/yawn

I'll swallow this mess of pottage if you can tell me how teh "terribly flawed" Roe v Wade is substantially different in mechanism or form from Brown v Board or Loving v Virginia.
To me, they are all three isomorphic.
Judgements rendered to protect the rights of individual citizens against the tyranny of the mob.
From a pragmatic viewpoint, it is inconcievable that the state could subsume the autonomy of a citizens body.
Restated, citizens simply cannot be forced to be wombs for the State against their will.
Step away from teh crackpipe boiz.
Roe v Wade is here to stay.

infant/fetus rights (same thing in reverse).

Incompletely differentiated cell clumps do not have citizen rights.
The very first thing the right must abandon is personhood/life at conception.
Simply a moronic argument.
And the citizen (mother) 's rights trump the rights of the fetus.
In a free society the state simply cannot force women to be wombs.
The first right of a free people is autonomy over ones own body.

I am not advocating anything.
I am speaking truth.
Sure, there should be two parties.
But it certainly isn't my say.
I am saying the current form of the GOP is doomed.

Evolution or extinction, your choice.

I am not talking individuals......I said the republican brand.
Those culture war issues are welded onto the GOP.
I'm just speakin truth.

So what Chris?
70% of high school seniors would not have an abortion.
60% of high school seniors are against overturning Roe.
Like with racial discrimination, anti-miscegenation and segregation laws, the majority approved....and that is we have judicial interpretation to protect citizens against mob rule.
All this lugubrious whing about teh constitution.....feh.

" the GOP and the culture wars are two entirely different things."

FALSE!
E. D., the GOP has become synonomynous with teh culture wars.
What is the GOP brand? Not small government or free market capitalism-- but anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-science, and anti-intellectual.
That is your brand.
The GOP has sown itself into a shroud with the religious right.
See those statistics? ^^
That is the storm crows coming home to roost.
;)

Prop 8 will be eventually overturned by judicial fiat.
Does anyone doubt that?
Roe v Wade will never be overturned.
Neither will Brown v Board or Loving v Virginia.

Nope.
Its ovah. And I'm not arrogant......I'm mathic.
Frum.

Gallup’s latest polling reveals the continuing collapse of the Republican party's base vote. The news is so very bad that there will be only one possible response from GOP party leadership and our radio talkers: Ignore it.

Overall: 36% of Americans now identify as Democrats and only 28% as Republicans. That 8% advantage for the Dems is the biggest since 1983, before the Reagan boom and triumph in the Cold War created a “Reagan generation” of young conservatives.

George Bush may get much of the blame. But Republicans in Congress are even less popular than Bush, with a 25% approval rating in December 2008.

State by state, the numbers look even worse. In only 7 states do more Americans identify as Republicans than as Democrats:
Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Alaska, Nebraska, and Kansas, and Alabama.

The two parties are tied in Arizona and South Carolina.

In all the other 41 states, including every one of the large population states, Democrats outnumber Republicans. In 29 states, including every Northeastern state and every Midwestern state save Indiana, Democrats outnumber Republicans by 10 points or more.

The GOP is like a chicken with its head cut off.
The body will run around for a while.....but the ending is pertty certain.

/yawn

The culture wars are over.
The last election was the political equivalent of the extinction event at the K-T boundary for religious conservatism.
The elephant in the room of teh cultcha of teh Unborn is this-- how many citizens actually think Roe should be overturned?
Less than 40%.
There's no ideological refuge in mob rule for the religious right anymore. The religious right is a shrinking mob.
Evolve or go extinct.

But I disagree with your conclusion.
Try this then.
Until someone(anyone) can give a valid secular reason that either homosexual orientation or behavior is damaging to society, then your ability to swing your religious fist leaves off exactly where my citizen nose begins.

/double sadface

Let's burn out the troglodytes and neandertals at Redstate and take over their crib for culture 11.

"viewing ideology as a rule of construction allows us to “talk about the same thing,” and thereby to arrive at solutions that, to the extent possible, are tailored to advance one or more core principles without hurting other core principles. "
But this is simply impossible when one side's arguments are not based on logic and reason, but on superstitious belief and the historical right of imposing those beliefs on other citizens.

But should a religious school be able to discriminate against non-religionists?
Yes, because religious affiliation is a choice.
A student could convert.
Race and gender and sexual orientation are not choices.

Larison is a fine writer.
But dont delude yourself, please.
He has enough substrate to choose.

"Of course you would say that without any evidence to back your claim."
Really....

Dawkins objection is to supertionalism in general.
Of course, this useless.
Homosapiens sapiens is hardwired for superstitionalism, and for religious behavior, and the hardwiring was laid down in the EEA (environment of evolutionary advantage). Dawkins himself coined the term Culturally Stable Strategy (CSS) for evo theory of games.
He is actually far more respectful than I in believing that the vast majotity of hss is capable of understanding his arguments.
I think he is wasting his time.
Might as well try to explain the American presidential electoral process to a talking dog.....with lipstick lol.
;)

"I’d say intelligence really plays no factor at all in faith."
Then you would be WRONG.
There is a negative correlation between religious belief and IQ.

"Some of the most brilliant people I know are religious."
Yes but they chose faith.
I am not saying thinkers can't be believers..... Dr. Ken Miller and Dr. Francis Collins spring to mind. But the vast chunk of the middle of the IQ bellcurve don't have a choice....they are forced to be believers... they just dont meet the IQ gradient to understand evolutionary biology or evo theory of culture....or quantum mechanics for that matter.
That is why Dawkins arguments fail.

Transplanted Lawyer, two words.
Segregation Academies.

"I find the idea of forcing traditionalist pastors to marry gay couples pretty disturbing."
Also, stop with the sillie calumny that churches would EVAH be forced to marry gays. You know that simply isn't true.
I am not sure you are Mathic at all at this point.

Wiil......the legal analogy would be segregation academies.
Unworthy of you, I truly expect more of teh Mathic.

u go boi.
bring teh sass.

I’m left with three possibilities when I consider the atheism of disrespect. Either people like Richard Dawkins, PZ Meyers, Bill Maher, and assorted don’t know that the way they are confronting these issues is disrespectful, in which case they are tone deaf to a frankly absurd degree; or they think that, tactically, the way to get the kind of change they say they want is to ridicule people into believing as they do, in which case they have a dramatically underdeveloped understanding of human psychology and sociology; or they are more interested in producing ridicule than in producing change.

I was in the fifth grade when I realized that other children just disn't learn as quickly as I did. It came in the form of a revelation that ripped open the top of my head with the fierce canopener of epiphany. So actually Sir Richards position is deeply respectful....he believes anyone can understand his elegant arguments agsinst superstionalism. The sad truth is most homosapiens sapiens simply do not have the substrate to "get" Dawkins.
The strong truth is that you need a certain IQ gradient to be able to choose faith. A capacity for superstitious (translation--religious) belief is hardwired, and so for most there is no choice. Faith is the only option.

Let me put it this way: from a certain perspective, marriage equality advocates need only play the waiting game as the demographics of those supporting marriage equality are increasing, while the opposition is dwindling.

NO
I'm sure apologists like you said the same thing to slaves, black kids in the days of segragation academies, and mixed race couples.
Un-American.
Judicial fiat FTW!

"But I don’t find it particularly useful to engage those who do oppose it in an antagonistic fashion."
Neither is it possible to make any progress starting with a false premise, Scott. You cannot persuade those laking the basic substrate to grasp this. ^^ look up there at Ed.
Far more practical to explain that opposing SSM will lose them votes and not result in their desired outcome than to try to reason with them about the basic wrongness of the separate but equal argument.