Forced Approval

Once again, we're having the wrong argument.  We're having it because it's the argument the Gay Rights crowd wants us to have, and has suckered the rest of the country into.

To my knowledge, there are no laws that prevent two adults (or more for that matter) to enter a relationship, live together, do whatever together, share everything, raise any resulting children etc.

There may be laws that don't recognize the special relationships even friends might have, that, for instance, allows only "immediate family" to visit someone in a hospital, or to put someone else on their health insurance policy.

These are all issues that can be addressed without redefining the word "marriage" for a culture that rejects the proposed new definition.  These kinds of solutions have been proposed, by creating "legal unions" or "civil unions" as contracts and knit social units recognizable by the state.  But that is, again and again, not what the activists want.  They've rejected that route. They want the word.  It may sound trivial, but it is not.  The word, once it becomes a legal definition, will be used to bludgeon those who don't recognize the unions as "marriage" and as a result refuse to treat it as such.

Rand Paul espouses a solution I have talked about on many occasions.  Take the word "Marriage" out of the tax code - and just enforce contract law, of which marriage is one of many.

The problem is, is that the proposed solution, the only one anybody but a few like Rand Paul are talking about, is to literally change the definition of the word for a a culture that roundly rejects that redefinition. It is the ultimate in cultural insensitivity. But if it were just that, I would have much less of a problem with it.

Now I'm not saying people cannot call their own relationships anything they want to call them, but it is quite another thing to force someone else to call it something they don't recognize it as. This is a special interest group using government power to stomp on existing culture.

If you don't think this is a problem, read Ed Morrisey's article -- I'll excerpt the part I'm talking about here.  File it under "Oh, THAT'LL Never Happen".

"Tolerance, it seems, works only in one direction — and that brings us to the religious argument, but not in the manner one might think.

While as a practicing Catholic my definition of marriage involves its sacramental character, I understand that others may not share my faith and perspective on its meaning or value. That, however, will not work both ways, as recent examples have made plain. For example, a baker in Oregon faces potential criminal charges for refusing to provide a wedding cake for a same-sex couple because of his religious beliefs. What happens when churches refuse to perform such ceremonies for the same reason?

Most people scoff at this question, but religions have partnered with the state on marriages in a way that bakers have not. Priests, ministers, rabbis, and imams act in place of the state when officiating at wedding ceremonies, and states that legalize same-sex marriage are eventually going to be forced by lawsuits to address that partnership, probably sooner rather than later. In similar partnerships, that has resulted in pushing churches out of business."

Got that? If you don't agree with the government definition for religious reasons, tough luck, buddy. Bake 'em a cake, place kids with them even if you believe it is wrong according to your religion -- or go to jail. The First Amendment means nothing.

And apparently neither do legitimate democratic public referendums.

Climategate III is here ....

Climategate 3.0 is in progress.   }--- link

The government-scientist media complex has proven strong.  But this, along with the debunking of the re-bunking of the hockey stick and with the IPCC itself noting that temperatures (data!) are looking to fall out of the 95% certainty band of alarmist predictions, this thing really does look to come crashing down.

Still, if the media continues to refuse to cover this, there are masses out there who have adopted it as their religion who will remain unconvinced.

Ran into an exchange on facebook where a friend said her son had to hide behind her during certain parts of the movie "Ice Age" ... cute enough.

But another friend of hers then commented "[He] knows climate change is scary ... and REAL."

We pray in Gore's name, forever and ever, amen. (eyes roll)

I'm sure the "science" will still be "settled™"

Sooner or later the IPCC was going to have to deal with the fact that it's been over a decade since the earth has shown any warming to speak of.

As I pointed out with historical vs predictive charts a few years back, what we've seen climatologically is not out of the ordinary... I'd say by any stretch of the imagination, but some people's imaginations have proven extraordinarily elastic of late.

Looks like they're thinking about it.

A version of the graph appears in a leaked draft of the IPCC’s landmark Fifth Assessment Report due out later this year. It comes as leading climate scientists begin to admit that their worst fears about global warming will not be realised.

Academics are revising their views after acknowledging the miscalculation. Last night Myles Allen, Oxford University’s Professor of Geosystem Science, said that until recently he believed the world might be on course for a catastrophic temperature rise of more than five degrees this century.

But he now says: ‘The odds have come down,’ – adding that warming is likely to be significantly lower.

Prof Allen says higher estimates are now ‘looking iffy’.