I discussed it with Chad and I believe he pulled the trigger on banning FC. Other mods were included in the discussion but may not have have had time to respond. FC was already on our radar as someone who might need the axe, and this just made it clear-cut.
I agree that the fervor against gay marriage is baffling at times. If someone doesn’t like gay marriage, then they shouldn’t gay marry.
Agree
Are you inferring that the Civil War was about something else?
I thought gay marriage caused the dinosaurs to become extinct. I heard from a credible source.
Saying that the Civil War was about states’ rights is basically the pro-slavery way of saying they read Playboy because the articles are good. The articles may indeed be good, but that’s not the real reason they bought it.
Now polygamy has to be legalized.
The Civil War was not about the North feeling bad for the Negro slaves in the South. It was about money. Period. The North couldn’t compete with the slave labor economy, so they fought to take it away via overriding States rights. Again, generalizing here. Lincoln used the Emacipation Proclamation as a last resort to win the war. If the war was purely about slavery and human rights, then the EP would’ve been the first order of business instead of one of the last. This human rights issue was just and noble, but not the motivating factor for war. That sugar-coated history that we were told in elementary school that North = good, South = bad is only partially true. (I am from the North, and winter is coming).
/end of hijack
yes. when are hyperconservatives going to realize that banning gay marriage does not equal banning gay people? these people exist, and there are far too many of them for it to be some rare disorder, so they must be protected from persecution.
i think bald people should be unable to marry. there’s clearly something wrong with them and i don’t like watching them be affectionate in public. thoughts?
^ What about people who have hair when they get married and eventually become bald?
Baldness is a choice!
^ According to Bosely it’s not!
I find this entertaining.
Being from the South*, I hear “Neither one was good or bad. They just had differences of opinion.” Then you go to the North, and they say, “Those damn rebels had to be whipped into shape.” In fact, when I went to DC for the first time last year, one of the tour guides at Arlington National Cemetary said, “General Lee was famous for fighting against the country in the Civil War.”
*At least I think Texas is the South. It was part of the confederacy, but it doesn’t necessarily equate to “The South” when talking about the Civil War.
As a Christian, I think that the government shouldn’t be in the marriage business.
Ultimately, it doesn’t affect me. In fact, I’ve performed at the “wedding reception” of a gay couple.
(I put “wedding reception” in quotes because, at the time, gay marriage wasn’t recognized in California.)
Seriously: what do I care? They’re likely to be as miserable as most (heterosexual) married couples. It’s their fault.
http://www.nps.gov/resources/story.htm?id=251
The North, by contrast, was well on its way toward a commercial and manufacturing economy, which would have a direct impact on its war making ability. By 1860, 90 percent of the nation’s manufacturing output came from northern states. The North produced 17 times more cotton and woolen textiles than the South, 30 times more leather goods, 20 times more pig iron, and 32 times more firearms. The North produced 3,200 firearms to every 100 produced in the South. Only about 40 percent of the Northern population was still engaged in agriculture by 1860, as compared to 84 percent of the South.** Even in the agricultural sector, Northern farmers were out-producing their southern counterparts in several important areas, as Southern agriculture remained labor intensive while northern agriculture became increasingly mechanized. By 1860, the free states had nearly twice the value of farm machinery per acre and per farm worker as did the slave states, leading to increased productivity. As a result, in 1860, the Northern states produced half of the nation’s corn, four-fifths of its wheat, and seven-eighths of its oats. The industrialization of the northern states had an impact upon urbanization and immigration. By 1860, 26 percent of the Northern population lived in urban areas, led by the remarkable growth of cities such as Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Detroit, with their farm-machinery, food-processing, machine-tool, and railroad equipment factories. Only about a tenth of the southern population lived in urban areas. Free states attracted the vast majority of the waves of European immigration through the mid-19th century. Fully seven-eighths of foreign immigrants settled in free states. As a consequence, the population of the states that stayed in the Union was approximately 23 million as compared to a population of 9 million in the states of the Confederacy.** This translated directly into the Union having 3.5 million males of military age - 18 to 45 - as compared to 1 million for the South. About 75 percent of Southern males fought the war, as compared to about half of Northern men.
http://www.historycentral.com/CivilWar/AMERICA/Economics.html
The South had almost 25% of the country’s free population, but only 10% of the country’s capital in 1860. The North had five times the number of factories as the South, and over ten times the number of factory workers. In addition, 90% of the nation’s skilled workers were in the North.
… In the North, the US government was able to fund the war effort with the nation’s treasury. The Union had strong banking institutions, and controlled at least 70% of the nation’s wealth. To raise more funds, the US government raised taxes on goods and services and set high imports tariffs;. In addition, the Treasury issued paper money (“greenbacks”) which was not backed by gold, but by government credit, thus reducing the amount of specie necessary for a given amount of money. The US government also raised money by selling bonds to individuals and banks.
The Southern economy, with its agricultural emphasis and relative lack of industrialization, did not have the money or capacity to support a war effort. The Confederacy had less than $1 million in specie in its treasury.
I was going to put forth some of this data too but was too lazy to go search.
What exactly was the north competing with the south on, and what exactly would have been the negative outcome (other than the expansion of slavery) even if the South had been economically dominant? The North had more factories, more lines of railways more productivity. This hardly sounds like a region in imminent danger of being put out of business by a slave economy. Are slaves (who have to be fed, sheltered, cared for when sick (at least enough to remain productive) watched and disciplined) really more cost effective than machinery and manufactures? How did all those factories and miles of railway get put into place if the North was so economically disadvantaged by having a slave-owning South? Why didn’t the South have similar capacities (at least at the start of the war) if it was so darned productive?
And the abolition of slavery was a discussion since the founding of the Republic, and considered repugnant even by many slaveholders. It wasn’t something where people thought “Oh, the south is getting rich, quick! Let’s abolish slavery. That will show them!”
There’s a fair amount of evidence that slavery was dying anyway because mechanization was starting to be felt in the South. Cotton was a problem because it didn’t lend itself well to mechanization the way wheat does, although the cotton gin was an invention that would eventually make it easier to mechanize. Ironically, the invention of the cotton gin breathed new life into what seemed to be an institution already becoming economically unjustifiable, because it made labor more productive until such time as cotton could be gathered from cotton bushes by machine.
Yeah, the North could never have been relevant in the cotton industry because of geology and climate. In virtually every other industry, including subsectors of agriculture the North dominated. Why would weakening their trade partner (many goods went to the south) be beneficial? It wouldn’t have been. Any analysis anywhere puts the North’s superior resources and industrialization as one of the key aspects of its victory. I grew up less than 15 minutes from Gettysburg, I was around this part of history a lot.
I saw this coming from both of you. Good points. I learned everything I know about the Civil War from watching North and South. Patrick Swayze’s character was just too good to not sympathize with the South. Damn you TV drama miniseries!
Let’s get back to the gay marriage thing.
Any analysis of the causes of the civil war without mentioning tarriff policy is going to be incomplete.
2 guys just showed up at a SC courthouse to get married wearing Confederate flag tuxedos. What to do?
So religion is an ever changing arbitrary interpretation of an old text. What’s the relation between modern Christianity and the Bible?