BTW, does this new “silver biscuit” come with bigot or troll repellant? Or really cool bunny clips? (Haven’t figured out the secret decoder part yet)

Laugh at the fools. Pisses ‘em off.

Democrats, on the other hand, do not have this problem as they really don’t have standards when it comes to moral issues.

Well, homosexuality is not a moral issue. Period. If you’re insisting that it is, in particular that being gay is immoral, you’re a bigot, pure and simple.

Begone bigot.

You came up with 3 big paragraphs of gobbledegook about whatever. Thanks Michael, for providing in one sentence the essence of conservatism: if things require intelligence to understand, conservatives either can’t or won’t address them. Bravo!

Now that’s criticism. What about those big words? Do they also hurt your widdle noggin?

Wouldn’t be a big surprise, since you couldn’t keep to your line about hypocrisy not applying to Democrats (because they have no moral standards, y’see) for two whole posts.

You came up with 3 big paragraphs of gobbledegook about whatever. In the meantime, Ted Kennedy has been a senator for decades(Chapaquiddick), Barney Frank is still around, and Gerry Studds was reelected by his constituents after having sex with underage pages. Democrats don’t care about these things.

Democrats also have their leaders telling us not to drive SUVs, and use energy efficient light bulbs, while they live in 29,000 sq. ft. homes, fly around in Gulfstream jets, and have utility bills 20 times the normal household. That is hypocrisy.

Democrats, on the other hand, do not have this problem as they really don’t have standards when it comes to moral issues.

This is a fairly typical conservative argument, the rather repellent semantic game that American conservativess play around the word “morality”. In the mainstream media and conservative / right-wing / Christian discourse, the word is taken to mean, almost exclusively, sexual morality. Improper Sex = Immoral; Immoral = Improper Sex. A closed loop. Taken from such a foolish and limited starting point, a conservative is correct in stating that Democrats lack “morality”, in the way that a man in a hole is correct when he looks up at somebody on the ground and says, “you’re taller than me”.

The notion of “morality” having wider and more noble definitions (both as word and goal) escapes conservatives. What would such a wider definition be? A reasonable working start might be this: societal morality in its positive sense is the the proper, dignified personal, political and economic treatment of one’s fellow humans; societal morality in its negative sense is determining those acts which injure others and making them both illegal and socially unacceptable.. You’ll note that I said societal morality. Other kinds of morality within subgroups are inevitable, especially religious subgroups, (don’t each pork or god will hate you… that sort of thing).

This is where conservatives, especially religious conservatives, err. They believe that their particular subgroup morality is the same as societal morality and, if it isn’t, it should be made to be so. So-called sexual morality, absent harm to another, does not matter a great deal to liberals and progressives. You’re right, michael carr, we don’t have many standards in that regard because it is not up to us to set standards regarding things between consenting adults in a free society that are none of our business. We don’t tell divorced people that they can’t hold office, we don’t tell pork-eaters that they can’t own property, we don’t tell women that not wearing a burka merits a death sentence, and we don’t tell gay people that they can’t get a civil marriage. We care about civil liberties, which is where we can put the boots to the old canard that gays are seeking special privileges. They’re not. They are merely seeking basic civil rights and dignities that you and I take for granted.

Which brings us back to sex and “morality”. We have seen over the past few decades that liberals and progressives do care more about America’s constitution and thus its democracy, economic, judicial and legislative systems. Conservatives don’t mind if years of those magnificent achievements go down the tubes; they only care about telling people not to bonk. Liberals don’t give much of a damn about sexual identity or choices from a public policy level. Our morality is too caught up in things that do matter. We don’t believe that it’s right that your neighbour doesn’t have enough food to feed her kids, or will never be able to afford a life-saving operation which the citizen of every other first world country takes for granted. We think that everybody should be able to vote, to have their vote counted and to have that count determine who wins. We care about going to war when we need to, and not when a tiny group of men wants to and has to twist facts in order to launch a war that could not happen without the lies.

Deal with it.

However, if such a waste of time of a law will actually win an ally, I’m all for it. Tell me how I can assist you in bringing about a law that will protect clergy from civil and criminal liability for refusing to perform a gay marriage (I work in a law office, and I will check for language that either protects clergy from other liability or discriminates against gay marriage itself), and I will do so. After you give me an agreement, in writing, under your real signature, that you will desist from your efforts against gay marriage. Even better will be showing me verifiable evidence of beginning to work for gay marriage. A receipt for a donation to an organization that supports gay marriage would be ideal.

Do we have a deal?

Democrats, on the other hand, do not have this problem as they really don’t have standards when it comes to moral issues. They pretty much are OK with whatever anyone wants to do, so the hypocrisy issue doesn’t usually apply to them.

You may want to check out your definition of hypocrisy. Liberals do have morals, we just don’t require that everyone adhere to our own.However, we do concern ourselves with hypocrisy, namely in the disjuncture between what one professes and what one does.

Since we feel less compunction to cover up our moral positions on things, since there is less judgement on those of others as I said above, there is not so much of said disjuncture, and hence less hypocrisy.

Democrats, on the other hand, do not have this problem as they really don’t have standards when it comes to moral issues. They pretty much are OK with whatever anyone wants to do, so the hypocrisy issue doesn’t usually apply to them.

They may appeal. But I haven’t found any information on whether they did or not.