re: #248 Walter L. Newton

No, I don’t agree with his remarks. I thought calling gays queer went out years ago-but then you have a successful program called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and you have to wonder if “queer” becomes a word like “n*****”. Only those that are within the segment can use it. I noticed in the movie Milk, it was sometimes used as a term of affection.

I know people that were young in the 1950’s still call them queers, so while that word might unsettle me, it doesn’t make others blink.

As the the Constitution, in my opinion there is a fine line between God and the Constitution. I think that the Founding Fathers were Christians. People can quibble about Deists, etc; but if we put our breeches and wigs on and went back into time, I think we would find basically a Christian country. I think that the Constitution espouses basic Christian values that work for a modern society. That’s where it ends for me(and the founders too I think). There should be absolute separation of church and state.

Gay marriage to me is not possible. I don’t think a marriage is anything more than a religious contract. We both can interpret the Bible in different ways like lawyers parsing words to find where God sanctioned or didn’t sanction marriage for the same sex.

However, civil unions are another matter. This is man’s law, and we can determine what ever we want. After all, we have seen tyrants come and go, and they did things under their law that would be an offensive to a Christian(or any other religious person).

Under the guise of civil unions, I can accept gays getting together. If my church decided to sanction religious ceremonies in it, I would leave the church.

I think that there is room for everyone if we follow the precepts of limited government, personal freedom, property rights, and equal opportunity for all.
Create a vibrant economic environment where people have an opportunity to get ahead, and a lot of these social issues go away (like abortion)

I think that statistically, it has been shown that two parent marriages (opposite sex) provide for the best outcomes for kids. I would grant anyone that gays raising children have not been around long enough, or do not have a large enough statistical sample to make any inferences about them. But, once you do have a large enough sample-if kids that came from traditional marriage do significantly statistically better than kids raised by gay parents-what do you do?

If it was statistically proven, would you let traditional marriage people adopt before gay couples because it was better for society as a whole?

Joe didn’t talk about this, but the other hot button is abortion. With regard to abortion, I don’t think that we can play God. But we can say that human life is significant, and that it’s important. So, federally funding abortions seems like a really bad idea to me. Banning late term abortions seems like a good idea to me. But banning abortion in the first trimester, and especially in cases where the life of the mother is in danger, rape, incest seem wrong as well. I think that what most people want is not to see abortion as birth control.

So, I empathize with Joe, even though I don’t agree with him. After reading a lot about Jack Kemp, I think that might be the model of the Republican party we ought to be trying to go for. Don’t know how he felt about gay marriage, but he was certainly pro-life.

Many very difficult questions.