Polls on Same-Sex Marriage State Laws

[asexual trans victimologist]

Whatever makes you sleep at night.

Although I recommend learning how to lucid dream so you can have a baku come and eat the gay Mexican night terrors. I think we'd all be happier that way, including you.

If you want to support Anal intercourse, then that is your decision.  Ask any woman on the street if they enjoy anal intercourse.  You may think its normal and safe to have anal intercourse but there are some things that the human body can't handle. 

Actually I have no specific opinion of anal sex one way or another, and my opinion of sex in general is much more negative than you might think.

The rest of your post is, of course, hilarious.

[greenforest32]

Actually I have no specific opinion of anal sex one way or another, and my opinion of sex in general is much more negative than you might think.

Do tell.

[asexual trans victimologist]

Actually I have no specific opinion of anal sex one way or another, and my opinion of sex in general is much more negative than you might think.

Do tell.

I don't like it, and I intellectually understand but am viscerally baffled by why other people do so much. I think there are all sorts of really creepy power dynamics bound up in it and I have serious concerns about the philosophical possibility of respecting the agency of a sexual partner.

I am equal-opportunity about all of this with regards to gender.

[crypto-fascist superhero]

The virginity on this page is killing me.

[greenforest32]

I don't like it, and I intellectually understand but am viscerally baffled by why other people do so much.

You don't like it personally or you don't like the idea that other people are doing it? In either case, why?

I think there are all sorts of really creepy power dynamics bound up in it

Power dynamics like what? People of different ages or positions of authority (boss-employee, teacher-student, etc)?

I have serious concerns about the philosophical possibility of respecting the agency of a sexual partner.

I am equal-opportunity about all of this with regards to gender.

? What, like you're not sure it would actually be consenting? Not sure I understand.

[asexual trans victimologist]

I don't like it, and I intellectually understand but am viscerally baffled by why other people do so much.

You don't like it personally or you don't like the idea that other people are doing it? In either case, why?

Both. In order, because I don't swing that (i.e. any) way and for reasons below.

It should be mentioned that I am attracted to girls (or people whose gender peformativity is female) aesthetically and in terms of relationships; it's just  my interest in some parts of their anatomy that's lacking.

I think there are all sorts of really creepy power dynamics bound up in it

Power dynamics like what? People of different ages or positions of authority (boss-employee, teacher-student, etc)?

The creation of a power tension between different people in general. I actually have a somewhat more positive attitude towards BDSM because I feel it's more honest about this. There are philosophical reasons for this that might take a little while to explain; some of the reasons are, in my case, religious, but they don't necessarily have to be religious to make sense (since I've elucidated them in my Philosophy Club to not entirely negative or confused response and I'm my Philosophy Club's token religious-in-a-remotely-conventional-way person). So I guess my explanation to you would depend on the extent to which you're interested in my interpretation of what power is and how it works in this case.

I have serious concerns about the philosophical possibility of respecting the agency of a sexual partner.

I am equal-opportunity about all of this with regards to gender.

? What, like you're not sure it would actually be consenting? Not sure I understand.

I'm not sure consent is entirely possible on the most basic level, but it is for all practical intents and purposes, so my main concern actually has to do with 'mak[ing] the loved person an Object of appetite' (quoting Immanuel Kant here). Obviously there are ways to ameliorate this. I'm not one of those crazies who insists that anybody who has non-procreative sex is automatically evil. But my understanding of sexuality does come from both a kind of baffled and a kind of unnerved place.

[greenforest32]

The creation of a power tension between different people in general. I actually have a somewhat more positive attitude towards BDSM because I feel it's more honest about this. There are philosophical reasons for this that might take a little while to explain; some of the reasons are, in my case, religious, but they don't necessarily have to be religious to make sense (since I've elucidated them in my Philosophy Club to not entirely negative or confused response and I'm my Philosophy Club's token religious-in-a-remotely-conventional-way person). So I guess my explanation to you would depend on the extent to which you're interested in my interpretation of what power is and how it works in this case.

I'm willing to read your interpretation.

I'm not sure consent is entirely possible on the most basic level, but it is for all practical intents and purposes, so my main concern actually has to do with 'mak[ing] the loved person an Object of appetite' (quoting Immanuel Kant here). Obviously there are ways to ameliorate this. I'm not one of those crazies who insists that anybody who has non-procreative sex is automatically evil. But my understanding of sexuality does come from both a kind of baffled and a kind of unnerved place.

Googles

So basically sex is wrong because people do it out of physical appetite and this appetite disregards the nonphysical aspect of a person (just having sex with a body) so that you're just having sex with a thing/object?

Meh, that seems pretty weird. There is obviously a person inside the body which is why you can rape a person but not rape a sex doll and I'm sure plenty of people have sex with not just the intention of making themselves feel good, but making their partner feel good too.

Even then, I don't see why wanting to do something purely for physical reasons is wrong. So what if you and the person you're having sex with are just using your bodies as a thing to make yourselves feel good?

[asexual trans victimologist]

The creation of a power tension between different people in general. I actually have a somewhat more positive attitude towards BDSM because I feel it's more honest about this. There are philosophical reasons for this that might take a little while to explain; some of the reasons are, in my case, religious, but they don't necessarily have to be religious to make sense (since I've elucidated them in my Philosophy Club to not entirely negative or confused response and I'm my Philosophy Club's token religious-in-a-remotely-conventional-way person). So I guess my explanation to you would depend on the extent to which you're interested in my interpretation of what power is and how it works in this case.

I'm willing to read your interpretation.

I have a written essay on this subject, but be warned, it also touches on...several other issues, including gender identity, faith and how it's distinct from religion, Marxist analysis of religion, and the concept of 'alterity' in extremely dense (and condensed) philosophese  (for example, I define atheism as 'the faith that the first apparent character of the world within the confines of logical perception persists beyond those confines'). I'll see if I can go through it and take out excerpts to maybe make a thread on the Religion & Philosophy board. I'm actually reasonably proud of the essay, for what it is.

I'm not sure consent is entirely possible on the most basic level, but it is for all practical intents and purposes, so my main concern actually has to do with 'mak[ing] the loved person an Object of appetite' (quoting Immanuel Kant here). Obviously there are ways to ameliorate this. I'm not one of those crazies who insists that anybody who has non-procreative sex is automatically evil. But my understanding of sexuality does come from both a kind of baffled and a kind of unnerved place.

Googles

So basically sex is wrong because people do it out of physical appetite and this appetite disregards the nonphysical aspect of a person (just having sex with a body) so that you're just having sex with a thing/object?

Meh, that seems pretty weird. There is obviously a person inside the body which is why you can rape a person but not rape a sex doll and I'm sure plenty of people have sex with not just the intention of making themselves feel good, but making their partner feel good too.

That's exactly the sort of thing that I was referring to when I said that there are ways to ameliorate it and that I'm not a crazy person about this belief. Kant's more hardline on this than I am even though theoretically there's not all that much daylight between me and him.

Even then, I don't see why wanting to do something purely for physical reasons is wrong. So what if you and the person you're having sex with are just using your bodies as a thing to make yourselves feel good?

This is a function of one's fundamental view of what the physical universe is here for and I suspect probably isn't the sort of thing that can carry over from one view on that to another. The best I can give you is that my view of the physical universe is intensively symbolic, if that makes any sense (again, this sort of view doesn't necessarily have to be religious symbolism per se, even though a lot of it is in my case).

[Snowguy716]

If you want to support Anal intercourse, then that is your decision. Ask any woman on the street if they enjoy anal intercourse.  You may think its normal and safe to have anal intercourse but there are some things that the human body can't handle.

Ahhh... I love reminiscing about the halcyon days of my youth.  Despite my rants about the adolescents that populate this forum I do actually enjoy experiencing the quaint naivete from time to time.  FYI young buck the way I roll its the women I've dated that have requested anal intercourse.  And yes some of them were very far right wing.  Once you put away the porn and get out into the real world you are going to get eaten alive.  To this day every time I meet a new woman I have no idea what to expect.  It's wild.

When your dad is hitting the Schlitz at the dinner table and regurgitating what Rush Limbaugh told him to say it's okay to put him on ignore every once in awhile.

I ask women on the street if they enjoy anal intercourse all the time.  Most of the time they say no... but every once in a great while, you'll get one who says yes.  And that's when you realize you've just experienced something very special.

But... seriously?  I actually find the completely hardwired misogyny in this guy to be fascinating.  I mean... either he's a very accomplished and subtle troll... or he really believes this crap.

And if he'd spend more time asking women if they enjoyed anal intercourse and less time thinking *for* them... he might actually learn a thing or two.

[asexual trans victimologist]

The highly formal and ideologically-charged discussion of anal sex in this thread is relevant to my sense of humor.

[opebo]

I think there are all sorts of really creepy power dynamics bound up in it

The creation of a power tension between different people in general. I actually have a somewhat more positive attitude towards BDSM because I feel it's more honest about this. There are philosophical reasons for this that might take a little while to explain; some of the reasons are, in my case, religious, but they don't necessarily have to be religious to make sense (since I've elucidated them in my Philosophy Club to not entirely negative or confused response and I'm my Philosophy Club's token religious-in-a-remotely-conventional-way person). So I guess my explanation to you would depend on the extent to which you're interested in my interpretation of what power is and how it works in this case.

But isn't the fact that you find these power dynamics to be 'creepy' the heart of your objection?  I mean, you may or may not have a point about the dynamics, but your value judgment regarding them is purely arbitrary.

I have serious concerns about the philosophical possibility of respecting the agency of a sexual partner.

I am equal-opportunity about all of this with regards to gender.

I'm not sure consent is entirely possible on the most basic level, but it is for all practical intents and purposes, so my main concern actually has to do with 'mak[ing] the loved person an Object of appetite' (quoting Immanuel Kant here). Obviously there are ways to ameliorate this. I'm not one of those crazies who insists that anybody who has non-procreative sex is automatically evil. But my understanding of sexuality does come from both a kind of baffled and a kind of unnerved place.

I think you are somewhat mixed up due to the notion of 'love', which should rightly have nothing to do with sex.  Think of sex not so much as a highly specific desire for a particular person or objectification of that person, but rather as a casual and anonymous though very necessary and important personal service - like massage, chiropractic, or dentistry.

[asexual trans victimologist]

I think there are all sorts of really creepy power dynamics bound up in it

The creation of a power tension between different people in general. I actually have a somewhat more positive attitude towards BDSM because I feel it's more honest about this. There are philosophical reasons for this that might take a little while to explain; some of the reasons are, in my case, religious, but they don't necessarily have to be religious to make sense (since I've elucidated them in my Philosophy Club to not entirely negative or confused response and I'm my Philosophy Club's token religious-in-a-remotely-conventional-way person). So I guess my explanation to you would depend on the extent to which you're interested in my interpretation of what power is and how it works in this case.

But isn't the fact that you find these power dynamics to be 'creepy' the heart of your objection?  I mean, you may or may not have a point about the dynamics, but your value judgment regarding them is purely arbitrary.

It's not arbitrary in the context of my other beliefs, which find other-than-explicit, other-than-broadly-social individual power tensions between people (which aren't necessarily the same thing as hierarchy, though obviously they tend to intersect) inherently problematic. I'm sure you can to an extent empathize with this, since you see better than most (even if you're a little...odd in your approach to it) the way civilization as it presently exists is made mostly or entirely of exploitative power dynamics. Imagine the problems with that transferred to a relationship between two (or slightly more) individuals and you have roughly how I look at sexuality, or at least, the way sexuality is done in most of our society.

I have serious concerns about the philosophical possibility of respecting the agency of a sexual partner.

I am equal-opportunity about all of this with regards to gender.

I'm not sure consent is entirely possible on the most basic level, but it is for all practical intents and purposes, so my main concern actually has to do with 'mak[ing] the loved person an Object of appetite' (quoting Immanuel Kant here). Obviously there are ways to ameliorate this. I'm not one of those crazies who insists that anybody who has non-procreative sex is automatically evil. But my understanding of sexuality does come from both a kind of baffled and a kind of unnerved place.

I think you are somewhat mixed up due to the notion of 'love', which should rightly have nothing to do with sex.  Think of sex not so much as a highly specific desire for a particular person or objectification of that person, but rather as a casual and anonymous though very necessary and important personal service - like massage, chiropractic, or dentistry.

If you please, I'd rather not, since that makes the problem worse, not better, in my thinking (as in, thinking of sex that way makes me almost entirely unable to understand why it's a thing, rather than able with some difficulty since I don't personally swing any way worth mentioning). I...to a great extent I think there's inherently something serious and personal about union of bodies on that level. Being very physically receptive with unfamiliar people unnerves me, personally, even in non-sexual contexts, and in the case of sex that enervation gets to the point of actually having normative ethical beliefs about the matter, since it plays back into the power dynamics and since even a non-loved person is still a person. So even if it's not highly specific or unique to one or even a few people it is still what it is. The goal should be to cultivate love (of whatever kind) wherever possible and the role of sex in that is, as you admit, limited; I happen to think that's more prejudicial to the position of sex than to that of love.

[greenforest32]

New Virginia numbers:

Do you think same-sex marriage should be legal or illegal?

Legal............................................................... 34%
Illegal .............................................................. 53%
Not sure .......................................................... 13%

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_VA_1222.pdf

Last VA PPP results from July 2011: 35% legal, 52% illegal, 14% not sure

[Holmes]

No change.

[Former Moderate]

New Pennsylvania numbers:

Asked of any woman on the street: Do you enjoy anal intercourse?

Yes .......................................................... 2%
No ........................................................... 5%
Get the hell away from me, you creep .... 93%

Adding this to the map we can see that there is still a clear national trend toward "get the hell away from me, you creep." Bad news for President Obama.

[Senator Snowstalker]

New Pennsylvania numbers:

Asked of any woman on the street: Do you enjoy anal intercourse?

Yes .......................................................... 2%
No ........................................................... 5%
Get the hell away from me, you creep .... 93%

Adding this to the map we can see that there is still a clear national trend toward "get the hell away from me, you creep." Bad news for President Obama.

Jersey should be much lighter.

[Senator Snowstalker]

Ask any woman on the street if she supports same-sex marriage...

[Tender Branson]

There are worse places than Alabama or Mississippi for gays though:

A poll by Lithuanian market research company RIAT claims only 4% of the country supports the introduction of civil partnerships for gay couples.

The Baltic News Agency-commissioned poll says 70% of the population is in favour of some form of legal recognition for relationships outside marriage, but not for gays.

Same-sex marriages are currently banned under the Constitution and the Civil Code, and while civil partnerships are permitted to be introduced by the legislature, the Code states they may only be between a man and a woman.

While 70% of respondents supported straight civil unions and 4% supported straight and gay unions, the remaining quarter did not approve of any non-marriage partnership being recognised by the state.

The Lithuanian Gay League drew attention to a 2011 poll by GfK Custom Research Baltic, which found 56% of respondents were unwilling to live next door to gays. A third said they would not object.

72% of the respondents said they would not be comfortable living next door to someone with AIDS.

A draft law has been tabled at the Lithuanian parliament which would introduce civil partnerships for straight couples, with many similar rules on property to those which apply to marriages.

The country’s Justice Minister reportedly said gay couples could protect their property interests by drawing up a contract when they begin cohabiting and as such do not require additional protections.

1003 Lithuanians aged between 15 and 74 were polled in November for the RIAT research.

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2011/12/28/poll-claims-only-4-of-lithuanians-support-same-sex-civil-unions

[Tender Branson]

There are worse places than Alabama or Mississippi for gays though:

A poll by Lithuanian market research company RIAT claims only 4% of the country supports the introduction of civil partnerships for gay couples.

The Baltic News Agency-commissioned poll says 70% of the population is in favour of some form of legal recognition for relationships outside marriage, but not for gays.

Same-sex marriages are currently banned under the Constitution and the Civil Code, and while civil partnerships are permitted to be introduced by the legislature, the Code states they may only be between a man and a woman.

While 70% of respondents supported straight civil unions and 4% supported straight and gay unions, the remaining quarter did not approve of any non-marriage partnership being recognised by the state.

The Lithuanian Gay League drew attention to a 2011 poll by GfK Custom Research Baltic, which found 56% of respondents were unwilling to live next door to gays. A third said they would not object.

72% of the respondents said they would not be comfortable living next door to someone with AIDS.

A draft law has been tabled at the Lithuanian parliament which would introduce civil partnerships for straight couples, with many similar rules on property to those which apply to marriages.

The country’s Justice Minister reportedly said gay couples could protect their property interests by drawing up a contract when they begin cohabiting and as such do not require additional protections.

1003 Lithuanians aged between 15 and 74 were polled in November for the RIAT research.

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2011/12/28/poll-claims-only-4-of-lithuanians-support-same-sex-civil-unions

Ouch.  Eastern Europe is nowhere near as socially liberal like everyone thought.

[Industigy]

"Do you think same-sex marriage should be legal or illegal?

Legal............................................................... 45%
Illegal .............................................................. 45%"

Wow.

[Badger]

"Do you think same-sex marriage should be legal or illegal?

Legal............................................................... 45%
Illegal .............................................................. 45%"

Wow.

Um, details? Link?

[Badger]

Not that this subject isn't valuable, but I think that maybe this thread should be relocked and a new one opened.  And more strictly kept to the goal of looking at the chances of marriage equality passing/failing in various states rather than...whatever the hell we're talking about here.

Really I think milhouse24 should just make his own marriage rant megathread.

^^^^ This. It's been fun with the lulz posts, Milhouse, but kindly take at least a couple weeks break from expounding in this thread on your "unique" theories of marriage and sex. Feel free to post anything you want in the meantime about actual polling on same sex marriages. K?

<Assumes Moderator Voice>

AHEM!

In case I wasn't crystal clear before, I meant it that we need to take a break from the discussion of milhouse's expounding on marriage and sex. I assumed it was equally clear this applied to those commenting on milhousems views in addition to the M man himself.

Kindly give it a couple weeks break or start a separate thread in the Off-Topic board. Otherwise this thread may require being locked again. Thank you.

EDIT: I just noticed the new thread started by milhouse. Thank you! That should end further off topic discourse in this thread for the short term at least.

[Former Moderate]

EDIT: I just noticed the new thread started by milhouse. Thank you! That should end further off topic discourse in this thread for the short term at least.

I just split the two threads. Keep this one about same-sex marriage polling and state laws; the other one can be used to continue the discussion about the merits of whether gay marriage is equal, lesser, or a sham. Thanks.

[The Mikado]

This is a good solution.  A polling thread and a separate discussion thread makes a lot of sense.

[Badger]

EDIT: I just noticed the new thread started by milhouse. Thank you! That should end further off topic discourse in this thread for the short term at least.

I just split the two threads. Keep this one about same-sex marriage polling and state laws; the other one can be used to continue the discussion about the merits of whether gay marriage is equal, lesser, or a sham. Thanks.

Yeah, i realized that when I opened that thread afterwards. Thanks, partner!

Why wasn't I surpised Milhouse didn't do something so rational? But I digress.....