to the next and investing in clean, safe, healthy neighborhoods for our citizens are vital for a meritocracy.  In the past, how to achieve that is where mainstream America diverged.  In the current political landscape, even the wisdom of inheritance tax and public education is contested.  I find this to be a head-in-the-sand, shortsighted mentality, but I agree with AP that we need to stop castigating people and labeling them as evil because their political views differ.  Racists and homophobes were labeled as evil by liberal Americans, and Sean Hannity responded by likening liberalism to terrorism and despotism.  Liberals had it coming, in a way.

Last edited by Max (12/30/2010 3:02 pm)

"But it seems to me that the one thing we can be certain about is that the framers didn't envision a system of government where the federal government would be involved in the citizen's daily lives anywhere near to the extent it is today, and I really doubt they envisioned a system where large segments of society would actually become dependent upon the government."

I'm not certain of that. I think they left things open-ended because they knew enough not to envision any scenario. Sure, I pay taxes, but I'm really not seeing the federal government impact my daily life - unless it's providing me with a 4-lane interstate highway that helps me to get to work (presumably) on time, and emissions standards for auto companies that help me breath a little cleaner air during the all-too-frequent times I'm stuck in traffic on said interstate highway, or the satellite weather system devised thanks to NASA that lets me know if there's snow or rain and I have to leave a little eariler to get to work (to say nothing of the nice glass of Tang I could enjoy once I got here, if I so chose) or banking regulations that ensure when I won't lose all of the money I've earned at work if the economic system should suddenly collapse, or labor laws that guarantee me a minimum wage and prevent my boss from working me 80 hours a week without having to pay me overtime, and if I earn enough in overtime maybe I can travel to our gorgeous national parks that are federally-protected ...

artie_fufkin wrote:

"But it seems to me that the one thing we can be certain about is that the framers didn't envision a system of government where the federal government would be involved in the citizen's daily lives anywhere near to the extent it is today, and I really doubt they envisioned a system where large segments of society would actually become dependent upon the government."

I'm not certain of that. I think they left things open-ended because they knew enough not to envision any scenario. Sure, I pay taxes, but I'm really not seeing the federal government impact my daily life - unless it's providing me with a 4-lane interstate highway that helps me to get to work (presumably) on time, and emissions standards for auto companies that help me breath a little cleaner air during the all-too-frequent times I'm stuck in traffic on said interstate highway, or the satellite weather system devised thanks to NASA that lets me know if there's snow or rain and I have to leave a little eariler to get to work (to say nothing of the nice glass of Tang I could enjoy once I got here, if I so chose) or banking regulations that ensure when I won't lose all of the money I've earned at work if the economic system should suddenly collapse, or labor laws that guarantee me a minimum wage and prevent my boss from working me 80 hours a week without having to pay me overtime, and if I earn enough in overtime maybe I can travel to our gorgeous national parks that are federally-protected ...

That's a fairly utopian view of things.  On the other hand there's the label on my breakfast cereal that is required because someone decided that the American public needed to be told that eating Cocoa Puffs might be less healthy than Wheaties.  The warning labels in my car that remind me that the air bag might be hazardous to my toddler (a toddler that I don't have).  Then there's the 6.2% that I'm required to pay into Social Security which really goes to pay for others' retirement, but ostensibly is money the government requires me to contribute for my retirement under the notion that it can manage that 6.2% better than I can.  I could go on, but I'm depressing myself.

Even if I stick to your example, do you really believe those roads wouldn't exist without the federal government?  Are there roads in Massachusetts that are maintained by someone other than the federal government?  Of course there are.  By the way, how much did that federal highway cost?  Was the bid given to the most efficient contractor or was it given to someone who promised to meet some flawed criteria established by the OFCCP?

For years the federal postal service had a virtual monopoly on delivery of mail and other similar items.  With the introduction of private competing companies, the post office is becoming nearly obsolete.  Sure, there are a lot of things the federal government does that are nice, but is it necessary for the federal government to provide these ameneties/services and is it the most efficient at doing so?  With few exceptions, the answer is a resounding "no."

forsberg_us wrote:

That's a fairly utopian view of things.  On the other hand there's the label on my breakfast cereal that is required because someone decided that the American public needed to be told that eating Cocoa Puffs might be less healthy than Wheaties.  The warning labels in my car that remind me that the air bag might be hazardous to my toddler (a toddler that I don't have).  Then there's the 6.2% that I'm required to pay into Social Security which really goes to pay for others' retirement, but ostensibly is money the government requires me to contribute for my retirement under the notion that it can manage that 6.2% better than I can.  I could go on, but I'm depressing myself.

FWIW, I agree with everyone of those.  Have you ever read the story of the first child who was killed by an air bag?  It's heartbreaking.  If I recall this correctly, it was a 5 mph bumper-to-bumper collision in a supermarket parking lot that did no damage to either car.  The airbags deployed and the driver's daughter (8?, 12?) sitting in the passenger was killed instantly of a broken neck.  The father driving the car couldn't believe that his daughter was non-responsive from such a little tiny accident.  The simple fact was that no one knew or even suspected such a thing could occur.  Using Lincoln's axiom that we will only do collectively those things that we cannot do better individually: do you have a better way to inform and remind 300 million Americans of the dangers of having a child in the passenger seat with an armed air bag than requiring manufacturers to afix a label that costs pennies  onto the dashboard?

Given that a healthy diet is key to a healthy society, should the entire nation become nutritionists and then individually track down the nutrition information for each and every product?  Or doesn't it actually make more sense to hire a surgeon general to inform Americans of nutrition guidelines and then require manufacturers to list the nutritional information in their product and calculate how it fulfills the surgeon general's guidelines?

As for SS, you repeat the big fallacy of our generation.  You are not paying 6.2% for your retirement.  You are paying 6.2% to eradicate poverty among the elderly during your working years.  Hooray!  I am all for that.  Between SS, Medicare, and a few other programs, abject poverty among the elderly (remember the stereotype of elderly people eating Alpo?) had been essentially eradicated in our country by the 1970s.  But since Reagan, the GOP has waged an incessant war against this for some reason, deciding that those tax dollars are not worth providing some measure of a safety net for our elderly.

Since back then it was a non-starter to discuss doing away with SS or Medicare, their unpleasant solution was simply to cut taxes, generate large federal budget deficits and eventually ask Americans to choose between low taxes with a very limited social safety net, or return to the tax levels of the 1940s through 1970s and enjoy a social safety similar to what people in other economically advanced nations get.

Last edited by Max (12/30/2010 5:14 pm)

Why does everyone think that the "Framers" were so fucking smart?  Has anyone ever considered that they might have not known what the hell they were doing either?

Last edited by APRTW (12/30/2010 6:25 pm)

"That's a fairly utopian view of things"

I'm an incredibly optimistic person.