The Suggestion Box

I find a lot of people phrasing their decision in such and such a situation as if they had principles. But when you really think about the alleged principle, can you really put it into words? Is it really a principle? Something you will stick to?

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not going to swear I won't lie; how can you say you're never going to lie, unless you're lying? You wouldn't lie at a job interview? I'm not talking about lies that are a risk to your employment, things they may find out are false and then not hire you or fire you or sue you. I'm talking about, lies that benefit you. You wouldn't make them if they were safe and you could pull them off? If not, is this still out of habit, fear, upbringing, or do you really believe it is, most accurately, a principle?

Your employer asks you what you think about marijuana legalization. You gonna have that debate and risk getting stereotyped? You know 95% of employers or more will condemn you if you even think about marijuana legalization, so wwud? Principles anyone?

Bottom line, for what principles are you willing to actually screw yourself over? Do you have a principle that you'd risk your job over? Your loved one(s)? Your career? Your limbs? etc.

What makes you sure it's a principle?

Please share your thoughts. I want to hear about your principles, because I'm afraid I might not have any.

Travis asked me to read this for his friend; since apparently the topic was closed and the victim banned in order to prevent further trolling, here are my thoughts:

Re: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=82090

First, it's a shame that anyone responded without being able to really imagine what he must have felt like in such a situation. The OP is a clearly written narrative leading you to a specific moment, with a follow up "wonderment" about the moment. If you don't share the moment, you can't answer the question. For those of you who couldn't read it--he is very close friends with someone, and also feels strong love for her, problem is she doesn't feel that way. But their friendship is completely awesome. Now this person, whose friendship alone would be one of the most important and valuable things in your current life (even without the feelings of love, you are sure), says to you something like "if only being friends is really that hard for you, maybe it would be better if we ended it completely--what do you think?" Your head spins--how do you know what to do under the pressure of love and loss of your most valuable friendship on the spot like that? For some people maybe decisions like that are easy, and feelings don't effect that or aren't that strong--but imagine they are. Imagine you're not a douchebag and you actually care--think back to when you watched movies or whatever and actually felt something strongly, nervous, to the point where it makes it hard to think and hard to do anything--maybe in your childhood. This is the situation he's describing; "you're dying inside; you're almost fainting; do you have the strength to rally?"

Gene said this happened to him recently (one of the few people who knows how to post enough so people can see what they are thinking for themselves rather than just agree/disagree with unstated assumptions):

Another thing that's confusing when people debate about certain topics (gay marriage being one of them), is the way people speak of rights. As George Carlin said, you don't have any rights. That's just some bullshit somebody sold to you.

So when people talk about "they have the right to marry" "you don't have a right to marry a horse, or someone with the same genitals as you, or a stapler--only someone with opposite genitals who resembles the class of human you could sometimes make babies with, as this is the most popular way and time-tested blah blah blah"--that isn't saying anything, other than "boo ..." or "yay ..."

People talk about rights, and fairness, and deserving, way too liberally. Think a little about what you're really saying.

The U.S. government grants some people rights. That means they promise not to do certain things, and if they do 'em, you can sue 'em, and hopefully, if those judges aren't too corrupt, and you fight through courts for enough years, you can actually try to be compensated for the damages, and have the shit reversed, and ideally, future cases will reflect the newly found truth of the law. Say the constitution says the government won't make a law respecting the establishment of religion (yes I know it actually says congress, but we have taken it to go further than that, so just roll with it unless you want to repeal a whole mass of bullshit and we can debate this later--bottom line is that we act like the government won't help one religion over another, or non-religious over the religious, etc.) Now some states may make laws that seem to fly against this--it's up to you to spend 10 years of your life to win some case, and then after that, all the government magically stops being bad in this one issue, unless they pass a constitutional amendment (which they don't).

So please, when you talk about rights in the gay rights issue, please remember you're only talking about what people could theoretically win in court according to your interpretation of some part of the bill of rights. I am so tired of people thinking "X has a right" means a damn thing morally and spiritually and universally. Obviously this is pure fantasy so please keep your fantasies where they belong--I have a right not to read them, and they are obscene.

Issue two! We also have this principle of "equal protection under the law", in addition to the right to not have government helping, hindering any specific religion (in other words laws need to have secular reasons only, and not specifically aid or harm people based on religion or non-religion).

equal protection under the law means that the government is supposed to give everyone the same chance; we are all equal in the eyes of the law. obviously this doesn't always work that way and maybe those are just some court cases waiting to be won.

to get an idea what i'm talking about take the issues of race and gender (yes, anthropologists, i know that in your world there's no such thing as race only ethnicity. you PC police changed the colloquial terms into jargon and then said that race doesn't exist only ethnicity. sue me, i think we all know what race means.. whether you're zerg, terran, protoss, nerd, etc.)

equal protection means the judge, the police, the laws, won't treat you different because you're black, white, Hindu, Muslim, a woman, a man. you are judged by the content of your character, by your deeds alone.

obviously sometimes this is hazy. you don't choose to be 18 but if you are 18 you're treated different than 17. and you can say, well everyone gets to age, that's just life. well no, some people die before they get to be 21, there's no guarantees. so people with different ages aren't guaranteed equal protection under the law. however, try to treat someone different for being older--if you are giving them money, then that's okay, but if you're asking that they prove they don't suck at driving, then that would be illegal.

point is there's grey area when it comes to equal protection under the law. we agree not to allow race or gender fuck with things, but that age is usually okay.

what about sexuality? can we make a law that says gays must pay more taxes, or that they can't vote, etc.? if not, then why not? i'm not talking morally here, so put away the kleenex. i'm talking, does the u.s. constitution, as it is generally used throughout history by lawyers, judges, etc. (not how YOU or your fantasy heads read it), make such a law illegal?

i think the answer is yes, and that means that people who are saying "you don't have a right to marriage" and "you don't have a right to be gay" are missing the point.

people have been saying in some topics things like "you choose to be gay, it's not like race", trying to say that you can discriminate against gays because they choose to be that way, that it's not the same as discrimination against blacks, because blacks have no choice whether they are black or not--they can't change it.

if gays can change it, sure. that's an issue to debate another day.

but we agree that for some reason you can't discriminate against gays openly. it's just illegal. so this seems to mean we put gays in the "equal protection under the law" camp, that it does count, as far as the law goes, as the same as race. maybe that's because we believe being gay is not something you do, it's something you are--yes, like being black.

maybe there are other reasons, i don't know. but if we agree that gays deserve equal protection under the law (for whatever reason), that means that you can't make a law that says, x can marry their lover, y can't. x gets these rights and privileges and legal abilities regarding their official state-sanctioned lover, y can't. that's discrimination then--it's the law treating people differently based on groups that they aren't supposed to, YES similar to making gays pay double taxes, or hell, putting all gays in jail, or blacks or Muslims. legally, that's what it's like. so unless you want to change the idea of "equal protection under the law", or can somehow be convincing that it doesn't apply to gays, it seems like all these state laws fucking with gay marriage are unconstitutional.

also, do you have a right to be fat?

This was a reply I PM'd to an OP of another thread, because it had reached 9 pages and had completely derailed. I think this deserves its own blog. This isn't about gay marriage or gay adoption. It's about the movements in California and Florida where people are actively passing laws to make sure gays can't have the same legal privileges as straights when it comes to what legal rights they have for their chosen partnership--with the government saying, "boys, you can only do that with someone who has girl parts." Or, "that's not a real marriage you queers, it's a queeriage." I don't think this should be the business of the government due to the separation of church and state, the freedom of religion, and the principle that say that we don't treat people differently under the law. If you think being gay is a choice then it isn't treating them differently, but that tangent aside (doesn't matter for the argument below), the government shouldn't have any laws about marriage or give benefits for it, especially marriage as Christians view it: it legitimizes one belief in marriage over another--one religious belief:

For Christians, marriage is a specifically religious thing. While history may go back further than Christianity, there can be no doubt that in the west since the dominance of Christianity, marriage has been a religious act for the west, and for Christians it remains a religious act by and large.

However, the government has gotten into the business of using marriage as a legal status. This alone should have offended Christians. It threatens the meaning of marriage for them. The government should have avoided the term, but instead they have acted as an agency that legitimizes marriage, by making them official and even offering benefits, rewards, and special rights for the married.

Clearly they should not be doing this on the basis of "real" marriage as Christians see it. It's an unfortunate turn that they use the same word at all. They should have called it "civil unions" from the start--instead the government has gotten into the business of marriage, which is religious for many people--the reason why people now feel that the government has to have their religions' definition of marriage. But that's just unfortunate.

Maybe they thought at the time they started using "marriage" in the tax codes and in laws that say who gets deported and whatnot, that people could distinguish between legal marriage and sacred marriage, that the two don't have to be the same thing. But obviously most people are just too stupid, and too offended that the government could use a term in a different way than their particular faith.

So I think you are right that religious freedom should strike the word marriage from government use--others should be free to marry as they wish. And on the other hand, we should not be handing out rights and privileges--nor taking them away-- based on religion or sexuality--that's seriously fucked up, to do so.

Makes all the people voting to do this, look VERY VERY bad.