Now This Is Projection

He's also admitting how burdensome private insurance plans are for small businesses.

Michael Steele (from the linked article): "Now all of a sudden I've got someone who wasn't a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse that I now have financial responsibility for," Steele told Republicans at the state convention in traditionally conservative Georgia. "So how do I pay for that? Who pays for that? You just cost me money."

Yes, and that describes a man and a woman who decide to marry.... So how are two guys or two women who decide to marry any different? To me it gets us back to square one.

It's ridiculous to recast gays as a threat to small businesses as a way to stick to the core Republican principles.... I guess the core Republican principles do not include equality for all, just your own Republican straight clique. And it's just another way of presenting gays as a threat (they are to small businesses, according to Steele).

So is he saying small businesses should only hire straight people, who will get married (and raise the costs of insurance) instead of gay people (who will get married and raise the cost of insurance)?

Michael Steele needs to get a grip.

Employees should be forbidden to marry or have dependents of any kind. That's what will save small business.

GreenDreams: spoken like a true conservative who wants to keep the costs to small (and large) businesses down. :)

Though that would mean that the GOP would then support gays and lesbians as the sole workforce in America- since they can't get married or probably won't have dependents. Here's to discrimination of straight married people in the workforce!!! :)

So I guess if one takes Steele's argument to it's logical conclusion then this is what he's really advocating. Hahahaha... I'd love to see Limbaugh say THAT on the air... That to keep costs to small businesses down the GOP should support workplace laws that allow discrimination against any straight married person and also support laws which promote homosexual "lifestyles".

Thanks, GD!

Michael Steele:
Just stop. Please. just. stop.

This may suprise you but I agree wholeheartedly. The argument is absurd and the overall impact on small businesses will be negligible.

There are many solid reasons to object to gay marriage, but this isn't one of them. Neither is religion.

There is a compelling human-behavioral, social-contagion issue. We haven't looked closely enough at the origins of how deviant sexuality is acquired. Or rather, we have, via comparative psychology and mammalian sexual behavior but the pro-gay PC crowd likes to pretend that comparative psychology doesn't exist...in this instance anyway...because it supports sexual preference as learned, around puberty and malleable. Also with preference being influenced by environmental pressures, including social coercion. The "norm" for a given area and a given culture.

Therefore, if you normalize deviant sexuality by granting it marriage rights [the socially-approved mating union], you can expect instances of deviant sexuality to rise in the culture that promotes it as normal.

And of course there is the slippery-slope issue when the polygamists petition the courts in the very near future.

How is this guy still in charge? Do people really take him seriously?

Sil: "We haven't looked closely enough at the origins of how deviant sexuality is acquired."

I beg to differ. Sil, for awhile you cited a study that seemed to support your viewpoint. I pointed out that almost 90 subsequent studies have been done, all citing the one that you always brought up. You seem to be set in the opinion you have, and that's fine, but I was hoping you could give an update with some more citations to subsequent studies.

As someone who is trained in the sciences (chemistry, of course), I am very much willing to go back and forth here and discuss this issue with you. You seem to be reasonable and reliant on data. But, right now, I don't see a consensus that agrees that sexuality is acquired at all. Some studies suggest it, others dispute it, but to my knowledge, there is nothing of a consensus. And you can see what the APA is up to regarding the psychology of sexuality if you want to. But I may humbly suggest to you that nothing of what you mention is "compelling" at all. It just adds to the discussion.

jchem, people will believe what they want to believe and if they find one wacko study to support their false beliefs, then they'll use that one wacko study to spread their false beliefs as if those beliefs were the truth, and close their eyes to all other "real" and "true" evidence. Sexuality and who one is attracted to is innate, not acquired. Unless Sil is really a lesbian at heart and had to acquire her heterosexuality, then she can speak from experience. But then in her case that would mean that homosexuality is innate and she had to acquire her heterosexuality.... :)

If Sil doesn't have the experience, then she has no credibility on the subject. So don't waste your time trying to engage her.

One "whacko" study? How about an entire industry [artificial insemination] that relies on the malleability of the sex drive in mammals at puberty to collect semen off of objects or other animals the stud animal is trained to "prefer"??

The food your eating today is evidence of the teeth in that "whacko" study. And that "whacko" study comes with some 5-6 pages of referenced studies, dates, names and credentials in print so fine you need a magnifying glass to read them all...there are hundreds. There may even be thousands..

The only argument left is that comparative psychology isn't a legitimate field of application. That's all the gays have left to refute the "whacko" scientific findings...

Silhouette, I don't know why you don't acknowledge that animal studies of sexuality are not very relevant to human sexual behavior. Hormonally and psychologically we're so much different than livestock that those animals don't provide a model for human behavior in that respect at all. And I say that as a person who isn't inclined to completely dismiss your theory because I do think that conditioning from early sexual experiences might play some role, but I think you're WAY overstating it and using poor evidence, which only weakens the argument.