If you rode a motorcycle, you would eat plenty.

The currant tomatoes are wild and quite tasty. Matt's Wild Cherry is one of my favorites.

Have you ever said, "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I'll fight to death for your right to say it."?

If you have said it, you lied.

If you have not said this or anything similar to it, then my comment didn't apply to you. You are honest about not supporting people who have opinions different than your own and do your best to silence all who disagree with you so that America may one day be of one mind. All who oppose you, including their families, must be punished into submission and silenced until they think the same way you do. You are one who is proud to be against differing ideas and cultures and feel that everyone in the world should... no.... MUST think correct thoughts.

Um, that's the Bill of Rights, not the Constitution. The Bill of Rights restricts the government. The rest of The Constitution actually gives the federal government lots of power. For example, see Article 1, Section 8 for the powers given to Congress. There's a bit too much to quote, so I'll just quote the last one:

This is also known as the "necessary and proper clause.
...all other Powers vested by this Constitution...

Why would the Constitution say this if it did not give any powers to the government?

May I suggest taking your own advice?

Um, the First Amendment actually "enshrines the religious bigotry of these Christians into law" and forbids government from getting involved in religious concepts. If the federal government is not allowed to recognize the Ten Commandments, how can mandate licenses and set rules for marriage?

It offends me.

How does drilling in ANWAR affect you in any way? How does a woman having or being denied an abortion in Texas affect you in any way? How does taxing rich people affect you in any way? I can do this all day, but I think you get the point. So don't give me that "how does it affect you" bullshit until you can answer these:

How does it affect you if the government calls your relation a civil union vs a marriage? Can you not have a wedding? Can you not wear a ring and tell everyone you are married? How does it make what you have any different?

The only difference I can see is that a civil union does not make me offended. But that's your whole point isn't it? You want to offend me and all Christians because you hate all Christians. Never mind that Muslims hang gays on the streets, they deserve to be heard and have their religious freedom, we must offend all Christians. And that's exactly why it will be held in a church. Democrats have already blocked a law protecting Chaplains in the US military from refusing to perform same sex marriages. How long do you think it will be before that same-sex couple sues the Catholic Church demanding "equal rights" to have a chapel wedding?

This isn't about equal rights. This is about getting even for perceived wrongs done to you. Tell me again how I am the bigot?

My mother owns a beauty salon that I worked in from before I was old enough to see over the counter. I know it's cliche to assume that gay me do hair, but it's a cliche for a reason. You have no idea how many gay friends I have. I have kinda grown up around them. I know what they are like, how they feel and what they are all about. And I feel they deserve equal rights under the law. But they do NOT have equal rights under religion. You don't have to like it. You don't have to be in a religion. But since freedom of religion is guaranteed under the Constitution, government has to respect it. By the way, can you tell me marriage is guaranteed in the Constitution? I can't find it anywhere.

I don't believe you have any religious friends. If you did, you wouldn't think they are all bigots.

And marriage is not just a Christian concept. It certainly predates Christianity. It appears to predate the earliest mentions of the Jews as far as the Bible goes. I would even say that the Bible agrees that civilization itself predates marriage as there is no mention in the Bible of Adam and Eve ever getting married. That doesn't mean shit as on July4, 1776, marriage was strictly a religious rite and carried no weight whatsoever in American law. It was, however being regulated by Jewish law in God knows what BC. So it was a religious rite for thousands of years before it was ever recognized by the United States Government. Sorry, but those are the facts.

Bingo!!! Marriage is a religious rite. Government has no business regulating or even recognizing a religious rite. However, there is a purpose to the government recognition of marriage, specifically taxes, shared property ownership, power of attorney, inheritance rights and so on, and I completely support gay couples gaining the same rights as straight couples. Those necessary results of government recognition of marriage could just as easily and equally be obtained if government recognized "civil unions" "legalized finger banging" or "neibersplat evernijula" or "hebeeshleebee itzu cowpoo". Does a rose by any other name not smell as sweet?

Like you said, I just don't like government redefining what has been a religious concept a thousand years before western culture, much less America or American law.

I plan on seeing the movie. During the Chick-Fil-A boycott, I ate more chicken sandwiches than at any point in my life!

It's not that I'm anti-gay. I think gay people are awesome. It's because I'm pro-Constitution. The Constitution says you have the right to free speech. Nowhere does it say you have the right to marry, straight, gay or otherwise.

I always used to hear liberals say "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I'll fight to death for your right to say it." It's amazing how fast that goes out the window when someone says something they view as "intolerant". I figure, if they're willing to claim to fight to the death for opposing views, the least I can do is enjoy a chicken sandwich with some waffle fries and see a movie I was interested in already.

If that were true, they would have accepted a civil unions law that gave civil unions 100% equality with marriage. I have yet to meet a gay couple that would have accepted a civil union, even if it was legally equal to marriage in every way. Most would claim some bullshit about the "separate but equal" issues in the civil rights era, where a water fountain for blacks was dirty and unmaintained while the "white's only" water fountain was new and shiny. I call it bullshit because if a law says two things are equal, they are equal, period. It's not like inheritance laws for gays can get dirty or leak. These are not physical objects.

When I would explain that "separate but equal" only applies to physical objects, they would say that they wanted to be "married", not unionized. So I ask them was stopping them from putting on white dresses, saying vows, exchanging rings, smearing cake on each other's faces, throwing a party and telling everyone they know that they are married? What difference does it make what the government called it?

If you want to be married, be married. Marriage is about love, trust and commitment. It's not about inheritance rights, taxes and contracts. Why must you demand that government call your relationship a "marriage" when the "rights" part can be achieved with using that exact word? Their only HONEST response was they wanted to FORCE those bigoted Christians to recognize their marriage.

This is not about equal rights. If it were, they could have had it years ago with little resistance. This is about revenge and punishing those they hate; religious people.

Don't mod this down because you don't like it. Be an adult and reply with why you think I'm wrong.

Laws are passed based on public opinion. Courts judge them based on the Constitution. Lady Liberty has a blindfold for a reason. If enough people feel strongly enough about an issue that is deemed unconstitutional, then the Constitution may be amended. For example, California held an election to in which the public opinion banned gay marriage. A court deemed that unconstitutional. Arizona has passed laws on immigration that were supported by public opinion that the court deemed unconstitutional.

The problem is that there is always going to be someone that calls any war or anything military illegitimate. Also, surveillance is important even in times of peace. It is worthless if everyone knows what we are looking at and what we find.

Since secrets are important to a government, regardless of your opinion, and since courts are public and have no current ability to hear cases where the matter is deemed secret by those charged, there is no oversight at all. Your resistance to court oversight that can keep things that need to be secret secret,is supporting the status quo where government has virtually unlimited power because any abuses can simply be called "national security" and court oversight is completely avoided.

The court system is supposed to be above public opinion and pubic opinion is not supposed to have any effect on the court's decisions.

No, this court, like any other, would work within the law. The problem is that without the appropriate clearance, judges are not legally allowed to hear the evidence in the case so judicial oversight is not possible right now. All this would be is a court where the judges have the clearance to hear the cases and the evidence. The evidence in the cases as well as most of the information about the cases could be kept secret so these cases could go to court without damaging national security or the government using that as an excuse to keep the cases from ever being heard.

The justice system is supposed to be blind and not "trust" anyone. I don't think the FISA court was set up to deal with the Constitutionality of the law itself, but to grant or deny warrants.

We need a separate court that is secret like FISA whose purpose is to deal with cases brought up where the evidence brought up in the case should not be made public. They could handle the cases of terrorists, for example or any challenges to instances where the government is doing something that needs to be kept secret, but may or may not meet Constitutional muster.

I think the fact that this has been made public and that the government itself is no longer denying this negates any attempt to call this "state secrets".

However, there will be cases that deal with actual state secrets. For those, we need a court set up to deal with that sort of thing, not just a court to approve warrants, but a court to handle cases brought up by whistle blowers that evaluate the Constitutionality of cases like this.

The problems you speak of are due to corruption, not free markets. Even in the height of the Soviet Union, most people were living in squalor while the few lived in luxury. I know you are not going to say that the former Soviet Union was a free market.

Iraq under Saddam Hussein had the same situation. Most people lived in poverty while those that were high ranking party members were rewarded handsomely.

China is not a free market either. While it does have some capitalist tendencies, it is still a Communist nation. You need government permission to run a business. However, in order to make it, you better be tight with the person approving the application. It's one thing to get your application approved. It's something else entirely to have your competition denied and your abuses of the law and your employees ignored.

Mexico is another example. While the market there is freer than the other places I've mentioned, the success of your business rests on your ability to grease the palms of the right people.

Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other countries are in the same situation. It doesn't matter what laws you have in place when those that enforce those laws are on your side. Selective enforcement of the law is a major ingredient in any tyranny.

What sets Europe and America apart is the lack of corruption compared to most other countries. It's not the laws that are in place, but a willingness to enforce them equally. Unfortunately, America seems to be moving away from that. Our DOJ, EPA and IRS departments seem to apply different levels of enforcement based on the political beliefs of those being investigated.