Pledge Of Allegiance: "One Nation, Under God"

Student Lounge College Life
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Are kids MADE to say it? At least in my district, you are required to stand respectfully but not to speak. By the time kids hit high school, very few actually say the pledge. And this is a fairly conservative area.</p>

<p>Re gay marriage: I don’t know whether people choose to be gay. I don’t think anyone knows. However, there are two questions at stake here: a) the religious implications of gay marriage on the traditional family unit and b) the legal rights granted to ‘married’ couples. As for the former, it’s really none of the government’s business. When we talk about the legal end of things, I’m inclined to say that granting such rights will be either a good or bad thing without regard to sexual orientation. As such, gay couples (whether given civil unions, marriage licenses, or some other registration) ought to have the same legal rights as straight couples.</p>

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<p>Comparison fail. Gay marriage ~/~ black people. Gay people ~ black people.</p>

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<p>Opposition to homosexuality =/= opposition to gay marriage. For someone preaching against ignorance, you seem pretty ignorant yourself.</p>

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<p>1) PROVE that harmful intervention in someone’s life is morally bad using no other assumptions than ones like “we exist” or “what we experience is real.” You can’t. Morality is based on assumptions that we believe are facts.</p>

<p>2) Some people believe that there is no such thing as private morality, either because of a supernatural force that takes offense or because there are no such things as actions without consequences.</p>

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I was implying that you should write shorter replies instead of rambling on about something useless. And no, your comment was not a “college paper”. So technically what you said was irrelevant, too.</p>

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<p>"Ok, wow. Starting to realize that you are just a really miserable person. "</p>

<p>Haha whatever makes you feel better about yourself. I’m not the one that needs to start name calling to feel better about myself…</p>

<p>“If someone has no control over something, and if that something nowhere near defines that person, it is ignorant to say you are opposed to it. Ignorance means you do not understand something about a subject. If you are morally opposed to homosexuality, then you clearly do not understand it. Because everything you say about homosexuality not proven to be biological we can say about heterosexuality as well. But as a gay person I am not going around claiming that straight people are simply choosing to be with the opposite sex, and that they need to be fixed. The only reason certain straight people do that to gays must be ignorance.”</p>

<p>Is it ignorant to be cautious when walking through a ghetto at night? So if Jeffrey Dhamers was just born with an instinct to rape and kill people, it’s ignorant to be morally opposed to his crimes? If someone is mentally insane, and commits a crime, is it ignorant to punish them? Assuming people are ignorant “just because they don’t support gay rights,” is kind of ignorant in itself, when you never investigated the reasons as to why people may feel that way. Maybe you being gay doesn’t affect others, and maybe it does. Maybe you just can’t bring yourself to understand homosexuality just offends people, like other sexually abnormal actions. It seems like you lack the understanding to think people can just feel like something is wrong. You have no “proof” that homosexuality is okay, you just think it is. Yet you would not consider yourself ignorant.</p>

<p>“What if I told you I was morally opposed to black people, or morally opposed to the Chinese? Would it not be ignorant to make a statement like that?”</p>

<p>I wouldn’t care. Maybe every crime ever committed against you was by a black person, or maybe the Chinese gov kidnapped and killed your family for dissenting. I wouldn’t care if you were morally opposed to woman’s equal rights. I wouldn’t care if you were morally opposed to equal pay for equal work. It doesn’t personally offend me, you are free to have your views. I don’t take offense when people in my job field don’t think women are capable of doing equally as well. It doesn’t make them ignorant, and means they have a differing opinion. I’ve encountered sexism, and it doesn’t really bother me. I could do without title 9 or 10 or whatever it is. Just because someone doesn’t have a “mainstream” or “progressive” opinion doesn’t mean it’s ignorant. Honestly, when I’m walking around at night at school, I have a heightened awareness when I encounter certain people. Why? Because people belonging to a certain group raped on of my friends, broke into a friends house, robbed a friend at knifepoint and broke a friends head open with a glass bottle after breaking into their house. You may call me ignorant, but my life experiences have shaped my views and I have reasons for it. I think it is judgemental to think someone is ignorant for believing the bible or koran or a religious doctrine that opposes homosexuality. Their beliefs aren’t physically harming people, just like your homosexuality isn’t. Very few people crafting laws belong to that religious right that you are aluding to. Most people in this country aren’t that religious. They are not going around killing gays, harming them, imprisoning them or banning homosexuality. They are using legal means available to all citizens to voice their opinion and have policies that they agree with pass. I don’t see the what “harm” they are doing to gays. You argue that homosexuality doesn’t “harm” others, beyond making people feel bad. Well people that are against gay marriage are not “harming” gays, beyond making people feel bad or upset. They are excersising their rights, and politicians are responding. </p>

<p>You are using a moral argument by saying homosexuality isn’t wrong. You have no proof, just a feeling.</p>

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Hmm… I guess I learned a lot about how you feel in that one message.</p>

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<p>“I was implying that you should write shorter replies instead of rambling on about something useless. And no, your comment was not a “college paper”. So technically what you said was irrelevant, too.”</p>

<p>Really? I didn’t get that you were implying my post was too long (for you, because plenty of other people have been reading them) by comparing it to a novel. Thanks for explaining that to me. It was totally above my cognitive abilities. </p>

<p>When did I say it was a college paper? And how does it not being a college paper make it irrelevent, especially when it is part of a conversation? </p>

<p>I don’t understand what you are trying to say, other than trying to make snippy comments to improve your self esteem.</p>

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<p>Sometimes I feel that people overuse the first amendment. I mean yes, people have the right to state their opinion. But sometimes they go too far. I see commercials about how Obama is a bad president because he is against the Arizona Immigration law. Seriously people? This is our nation and you cannot always blame the president. Haven’t you ever read the preamble? We the people, in order to form a more perfect union. It’s us as a nation that keeps America alive. Saying horrible things about the president is as if you’re saying horrible things about our nation. I know this is irrelevant but when I hear people saying that it is our opinion, I start to think about the nation as a whole. How much people overuse the first amendment.</p>

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<p>^ A necessary corollary to the right to free speech is the right to a good pair of earplugs.</p>

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<p>^If people believe that Obama is a bad president for reason X, why shouldn’t they express their opinion of such a belief? How is pointing out the perceived flaws of an elected official overusing the 1st amendment?</p>

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<p>But to actually make commercials about how he is doing a bad job is just wrong, in my opinion. They show it all the time out here in Arizona, it’s a McCain commercial.</p>

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<p>I assume that you also had a problem with people blaming Bush for everything.</p>

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<p>^^ Cool story bro.</p>

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<p>I hate Arizona… And I was kind of too young to understand why everybody hated Bush too much. I mainly saw it when he was in his second term. And it’s not as if I’m a Democrat or a Republican; I’m mainly Independent.</p>

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You do realize that Obama will eventually possibly be up for re-election, right? Public media is useful for expressing opinions about things, you know.</p>

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<p>Yes, I know that.</p>

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<p>I agree with r0kAng3l … It seems as if America totally neglects the legislative branch when criticizing the government.</p>

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<p>I mean, I can understand if they are using all sorts of logical fallacies in these commercials (I haven’t seen them), but many politicians on all sides do that in any case. The office of the POTUS holds significant political capital, as I understand it, and if one’s agenda is to lessen the effect of that capital or to redirect it, such commercials would be a rational option. Better to pay for commercials than to pay for hitmen.</p>

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I agree with this. I also think that it’s ridiculous that people seem to think that they are determining exactly how the next 4 years of U.S. government will operate when they vote for/campaign for a president, but that’s another issue.</p>

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<p>No, Baelor, if you bothered to read the exact quote I responded to, tiff said we should not call people ignorant for being morally opposed to homosexuality in general.</p>

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<p>In many countries, when people say “Government” they mean the executive branch, as distinct from the legislature. That might be why people think that the President is the only department that controls everything, even though the legislature has to originate most laws.</p>