I’m a fiscal conservatve. \u00a0Along with that, I’m a legal constructionist and a social libertarian, and a personal Christian by the bye.<\/p>\n
And I generally take that “libertarian” side pretty seriously. \u00a0I don’t much care what other people do with their lives; I’d much appreciate it if they felt the same and let me live my personal life the way I want to; I’m happy to return the favor.<\/p>\n
So my approach to “gay rights”, as a rule, is driven by all these factors. \u00a0All people must be equal before the law. \u00a0Nothing else should modify that statement – not race, gender or religion, not orientation, nothing<\/em>.<\/p>\n My faith sees marriage as a guy and a gal getting together to start a family. \u00a0My libertarian side says that government should allow people to sign contracts, including civil “marriages”, and enforce them (and since goats and children can’t sign contracts, the “human-animal marriage will be legal” argument is something of a red herring, and it should be a fairly simple thing to legislate that groups can’t get the same rights as inter-personal “marriage” contracts without violating anyone’s right).<\/p>\n I happen to see marriage as a religious institution, not a civil one. \u00a0In the event I ever get married again, I’ll endeavor to avoid the state bureaucracy, to the point of eschewing the government \u00a0license if possible, and sticking with the church ceremony. <\/em> And, by the way, since I see marriage as a religious institution, I’d be disingenuous if I didn’t add that a church might be perfectly within its theological purview to find a scriptural justification for same-sex marriage. \u00a0It’s difficult, of course; no major religion anywhere in the world believes any such thing – but never say never. \u00a0If theology were engineering, the Episcopals in particular could build the Panama Canal.<\/p>\n And I’ll exercise my right not to get married there!<\/p>\n I’m a Tom Emmer supporter. \u00a0While I kept quiet about it, I’ve been supporting him since last summer. \u00a0There were several moments that tipped it over for me; I’ve written about one of them on this blog before. \u00a0When an audience member asked him about gay marriage, Emmer responded without skipping a beat that while he was a Catholic who shared his church’s beliefs on what marriage is, that the only real issue in the upcoming election is jobs and the economy – and the governor would have absolutely nothing to do with any legislation on gay marriage, anyway.<\/p>\n And I thought “there’s a guy with the right priorities”. \u00a0And I still do.<\/p>\n ———-<\/p>\n The “MNForward” flap has been a classic case of astroturfing. \u00a0Now, a writer for a “Gawker”-class snarkblog wrote me last week taking umbrage at my calling it “astroturf” because…well, apparently because his publication had written about it and they just don’t do astroturf, nosireebob. \u00a0I wasn’t entirely clear on that point.<\/p>\n (I was thinking about writing about how the biggest thing standing in the way of acceptance of gay rights has been gay activists – but The Onion said it better<\/a>. \u00a0And they’re liberals, so they can get away with it).<\/p>\n But the fact is that the issue took off when the Alliance for a Better Minnesota started pushing it as a wedge; gay groups ran with it, with the able help of the regional and finally national media, trying to portray an action by <\/a>very, very <\/a><\/em>few people<\/a> as an epic groundswell (that was going to harm Target financially<\/a>, no less) even though gay issues are pretty much a nonentity for Emmer…<\/p>\n …and all three of the DFL contenders, none of whom has ever wasted a moment of their precious time introducing any bills to legalize gay marriage in Minnesota or speaking at all outside safe DFL districts about the issue. \u00a0Paper statements on how important it is, sure – but they have yet to put their bills where their mouths are.<\/p>\n The writer pointed me to the DFLers’ paper positions, as well as Emmer’s support for a constitutional amendment favoring traditional marriage, and asked me if I actually knew anything about Minnesota politics, or “am I wasting my time?”<\/p>\n In retrospect, I should have responded “I have virtually nothing against gay marriage outside my own personal religious observance. \u00a0Ask me about subject I care about, or consider it a waste of time and leave me be”. \u00a0I made the mistake of reading his writing about Emmer to that point – the sort of ad-hominem context-smashing that fits in in places like “Gawker” or “Dump Bachmann” – and just threw him in my spam folder.<\/p>\n Here’s the ironic part; if Tom Emmer were <\/em>genuinely “rabidly anti-gay” and the gay community is genuinely concerned about a constitutional amendment against gay marriage, they \u00a0would be better off with him in the governor’s mansion (or, obviously, out of the House, although that wasn’t gonna happen by electoral means until Emmer felt like retiring) – since the governor has nothing to do with Consitutional Amendments<\/em>. \u00a0Nothing.<\/p>\n At any rate, this issue exists for only one reason, as far as the DFL spin machine and Dayton’s personal smear shop are concerned; to get moderates to think “Emmer is intolerant”. \u00a0Which is absurd; he, like most of us, has strong, personal beliefs on the subject, as is his right. \u00a0It does not <\/em>make him “anti-gay”, in the sense of “hating gay people”; it merely means he, like over 2\/3 of the American people even in liberal cesspools like California and Oregon, opposes one policy plank of the gay agenda.<\/p>\n That is all.<\/p>\n The Dems need <\/em>to turn this campaign away from what will be the key issue, and the issue that should <\/em>matter to Minnesotans; what is going to do the most to bring jobs, prosperity and fiscal sanity back to Minnesota. \u00a0Because while DFLers may or may not cAare, moderates and swing voters need jobs too. And even the DFL knows that Mark Dayton loses that debate.<\/p>\n And so the DFL, the media and the smear machine need <\/em>to make this about emotional side issues – to distract the distractible.<\/p>\n As far as this blog is concerned, this election is about jobs and the economy. \u00a0 And I, like the parts of Minnesota that this election will affect most – workers, taxpayers, regular schlemiels – will be paying attention to that, rather than the cynical, astroturf side issue from now on.<\/p>\n Oh, yeah; Emmer’s going to win by 2-3 points.<\/p>\n (Disclosure: \u00a0I don’t work for the Emmer campaign, and never have. \u00a0I don’t get anything from them, other than what I get out of my sources on the campaign. \u00a0It’s called “reporting”).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m a fiscal conservatve. \u00a0Along with that, I’m a legal constructionist and a social libertarian, and a personal Christian by the bye. And I generally take that “libertarian” side pretty seriously. \u00a0I don’t much care what other people do with their lives; I’d much appreciate it if they felt the same and let me live […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,24],"tags":[115],"class_list":["post-12475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-10","category-culture-war","tag-abm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12475"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47767,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12475\/revisions\/47767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}