Gary,

Your story really moved me here when I read it.  Your optimism and take it all in stride attitude is extremely admirable.  I’d like to encourage you to give us a paypal link, but I’m afraid it might be too late if you’ve gone to pawn your laptop!  Maybe if your are still out there, give us a chance to help you out.

Maybe some other people reading this would like to recommend the diary as well, and we can get a little fund drive going for Gary!  Notice that he didn’t ask for anything either!  Let’s help a fellow DDer out who is down (but obviously not out!).  Come on people!

occuring too often in my dreams lately, where he is naked, eating carrots and talking about my mother.

On campus I wish it was true that conservative "thinkers" were lonely and fearful to speak out (for fear of people explaining how often they are wrong), but it usually doesn't seem that way to me.  I would guess college environments probably lean left moreso then the public at large, but its certainly not as dominating as I would like.

The problem is, though, is we should probably be ignoring this sort of crap.  It's preposterous and doesn't get us anywhere.  Maybe we should keep some facts handy, though, so when it comes up it can be quickly squashed.  Like "I think your comparison of (person x) to Osama bin Laden (or Hilter or person y) is absurd.  I could also point out that the two of the most common words that bin Laden and Bush use are "Freedom and Liberty" but I don't think that it matters and I really don't think they believe the same things or are even talking about the same things.  This way we can quickly dismiss and diffuse the outrage.

I'm sort of suspicious that people who are living "progressive lifestyles" are seeking these things by in large and are already voting democrat, or perhaps even green party, unlike the more mainstream "conservative lifestyles".  It's even in the words used here, where conservative is going to mean something older, more commonly accepted because of its age, conformist and traditional.  But I think that people who live their lives in a progressive manner are the people who are already politically aware and active at least to the degree that it affects the way they live their life.  Attempting to reach these people is probably a good way to activate the base of the party, but I'm not sure you're going to find new voters there.

Perhaps a better idea is to encourage lifestyles of this sort and look to build communities around them so people can find themselves along others of the same beliefs.   Real institutional change.  Instead of directly attempting to get people who vote for you who do these things, encourage others to simply to take part in them.  Since I would probably define "progressive lifestyles" as inherently helpful to society, especially when done in great numbers, even if this doesn't bring election victories, at least it will bring about many of the changes we seek from those victories.

But I guess this is how we've been changing things for the most part, for, well, forever, really.  Not from the top, but from the bottom.

Geees.  Where did we get such a ridiculous idea like that?

Dam liberal propaganda, making us think we have an inherent right to control our lives.

Sometimes people do fuck up, and do have to deal with the consequences, but your point of view is that women are subordinate in their rights to a part of their own bodies and the potential contents within.  That's not moral.  That's just sexist.

I think it's a pretty easy argument to make that forcing a women to have a child just because she becomes pregnant is vastly more immoral then her choice to have an abortion.  You didn't answer any of my questions that I posed to you concerning this.

You're not thinking this through enough jcjcjc (something I find typical of people who hold this position).  Answer some of these questions and scenarios...

For instance, imagine a situation where two people are having consensual sex and use birth control because they do not wish to start a pregnancy.  Regardless of this a no-fault accident happens and a pregnancy does occur.  So despite any negligence on the part of the women (and in fact, an active approach to avoid), you would now oblige her to bring the pregnancy to completion, infringing on her rights by making her do something she does not wish.  You call that ethical?  You call that fair and equal considering that only half the population is capable of becoming pregnant?  She should go before a judge and present the broken condom, the journal where she recorded taking the pill or the box of spermicide with the expired date she missed as evidence she has the right to an abortion?

It's not just that situation either.  You have to keep thinking more about this argument you are making.  What sort of additional legal, moral and ethical responsibilities are you placing on women for wanting to have sex as a result of your stance?  How much more of a burden are you placing on them for selecting partners, for understanding and knowing the motives, emotions, background and future of the people they have sex with?  How much more responsibility are you placing on women for planning their lives out when they are young?  How much less room for learning hard things about love, life and sex are you giving them?

Or even what about rape?  Why do you stop at having a legal and moral responsibility to give birth just because the women wanted to have sex?  Why does an unborn fetus in a 14 year old girl have fewer rights just because it was put there by her uncle?

Are you beginning to see how INSANE your belief is yet?

How can the contents of a women's uterus have more rights then the women with the uterus?  How far does this go?  Do her eggs have more rights then she does?  She should even be allowed to use birth control at all because it restricts the rights of her eggs to turn into a fetus?  Does the contents of a man's ball-sac have more rights then a woman too?  Like a fetus, sperm too has the "potential" to be a living human being, its just a few steps behind.  If you are looking for a law that requires you to have access to spread your sperm so it can fulfill its rights, keep dreaming bub.

Do you have a right to be born?  Should we require that pregnant women abide by certain laws while pregnant, such as not smoking, drinking or forcing them to attend Lamaze classes?  What would the punishment be if its found out that a miscarriage was the result of a failure to comply with these?  Murder 1 or 2? 5 years or life?  Death penalty maybe, considering how helpless the victim was?  Why stop there?  How about requiring that all pregnant women spend 30 minutes a day on playing classical music, reading Shakespeare and just talking to their womb each.  Think of the loss of things in their life an unborn fetus might experience if denied these things.  What a terrible infringement on its rights!  Its unethical and immoral, so of course, there needs to be a punishment!  Why won't somebody please think of the unborn children?!?

If you still haven't figured out the answer yet, the truth is of course, that you DO NOT have a right to be born.  Period.  What you really need to do is remember this fact every time mother's day comes around.

You know, at least the "Right-To-Be-A-Birthing-Machine" crowd could do would be to devote even a fraction of the energy they expend protesting abortion to pushing for important things that could begin to make the responsibility of having children even remotely fair for women in the first place.  Things like the right to good health and prenatal care, more money for pursuing and enforcing paternal responsibility, reducing domestic abuse, access to day care, mandatory employer child care leave (not just maternity leave), equal pay for equal work and on and on and on.  Of course, we never see them outside of clinics with signs like that, though.  We do not live in an equal society and in the case of gender you are just looking to make things worse.  I think that if you dropped the abortion stance for awhile and starting really working towards some of these other goals first your mind will change.

Nobody likes abortions.  It is quite often only the lesser between two difficult choices for the women who have to make it, and who are often only faced with the choice because they were a bit too innocence or trusting in the first place.  I think the argument of forcing "people to grow up enough to confront the consequences of their actions" is brutally harsh, specifically unfair to women and hypocritical. The truth is that they available of that choice makes things better for women and society as a whole.  

I guess I feel like we got taken off topic here, and have been trying to defend a tactic rather then a principal and so it leaves us nothing good to point to.  Sure, they possibly would have gotten it anyway, but we are now going to let them have it without "nuking" us.  I guess I feel like the sympathy and outrage that comes from being nuked would have been preferable to saving a procedure that "maybe" could help us in the future, specially one that appears to have such a negative attachment to it.

I think the organized labor in this country has done a terrible job at combating this sort of "common-sense" style ignorance.  As a simple example, try naming 4 major federated unions.  Now 4 cell-phone companies. Or 4 car manufactures.  Or 4 major clothing retailers.  Or 4 oil companies.  Or even better, 4 companies that you have no idea what they do, but that do spend enough money to make sure you know they exist.   All of those are easy to do compared to the unions, right?

Where are the ad campaigns saying "AFL-CIO, making the American Way of Life better for 100 years"?  Where are the campaigns telling people why they shouldn't shop at Walmart?  Where are the ads encouraging us to shop at places that aren't exploitive towards their workers and explaining how the quality is better (and it ALWAYS is) as a result of that?

Lastly, where does labor stand on the environment?  Do they push their companies to improve standards independent of current laws? I think there needs to be a modernizing of their own ideology on that front as well.

Obviously this Brian Brown guy is an IDIOT.  Someone needs to say that, and that needs to be the real news story.  A high ranking democrat should actually say that straight out, that he is IGNORANT, HOMOPHOBIC and NOT IN TOUCH WITH REALITY, and should field any and all questions that people might have that arise from calling someone such things.  I have no doubt that Mr. Brown would be more then willing to back our claims up with responses to this statement.  This way, the next time this fucknut opens his mouth he will be labeled in this way because these claims are easy to back-up with FACTS.  He will no longer be credible and this sort of rhetoric that the rightwing is so successfully using will no longer be effective because people will now associate it with IGNORANCE, HOMOPHOBIA and being OUT OF SNYC WITH REALITY.  Eventually, hopefully, people will learn and stop saying these things

Subtle mocking and pointing out flaws in logic just don’t cut it.  The things many right wingers say and are fighting for are causing pain and tragedy in people’s lives in very deep and real ways, and if we aren’t screaming the truth at the top of our lungs then we aren’t doing enough. We own the moral high ground here, let’s start acting like it.

Jeb.  Well, for starters his name is Jeb.  He is stupid, shady and pretty much only pandering to moralists in order to get elected.  That would never work.

Ummm.  Shit.