Funny how things like this work out:

I was talking to a friend I met online named Andy, who is moving to one of the most politically charged cities in the country: Columbus, Ohio. It's about 65/35 Liberal/Conservative in and around OSU (which makes up about a good half of downtown Columbus, and the people living around the school subscribe to a similar culture in many respects)

Having lived there for 2 years +, I saw everything from people from HRC asking for donations to Christians damning them for helping the sinful gays.

I started a student Organization with my friend Edwin called "Sexuality and Education" to try to eliminate the perception (mostly by Christians) that being gay is wrong, and to educate people about what being gay and bisexual actually means. Edwin is an extremely devout Christian - he does not believe homosexuality to be sinful. He was president of the organization. No officer in the organization was gay or bi-sexual.

What strikes me as odd, is that people can use Christianity as a message of peace and love for gays, as Edwin did, or use it as a reason to marginalize them, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Just the fact that someone thinks they are wrong or sinful will marginalize them.

What Andy said to me is something he goes through every week, and it just makes me mad:

Andy: OMG so funny: I got this note on Deviant Art the other day from a user on my website, he has been a member for around 2 years now, making graphics with the other members and what not. But get this: he sends me this shit after he reads some of my journals on DA.

"What the crap, that's just sad, no offense, but i hate gays, lol, sry if it hurts your feelings. I'm a christian so i don't believe in that stuff."

It makes me cringe seeing things like that.

And I'm not even gay.

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Wired magazine has done a tribute to Bill Gates now that his major role with Microsoft is done, and he is focusing more on charitable causes around the world.

The tribute can be found here

"August 28, 1980
Gates signs a contract with IBM, agreeing to develop software for the PC. Later he buys an operating system called QDOS for $50,000, improves it, renames it DOS, and licenses it to IBM."

One of the most important events of the previous century.

Enjoy your time off, Bill, I wouldn't be writing this entry without you.

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That or it has taken "Well informed" too far



It's such a paradox

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I realized that to me, Republican political candidates seem to be for the most part idiots. However, that recently became unsatisfactory so I felt like breaking down current Republican social-political views into their economic and social counterparts.

The economic stance of conservatives is to lower taxes across the board and spend less federal money. Hey, that doesn't sound so bad.

The social policies is to install Christian morals into law to have a better society. Hey that doesn't sound so-wait a second!

You see its not so much the economic conservative policy I disagree with, but I'll get into that in a moment. It's the social "I know the best way to raise a country" thought that bothers me.

You see I personally believe in most circumstances, if it doesn't adversely (and directly) negatively influence other people and/or society, there should not be a law against it. Prostitution? Legal. Drugs? Legal.

You see the difference between my views on these 2 subjects in particular is that both will be heavily regulated by state and/or federal government so things such as fraud, extortion and slavery don't come about.

This 23 year old wants to become a professional prostitute. Okay so we will test her medically to see if she can both physically and mentally handle the job of being treated like an object for 12 hours a day. Next, we test her for STDs, and will do so every week for the remainder of her career. Okay so now she's a  certified prostitute, so we register her into the prostitute database that we use to track prostitutes. She now goes and applys at a brothel for employment.

Personally I don't see the harm in this process. You also would have to ensure she wasn't being forced into this process, but that's only slightly more complicated than standard criminal background checks.

Think of the economic benefit this country would receive if the Federal government sold Marijuana. Federally certified weed, top quality, that had been screened for imperfections and given a seal of approval. This weed will get you high as the clouds.

I digress from this now, but you see my point. It's not government job to tell people how their morals should be, apart from basic sociology and public good.

But now I want to talk about Conservative Economics, the basic idea of which is to lower taxes and spend less money so that people have more money and therefore spend more money on the economy. It's a great idea, its basically what a libertarian is. But you see here's the problem, there hasn't been a Fiscal Conservative President in at least 40 years. Every single Republican candidate as far back as I remember has started a war, while at the same time lowered taxes.

Well when you lower taxes and spend more as opposed to less, you reach a point of economic troubles. The problem with Republicans isn't their economic policy, its what they actually do in public office that causes problems. The idea of having lower taxes is great, but the problem is, more often than not the way they run their social policies causes you to need to spend money by telling someone "This is the way we are doing things!"

This is why left leaning libertarians will be able to succeed one day, because they are about letting people do what they want, and spending less money. I suppose this is a more apathetic government, and its not my social view (as I'm more of a socialist leaning liberal, who wouldn't mind 30% income tax if we received the government benefits of say Sweden, Norway or France), but it works. The traditional Republican mindset as we are seeing with $4/gallon gasoline (which in turn raises the prices of everything dependent on gasoline, which is almost quite literally everything) does not work.

Honestly, I just find most Republicans to be stupid.

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I thought this was pretty funny, found here

Now its back to CG at work. Maybe when I get home I'll EF.

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