I have no axe to grind here. Gay and homosexual people should NOT be discriminated against. AND, if they want medical benefits and want to pay for them as I do, they should be able to seek and receive medical care as every other American does.
I did not write this letter nor do I subscribe to the email list that it was sent to. HOWEVER, I do care about our civil liberties and this appears to be moving to remove our freedom of choice in religious platforms.
If our government wanted to silence the Muslim, Hindu, Gay, Mormon, Jehovah Witness, or the 1st Kool Aid Drinkers of North Dakota, I don't agree. PERIOD.
We have the right as a Nation that many have fought and died for, to speak our mind on any issue we want to. Now, there need to be some norms that we can count on.
What, you don't agree there needs to be some standard at some base level? Then, it will be okay for anybody that wants (because of some belief that we don't want to offend) to come and take YOUR 1, 2, or say 3 year old child, male or female and do what they want with them.
"Well, the author of this blog has just gone too far with their thinking on this one!" Have I?
It's all about the government and them controlling what we can and cannot do.
I love America and want it to stay the home of the FREE and the land of the Brave. At this rate and direction, will we keep that?
Time to wake up America. We have been asleep at the wheel. You think you are informed? Where do you get your views on the state of our nation? TV? Humm, have you checked the validity of the information presented?
You owe it to yourself to KNOW the answers to those questions.
Do I have the answers or know what to do? Nope. I'm putting this out for a cry for help that maybe, if we all pull together we can learn and grow and take our nation back and keep it within the Constitutional Rights we have been given.
Oh, do you know what those are?
Here is the link:
http://www.answers.com/topic/united-states-constitution
I'm sorry to say today, that I have not read this since grade school. I'm guessing that you have not either and have forgotten what you are entitled to in this great nation of ours.
Oprah has a "book of the month club." This should go in our "We Know This In Our Gut" club.
Let me leave you with information straight from Answers.com which you can see this has not been modified in any way. You will find it below the email letter that started my whole dialog about this issue.
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the email letter:
Please help us get this information into the hands of as many people as possible by forwarding it to your entire email list of family and friends.
Democrats set to deliver on campaign promise to homosexuals this week
H.R. 1592 dangerously lays groundwork for silencing Christian viewpoint on homosexuality
Dear Earl,
Did you know your constitutionally guaranteed “First Freedoms” to free speech and religious expression as an American are under attack as never before?
It’s true. Thanks to the new and unabashedly pro-homosexual Democrat leadership in Congress, Bible-believing Christians and Jews face an onslaught of bills that will inevitably create federally protected “class status” for homosexuals, bisexuals, transvestites, “transgender” and “transsexual” persons.
Specifically, I’m talking about the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Protection Act (H.R. 1592) and the “Employment Nondiscrimination Discrimination Act” (ENDA).
Please don’t be deceived: while “hate crimes” and “nondiscrimination” laws sound noble and high-minded, they aim to normalize homosexuality and “transgenderism” in all arenas of society – and to silence and punish all opposing viewpoints. Read the excellent article by Peter Sprigg of Family Research Council, “What's Wrong with Thought Crimes ('Hate Crimes') Laws?”
Of immediate concern is H.R. 1592 – the “hate crimes” bill that was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in March. This bill establishes a new federal offense for “hate crimes” and adds “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as protected classes in the U.S. criminal code. These classes are based solely upon unverifiable self-identification and/or sexual behavior.
Ominously, this bill mandates a separate federal criminal prosecution for state offenses – with the possibility of life imprisonment – for crimes motivated by actual or perceived “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” Significantly, H.R. 1592 doesn’t even define what the term “sexual orientation” means!
Obviously, we have many concerns with a bill like this – including the fact that it is constitutionally suspect, unfair, dangerous, indefinable, unnecessary and un-American.
And not only does H.R. 1592 violate the concept of equal protection under the law by granting more government protection to certain classes of people, it is a clear overreach of federal power – allowing the federal government to intervene in local and state affairs.
But even more chilling is the fact that H.R. 1592 paves the way to religious persecution – with “hate crimes” laws inevitably leading to “hate speech” laws targeted specifically at Christians and other faith groups who hold traditional beliefs on homosexuality.
Already this has happened in Canada, Sweden, Belgium, France, Spain, Ireland, Scotland, England, and New Zealand. Even here in the United States in Philadelphia, Christians have been arrested and jailed under a state “hate crimes” law.
Let’s face it: homosexual and transgender activists know full well that the church is one of last bastions in Western culture that has yet to cave in to the demands of a radical agenda that seeks to redefine fundamental concepts such as marriage, family and gender.
Here’s the bottom line: If this Thought Crimes law passes, your right to share politically incorrect parts of your Christian faith could, in fact, become a federal crime.
Clearly, a grave threat to our civil liberties and the liberties of our children and grandchildren is now upon us.
Take Action |
Join us today in the fight to stop the Thought Crime bill known as H.R. 1592. The vote could come as early as Thursday, April 26. Take a few moments to call your U.S. Representative and urge him or her to against H.R. 1592 and preserve the "First Freedoms" of all Americans. A telephone number and talking points will appear when you Click Here. The main switchboard number for your House member is 202-224-3121. Homosexual activists say they can "taste victory" now that their liberal allies in Congress control the majority. Let's make our voices heard today. |
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If you think our efforts are worthy, would you please support us with a small gift? Thank you for caring enough to get involved.
Sincerely,
Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman
American Family Association
P.S. Please forward this e-mail message to your family and friends!
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Just so you don't miss it, a snippet from below in this article from Answers.com:
The Great Depression marked another turning point for socialism. Overproduction, underconsumption, and speculation led to an implosion of markets, a result predicted by Marx. One response was powerful centralized governments in the form of totalitarian regimes such as those of Adolf Hitler in Germany and Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. Socialism was revived by the British economist John Maynard Keynes who advocated that the government stimulate consumption and investment during economic downturns. Previously used only on a limited scale, deficit financing, as it came to be called, was now used by socialists in Europe and liberals in the United States to revive capitalism. Many countries still use Keynesian economics to provide a bridge between capitalism and socialism.
History does repeat itself....have you just received offers to remove the equity from your home for "any purpose you want?" Humm.....
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The Article from Answers.com
http://www.answers.com/socialism
Sunday 4-29-2007
This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.
Related Topics
Socialism
An economic and social theory that seeks to maximize wealth and opportunity for all people through public ownership and control of industries and social services.
The general goal of socialism is to maximize wealth and opportunity, or to minimize human suffering, through public control of industry and social services. Socialism is an alternative to capitalism, where the means and profits of production are privately held. Socialism became a strong international movement in the early nineteenth century as the Industrial Revolution brought great changes to production methods and capacities and led to a decline in working conditions. Socialist writers and agitators in the United States helped fuel the labor movement but were often branded as radicals and jailed under a variety of laws punishing attempts to overthrow the government. Although government programs such as Social Security and welfare incorporate some socialist tenets, socialism has never posed a serious challenge to capitalism in the United States.
One of the early forms of socialism was the communitarian movement, popularized by the brothers George and Frederick Evans, who came to New York from England in 1820. Communitarianism, which was based on the ideals of the French theorists Jean-Jacques Rousseau and François-Noël Babeuf, involved the pursuit of utopian living in small cooperative communities. Cooperative living gained greater popularity under the utopian socialists, such as the Welsh industrialist Robert Owen and the French philosopher Charles Fourier. Owen's followers established a self-sufficient utopian community in New Harmony, Indiana, in 1825 and Fourier's followers did the same in the 1830s and 1840s on the east coast. Both of these efforts failed, however.
In 1848 the German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels introduced scientific socialism with their extremely influential work, the Communist Manifesto. Scientific socialism became the definitive ideology of a second, more powerful phase of socialism. Scientific socialism applied the dialectic method of the German philosopher Georg Hegel to the political and social spheres. Using discussion and reasoning as a form of intellectual investigation, Marx and Engels identified a historical progression in human society from slavery to feudalism and finally to capitalism. Under capitalism—defined as a global system based on technology transcending national boundaries— society was divided into two components: the bourgeoisie, who owned the methods of production, and the proletariat, the laborers who operated the production facilities to produce goods. Marx and Engels predicted the disappearance of the middle class and ultimately a revolution as the vast proletariat wrested the methods of production from the control of the small bourgeoisie elite. This revolution would usher in an era when resources were owned by the people as a whole and markets were subject to cooperative administration.
The Communist Manifesto made less of an impact in the United States than in Europe, in part because the nation's attention was focused on the issue of slavery and the growing division between the North and South. When these tensions escalated into the Civil War, a great increase in industrialization led to the emergence of socialist labor organizations. At the same time, political refugees from Europe contributed socialist theories to labor and political movements. In 1866 socialists who had been heavily influenced by German immigrants helped create the National Labor Union. Their efforts led to an 1868 statute (15 Stat. 77) establishing the eight-hour day for federal government workers; however, it went ignored and unenforced. The National Labor Union disappeared a few years after the death of its founder, William Sylvis, in 1869, but the ties between labor and socialism remained.
As socialists across Europe and the United States debated and extrapolated on Marx's initial definitions and their application under widely varying conditions, socialism gradually divided into three major philosophies: revisionism, anarchism, and bolshevism. Revisionist socialism promoted gradual reform, compromise, and nonviolence. Initially, "reform" meant the nationalization of state and local public works and large-scale industries. Dedicated to democratic ideals, revisionists believed they could achieve civilized progress and higher consciousness through economic justice and complete equality.
Anarchic socialism, best exemplified by the Russian Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), sought the abolition of both property and the state. Under anarchic socialism society would be composed of small collectives of producers, distributors, and consumers. Anarchism reflected the desire of the dispossessed to eliminate bourgeois institutions altogether. Like its contemporary syndicalism in France, anarchic socialism sought the immediate implementation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Anarchic socialism and its derivations failed to attract a mass following, but its doctrines of disrespect for political institutions and immediate action found a home in the Industrial Workers of the World.
Bolshevism advocated the use of a select revolutionary cadre to seize control of the state. Bolshevists asserted that this cadre was needed to raise the consciousness of the proletariat and move toward a socialist future through absolute dictatorship. Their preferred method of redistributing wealth and resources was authoritarian collectivism, commonly known as Communism. Under authoritarian collectivism the state would own and distribute all goods and services. In envisioning this role for the state, the Bolshevists rejected both classical and theoretical socialism. Their only tie to classical socialism, besides the rhetorical one, was their view of the state as having a role in ameliorating the suffering brought about by industrial capitalism.
The Knights of Labor, which was formed in 1871 in Philadelphia, became the first truly national and broadly inclusive union in the United States. Revisionists worked within this union and other labor and third-party groups, often in leadership roles, to achieve definable goals that would culminate in a socialist state. Preaching reform, education, and cooperation, the union grew in numbers until 1886. In May of that year, during a strike sanctioned by the Knights against the McCormick Harvester plant in Chicago, an unknown person threw a bomb into the ranks of police sent to disperse a public gathering organized by anarchist socialists. The Haymarket Riot, as it became known, set the stage for the first Red scare in U.S. history. Eight anarchist leaders were charged with murder on the basis of speech defined as conspiracy. The use of a judge-selected jury and his instructions to them led to the conviction of the anarchists, four of whom were sentenced to death and hanged. The U.S. Supreme Court could find no principle of federal law to review the case.
The reaction that followed the riot signaled the end of anarchism as a force in U.S. politics. It was also the end of the first phase of inclusive, or industrial unionism, as opposed to trade unions. Under the pressure of economic downturns, factionalization, and the stigma of being affiliated with anarchists, the Knights of Labor declined into a negligible force.
In 1887 revisionists created the Socialist Labor party. Beset with internal strife over policy, its refutation of trade unionism led to its demise. Only the reemergence of the theory of "one big union" brought socialism back as a force in U.S. politics. Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) became a national figure at this time, having previously proved his abilities as a leader and orator as head of the American Railway Union (ARU). The Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, ostensibly passed to curb the accelerating trend of monopolization, was used to stop the ARU's strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company in 1895. When the ARU ignored the injunction granted under authority of the act, Debs was sentenced to six months in prison for contempt of court. On appeal the sentence was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in In re Debs, 158 U.S. 564, 15 S. Ct. 900, 39 L. Ed. 1092 (1895). Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, the revisionists attempted to unionize various companies but suffered a series of defeats, as at Andrew Carnegie's Homestead Steel in 1892, where private armies and the Pennsylvania state militia were used to break up the strike. Such defeats ultimately led the revisionists to join with Progressives and Populists to form the Social Democratic party in 1905.
In the early twentieth century, socialists worked with members of the Progressive movement in calling for changes to currency and taxation, an eight-hour day, an end to adulteration of food, more attention to product safety, improved working conditions, urban sanitation, and relief for the poor and homeless. Congress took notice of these demands and passed various laws granting the government the authority to regulate industry. As an electoral force, socialism peaked in 1912, when Debs garnered six percent of the popular vote.
The Supreme Court, however, was slow to recognize workers' rights and government regulation of industry. The Court repeatedly struck down state laws restricting the hours women and children could work on the ground that the laws violated the doctrine of liberty of contract. In 1910, the Court forced Standard Oil to divest itself of some of its operations; the decision was the first real antitrust victory, although it was limited in scope. Standard Oil v. United States, 221 U.S. 1, 31 S. Ct. 502. Not until Muller v. Oregon (208 U.S. 412, 28 S. Ct. 324, 52 L. Ed. 551) in 1908 did the Court recognize a limited legislative right to protect health and morals.
During World War I (1914-1918) socialism faced new setbacks. In the United States, the Espionage Act of 1917 (codified in scattered sections of 22 and 50 U.S.C.A.) was used to prevent socialist literature from being sent through the mail. The Industrial Workers of the World, which had been formed in 1905 and represented the legacy of direct action advocated by the earlier anarchists, was one of the main targets of the wartime hysteria. The "Wobblies," as they were called, and their leaders, William D. ("Big Bill") Haywood and Mary Harris Jones, were effectively silenced during this period. Debs was jailed again, this time for interfering with military recruitment in violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. Again the Supreme Court upheld the conviction (Debs v. United States, 249 U.S. 211, 39 S. Ct. 252, 63 L. Ed. 566 [1919]). Many other socialists were imprisoned for antiwar activities.
After World War I democratic socialists came into power, alone or as part of coalition governments, in Germany, France, Great Britain, and Sweden. They all faced the problem of how to make socialist principles viable within a capitalist system. Only in Sweden, and only after a lengthy conflict, were labor and capital able to cooperate to establish a socialist system without abandoning socialism's philosophic foundation.
In the United States, socialists faced another wave of repression during the strikes that erupted after the war. The Russian Revolution of 1917 had aroused new fears of Bolshevism, which led to greater intolerance. Under the auspices of the Justice Department, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer conducted raids against individuals and organizations considered a threat to U.S. institutions. The nationwide arrest of dissidents ultimately prompted the Supreme Court to reconsider federal protection of individual rights. Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Louis D. Brandeis argued for greater protection of the right to voice unpopular ideas.
The Great Depression marked another turning point for socialism. Overproduction, underconsumption, and speculation led to an implosion of markets, a result predicted by Marx. One response was powerful centralized governments in the form of totalitarian regimes such as those of Adolf Hitler in Germany and Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. Socialism was revived by the British economist John Maynard Keynes who advocated that the government stimulate consumption and investment during economic downturns. Previously used only on a limited scale, deficit financing, as it came to be called, was now used by socialists in Europe and liberals in the United States to revive capitalism. Many countries still use Keynesian economics to provide a bridge between capitalism and socialism.
As the Depression deepened from 1929 to 1933, U.S. socialism attracted more adherents, but its influence was still relatively slight. In the 1932 presidential elections, Socialist party candidate Norman M. Thomas won only 267,000 votes. Increasingly made up of middle-class intellectuals, socialists became isolated from the needs and demands of workers. Socialism's greatest achievement during this period was President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal program, which expanded government services to help the poor and stimulate economic growth. The Supreme Court, however, struck down much of the New Deal legislation, most notably, the National Industrial Recovery Act (48 Stat. 195) in 1935 (A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495, 55 S. Ct. 837, 79 L. Ed. 1570). Only when Roosevelt threatened to enlarge the Court to include justices with his perspective did the Court begin to uphold New Deal legislation.
The Wagner Act, also known as National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (29 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq.), the first recognition of labor's right to organize, was the culmination of eighty years of socialist-labor efforts. Ironically, however, the socialists' message lost its urgency with the broadening of workers' rights and regulatory reform. With the coming of the cold war, politicians and the public began to equate socialism with Communism. People with socialist backgrounds, who had been part of the Roosevelt administration, were denied employment, fired, and blacklisted during the late 1940s and 1950s. In 1951, in Dennis v. United States (341 U.S. 494, 71 S. Ct. 857, 95 L. Ed. 1137), the Supreme Court upheld the Smith Act (18 U.S.C.A. § 2385), which had been passed in 1940. The decision established the legality of anti-subversive legislation under the theory that a vast underground horde of Communists and "fellow travelers" was working for the violent overthrow of the government. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin proclaimed that Communists had infiltrated U.S. politics on a broad scale. Meanwhile the House Un-American Activities Committee tried suspects in the popular media, destroying numerous careers in the arts, entertainment, and politics. Only when McCarthy charged that the Army had been infiltrated by Communists and then failed to prove his allegations did his power decline.
By the time the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C.A. § 2000a et seq.) was passed in the aftermath of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, socialist precepts had again become acceptable topics of conversation. The remedies politicians and scholars proposed for urban blight, poverty, and inequitable distribution of wealth drew heavily on the traditional socialist tenet that the state should play a role in alleviating suffering and directing society toward desirable ends. The socialist perspective on the treatment of third-world nations in the transnational capitalist system also influenced protests against the Vietnam War.
Socialists, such as Debs, have argued that the legal system under capitalism serves only to protect the status quo, that is, the control of the wealthy over the means of production. Capitalists make a similar criticism of law under socialism, arguing that socialist regimes use law as a means of implementing policy. Widespread abuse of the law under either system can lead to revolution. The collapse of the iron curtain in the late 1980s and early 1990s brought an end to Communism's biggest regime and led to the renaming of many "socialist" states. Yet the vast disparities in resources that exist between wealthy and poor nations and between individuals keep the state control of industry and resources in practice, or under consideration, in many of the world's countries.
See: Dennis v. United States; Jurisprudence; Labor Law; Labor Union.
