Gay rights

[zrath]

I hope that firedrake_mor doesn't mind too much if I borrow his words on this issue:

"I'm straight, but not narrow, and resent the meme going around demanding one put it up on their LJ or be
considered anti-gay. It is probably that they were simply trying to drum up visible support, but I found it rude
to say the least. Of course, here I am commenting on it, so maybe it served its purpose after all."

I think people know me well enough by now to know where I stand.
Truth, justice, and a better American way
I am a strange visitor from another planet and am not allowed to vote.
I'm in your corner nonetheless.

Comments

[trailer-spot.livejournal.com]

It makes my happy to see that the number of posts I have seen that complain about the original meme is now higher than the number of blogs that blindly posted the original meme.

[dustmeat.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU!!!

[firedrake-mor.livejournal.com]

I don't mind at all . . . the subject of rights, both of individuals and ones subsumed by our government, is exceedingly important right now. Thee are many of them, including free speech and various forms of privacy, under attack right now.

[roycalbeck.livejournal.com]

Really? What speech can you not engage in now that you could ten years ago? I've been here all this time, and nothing on that score has changed.

On the other hand, the Patriot Act EXTENDED First Amendment protections to a wide variety of laws that previously made no such exemptions, such as the 1970 RICO Act (written, debated, passed and signed by a Democrat-controlled Congress and a Democrat President).

Most of the "lost rights" people have been screaming about regarding the Patriot Act were lost in the '30s through '70s via laws which the Patriot Act merely amends. The simple fact is that nobody pays any bloody attention to these things until one party or the other makes an election-year issue out of it.

[firedrake-mor.livejournal.com]

Well, I could point to a certain homeowner who, after telling the Vice President he thought that the Administration's position on Iraq was "repugnant" was arrested.

Or, the "Free Speech Zones" set up in New York during the last Republican convention, which were the ONLY permitted place for protests -- blocks away from anywhere the President was passing.

Don't TELL me nothing has changed. This administration wants to hear NOTHING that doesn't square with their own evaluatuons, and will brook no opposition. Talk to the various generals who disputed the Pentagon's claim of listening to them (you know, like former CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks), or the female brigadier general who was demoted to colonel just before her retirement just for disputing the Abu Ghraib story.

Tell me again what the Patriot Act protects. Come on, tell me.

[roycalbeck.livejournal.com]

"Free Speech Zones" predate Bush. Both Clinton appearances I've attended here in Arizona, same thing: protestors were shuffled away to places out of the way and generally out of sight of the cameras and the event itself.

And on at least one occasion, to my personal knowledge, a Clinton visit to a shopping mall resulted in Secret Service forcing booksellers in the mall to take down front-store displays of books that did not portray Clinton positively.

As for "hearing nothing that doesn't square with its own evaluations", that is in fact nothing new. You can go back to at least Johnson and find keester-kissing generals and advisors who toe the party line no matter what reality says. The Pentagon, for one thing, specifically provided Johnson with backup when he lied about a second US destroyer being attacked by North Vietnamese speedboats, justifying his escalation of the war into the nightmare it became. But there was no such attack, and no one posted in the Vietnam theatre claimed one occurred, either. The daily report for the day of the "attack" mentioned nothing more exciting than a sonarman "chasing his own screws". The Pentagon fabricated the report at his request.

And I'll tell you again: the Patriot Act protects your First Amendment rights regarding such laws as RICO and the Foreign Intelligence Act. It is, for example, no longer illegal to say you want the President to die. Under previous interpretations of the Foreign Intelligence Act, such a statement by itself could legally be interpreted by the FBI to be evidence of conspiracy to commit the actual deed. Now you can wish openly for Bush to die by any number of means --- thanks to Bush.