Commenter Archive

The money sounds good until you think of how much it cost the entire EU to fly to Norway to receive the award.

There's always the possibility that the Grimace is working with Wendistan.

The theory is basically, and this is a bit out there, is that they promised him all the remaining milkshakes after the invasion. Wendistan, while after the other natural resources of McDonaldistan, (Especially the beef), has no need for the milkshakes. This is because, instead of milkshakes, they have based their society on an alternate cold-milk formulation called a 'Frosty', and standardize milkshakes are incompatible and expensive to convert. (The use of Frosties have caused human rights criticism in the past, with allegations of anti-vanilla discrimination, but they asserted that was due to technical issues, and claimed to have remedied this in 2006.)

I'm not sure if this theory makes sense, but it's been bouncing around the fast food blogosphere for a bit.

At any rate, I’m looking forward to the opening of several coal-fired power plants here on Long Island and not paying any income tax on the $1.27 in interest my bank paid on our savings account this year. Fanfuckingtastic.

I love the fact that he's proposing that no one has to pay any income tax on their investment income as a counterbalance to removing deductions, and I'm making sure to tell everyone I know about that 'solution'. I get exactly the same sort of response you just gave. ;)

Jesus H. Christ, Romney, do you even _live in the same universe_ as human beings? Human beings do not have investments that are earning taxable interest. If they are very lucky, they have some _tax-deferred_ investments(1), but the vast majority of non-retired people do not have any interest payments they declare on their taxes at all. Especially since _ interest rates are at all time low_, so this is an exceptionally stupid time to pretend people are worried about interest tax.

1) Which they will pay taxes on after they retire, so a) is not important now, and b) they will be paying taxes on when they have almost no other declared income, and hence will pay _almost no taxes_ anyway. And thus cannot possibly make up for removing deductions _now_.

Threaded barrels are not just cosmetic. They are attachment points for things that either are often illegal (suppressor) or make the gun more deadly (extended barrel). As such it appears somewhat reasonable to have laws about that. (And people who want to attach a harmless handgrip are just SOL. But I'm confused to what that is, I don't see why those would need to attach to a threaded barrel...and isn't the end of the barrel a bit far for a handgrip?)

Bayonet mounts and grenade launcher attachment points are sorta the same way, but no one ever illegally attaches grenade launchers and uses them in crime, and no one uses bayonets outside of an actual close-combat war. In real life, if someone was going to close enough to bayonet people, they'd bring a handgun, not a rifle + bayonet.

Of course, it makes no sense to have a law where threaded barrels are allowed if they are the _only_ thing on the weapon. I frankly would rather have a policy that no weapon barrel modifications are allowed, and no gun can have a place to screw those in, and everything else is allowed. (Yes, I know, people will just buy swap out the barrels for one that do have threaded ends, but whatever. At least a trivial inspection can detect those, instead of having to dismantle the gun and carefully check it out to see if it's capable of fully automatic.)

Telescopic and folding stocks are _also_ not just cosmetic, they are slightly useful to get the gun in places it could otherwise not be found...but considering the prevalence of handguns, which are much smaller, a stock that can make a rifle 2/3rd the original length but still much larger than a handgun seems stupid to worry about. (I think people have perhaps been watching too much TV where assassins, even in small auditoriums, bring a rifle in and assemble it. Like it's impossible to shoot someone at 100 feet with a handgun.)

Whoa whoa whoa. Let's be careful here.

Simpson-Bowles does not have _anything_ in it, because that commission (National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform) did not actually return. That commission was set up to require a supermajority, and did not get it, and thus, strictly speaking, failed to make any recommendations _at all_. It is not correct to refer to anything as the product of that commission, or by the name of that commission.

Now, there was a draft proposal that the committee can up with that got a _majority_ (But not the required supermajority), and it is entirely reasonable for some of the Congresspeople who supported it in the commission (Or even random others) to make legislation based on it. People are free to take failed results and use them as the basic for legislation if they want, no one has a problem with that.

But that doesn't mean that hypothetical bill is 'Simpson-Bowles'. (Not that such a bill appears even to exist!)

Also, it is somewhat confusing to blame the Dems for not doing anything with this draft proposal. The commission failed to return a recommendations in Dec 2010...and last I checked starting a budgetary bill was the job of the House, and the House has, duh, been controlled by Republicans since 2011. Yes, granted, the Democrats had half of a lame duck session before 2011 they could have done it in, but that is just a little silly, and seems to assume a few proposals can turn into actual legislation a lot faster than it can.

I am not a neoliberal, and am in fact vaguely confused as to what that is, but I have to agree with ' If anything most of what I’ve read suggests that it is the current government regulations imposed on unionization that go a long way towards harming union formation.'

I think labor be much better off if we removed all regulation vaguely connected with unions, and start over.

Why? Because that regulation was in pre-internet, pre-cell phone camera days. It was in the days when the local police could, and would beat strikers. And it was the days without safety regulations, so unions had to give concessions just to get those. And it was in the days where someone couldn't set up a nice website and get the workers behind them on _that_ without the management knowing about it.

Reboot the entire thing, but in _this_ universe? Holy crap. You'd have sympathy strikes, you'd have strikes of 'management', you'd have partial strikes and slowdowns of skilled workers, you'd have unions forcing union shops everywhere. You'd have unions that barred anyone who scabbed from ever working in the field again. You'd have picketers deliberately blocking entrances and getting arrested. (That last would still be illegal, but we've gotten much most sympathetic to that since the turn of the last century.)

I.e., back then, companies did a lot of _illegal_ things to cripple the movement, so that labor laws were accepted as some sort of compromise. Not only can they no longer do that, but _unions_ can do a lot more completely legal stuff...and 'protesting' has become a lot more accepted, especially for stuff that is easy to explain.

I sometimes wonder if we're looking at this backwards. What perhaps we should be thinking is that you get less punishment if you had some moderately 'sane' reason for your actions. Instead of assault being 10 years and hate crimes rules adding two, instead we say assault is 12 years, but you get two years off if you can come up with any reasonable justification besides 'He was a member of group X and that made me attack him'.

Why? Because someone who runs around attacking people for _no_ reason (Or, worse, their reason is to intimidate entire groups of people) is much more harmful to society than someone who assaults someone because that person stole their parking space.

Incidentally, this would also then neatly lump _gang_ violence under the same laws. Sorry, the reason 'I attacked him because he was a member of a different criminal organization' doesn't work. And neither does 'I attacked this random person because my gang made me.'

The problem is, phrasing it that way makes it look like we've started accepting 'justification' for crimes...which, in a way, we have. (In fact, we're currently doing that now with existing hate crimes.) But it sounds really bad to say there are 'good reasons' and 'bad reasons' to commit crimes, even if we're also saying 'But everyone goes to jail, just slightly less time for good reasons'.

And now I'm wondering if there ought to be three levels. The lowest is when a crime is done for an actual _benefit_ to the criminal, the next level is when a crime is done out of individual anger(1), and the next is the hate crime level we're already talking about.

1) Yes, those two seem backwards, but don't confuse this with premeditation, which is also a modifier. Crimes done for material gain are easier for society to deal with for multiple reasons. There are more obvious motives when investigating, there are ways to structure society that make those crime less likely to happen, etc, etc. Plus, in the cases of physical harm, the premeditation would increase the punishment back up anyway.

Yes, but spreading the criminals around is _helpful_.

They would end up in areas that are not high-crime areas. Areas that it does not take the police 30 minutes to respond, areas where people do not cower in fear of pointing out the criminals (Snitches get stitches), areas where other criminals do not cover for them.

You can see this exact thing happen when neighborhoods get together and drive out criminals, finally standing up to them. Turning them _back_ into law-abiding communities, hitting that threshold where people are willing to cooperate with the police and stop crime.

Except under what I propose, it would happen automatically, without really any risk. 'Hey, you! You want to move somewhere where the laws are enforced? And there are actual jobs? We'll cover the difference in your rent for five years.' (Actually, I think what should happen is that the rent paid is used to rent out the _original_ apartment to keep anyone from moving into it, so the building eventually empties and the government can buy it.)

And, frankly, I think hardened criminals would realize this too, that moving to some random location without being surrounded by criminals is very stupid, and they would not move. However, without innocent people to prey off of and mooch off of and sell drugs to, the entire system would fall apart. (At which point the government resells the place to a developer or whatever.)

Also, I don't think you understood what I was saying. There would not be 'receiving locations'. It wouldn't be some sort of collective move, to some other place. It would be that individuals move into individual houses or apartment located wherever the government can find them. (Luckily, we have a _lot_ of empty housing right now.) No one moves as a group, and we're talking about moving 0.0001% of the population, so the idea that more than two of them would end up in the same place is a bit silly.

Perhaps if Republicans have an issue with 28% of the people having so many deductibles and tax credits that they do not pay any income tax, they should _stop making every proposal into a tax credit_. 'Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this.' 'Well, then stop doing it.'

I mean, deductibles and tax credits are just a scam to keep the poor from getting any benefit from the law, because they rapidly hit the floor of '0'. You give a rich person $7000 tax credit for buying an electric car, they get ~$2000 less taxes. You give a poor person a $7000 tax credit, they get $100 less taxes, because they don't have any more taxes to apply it for. And then you bitch and moan they don't pay any taxes. This makes no sense at all, and it's how the _Republicans_ set this shit up.

Here on the left, I rather suspect we'd be much happier if you just _gave_ everyone who was eligible the ~$2000, in cash.

Same with earned income tax credit, which, I must point out, is a rather deliberate way to give out welfare to employed people, as part of welfare reform, and the Republicans loved it...except, apparently, now it's made everyone's taxes bottom out.

You can't whine and bitch about how the government is giving out money, and change it all to tax credits, and then whine and bitch about how no one's paying taxes.

Meanwhile, I must point out that payroll tax is 15% of income, although not technically 'income tax'. And what rate did Mitt Romney just pay? Oh, that's right, he had to rig his tax to get all the way up to 14%. But capital gains tax, of course, is legally defined as 'income tax', whereas payroll tax is not.

And while I'm not sure if Romney pays payroll tax (Is that on all income or does it not include capital gains?), it's capped at a very very low threshold, which means that, even if he did have to pay it, it would be something like 0.1% of his income.

Obvious solution: Legally define payroll tax as part of 'income tax'. Tada, more than half of the freeloaders people out there instantly stop freeloading and pay the same income tax rate as Mitt Romney! Woo!

Next step: Raise social security payments by 15%, put a payroll tax (Which now counts as income tax.) on them of 15%! We can automatically deduct it from their payments, like normal income! It just imaginarily goes to them, and then magically ends up back in social security. Now _they've_ stopped freeloading also!

Conclusion: Every person who talks about what percentage of people pay 'income tax' is an idiot. The vast majority of people who don't pay 'income tax' either _do_ pay 'taxes on income' that mysteriously isn't defined as 'income tax', or they are living off their social security, and it's complete gibberish to assert that they should pay taxes on the money the government is paying them, because all that would result in is the recalculation of benefits and them ending up with exactly as much money.

I've always wondered about this WRT _crime_ instead of happiness.

Basically, what we take high-crime, gang-ridden neighborhoods, and instead of spending money trying to reduce crime, we just simply offer the people living there slightly better housing, for exactly the same price, in some _other_ neighborhood. Different neighborhoods.

Entirely voluntary.

It would split up gangs, it would result in less innocent victims, it would put troublemakers in area with almost no crime...which sounds bad, but no one is going to put up with their crap there.

Well, as murder is mostly a state issue, the commerce clause can be ignored to some extent...if there's anyone seizing anything here, it probably should be the actual place with laws against murder. So let's assume this is a state issue for the time being.

First, I can't come up with any good reason to 'seize' the gun in any official way. It is not the result of a crime. Although that doesn't mean the criminal is getting it back. It's _evidence_. Likewise, convicted felons can't generally possess guns. Although this doesn't technically mean he doesn't 'own' it...he can get someone else to take it when returned from evidence and have them sell it or keep it. You can own things you cannot legally possess, and vis versa.

As for the money...in this case, the money isn't the result of the crime...the money transfer _itself_ was a criminal act. Paying someone money to kill someone is a crime, as is accepting money to kill someone. (I'm fairly certain most states have specific laws against murder-for-hire, but if not, it's conspiracy to commit murder.) I don't think anyone would have problems with seizing money that the transfer of _itself_ was a crime.

What I think is somewhat legally dubious, however, is tracking down a hitman who someone paid $5,000 (I have no idea if this is reasonable) to kill someone, charging them both, and then going through their bank records and finding a bunch of other origin-less deposits of $5,000. Well, that, in itself, is fine...and if they can track those back to other people and figure out who else hired him, that's fine also. (With warrants and all, but those shouldn't be too hard to get.)

What isn't fine is being unable to track them back to anyone or any murders, but just claiming all the money is the results of a crime and seizing it also. Along with other stuff the hitman owns.

In these circumstances (And this is pretty close to how seizures WRT drugs works, except even more vague.) please note that not only has the government not proven the cash is the result of a crime, the government _has not even proven the crimes exist_.

Laws are against specific actions. Someone specifically was murdered and the hitman was paid for that. Someone specifically purchased specific drugs. Crimes are specific actions that happen at specific times and places.

If I go to court, and under oath, state I'm a hitman, or a drug dealer, or a prostitute, or a bank robbery...I cannot be arrested based on that, because 'being' those things isn't illegal. A specific instance of _doing_ those things is illegal.

Drug seizure laws aren't just 'Guilty until proven innocent'. They're _worse_ than that. They're 'We think you're guilty of committing crimes _in general_ and we can somehow punish you for that. We not only don't have to show you committed a specific instance of that crime, we don't even have to come up with _any_ specific instances of that crime _at all_.'

Except this is stupid logic. No one can prove how they have acquired almost any possessions of theirs. I look around where I sit...by contacting Toshiba, I probably could prove I owned this laptop, and my Nook and iPhone via their respective companies...and that's about it. Can I prove I own this chair? This table? My keyboard? My stereo? This monitor? My pieced-together desktop PC? Any of these books? No.

More to the point, the government seizes things the person _can_ prove how he acquired. Like cars and houses, which require a _government registered title transfer_. Anyone with a car or house can prove exactly who they got it from, and in what circumstances...and, in fact, the government already has that information! (Not is disputing the right to take cars away from car thieves, after all.)

So, despite them proving they legitimately acquired (Via the exchange of cash) that item, the government just then demands that they prove where they got the money for that from. Which, in infinite regression, is a fool's game...no one can prove that every dime of income they have was earned via non-illegal means.

Ignoring the fact that I clearly meant churches in the US, because things that happen outside the US do not happen 'in US history', I must point out that no church in Denmark _lost a suit_ either.

And Denmark has a _state controlled_ church (The authority of the church is the monarch, the head of the church is a political minister), and that state just voted a rule-change on the church, which is fundamentally no different than Rome putting a rule-change on the Catholic church, or the membership of a Baptist church voting for a rule-change in their church.

Or do you think the leadership of the Danish National Church is should somehow _not_ be allowed to make changes in how it operates? (And if not them, then who?)

Making an analogy between the _leadership of a church_ (even if said leadership is the Danish government) changing the rules of a church to _the US government_ (which does not run any churches) being able to do that is complete nonsense.

Actually that problem is fixed if you say the state only authorizes Civil Unions and a Civil Union is in place once both parties sign the application and the clerk issues the document no ceremony needed. (Basically an extension of the French model where due to historic anti-clericalism marriage takes place at the registrars office).

Erm, that _is_ how it works, except the document is called a 'marriage license'. Two people can walk down to the courthouse and fill one out, and, tada, they're married.

Teaching programs have been responsible IMO for a lot of the woes facing schools with regards to curiculum.

Education is actually something I don't really see on a left-right axis. The far right has policies that will _clearly_ make education worse, like vouchers (Which is essentially 'This school sucks, let's remove all the high achieving students and all the money. That will make it better!'), but barring nonsense like that, the entire things gets pretty murky.

Of course, this is probably because I have a somewhat conservative mother who is a teacher, and she, and I, agree with what is wrong with schools in Georgia: Not enough teachers, and idiotic standardized testing.

Third trimester abortions are legal and DO happen, though admittedly 2nd trimester is much more of a concern.

Third trimester abortions are almost entirely medically required. The number of abortions after 24 weeks is estimated at 0.08%. (The number after 21 week, after which detailed records aren't kept, is only 1.4%, so it can't be higher than that.)

It is perhaps also worth pointing out that only about 12% of abortion happen in the second trimester. And frankly, I rather suspect most of those are delayed to that point only because the right keeps making women jump through hoops, some of which take a while.

The big O didn’t mention adoption one time in his 2008 ‘Blueprint for Change’. McCain did.

...whether or not a presidential candidate mentioned something in an election blueprint is not actually very good evidence that it is an issue the party cares about. And I'd actually like some reassurance McCain didn't just mention adoption in the context of _gay_ adoption, which was an issue that election. (Or rather, states enforcing their anti-discrimination laws and some faith-based adoption services having their funding cut because they refused to follow the rules.) 'Mentioning' adoption is not actually saying he'd strengthen it or fund it better. I cannot find his policy statement.

But regardless of what he said: Adoption services, like almost all government services to help out families and children, are supported much more by the left than the right.

Uh, okay. Now I'm confused even further, but I had run into my general confusion of what 'conservative' actually means, so I'm not sure this is solvable here.

Other political parties (Even libertarians) seem to want to solve problems. And all too often, it appears that conservatives _don't_. So I try to constantly remind myself that conservatives _do_ claim to be solving problems, although their problems are often imaginary. (Hey, did you hear Obama was going to remove 'In God We Trust' from money?) They also want to 'fix' things, although their 'fix' is often very clearly something that would be worse off.

But here, it appears by 'progressive conservative' you mean 'a progressive who wants to solve problems _slowly_'. I.e., it appears that you're using exactly the definition of conservative that _I_ keep thinking inside my head, but which conservatives assure me is wrong: 'Someone who doesn't want to solve any problems'.

In my universe, politics have both goals, and general ways they solve those goals:

Progressives, for example, have as a current goal helping the worst off, and have generally used government programs to fix this. Progressivism, in fact, has changed goals a few times, and is probably best identified by the means used to reach those goals: Progressives want to use the power of government to fix problems.

Liberals have 'everyone should be treated equally', and used to use courts and public opinion to fix this. Although now that the left ended up with both them and progressives, liberals have, in recent times, used progressive methods. (To, I think, their detriment. For example, affirmative action, which tries to used a progressive method to reach a liberal goal.)

Libertarians have a bunch of goals, and a fairly consistent way (less government) to reach those goals.

Conservatives have a jumble of stated goals that don't really work together, and a jumble of stated means to reach those goals. (Anti-abortion laws, I must point out, are _more_ government. And gay marriage laws are basically exactly the same amount of government.) I really can't parse out any consistent _anything_ from them, although I keep people told there is.

And then other conservatives show up and say 'No, conservative is just refusing to do anything'. Which I _actually agree_ with, but am told is wrong by other conservatives.

Sometimes I have the idea that none of us know what the hell we're talking about.

Actually, the real questions I think I need to ask:

Are you sure you guy don't mean conservative progressive instead progressive conservative? Aka, a moderate progressive?

And my next question is: Do you realize how moderate current progressives are?

I mean, we can't even get any banking reform after the damn banks blew up the country. Our health care reform is the _conservative_ version. We are unable to regulate CO2. Our stimulus is half tax cuts, and cut in half, and we can't pass another in the middle of a recession. We couldn't pass a damn _highway_ bill.

Claiming to have a progressive viewpoint, but that there's some sort of _moderation_ needed in our current political system, is a bit surreal. You're demanding that a person crawling along the floor with broken legs 'slow down'. There's not a hell of a lot slower it is actually possible to go and still move forward.

Education? Progresive conservatives pushed for smart reforms that took the decisions out of the hands of teaching programs and replaced them with commonsense.

I have no idea what you mean by 'teaching programs' or having 'commonsense' replace 'decisions'. I don't mean that snarkily, I literally have no idea what you're trying to say there. There were some bad decisions being made by teaching programs (?) and those decisions were replaced (At a higher level?) by using common sense?

Conservation? I’ll take Ducks Unlimited over Greenpeace any day of the week.

Wait, so we're talking about some sort of caricature of the left? What left politician even vaguely supports Greenpeace?

...and, I must ask, what politicians on the right supports Ducks Unlimited?

I agree entirely that environmentalism _should_ be considered 'conservative', although it sadly is not. But it's fairly odd to claim you should called conservative just because you support some environmentalism.

This is a disagreement you're having with the right, not the left.

We would love to see a full ban but that isn’t going to happen. Re-focus on 2nd and 3rd trimester and you are at least making ‘forward’ progress.

...you think there are 3rd trimester abortions? WTF?

Couple this with better funding and advocacy for adoption and you move a little further.

Which is, I'm fairly certain, another example of a disagreement you're having with the right, not the left.

...so, basically, what I got from your post was 'somewhat pro-life, moderate progressive'. Perhaps I wasn't clear in my question:

What is the specific policy ground that progressive conservatives inhabit that neither progressives or conservatives do? Or, failing that, what general progressive policy grounds do they inhabit and what general conservative policy grounds do they inhabit? (Like libertarians generally inhabit fiscally conservative grounds, but socially liberal grounds.)

I agree (impossibly) with Tom Van Dyke. Your 'progressive conservative' seems to just be another way to say 'moderate progressive'. Does this apply to anything but gay marriage?

(And I must point out that the entire concept of 'civil unions' was 'something the right could get behind', and when they failed to do that, there was no point. 'Progressive conservatives' might want that, but as there actually appear to be _none of those in office_, it seems rather pointless to claim there's some opening being missed there. The imagined history of 'the left wasn't content with civil union' is not actually what happened at all. It's the _right_ that didn't like them. The middle proposed that as a compromise, the right said 'Hell no, we won't support that', the left shrugged and decided it would be just as easy to get gay marriage.)

But, anyway, take health care. The only 'social' change I can see is that we decided that we weren't going to let people die from lack of money for health care, an position that, essentially, the entire country agrees with. So it's not like this position was 'forced' on anyone.

So, pick any point in history all the way back to, say, 1960 when access to health care first became a national issue. What is the 'progressive conservative' idea there? Or what would it be now to replace the ACA, or passed instead of the ACA?

Because it's actually hard to come up with a _more_ conservative plan than the ACA that would actually accomplish the goals that American wish accomplished.

Basically, we seem to live in a country where the right is 'We do not actually wish to solve any real problems at all, we demand the rich pay less taxes and you do something about these social issues we've made up!' And the left says 'We wish to solve problems, but because of years of insecurity, we will propose literally the most right-wing idea we can think of, and the right surely won't complain about that!' (Spoiler alert: the right ends up complaining about it.)

Where exactly are the 'progressive conservatives' located in all this?

Yes, like those Catholic churches that refused to perform marriages of non-Catholics face lawsuits....oh, wait, no, they don't. Or like those churches that refuse to perform interracial marriages faced lawsuits...wait, they didn't either. (Societal pressure, yes, lawsuits, no.)

That excuse is literally the stupidest ahistoric excuse I've ever heard in my entire life. No church, _anywhere_, in the entire history of the US, has lose a suit over failure to perform a marriage service.

This is because you simply cannot, under any circumstances, sue a church for failure for hold a _religious ceremony for you_, and that entire concept is crazy.

And it's crazy in another way, a way that doesn't ever get pointed out. It's crazy in that it assumes that gay people are being gay to _annoy_ people, and thus it's perfectly reasonable for them to decide to _force_ others to participate in their marriage ceremony against their will, when they could just go elsewhere and have a marriage free of problems.

Of course, what Rod is _probably_ talking about, and trying to confuse is the issue, is 'religious' organizations that are not actually religious, might face discrimination lawsuits about their hiring practices...which is, indeed, true (Just like if they refused to hire women or Jews or black people) but this has nothing to do with gay _marriage_ and is instead due to whether or not sexual orientation is a protected class under state law.

Right. The whole 'Where do things come from?' question that might be of interest to philosophers, but is not really important.

To restate what I said more specifically: Either we can take the position marriages come from governments, and should be available without basis to gender, or we can take the position they can just exist, and the government should not fail to recognize them based on gender.

Either of those is fine. I won't argue with people who take the second position. In fact, like I said, it's probably best if we act and speak like the second position is the truth, even if we don't think it. How we talk about things is important, and there's a large difference in people's head between 'The government refusing to recognize a marriage' and 'The government refusing to let two people get married'.

Or course, this applies in other contexts, too: 'The government refuses to recognize the free speech rights of X' vs. 'The government decides that what X intends to do is not speech'.

I'm reminded of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0Ti-gkJiXc

Basically, it says shouldn't call people 'racist'. You should call their _actions_ seem racist, or their _statements_ seem racist. Not because of any moral reason (Someone who does racist things is, by definition, racist.) but because there's a difference between asserting something in their head, vs. something specific that they did.

And I want to explain on what the video says, and give _another_ reason to present it that way: It gives undecided people an 'out', let think in their head 'Oh, that probably did seem a little bit racist, and since I'm _not racist_, I should stop doing that'.

As opposed to say 'You can't call me a racist, I'm not racist. Ergo, my actions must not have been racist.'.

So, to apply this to anti-SSM people: The question isn't if people _are_ bigoted. The question should be whether blocking SSM is a bigoted policy, and whether or not promoting such a policy appears inherently bigoted no matter what the justification.

Now, there probably _are_ people it's reasonable to call bigoted. Whose statements and actions lead you to a reasonable conclusion that they are not going to change their mind anyway, they are aware of how they present themselves, and think it's a _good thing_. (OTOH, think about the video. Saying what is in _their_ heads gives _them_ an easy victory, as they can make a much better claim to know that.)

But for 90% of the SSM-opposition out there, it should be: Opposing the right of people to marry who they wish _seems_ bigoted. I know you claim to have reasons it's not, but none of them stand up to any scrutiny, and in fact some of those justifications _themselves_ seem rather bigoted, and not just towards gay people. Like the idea that adopted children are somehow 'lesser' and worse off, or that infertile heterosexual people have fake marriages. These are not things you _actually_ want to be saying, and sound rather hateful if you stop and think about them.

As you are of opposite genders, and thus can procreate (Opposite genders, of course, being the sole deciding factor of procreatability, if I recall my 'anti-gay marriage' information correctly.), it seems allowable.

The freedom to be/get married is bigger than the government. Whether the government officially recognizes your marriage, you are still married.

Well, almost all rights are 'bigger' than the government.The US Declaration of Independence specifically claims that rights exist in some real sense, independent of the government: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...

But where rights come from is rather moot. Either we can take the position they come from governments, and should be distributed equally without basis to gender, or we can take the position they just exist, and the government should not fail to recognize them based on gender.

(I confusingly take the position that rights actually come from governments, or rather whatever we can force out of them, but we should _pretend_ they do not. We should pretend 'freedom of speech' is some real thing. How we think about things is very important, and it's best if we think 'freedom of speech' is something like 'our left arm', and get annoyed if people try to take it away, even if, unlike our left arm, freedom of speech is something we made up.)

What I was really getting at was that rights belong to the individual; collective rights only exist as a collection of individual rights (which is, I think, what you’re saying, too)

I'm not _entirely_ certain I agree completely with that, there are some things that I think probably can best be be regarded as collective rights, like self-governance, and some religious freedoms. Note these would be entirely different rights than individuals have, though. A group of people have a right to create laws and government, and make everyone in that area live under them, which is a right individuals do not have. You can try to break that down to individual rights, and it might work, but it's vastly simpler to just pretend there are collective rights.

However, yes, WRT marriage, that is entirely an individual right, and I see no rights that it would make sense to view as collective rights except maybe 'The right to own property'. But almost all the rights associated with marriage are 'an individual member of the marriage can do something'.

Or, to put it another way, a 'married couple' is a fictional legal entity, and just other fictional legal entities, do not actually have most 'person' rights, except joint property. (No matter what nonsense the court says.)

Of course, this is all irrelevant to whether or not individual people have the right to _be_ married to a specific other person. Which is, as we both agree, an individual right. And I further assert this individual right cannot be removed based solely on gender, at least not in any country where gender equality is based in any sort of fundamental principles that laws cannot override. (Like the Constitution in the US, and it's entirely possible there's some equivalent thing providing gender equality in Canada.)

I don't even vaguely understand the idea of 'not an individual right, hence not a right'. In what way is entering a marriage something an individual doesn't do?

Sure, it requires two people...but so does freedom of assembly. And freedom of speech and press also. (Unless you want to argue that the government banning people from listening to you isn't a violation of those rights.). The right to vote presumably is the right to vote for _other people_ in addition to yourself. The right to a trial by jury requires other people, and in fact they can be _involuntary compelled_ (via jury duty) to participate in your exercise of that right. (Talk about 'positive rights'.)

But this is not actually important. And while there actually _is_ a right to be married (Ask Loving vs. Virginia), let us pretend there is not.

What there _is_ a right to is a right not to be discriminated based on your gender. Especially via government treatment of you. We can stand around debating conflicting rights of private entities all we want, but we should all agree the _government_ has a duty to treat people identically. Which it does, under the Equal Protection Clause.

So let us assume I am named Leslie. And I wish to marry a woman named Jennifer. There are things needed before marriage (Blood test, consent of the other party, etc) and let's assume those are done. There are things that would bar marriage (genetic relationship, a current marriage to someone else) but let's assume none of those apply.

So I walk into the place to get a marriage license, and get one outcome if I'm a man named Leslie, and one if I'm a woman named Leslie. That's it. That's the sole deciding factor in that outcome, all other things being equal. My gender.

Please note that, while Jennifer is also (If I am a female Leslie), barred from marrying _me_ based on _her_ gender, but that is a completely unrelated violation of rights. Violating two people's rights at once is not somehow not violating individual rights. (We shall bar you from speaking to this guy, but we shall also bar him from speaking to you, so that's okay.)

The government decided that I can or cannot do something based solely on my gender. An _individual_ violation of _my_ rights.

And, yes, there are also things that female Leslie can do that male Leslie could not. That does not really change anything, and we've long since moved past allowing 'separate but equal'. And _that_ was in circumstances (different facilities) where 'equal' might actually apply in theory, but did not in practice. But it's hard to argue that different marriage partners can substitute for each other _even in theory_. (Someone needs to see if there's any instance in modern history where groom ran away, and the people at the wedding shrugged and married the bride to the best man, like what is supposedly 'supposed' to happen.)