Steve King: "I don’t expect to meet [gays] should I make it to heaven."

[Slander and/or Libel]

Marriage equality affects everyone. The United States hasn't been living up to the Equal Protection Clause of the  Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. So, it may not personally interest you; but, then again, the LGBT community isn't interesting in waiting for you to become possibly supportive. So, giving LGBT persons their due equal rights for legal marriage, as experienced by heterosexual persons, is the solution to that particular issue. Other "current problems" are just more topics. This one does not take a back seat, at this time in our history, because you emotionally want to deflect its importance by telling us that you have more pressing concerns. That's not how this country, or any other country, operates. The issues come up, maybe they even get solved, whenever they do.

If you're using Equal Protection to have a pointless argument about the correct definition of marriage, you're wasting our time. If you compare the legal privileges of a married individual to those of an unmarried individual, you will find evidence of inequality, regardless of sexual orientation. The socioeconomic discrimination between married and unmarried individuals is the source of our problems.

For many decades, the government has been content to ignore Equal Protection as it pertains to marriage, but as women have entered the workforce, inequality has become more acute. We are actively subsidizing a lifestyle decision, which carries inherent socioeconomic benefits to the individuals who partake.

The SSM debate is just the canary in the coal mine.

You find such inequities between all sorts of groups. Homeowners and renters. Parents and non-parents. Investors and wage-earners. Why is this particular dichotomy one that you beat on about so much?

[Slander and/or Libel]

You find such inequities between all sorts of groups. Homeowners and renters. Parents and non-parents. Investors and wage-earners. Why is this particular dichotomy one that you beat on about so much?

Because married vs. single is systemic, not legislation-specific. The promotion of inequality between home owners and renters can be addressed with revised rules for mortgage interest deduction. Inequality and ability-to-pay between parents and non-parents can be addressed with the child tax credit rules. Inequality between investors and wage earners can be addressed by creating more brackets based upon the holding period of the investment, rather than simplistic short-term or long-term designations.

Socioeconomic inequality between married and single goes all the way to the core of the tax system, specifically graduated income tax brackets and filing status regulations. Unfortunately, many people believe that graduated rates are the key to equality, when, in fact, they are the source of economic inequality and social decay. Therefore, I harp on this particular issue.

You can't build a system of social equality and goodwill, upon a foundation of economic rot. The rot will always infect the social contract.

What?

How is this not legislation-specific? You object to the legislation that introduced and codified the tax code to which you object, but that doesn't mean it's not specific to legislation. This is incoherent.

[Slander and/or Libel]

If only gay people had known that the reason they've felt discriminated against all this time wasn't that they were gay, but that they were single! Thanks for straight-splaining that, Aggy!

[Slander and/or Libel]

If only gay people had known that the reason they've felt discriminated against all this time wasn't that they were gay, but that they were single! Thanks for straight-splaining that, Aggy!

If Democrats would learn the power of populism, rather than protecting the minority/victim status of their factions, perhaps they wouldn't have to feign outrage all the time. Perhaps homosexuals wouldn't be in their current predicament.

Furthermore, I offered no opinion as to how homosexuals should feel about the SSM situation.

LOL.

[Slander and/or Libel]

Human rights are not counter to each other. They do not imply an exclusive choice as it is for middle-income budgets with respect to buying a Ford or Chevrolet automobile. One might be able to buy one, but buying one precludes buying the other. There is no limiting budget for human rights. The civil rights struggle for Southern blacks was not contrary to the right to union representation, to environmental protection, to the rights of the handicapped, or to women's rights.  If it is simply a matter of a right offending a special interest or a personal sensibility with no other merit, then tough.

Personal license may be a different matter, as when "gun rights" imply a severe compromise of the assumption that we have a right to safety from gun violence.

Political capital is like a budget. You cannot buy everything, and if you spend/invest your capital in the wrong places, you end up fixing nothing and spreading misery.

A majority of the discrimination against same-sex couples is not derived from the narrow definition of marriage, but from the federal/state legislation that arbitrarily and inadvertently rewards people for being married.

LOL.

[Slander and/or Libel]

Are you honestly saying that gender and racial distinctions are artificial distinctions? You can't believe that.

[Slander and/or Libel]

Are you honestly saying that gender and racial distinctions are artificial distinctions? You can't believe that.

When it comes to voting, do you feel otherwise? We have a hangman's noose at the ready, if you manage to screw this one up.

WTF?

[Slander and/or Libel]

WTF?

When it comes to voting, do you really believe that gender and skin color are legitimate differentiations?

Not the WTF part. The part where you're hinting about my death.

[Slander and/or Libel]

Not the WTF part. The part where you're hinting about my death?

I sometimes forget that you are incapable of understanding figurative speech and rhetorical tropes so I edited accordingly.

Regarding the matter at hand, do you believe that skin color and gender are legitimate personal traits that warrant modification of voting privileges?

What was the rhetorical trope of telling me you had a hangman's noose ready for me?

[Slander and/or Libel]

How good to know that Rep. King is so clean of sin himself and also so familiar with every single gay person in the world and what they have done in their lives that he has the privilege to make a statement damning a massive group of individuals to hell.

Except King doesn't claim that.  He assumes that if gay can make it there, his own actions are going to preclude his being there.

So he assumes that he is less sinful than every member of the gay community?

Are you incapable of reading comprehension, or are you simply insisting on continuing to make your point regardless of whether it has any relevance as part of a reply?  To the degree I bothered to decode King's logic, he was saying that if he was wrong about actively gay people wouldn't be in heaven, then his own hateful mistakes would preclude him from being there with them.  (Yeah, I know, I'm being awfully generous to King, as I doubt he realized he was allowing for the possibility that he truly might be wrong, but still...)

The bolded part isn't just being generous, it's imposing a reading that the text doesn't explicitly support. It doesn't preclude it, but that's all.