Actually I was just being realistic and have been rather prescient on how issues would play out several steps and several years in advance.

That's also how civil rights movements operated successfully; India's independence movement, etc.

That's the reality I'm connected to. What are you connected to? Head > ass closed circuit?

Posted at May 18, 2008 4:34 AM in response to We're Already Married

You think the Republicans are the only ones who've figured out how to press people's buttons and turn out the rubes on wedge issues while passing a corporate agenda? Are you really that clueless?

Where do you think the money comes from for the political campaigns, the foundations and litigation? In both parties. It's not the grass roots.

All of these foundations, community centers, legal funds, etc are funded by a small number of hyper wealthy donors and trustees who sit on the boards of finance, developers, energy, telecom, MSM, etc. National and transnational conglomerates, none of whom give a damn about gay marriage, gun control, or whatever.

Their formula is very simple: pander to provincial cultural wedge issues, whatever they may be, while passing a pro-corporate agenda. May as well be feng shui and bribes to do business in China.

Some will fund Evangelicals in the South. Some fund gay issues or gun control or whatever in the coastal areas. Some fund gun rights in rural areas. Some fund all of the above. But they all fund a common corporate agenda.

Why do you think Clinton passed NAFTA and deregulated telecoms and media consolidation, deregulated banking, and so on, with bipartisan support? Just as both Bush's have, and Reagan did. Why do you think both Dems and Reps line up together, quietly, and fast track every major corporate give away, but love to perpetually distract voters with cultural wedge issues that are never resolved.

Posted at May 18, 2008 4:07 AM in response to We're Already Married

PS, California by itself has a larger population and more cultural and economic diversity and division than Canada.

Posted at May 17, 2008 9:36 AM in response to Marriage in California

Yes, everybody knows all that. But claiming Canada isn't more homogeneous and unified, which affects issues like healthcare or gay marriage... you've got to be kidding. It's too goofy.

First off, Canada is about 95% light skinned and 85% of Western European descent.

Wealth distribution is far flatter.

Religious beliefs are more secular, pluralistic, and with less acrimony.

French and English are the most closely related of W European cultures and differences literally pale by comparison to the US. Even American Italian and Irish are more disparate, culturally and visibly.

Canada's main immigrant population is light skinned Asians who are highly assimilated in Vancouver especially, which is like the Asian community of San Francisco.

Canada doesn't have a history of race riots or civil war over slavery. Canada is bordered by the US, and Greenland if you want to count it. Not Mexico and Latin America, not the Carribean. Etc.

All of which matters, enormously, for building consensus on social policies.

Posted at May 17, 2008 9:28 AM in response to Marriage in California

You really don't know what you're talking about. I started to write a post correcting you but it would have taken too long.

btw, if you're in Boston and a gay marriage advocate, why is your nick "San Pasqual, CA" which is a conservative rural/suburban farming region outside San Diego, and Republican/Bush country.

Posted at May 17, 2008 8:22 AM in response to We're Already Married

Loki is an idiot. But having said that, you're no better. You're mirror images really.

Once the Constitution is amended it's not going to be re-amended for a long time. Get real. Look at Prop 13. Gay marriage in all likelihood will be banned constitutionally and remain that way for 20+ years.

Gay marriage is the Dem's version of anti-abortion activism. It's not really been properly managed if they wanted to win. But it's sure been a great way to manufacture a wedge issue and perpetual war. A Sisyphean wedge.

Who wins? Same as every wedge issue, it ultimately benefits Wall Street by distracting voters from real issues with bipartisan support.

Look Feinstein for example. Never met a wedge issue she didn't hype and it keeps her in office just as wedge issues keep various Republicans in office. They fight and fight on wedge issues and nothing ever changes or gets resolved. A gun requirement passes for a little while, an abortion requirement passes for a little while, then things reverse. SOS.

But they never miss a chance to sponsor and pass legislation for big business. It can be legislation totally unpopular across the political spectrum, like bankruptcy, domestic spying, tax cuts to the hyper wealthy, etc, and there will still be bipartisan support for it, fast tracked even.

It's a con. These wedge issues are perpetuated to keep people spinning and most times if you look into the record of a culture warrior you'll find a lot of advocacy for big business slipped in between the wedge issues and sensational headlines.

Posted at May 17, 2008 7:49 AM in response to We're Already Married

I think Newsom is a pandering jerk, a sleaze ball, a complete phony, and didn't vote for him. He's got this young GF now and was screwing his deputy cheif's wife too. What's up with that?

He was always a weasel. He's always juked left publicly while moving right behind the scenes. He certainly is in the Feinstein mold. All pandering, all the time. No thanks.

Tom Ammiano was a real Progressive and i wish he was mayor. But unfortunalty being not only gay, but flamboyantly gay, and Progressive, really killed him in the conservative districts. I think he also would have had more sense than to screw the gay community on this ill conceived marriage pander.

Matt Gonzalez was also a progressive, even if he is a tool. I think the board of supervisors would have prevented him from doing anything too stupid, and he wouldn't be Nader's running mate now. :rolleyes:

Jeebus SF politics are FUBARed.

Posted at May 16, 2008 8:06 PM in response to We're Already Married

Your "facts" are BS. Typical though.

Sorry to break it to you, but you're quoting a lot of bogus research from Kinsey which is throughly discredited. Kinsey's studies on homosexuality were conducted disproportionately on prison inmates, with any sexual activity being considered evidence of latent homosexuality. Kinsey was a crank. He was bi-sexual and projected himself into all of his work.

Commonly accepted statistics, including those supported by gay and lesbian advocacy groups, state that between 1-3% of the population is gay or bisexual.

You just flagged yourself as a rather uninformed and naive person probably going through a phase of identity politics where you absorb and regurgitate "facts" uncritically. I suggest you grow up and start taking issues seriously.

Posted at May 16, 2008 7:51 PM in response to We're Already Married

I was actually less than a block away from City Hall when it happened, in a meeting. During a break we got word.

At the time I was still in favor of gay marriage.

Some people were overjoyed saying what a huge step it was. There was no pragmatic concern for strategy or long term outcome.

I remember commenting, somewhat hesitantly, and wondering if everybody knew something I didn't.

So I questioned it a little bit, said something to the extent of "but won't this just be repealed and generate a backlash? How will that be avoided?" Also, wasn't it clearly a pander to the Castro by Newsom after being challenged by Ammiano?

To which I mostly got blank states.

I realized then and started noticing more that vast majority of people who favored gay marriage had no real knowledge of the issues or tactical plan to get there, nor did I. It was just an identity politics issue and PCness. The more i researched it the more I realized it's a wedge issue used to distract and manipulate people while picking their pockets, much like the politics of religious right. Same bullshit.

Posted at May 16, 2008 7:42 PM in response to We're Already Married

Sorry but that's just PC blather.

I grew up in the Castro and we had many gay and lesbian friends and neighbors. There's nothing strange about that to me. If anything, I feel weird in places that aren't as mixed (or hilly.)

I supported gay marriage for years out of PC'ness and bought into the equality rhetoric.

But when you actually look at the issues and the complexities, it's not good enough to just be PC about it. There are real differences between homosexual and heterosexual couples in regards to families and child rearing. Marriage is part of that and can't really be decoupled. So no, there's not an equivalence. Gay activists know that, which is why they're attempting to force a false equivalence via marriage, a sort of Holy Grail delusion.

And when you study the history of gay activism, and it's ties to a lot of Republican bankers and finance, it's not nearly as clean and idealistic as some naive hippies seem to think.

A lot of wealthy gays benefit by these wedge issues, playing both sides.

Gay activism has all these otherwise hyper conservative patrons upstream. For example, San Francisco gay activism, litigation, and money comes largely from banking and real estate. These are not liberals or Progressives in any sense.

There's a lot of Lynn Cheneys and closeted Republicans out there.

Posted at May 16, 2008 7:19 PM in response to We're Already Married