Your hot button issue

[J.R. Brown]

1) Gay Marriage-Instead of defining marriage in religious terms which I'm pretty sure is unconstitutional under the establishment clause which pretty much says that the federal govenment cannot favor any single religion practices or establish religious law. Instead we should leave it up to the priests and ministers to dictate the law of the bible in their individual churches. I think we could, however establish civil unions as a way of defining marriage on the federal level separating it from the church-I say leave it up to your indivdual churches to decide what's right and wrong in their own communities. Let all couples, homosexual and heterosexual receive equal benefits from the federal government. I would like to stress that in no way to I support the marriage of homosexuals in the church, but I also believe that what is written in the bible is up for interpretation, I'm not a theologist, so I'm not even going to try.

2) Death Penalty-Abolish the death penalty for most cases, we have no right to decide who is going to live and die, that's up to God. I'd like to see America join the rest of the Democratic world. How can we presume to preach democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere if our justice system isn't even like most democratic nations.

3) Drug offenders-Lets quit sending drug abusers to prison for longer terms than most rapists and child abusers get. Instead, we should initially send them to rehabilitation, and not some half ass thing, we should assemble the best psychiatrists and medical professionals in the country to lead a national rehad center with the best care money can buy. I know you're going to ask where's the money going to come from for this, I don't know yet. I know no one is up for higher taxes, so if you have any ideas let me know.

4) Health Care-We need to socialize health care. Health care is a right, not a privelege for the very wealthy. My father was diagnosed with prostate cancer a couple of years ago and the hospital bills almost killed us. My parents had to declare bankruptcy and they had to borrow money from my grandparents which I'm sure really made them feel even worse. Stopping obesity in young children and adolescents should also be a top priority. I read somewhere that my generation's life expectancy has actually gone down, that's the first time in history that has happened. I think it was if you were born between 1980 and 1989 or somethng like that. I not sure. But it's an extremely important issue that needs to be dealt with.

5) Social Security-I think we need to raise the retirement age instead of privatizing it. People are living longer and new medical technologies are being created everyday to prolong our lives. I think privatization looks really good right now to a lot of people, but I think in the end it will hurt a lot of the elderly who have social security as their only source of income. We don't want to go back to the days where becoming old meant that you might go into poverty and everyday a struggle to survive. I agree that our current system needs a lot of improvement. You know maybe partial privatization for now until we have fed enough money into the system to prevent it from going bankrupt. We can't drop the current system altogether it must be dealt with in a thoughtful and intelligent way. We can't just go with the one plan we have now, we must continue to negotiate and think about the problem while there's still time. What looks good now may not be good for the future.

[J.R. Brown]

-women's rights

I assume this means you think that women's rights are more important than men's rights?

No. But there are few (if any) female politicians who are openly anti-male. Therefore, men's rights does not need to be addressed the way women's rights does.

I think you're kidding yourself. Give up the left-wing propaganda and look at the truth. There are plenty of MALE politicians who are anti-male. John Kerry said "I'm going to put the legal system on the side of women." This is an outrageous statement.

And there are no organized anti-female groups as their are organized anti-male groups supporting the Democratic Party (groups like NOW). If you don't recognize these groups as anti-male, with an agenda that seeks to make us into second-class citizens because of that Y chromosone, then you truly have blinders on.

Someone needs to pick up a history book. Because according to you the declaration of independence and the constitution states that all men AND women are created equal. When in the history of this country have women not been treated like second-class citizens? Women are being discriminated against in this country, and if you cannot see that then you are the one with blinders on. Maybe men need to be second-class citizens for a while, just to feel what women have been put through for centuries.