Marriage Equality Looms Large Over Obama's Minnesota Visit
President Obama takes his reelection campaign to Minnesota tomorrow, and analysts think both his overall popularity and gay marriage endorsement will help defeat a ballot measure that will further restrict marriage rights in the Northstar State.
From the Washington Post:
Minnesota’s[ballot measure] would toughen current limits on gay rights and etch the ban into the state constitution. Obama won 54 percent of the vote in the state and is expected to win it again this year, so opponents of the ban are hoping enough Minnesotans follow the president’s self-described evolution on gay marriage so they can defeat it.
…
John Murphy, an expert on presidential rhetoric at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said it’s not a stretch to think some Democrats previously unlikely to vote in favor of gay rights would be won over by Obama. When presidents take a new stand on a hot-button social issue, Murphy said, it can motivate dedicated party followers to change their own views and stay on the same page as their party’s leader.“I imagine his newly unequivocal support for gay marriage is likely to convince at least some die-hard Minnesota Democrats to swallow personal qualms they might have in order to give their side a win,” Murphy said.
The discriminatory measure's defeat may also be aided by the fact Mitt Romney has yet to open an office in Minnesota, nor does he seem inclined to spend time and money in a largely Democratic state he lost to socialyl conservative primary rival Rick Santorum. Plus, it's unlikely Romney wants to get involved in a marriage fight when the majority of the nation supports recognizing same-sex relationships.
Obama, meanwhile, seems in it to win it. Hopefully he'll his use his clout to the best of his ability.
Didn't Obama rally For marriage equality BEFORE running for congress in IL? Oh, that's right he flip-flopped and decided to call his flip back from his original flop an evolution. I think if he spit in the face of gays it would have been less offensive. Using a group of people as a political puppet to milk money from them and then to pull the stunt he did on his "evolution". He's not earned the right to continue running this country by treating groups he calls friends as less than until it's politically convenient for him. Don't be fooled GBLT's by this ultimate of snake-oil salesmen.
Posted by: Old Skooler | Jun 1, 2012 10:56:48 AM
@Screech
This is probably the most entertaining conversation I have had in years. This is not the place to continue it. I have copied your last post so that I will have it verbatim to respond to. If you would contact me at nullnaught@gmail.com we should havea lot to talk about.
I agree with your political values. I think your presenting you information to an audience not ready to understand/believe most of what you are saying. I would like to help you spread the word, but I can't see it working the way you have approached it here. You don't come off well, and I agree with almost all you say. If you come of poorly to me, I can't imagine how extreme you sound to everyone else here.
Posted by: NullNaught | Jun 1, 2012 3:29:32 PM
@Screech
Alternatively, we can stay here. We are off of page 4 and so nobody is likely to accuse us of highjacking the thread which is what I was worried about mainly.
I think in response I would like to cut close to the heart of our disagreement with the question: "Human Values," wTF? I know what a human genome is; it is a genome that all humans share. Are you saying there is some value we all share? What pray tell? Or are you saying that if the majority share a value, then it is a human value? Are we going to appeal to the masses, then? may I remind you of your gang-rape democracy analogy? So if the majority of humans value truth derived through torture then truth derived from torture is a human value? Did you know, if that be the case, that truth derived through torture was a human value in the middle ages starting around the 12/13th century?
Again, the real question here is "How do you show what is a human value?" Or how do you assign a truth value to a human value?
Posted by: NullNaught | Jun 2, 2012 12:40:20 AM
I emailed you so we can continue our discussion without having to post here, so check your spam trap if you don't see it.
What is value? At a few moments in our correspondence you alluded to truth values. So truth values tell you the relation between a proposition and truth. If a sentence 'A' is either T or F, then truth values are properties of propositions. But there are other types of value. For instance, economics recognizes the value of goods and paper+abstract value=money (and money has value).
The easiest way to explain it is to appeal to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_theory "Value theory encompasses a range of approaches to understanding how, why and to what degree people should value things; whether the thing is a person, idea, object, or anything else. [...] Today much of value theory is scientifically empirical, recording what people do value and attempting to understand why they value it in the context of psychology, sociology, and economics." Take note of the use of the term 'scientifically empirical'. So pleasure and pain are mental states - psychological. They are also empirical. They are human values in that human beings are the types of creatures that seek to avoid pain and seek to gain pleasure. Such are human values.
So it is a good question to ask if we all share the same values. In one sense we obviously have different values. I like olives on my pizza but perhaps you don't; I think olives taste good and perhaps you think they taste bad. The kind of 'good' or value I place on olives is what Kant would call a matter of taste. So I might pay $200,000 for an original Ernst Fuchs, my favorite painter, while you wouldn't pay a dime for it. That's a matter of taste.
You also suggested that in the thirteenth century perhaps if I needed to extract information I would value torture. Now if I value torture because it gets me information then it is a means to an end. This kind of value is what philosophers call 'instrumental value'. If you want good grades, then you value studying. If you want information then you value torture. The value is instrumental to the goal.
When we talk about moral values, these are just things that we value for their own sake. If a thing is valued for its own sake then value is not instrumental. But when seeking moral principles, the goal is to develop a system that is not merely a matter of taste or subjective or relative – whatever you’d like to call it. What we want is something that is inter-subjective. So Mill’s hypothesis is that seeking pleasure and avoiding pain is something we all do. These are his values. Is it true? In general, I would say so. So there are masochists out there, cases where perhaps pleasure and pain are confused a bit, but a masochist will still have limits to pain or a threshold where the pain that is pleasurable becomes simply pain. Or perhaps someone is suicidal but, even in this instance, people usually commit suicide to avoid pain (even if suicide is painful).
Kant makes use of attributing abstract value to people and things. His big thing is that you cannot treat people as if they are a means to an end (which is to treat them as if they have instrumental value). Kant says that we value people for their own sake and so we create moral rules that we can will everyone to follow. So ‘Do not lie’ is a rule that, if everyone followed it, we could will it in all circumstances. We recognize the value of truth (but this value is secondary to the value people possess).
So think about the institution of slavery. Why is slavery wrong? Actually, Mill will say that it is wrong because it deprives people of their liberty and this harms them. Everyone is entitled to liberty. Kant will say slavery is wrong because you cannot will that everyone be slaves and you are treating people as if they have instrumental value (you want work done and a human being is the instrument). It is as if you respect your own will, but not the will of those you enslave. So is Kant right? Well, probably. We do value ourselves and people for their own sakes. There might be limits, for example with psychopaths/sociopaths that value only themselves – but then this is part of Kant’s claim that all RATIONAL agents ought to respect the will of others if they respect their own will.
Now how you get from values to rights is another matter. For Mill, see ‘On Liberty’. For Kant, see ‘Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals’. But these are what I mean by the term ‘human values’. So when you ask “how do you assign a truth value to a human value” the answer is you cannot assign a truth value to a human value because truth values are the properties of propositions. Sentences are true or false – not values. And when you ask “How do you show what is a human value" - you just look at humans. Mill takes a psychological approach. The direction I would take the Kantian argument in is a sociological approach.
Posted by: screech | Jun 3, 2012 9:01:33 AM
Psych majors ahoy.
Posted by: Lance | Jun 4, 2012 11:17:50 PM