User Comments - kdogg36

Posted on: Trip to Harbin

我去年一月去了哈尔滨，我也觉得值得。除了冰雪节以外，还有一所很有意思的老虎园。而且听说夜生活听不错的。

冰雪节当然是"tourist trap", 不过至少是有中国特色的"tourist trap"!

Posted on: The Wives of Gay Men

那你这个名字就是“小熊”吗？：）

Posted on: The Wives of Gay Men

floalvarez, if you really care about your nephews, I hope you'll pray that they have a wonderful life with their partners, or that they'll find a wonderful partner, or that they'll have a happy single gay life, as the case may be.

Anyhow, although the official church is of course very stern on the issue, most individual Catholics support marriage equality. I hope you'll come around to join that party. As a (very happy) former Catholic, I won't pray for it, though. :)

Posted on: The Wives of Gay Men

Well... these conversations aren't always so fun for me, and I should probably leave well enough alone, but I can't help myself. I try to keep things civil, but these matters are very volatile for me and I get sucked in. So it's at least as much about me gracefully extricating myself from the conversation as it is about getting too far off-topic.

Posted on: The Wives of Gay Men

(I cheated and took the discussion private, so no worries!)

Posted on: The Wives of Gay Men

And if you want to say that that makes it meaningless, then every time someone says "I love you" then they are making a meaningless and useless comment.

Surely the meaningfulness of an utterance is related to context. Saying "I love you" to someone you truly love is indeed meaningful and (hopefully!) useful; announcing that homosexuality makes your skin crawl on an educational message board is not.

Regardless of my feelings, I believe in democracy above all else. So there should be a referendum on the matter.

And on interracial marriage, I would assume, and on your current or future marriage as well - at least I'd conclude that based on your stated principle.

Since we're way off-topic - which is partially my fault - I will let you have the last word, unless it's *really* provocative, in which case I can't make any promises. :)

Posted on: The Wives of Gay Men

I deem that your comment, which was something like "I'm not listening to this podcast because I find homosexuality disgusting," is very nearly empty of meaning. I imagine that even many people who agree with your outlook would find it a pretty useless comment.

Anyhow, what we're talking about at this point in the conversation is the law, the policy of the government. Those who oppose marriage equality are arguing that a group of people who pay their full share of taxes should be denied full access to the benefits and services that those taxes pay for. This is clearly unfair, unless opponents can come up with some objective reasons to deny this access - some actual harm that will come about if two guys or two women get a marriage license. Claims along the lines of "my religion tells me it's wrong" or "it's always been one way, so we shouldn't change it" do not meet this threshold.

As I wrote above, ultimately I think marriage shouldn't be a government matter at all. I don't believe government should bless and bestow privileges on people in certain kinds of relationships. But that's a long-term goal.

Posted on: The Wives of Gay Men

Let me also add that I don't think your comment should have been deleted. Inanity is rarely a threat to anyone.

Posted on: The Wives of Gay Men

My comment, translated into English, was something like this: "Thank you for your incredibly incisive comment." I would have thought the sarcasm would be obvious, because your comment was very, very far from incisive.

Posted on: The Wives of Gay Men

My point is, in all this flurry about equality, people forget that heterosexual has rights too and could be discriminated against, and some people do value tradition.

How would you be discriminated against if I married my nonexistent boyfriend? You haven't given any reason at all how it would impact you. And, in fact, it would be impossible for you to do so, since it wouldn't affect you at all, as I think you know. All arguments against marriage equality are based on religious belief and tradition, which are not real reasons to maintain official discrimination.