I work from home but go to actual meetings once a week that are either 30 minutes or 60 minutes one way depending on the location. But the pay is chicken feed. Even working a minimum wage job part time would be a positive financial gain for me.
At first I was going to create a new thread for this, but then I remembered we already have a thread for hate. So this is the perfect place to discuss all the jackasses in California trying to block gay marriage!
SAN FRANCISCO—Lawyers debating the legality of California's ban on same-sex weddings sparred in federal court Tuesday over a witness who argued that marriage is a strictly heterosexual institution designed to promote parenthood.
"There is only one institution in the world that performs the task of bringing together the three dimensions of parenting: the biological, the social—the caring of the child—and the legal," testified defense witness David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values. "That institution is marriage."
That marriage exists across most cultures and different religions is evidence that it is "fundamentally important in nature," Mr. Blankenhorn said. He added that allowing gays to wed would weaken the institution of marriage, leading to lower marriage rates and higher divorce rates for heterosexuals, as well as more children born out of wedlock. He said the weakening of marriage could also lead the legalization of polygamy.
David Boies, a lawyer representing gay couples, began questioning Mr. Blankenhorn in a cross-examination that had the two men raising their voices at each other. They accomplished little as Mr. Boies pressed the witness to give succinct answers, which Mr. Blankenhorn often refused to do. Their bickering prompted the judge to end the trial for the day. He asked lawyers from both sides to finish presenting evidence Wednesday morning.
The U.S. District Court trial is the first federal-law challenge to Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriages in California after voters passed it in 2008. Lawyers representing same-sex couples argue that gays deserve special protection because they are victims of discrimination. The defense is seeking to refute that argument and contends that voters have the right to define marriage.
Also Tuesday, Mr. Boies challenged the testimony of political expert Kenneth Miller, who said Monday that gays in California wield significant political clout because they are well-funded and supported by elected officials, corporations, unions and newspapers.
On the second day of an often-testy cross-examination, Mr. Boies asked about a book Mr. Miller recently published in which the professor wrote about how ballot initiatives could be used to target minority groups. Under questioning, Mr. Miller, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, said ballot measures could be used to tap into anti-minority sentiment. Mr. Boies hopes to show that the ban on same-sex marriage was motivated by bias.
In questioning by defense lawyer David Thompson, the professor said that California voters rejected several anti-gay initiatives in the 1970s and 1980s, and that recent polls showed that most state voters have a positive or neutral view of gays.
Mr. Miller's testimony is at odds with that of Gary Segura, a Stanford University political science professor whom the plaintiffs called last week. Mr. Segura said gays and lesbians have little political influence.
After the defense rests its case Wednesday, Judge Vaughn Walker is expected to review the evidence and call back lawyers for closing arguments in February before making a ruling. His decision, whatever the outcome, likely will be appealed to a U.S. appeals court and then the U.S. Supreme Court, a process that could take more than a year.
Let's break up these ridiculous arguments, shall we?
He added that allowing gays to wed would weaken the institution of marriage
People say that all the time, but I find that it really doesn't mean anything. I would argue multiple marriages and divorces weaken the "institution" of marriage far more, but where are the propositions banning divorce?
leading to lower marriage rates and higher divorce rates for heterosexuals
Really. Last I checked, the majority of people don't seem to shop around the local bars, wondering if they feel like ordering some cock or vagina for the night (though some do). Legalizing gay marriage isn't going to cause a surge of people to turn gay just because they can.
as well as more children born out of wedlock
Oh come on. I'm calling shenanigans on this one. How are gay married people going to create more babies out of wedlock? You're just spitting out buzzwords and nonsense now.
He said the weakening of marriage could also lead the legalization of polygamy
wat
Slippery slope argument. Ok, I can deal. Did you know that slippery slope arguments can slip both ways? If we illegalize gay marriage, then pretty soon we're going to have to illegalize regular marriage too!
/rant
Sorry for the rant everyone. It's just that when you have such an impossibly massive intellect as I do, the bullshit that comes out of people's mouths is too much to bear sometimes.
Maybe they should just change the word Marriage to Union or something. Separation of Church and State and all that. Make a State recognized Union be understood to be a wholly separate thing from a Church recognized Marriage. Problem solved. Everybody is happy. Or perhaps everyone is equally miserable, but the key word is "equal".
I was actually debating with my dad the other week about gay marriage, he was against and I was for. I could combat everything he said, except polygamy. I mean... really, what's morally wrong with polygamy? He made a good point. Many religions support polygamy, the only thing that really keeps it taboo in the US is our traditional definition of marriage (and, ya know, it's illegal).
If we WERE to allow for gay marriage... why would legalizing polygamy be wrong?
Food for thought. I just want to throw out there: I fully support gay marriage. I think if two people love each other, then they should absolutely be able to get married and have all the legal benefits of being together permanently.
Also, for X's comment: I think that although Matt is right, Separate But Equal is not good enough... it might be a good starting point. Have the full legal benefits of getting married while all of the people against gay marriage could be satisfied with their definition, and then later on have a follow up law passed that says "Okay gays have been getting Civil Unions and the world hasn't ended, I think it's okay if we called it marriage now"
Yeah, this kind of shit enrages me too. So much crap spilled from that guy's mouth, particularly about babies born out of wedlock. What????
As for polygamy, I don't see any problems with it as long as it goes both ways and the usual protections are placed on it. Obviously we don't want some creepy cult dude marrying 15 year old girls, but we don't want those people doing that with even one person. If both polyandry and polygyny were legal, I'd be fine with polygamy. What's so bad about it anyway? Maybe I'm missing the big arguments.
The whole "separate but equal" thing is... weird. I think it's complicated by the fact that right now, the idea of "marriage" covers both legal and religious ground. Granted, not all marriages do... Megan and I did everything we could to keep religion out of our marriage, but even still, we had to use a pastor since getting a justice of the peace was way more expensive (I think.......).
But, if I understand things correctly, a civil union doesn't grant the couple the same rights and privileges that marriage does, and that's a problem. I think, perhaps, the ideal solution (though probably not feasible) would be to somehow disentangle marriage from the legal and then grant civil unions the exact same rights as marriages. Then, people wanting to join together can mix and match however they want... if there's some desire they have to "be married before God", they can do the whole ceremony and whatever and also file for civil union status, which would grant the legal rights that typically come with marriage.
That way, Megan and I could have just gotten a civil union and not messed with the religious bullshit, and religious gay couples can get a civil union and then try to wrangle some sort of religious ceremony. Because as much as I despise the intolerance of Christianity, I don't think churches should be forced to marry gay couples if it's against their beliefs... this is religion we're talking about, and it's supposed to be separate from the law. So if my two lesbian friends found a religious organization willing to marry them (and they're Quakers, so it's quite likely) then they could be fully married and civilly unified. There. Problem solved. Right?
As for polygamy, I don't see any problems with it as long as it goes both ways and the usual protections are placed on it. Obviously we don't want some creepy cult dude marrying 15 year old girls, but we don't want those people doing that with even one person. If both polyandry and polygyny were legal, I'd be fine with polygamy. What's so bad about it anyway? Maybe I'm missing the big arguments.
The problem with polygamy is that marriage ostensibly bestows specific legal rights/privileges/whatever on behalf of one person to another - it's a legal agreement between those two people. In a polygamous marriage, if someone is on life support or whatever, which spouse has the right to make decisions on their behalf? Does someone in the relationship receive "primary" status? Why even bother with it in the first place, then?
This also means the argument that gay marriage will lead to polygamy is bullshit, since it has no impact at all on the number of people involved in the actual process.
Because as much as I despise the intolerance of Christianity, I don't think churches should be forced to marry gay couples if it's against their beliefs... this is religion we're talking about, and it's supposed to be separate from the law. So if my two lesbian friends found a religious organization willing to marry them (and they're Quakers, so it's quite likely) then they could be fully married and civilly unified. There. Problem solved. Right?
This has always been the case. There has never been an instance where a state government forced a religious organization to marry two people that the clergy refused to. Why? Because the state has already implicitly recognized that marriage is a legal agreement between two persons that has nothing to do with the religious ceremony - as you noted, you can just as easily do it down at the courthouse rather than a church or synagogue. An interesting comparison is that divorce is legal, but the state has never forced the Catholic Church to recognize divorces or perform marriages between divorced persons.
The entire shitstorm boils down to this: what rationalization does the anti-gay marriage crowd have other than they simply just don't like gays?
Okay, so that's certainly a legal hiccup with polygamy. But what about people who never married? Do then their parents have the power to make those decisions? In that case, which parent is "primary?"
I'm not saying this spitefully or anything, I'm simply curious.
Maybe they should just change the word Marriage to Union or something. Separation of Church and State and all that. Make a State recognized Union be understood to be a wholly separate thing from a Church recognized Marriage. Problem solved. Everybody is happy. Or perhaps everyone is equally miserable, but the key word is "equal".
You could take that a step further and just have marriage be an entirely religiuos ceremony with no legal bindings or benefits, and make gay and straight couples get civil unions with full legal rights given to married couples today. The Church can't complain, no more gay marriage, unless they choose to, and if people get a divorce, it's just a legal contract being anulled, not a promise to God.
The polygamy argument was used back in the 60s when the Supreme court ruled anti-miscegenation laws (laws that prohibit interracial marriage) unconstitutional. If we allow blacks and whites to marry, pretty soon we'll have to legalize polygamy, sodomy, pedophilia, necrophylia, dendrophylia...
These people are not very familiar with the term non sequitur.
No, he's talking about no marriage for anybody. I had the same idea, and i don't know why nobody's argued for it. Marriage is a religious matter, therefore, the state has never had the right to perform marriages. However, the state could legally oversee domestic contracts between 2 adults. Included in this contract would be the understanding that there would be shared financial burden and a cooperative living environment in which one or both parties works and/or manages the home. For the gov't, they would give the option to file taxes jointly and they'd mandate insurance companies to offer coverage for the spouse. And the spouse would have many other defacto powers of estate and family privileges like hospital visits.
EDIT: this was in response to X and Tak, stupid new page.
DOUBLE EDIT: Polygamy: The problem I see with polygamy is the privacy rights it could give to an entire group. You could have a commune/cult/criminal organization in which all the members get legally "married" to one another and none of them could be held as a witness against any of the others. They could also take advantage of tax laws, and other more minor spousal privileges.
That sort of thing I understand, since it's really only a phrase that exists in speech... writers don't seem to use it very often. Probably because it only works as a phrase divorced from its words and 'really' performs the same function.
I always found it retarded that people who want to get married feel the need to involve the state in their contract. Marriage is a contract between two (or three or four or five) people, whatever. Why get the state involved? If people want to, fine. If you want to get God involved, that's fine too. It's all freedom of contract. What I'm saying is that I agree with Adam, and I'm glad he said as soon as he did since I didn't have the chance.
Grrr. I missed our company bus this morning because it was four fucking minutes early and I was in line getting breakfast at the time. So I had to go take the public bus which takes forever and is a little smelly.
Harvard Law School student Eva S. Hibnick filed a class action lawsuit on Wednesday against Google on behalf of Gmail users, alleging that Google Buzz—Google’s new social networking application—discloses personal information without consent and constitutes a breach of privacy.
Buzz allows users to “follow,” or track updates posted by, their e-mail contacts. Though Google has issued apologies and made changes to the program since its Feb. 9 launch, the application continues to be an “opt-out” program, meaning that Gmail’s 31.2 million users are automatically signed up until they choose to deactivate Buzz.
Hibnick, a second year student at the Law School, said she was upset that she was automatically “following” and being “followed” on Buzz by people whom Google had chosen for her.
“The social networking industry is going too far,” Hibnick said.
Hibnick signed on as lead plaintiff for the lawsuit after third year Law School student Benjamin R. Osborn approached her about pursuing a class action suit.
Osborn said he thought that there might be evidence for a lawsuit two days after the program launched and later suggested the idea to Law School professor William B. Rubenstein, who specializes in class action law.
Rubenstein then contacted attorney Gary E. Mason, who will now take charge of the case, with Rubenstein and Osborn serving as independent consultants.
Rubenstein said he regularly works with students on litigation, but said that this was the first time a student came to him with an idea for a lawsuit.
“[Osborn’s] identification of this as an issue reflects the fact that these social networking sites are a concern of the student generation,” Rubenstein said. “The most important thing about this case to me is the initiative my students have shown.”
According to Osborn, it is unclear whether Google’s breach of privacy was intentional.
“I don’t know what Google’s motive is in all of this,” Osborn said. “I think they were just trying to jump-start their social network.”
Whether Google was aware of the problem could determine the outcome of the case, according to Rubenstein. If Google had known that the application infringed upon users’ privacy, the corporation could face greater consequences, he said.
Rubenstein also noted the lack of transparency about the changes that Google has made to Buzz in the last few weeks, and Osborn said that the team plans to pursue the case regardless of any future modifications to the application.
“[Buzz] has already violated people’s privacy,” Osborn said. “Damages have been incurred. And we want Google to change its conduct in the future.”
Historically similar cases have settled rather than gone to trial, Mason said. He suggested that monetary compensation might go to an appropriate public interest group or organization, rather than being distributed among all of Gmail’s users, but declined to estimate the amount of compensation sought by the plaintiffs.
Google has not made any public comments in response to the lawsuit and did not return requests for comment this weekend.
You know, they already fixed all the privacy issues as I said, It's on the cloud so it doesn't do anything to your computer directly, and though it is an opt out program they tell you the first time you log on with it activated that it's activated, and that it can be turned off.
In addition to that, it has already been stated that Buzz was tested internally, and that all these privacy issues simply never came up.
Oh, I should probably elaborate. I'm not raging because of the Google issue; I'm raging because some pissant Harvard student is trying to cut their teeth on some big case. There are many more important cases to handle, this kind of irrelevant shit just clogs the courts. Corporate fraud is worthwhile. Mismanagement of corporate funds is worthwhile. This kind of shit just further reinforces the idea that lawyers cause more harm in society than good.
I should clarify, I wasn't counter-raging because you were raging over the Google issue. I was raging because I think the Harvard student is a moron and should know better.
This is stupid. If you don't know whether the privacy invasion is intentional or not, maybe you could just ask Google to stop? Why does a lawsuit ever have to be the first course of action?
Comments
Witness Assails Gay Marriages
Let's break up these ridiculous arguments, shall we?
People say that all the time, but I find that it really doesn't mean anything. I would argue multiple marriages and divorces weaken the "institution" of marriage far more, but where are the propositions banning divorce?
Really. Last I checked, the majority of people don't seem to shop around the local bars, wondering if they feel like ordering some cock or vagina for the night (though some do). Legalizing gay marriage isn't going to cause a surge of people to turn gay just because they can.
Oh come on. I'm calling shenanigans on this one. How are gay married people going to create more babies out of wedlock? You're just spitting out buzzwords and nonsense now.
wat
Slippery slope argument. Ok, I can deal. Did you know that slippery slope arguments can slip both ways? If we illegalize gay marriage, then pretty soon we're going to have to illegalize regular marriage too!
/rant
Sorry for the rant everyone. It's just that when you have such an impossibly massive intellect as I do, the bullshit that comes out of people's mouths is too much to bear sometimes.
If we WERE to allow for gay marriage... why would legalizing polygamy be wrong?
Food for thought. I just want to throw out there: I fully support gay marriage. I think if two people love each other, then they should absolutely be able to get married and have all the legal benefits of being together permanently.
Also, for X's comment: I think that although Matt is right, Separate But Equal is not good enough... it might be a good starting point. Have the full legal benefits of getting married while all of the people against gay marriage could be satisfied with their definition, and then later on have a follow up law passed that says "Okay gays have been getting Civil Unions and the world hasn't ended, I think it's okay if we called it marriage now"
As for polygamy, I don't see any problems with it as long as it goes both ways and the usual protections are placed on it. Obviously we don't want some creepy cult dude marrying 15 year old girls, but we don't want those people doing that with even one person. If both polyandry and polygyny were legal, I'd be fine with polygamy. What's so bad about it anyway? Maybe I'm missing the big arguments.
The whole "separate but equal" thing is... weird. I think it's complicated by the fact that right now, the idea of "marriage" covers both legal and religious ground. Granted, not all marriages do... Megan and I did everything we could to keep religion out of our marriage, but even still, we had to use a pastor since getting a justice of the peace was way more expensive (I think.......).
But, if I understand things correctly, a civil union doesn't grant the couple the same rights and privileges that marriage does, and that's a problem. I think, perhaps, the ideal solution (though probably not feasible) would be to somehow disentangle marriage from the legal and then grant civil unions the exact same rights as marriages. Then, people wanting to join together can mix and match however they want... if there's some desire they have to "be married before God", they can do the whole ceremony and whatever and also file for civil union status, which would grant the legal rights that typically come with marriage.
That way, Megan and I could have just gotten a civil union and not messed with the religious bullshit, and religious gay couples can get a civil union and then try to wrangle some sort of religious ceremony. Because as much as I despise the intolerance of Christianity, I don't think churches should be forced to marry gay couples if it's against their beliefs... this is religion we're talking about, and it's supposed to be separate from the law. So if my two lesbian friends found a religious organization willing to marry them (and they're Quakers, so it's quite likely) then they could be fully married and civilly unified. There. Problem solved. Right?
The problem with polygamy is that marriage ostensibly bestows specific legal rights/privileges/whatever on behalf of one person to another - it's a legal agreement between those two people. In a polygamous marriage, if someone is on life support or whatever, which spouse has the right to make decisions on their behalf? Does someone in the relationship receive "primary" status? Why even bother with it in the first place, then?
This also means the argument that gay marriage will lead to polygamy is bullshit, since it has no impact at all on the number of people involved in the actual process.
This has always been the case. There has never been an instance where a state government forced a religious organization to marry two people that the clergy refused to. Why? Because the state has already implicitly recognized that marriage is a legal agreement between two persons that has nothing to do with the religious ceremony - as you noted, you can just as easily do it down at the courthouse rather than a church or synagogue. An interesting comparison is that divorce is legal, but the state has never forced the Catholic Church to recognize divorces or perform marriages between divorced persons.
The entire shitstorm boils down to this: what rationalization does the anti-gay marriage crowd have other than they simply just don't like gays?
I'm not saying this spitefully or anything, I'm simply curious.
Don't you watch Big Love? First wife would have primary status.
These people are not very familiar with the term non sequitur.
EDIT: this was in response to X and Tak, stupid new page.
DOUBLE EDIT: Polygamy: The problem I see with polygamy is the privacy rights it could give to an entire group. You could have a commune/cult/criminal organization in which all the members get legally "married" to one another and none of them could be held as a witness against any of the others. They could also take advantage of tax laws, and other more minor spousal privileges.
loose vs. lose
won vs. one
for all intensive purposes
their/they're/there
to/too
could have/could of
These are constant problems in the papers I get. And the students never learn...
In addition to that, it has already been stated that Buzz was tested internally, and that all these privacy issues simply never came up.