I think the downfall to Kerry is his stance on gay marriage

i think his real downfall is that he's john kerry and anyone with a clue knows that john kerry sucks just as much as bush

makes since to me, here in oregon, we had a big thing about gay marrige, now a constatutional amendment has passed that makes marrige between a man and a women. we oregon is a very liberal state...

The problem was John Kerry was too polite . Instead of saying what a good job the president did the days after 911. He should of attacked him for letting it happen. If Gore was President you would of seen it on every poster and commercial. He should spoke out against the war for real. They are all so afraid of offending someone they play it safe and they lose.

Um.. he kept saying he was against gay marriage too. (pro recognition of rights tho) But the republicans still mailed/phoned everyone to say he was for forcing priests to marry fags.

your posts earlier today prove that you are biased beyond belief. please leave.

opposing gay marriage isn't a enough of a hot button issue for anyone that would cause them to vote for someone just based on that in itself. it's a combination of issues that drives people to vote one way or another, and i think the real problem with kerry is that no one really knew exactly what he stood for, they just knew he wasn't bush.

even some of my (male) gay friends that i've asked have actually laughed at the idea of gay marriage - say they couldn't care less about getting married and prefer to be single. maybe the lesbians take it more seriously?

I think your right... plus the gay marriage issue.... All the kids around here that go to school with my kids said that there preachers or leaders or whatever they are, told the people flat out "A vote for Kerry is a vote against God"

This is a HUGE win for the religous right... We will just have to wait and see how it plays out cause there aint shit we can do about it now!

Its simple. People figure Bush started the war.. He should finish it... Nuff said..

no question that having the gay marriage ammendments on the ballots was a killer to the democratic strategy as it pulled right wing christians to the polls in droves which helped to neutrilize the increased youth vote, the campain was hoping would put them over the top.

Putting issues on the ballot which wakes up the religious nuts in the country and gets them to vote is never a good plan for a democratic campaign.

And that is the one positive I can take from the win by Bush. I really want to see him try to get himself outta the mess he has created, and the increased hatred he has spurred towards himself and to our country.

I have a feeling many republicans are going to be shocked at just how bad the results get during these 4 years.

Which could mean a good long run for the Democratic party from 2008 onwards.

Demonising George W Bush was the downfall

especially the fact that THE WHOLE WORLD wanted Kerry to win is what made him lose !!!

Don't forget guns.. most americans love their guns, and he's about as anti gun as they come (no matter how much he lied about it on tv)

I agree with this conjecture.

Nothing against same-sex marriage (we are working towards supporting it legally in Canada because many of us believe it is a civil right, although some faiths believe they own the patent on the word 'marriage'), but it may have been too much to accept for some traditional valued Americans (no offense intended to any specific spiritual views).

We don't have to agree with them, but we must understand that the nature of some value systems are not flexible/negotiable (it's part of what makes up a faith) and I have a hunch as does Myst that many more conservative Americans may have voted for Mr. Kerry if they did not feel they were somehow endorsing an absolutely unacceptable component - even though they may have been on board with the rest of the program and sincerely wished for a changing of the guard.

My question is, how do peoples from such extreme opposite poles of values and thinking (R vs D) find enough common ground to mandate a national course more consistent with the larger picture, and without feeling they must betray their respective core values to do so.

I suspect many folks who voted went to bed last night feeling content that they stayed true to their beliefs, but at the same time, they were disappointed with the limited number of options they had - the two choices were just too far apart for many.

I believe you are right. I am gay and I grew up most of my life in the bible belt. Unless you have lived there and see how consuming religion is, how people all confess to having a "personal relationship" with God you will never fully understand the brainwashing that goes on wtih evangelical christianity. Growing up Baptist we went to church for a totaly of 5-7 hours a week. Sunday school and church on sunday morning, traning union and sunday evening services and prayer meeting and choir on Wed. Usually once a week there was some kind of youth activity to boot. It wasn't untill I grew up and moved to California that I realized that not everyone else in the world thinks the way you do.

I also grew up and around people who believed it was really cool to say "The Bible is the only book I need to read"
I remember hearing people say that reading anything else is just a waiste of time.

When you have people growing up in a society of ignorance its no wonder they will believe what ever any authority figure tells them. They go to church and they believe whatever Pator Joe tells them because he is the authority.
The blue collar town I grew up in Oklahoma also had a very low graduation rate and I can tell you that 90% of the people I graduated with did not go to college and still live there. Most have never been out of this country to expereince another culture and some have still never been out of state. To me it is no wonder why the republican party loves to bash education. If someone can't read and form an opinion on their own they are much easier to con deceive.

Homsexuality is easy to demonize. I mean it only takes one video of a gay pride parade in San Francisco to make country folk point and scream and think armagedon is on the way. The idea of someone doing something that they want to do, freely without any concern about what others think is a foreign concept. The idea that you can spit in the eye of the norm and still live to see another day without there being some grave consequence scares the living shit out of many.

The same Bible that condemns homosexuality also condemns envy, greed, all types of lust, laziness and gluttony. But for some reason the fat ass that fill a church pew week after week tend to not be real concerned about the last two.

The republicans who have courted the religious right for so long they can't win without them......they just can't. They have worked with ministers and pastors all over this country to deceive people into voting for "men who serve God". They know that their policies are not going to help blue collar high school educated people in the midwest but as long as the people really know nothing about the economic policies of the party and they focus them on the moral issues they will win.

One would think that when its all over and said that the deaths of over 100,000 civilians (not soldiers but civilians) in Iraq would make them shed a tear but not really. Why should they care about the 100,000 faceless men, women, and children who have dies because of a horrible circumstance when there are homo's to round up!

The brilliance of the republican masterminds like Karl Rove and the like is that they knew if they got Gay marriage on the ballot in as many states as they could they would get TONS of the evangelicals to vote. And if they vote against fags they will vote for George W while there. And it worked. On MSNBC they acctually showed chartered busses of eldery coming from churches to vote at the precincts.

Yes Gay Marraige did help to defeat John Kerry. And once again gay americans were used as a whipping post to scare people and deceive them into believing it's the worst issue we face today

yah, what he said

Well said.

my wife and I were just chatting about that

we truely think that one of the strongest positions bush had that ay have won the election was his stance on gays...

there was a great article in creative loafing here about how most of the people in backwoods georgia, outside the city, were voting for bush, "because he hates them gays"....and that was their sole reason

Absolutely. And it was masterful on the part of the Republicans in terms of motivating that part of their base.

I grew up in Texas, in Austin, which is liberal by Texan standards, being a college town. One of my best friends in high school was gay. I had a pretty liberal mom, and so it just never occurred to me to not be friends with Tim.

The result? I got into more fights that he did, because of the kids that wanted to kick my ass for being a 'friends with a faggot'. In my sophmore year, it was nearly a fight every 10 days (average).

If I had a party, some friends weren't allowed to come if 'he' was going to be there. And of course I was called every name in the book, and people spread rumours we were sleeping together, sucking each other's cocks, etc, etc, etc.

That, to me, is the South. Along with the confederate flag still flying everywhere. People think this stuff is an exagerration or generalization - it's not. I left Texas at 17. Tim left at 16 - probably a good thing since I think he'd lost 2 teeth by then.

No one ever got in trouble for it, either. Just wrist slaps, and probably some pats on the back for 'kicking that faggots ass.'

All you have to do to understand the depth and ferocity of these religious beliefs is do this: think of a principle to you that is absolutely firm and unshakeable, that carries your deepest conviction. Someone would have to put a gun to your head to sway you from it. Say - raping babies. As fundamentally and ferociously certain you are that that is a horror of horrors, well - that's the level and depth of conviction and committment deeply religious individuals have as regards some of these issues.

To be fair, I've also travelled most of the US and a good part of the world, and I've always been interested in religion. I've met a number of Catholic Priests, a buddhist monk , A Mormon deacon (or whatever they call them), been to a Baptist Revival (the only church going that's actually fun, IMO). And of course, most of these people, if you sit down and talk to them, are good people. Some were even wise.

The main divide is caused, IMO, by a single factor. Not the diversity and differences of beliefs - but the attempt to legislate them. I really don't care what someone believes. I just don't want their beliefs to be enforced on me via law.

hmm..yeah. dead young american bodies rotting in the desert, or girls making out in public places wearing wedding rings. Yeah the choice was clearly an easy one.

Randy you FAG!!!









j/k u know i love the cawk! well written man!

I agree, excellent post and dead-on.

There were some pretty rediculous things being said about a Kerry presidency in ads and flyers around here. In addition to forcing acceptance of same-sex marriage supposedly he was going to have the governement take over all health care, ban the bible, insure partial birth abortions remained available with the government picking up the tab, take away all guns... you name it, they said it. Values, morals and faith were 3 big buzzwords.

I think most people who dislike bush, would not have a problem with having gay marriage legalized

Choice quote.

I think that was a big part of it. I saw more than one person interviewed that said they came out as a backlash to Michael Moore and liberals and might not have even voted otherwise.

Nice post

well said

even Michael Moore says (as one of his reasons to not be too upset about Bush winning):

9. Gays, thanks to the ballot measures passed on Tuesday, cannot get married in 11 new states. Thank God. Just think of all those wedding gifts we won't have to buy now.



its so unbelievably sad that the destruction of a country is occuring for such a stupid reason