Actually, in many places there are/were "anti co-habitation laws" that prevented even a man & a woman from living together unless they were married. In many places there are anti-sodomy laws or laws against sex toys(why they're called "marital aids" sometimes). Also the fact that something is not illegal, doesn't mean that people accept it. It may have been legal once the civil rights movement took place for a white man to live with a black woman(or visa versa) but that doesn't mean there wasn't closeted discrimination against them. It isn't illegal to be a Muslim in the US, but that doesn't mean you won't get flack for it. If something is legal(abortion), why balk at the government spending money on it? That is unless you think it's illegal and don't want the government spending money on it, which sounds more like the case? You recognize it's law, suggesting that the law should not be questioned, yet you then suggest we should add a law that changes the current construct of the existing law. Laws can be morphed & changed, we're not still living with all the laws from 1776 on the books. Vote or demonstrate against abortion all you want, most laws come from social pressures. It sounds like you want the law changed, then just be outright with it. Marriage is indeed a sector of law that needs to be changed. You make it sounds like you're trying to divorce your moral/religious thoughts from the decision making, but it still seems as though those thoughts are front & center. If you want to look at marriage objectively it should merely be a contract between two people(or more?) who want the benefits of marriage. Marriage is no longer about possession of a woman or procreation, it provides both social & financial protection for the parties involved. Our society also views it as an "ultimate act of love" showing your deep commitment to your partner(partners). As far as the .gov is concerned, though, it should merely be a business contract between the parties involved. If you want to segregate it, then there better be a good reason why, but there really isn't an objective reason to prevent gay marriage other than religious/moral reasons. Ultimately let's strip the .gov clean of corruption & wasteful spending, I am all for that. But your choice topics around gay marriage & abstinence only education make it sound like you'd prefer to force your moral/religious viewpoints on others, while trying to mask it as some sort of fiscal concern.
For Barfo and Klinky, I chose those topics b/c they were ones that many would say are "social" conservative issues, and I was trying to point out that they have financial aspects to them. Of course things like farm subsidies and warplanes and Medicare overruns and welfare are "on the table", but to my knowledge no one's saying that farm subsidies or warplanes are a "social issue to be put away" that Denny's talking about. (Though I wonder where the "fascist banning of the unions" crowd was when this guy did it 5 years ago) Of course you're going to have a vocal minority who want to stand outside clinics or hold up posters outside city hall or go on the radio and bash people not like them, but we both know that that doesn't represent social conservatives, rabid evangelicals, "whacky" Christians or whatever at-large. Most of the people I know and go to church with and work with in the community are those who many of you would call whacky. We go to church every week, give a chunk of our pay to the church, volunteer for social work b/c we believe that it's mandatory, etc. We don't believe that abortion is right and if it came to a vote we would vote against it. But there's a difference that comes b/w acceptance that that's what the world we live in believes and has legislated vs. supporting it with our money. In religious terms, (and speaking only for myself and my opinion now) that difference is the difference b/w living and ministering in a broken world versus a sin of commission of using my God-given resources to help pay for something that He says is wrong. Because for me (and again, this is personal opinion), having one-issue voting is stupid. There's no one (probably not even my wife ) who would legislate and execute our government exactly the way I'd do it or like someone to do it. And I DO think abortion is wrong. I believe that many things are wrong. And I believe in many things that we don't do as a country that I think would be good things. For one reason, because I don't think gov't should spend money or insert itself in every realm it thinks it "legal". It's legal to home-school your kids, for instance, but I don't think the gov't should be paying parents to keep their kids out of school and only teach them what they want to. It's legal to consume alcohol, but I don't think WA state should be publicly paying overhead for liquor distribution. It's legal (if misinformed) to say that the Holocaust never happened (mixing threads here), but that doesn't mean the gov't should spend money to distribute textbooks that say that to every child in America. Driving is legal, but the government doesn't buy everyone a car. Democracy in action!
I'm talking about funding. If they want to tax abortions or defense contractor profits I think there's precedent for them to do so. But that's not necessarily in the scope of "limiting" government...fiscally or socially.
Everyone has their ox they don't want gored. You object on moral grounds to money being spent on abortions. There are plenty of people who object to money being spent on anything military, especially using force outside our borders. If you're in favor of one, you basically have to live with the other. You've already posted that you have your own vision of how govt. should be enacted. I suspect barfo does, too, but it'd be like the old USSR with govt. bread and cheese lines and everyone living in govt. housing. It's probably a good thing we don't have barfo's world, nor yours, nor any one person's.
What's mine? So what about my non-moral grounds for it being spent on abstinence training? It's a cop-out to say it's all moral-based and therefore not worth talking about. Completely disagree. One is defined by the constitution, one is not. But you advocate paying for those things that aren't common?
I advocate govt. paying for as little as possible. The govt. that governs best governs the least. The reality is that govt. spends near $4T and some of it you're going to be satisfied with and some not. Same for me, and same for barfo. At the same time, I don't see why your anti-abortion morality should be forced on anyone else, nor should someone's social agenda be forced on others as well.
not at all. My views for or against it don't factor in anyone's life. As vociferous (or not) as I am in my "moral" view, no one pays a dollar or a shred of attention. That NOT the case, though, for those using my tax dollars FOR the abortions (or any other aspect of the "social agenda" you'd like). If they want to have them, go for it. Just pay for it yourself or get someone else (a charity, maybe?) to do so. And again, that's not a moral argument. It's a fiscal one. That's why I keep bringing up abstinence training. Do you want your children only taught abstinence with your tax dollars? Doesn't matter, b/c it's a "luxury" the government can't afford. The "reality" that the gov't spends nearly $4T is the one we're talking about. Fiscal conservatism, whether or not social goes along with it. And as soon as we start divorcing the emotional stuff from the argument, the sooner we'll be back on track.
$393 million from tax payers covers 800 Planned Parenthood clinics for a full year... $393 million dollars covers 24 hours of military services in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Exactly. At $300 per abortion, it'd cost $450M to pay for every abortion during the peak abortion years. The number of abortions are actually significantly on the decline since 1996. I don't at all suggest govt. pay for abortions, or much of anything else. I hope that's clear. But if govt. is going to pay for all sorts of things, abortions aren't particularly different than anything else it spends on. For the record, the federal govt. doesn't pay for any abortions.
