Interactive: You are elected POTUS. What is your agenda for America?

[perdedor]

1) a second "great society": this would invole raising the minimum wage to 13$/hr and indexing to inflation, repealing Obamacare and implementing single payer, tripling food stamp and TANF spending + setting national qualifications that expand access, subsidized internet service, and free community college.

2) promoting intelligence and better culture: this would double spending on the arts/humanities and public media, new (stringent) advertising and television programming restrictions, education reform (national curriculum), internet pornography regulations, gambling prohibition (the horror!). finally this bill would end the drug war and divert all resources freed to a broader war on gangs.

3) nationalize the banking sector.

4) pro-life legislation.

[perdedor]

-Constitutional Amendment banning Gay Marriage nationwide

Wtf?

Yes...in spite of the great progressive circle jerk, there are still people that believe in traditional marriage regulations.

[perdedor]

-Constitutional Amendment affirming rights of states to ban Gay Marriage

I still don't understand your dislike of gays.

I support civil unions as an alternative. I have no hostility towards gays whatsoever.

You must have a little if you don't believe they should be able to get married and actively seek to impose that view on states where the voters or the legislature have decided to enact equal marriage.

The fact I have a husband is worthy of an amendment to annul it. Yet that fact that one in three marriages end in divorce, the average length of a marriage is seven years, people marry, two, three, four, five, six times doesn't merit your attention. It's okay to allow someone to marry and divorce as many times as they want to but won't allow gays and lesbians who have been together for years or decades to marry just once?

Or the fact that people marry for money, for inheritance, under duress, under force, marry after a few drinks at Vegas or marry several times to get new magazine picture deals.

But no; can't have gays marrying. I mean, in my joke post I was being semi serious. Straights have screwed marriage royally; it's cheap and easy and accessible. Business deals have more worth (and longevity) than a lot of marriages. Why shouldn't gays be allowed to take a stab at saving the damn institution?

The present day problems with hetero marriages are not corrected by expanding access to marriage. Realistically, we need marriage reform that goes beyond gay rights.

[perdedor]

Yes, perdador should explain his exact reasoning for why while gays can get civil unioned (and get the same federal benefits as marrieds?), they should not be allowed to call that union "marriage."

Homosexuals are free to call their unions whatever they please, just as I am free to define marriage through the lens of my faith which may exclude their union. If there is no distinguishable legal difference between a "civil union" and a "marriage", the definition of the latter becomes abstract and personal. Any attempt to subvert that with a collective definition, in either progressive or conservative language, would be inflammatory and destructive.

I originally posted that the problems with hetero marriages are not due to a lack of access to marriage, and that's simply a reaction to the argument "hetero marriages are already messed up, so why not homo marriages?". My suggestion was that gay rights and modern marriage problems are not related, is there a progressive here that cares to disagree?

I concluded by saying that we need marriage reform that goes beyond gay rights. My preference would be for the government to operate only in terms of legal unions ("civil unions for all") and to return marriage to the churches and the people to define for themselves. For what its worth, I believe there are many man-woman unions that would not meet the standards of what many consider to be a proper "marriage".

As an aside, someone mentioned that "there are still people who believe in traditional marriage regulations" was the worst post ever. The idea that those against gay marriage are just going to die out and be a non issue anytime soon is a progressive pipe dream.