Pashtun men commonly have sex with other men, admire other men physically, have sexual relationships with boys and shun women both socially and sexually — yet they completely reject the label of “homosexual.” . . .
The U.S. army medic also told members of the research unit that she and her colleagues had to explain to a local man how to get his wife pregnant.
The report said: “When it was explained to him what was necessary, he reacted with disgust and asked, ‘How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean, when one could be with a man, who is clean? Surely this must be wrong.’”
The Pashtun populations are concentrated in the southern and eastern parts of the country. The Human Terrain Team that conducted the research is part of a military effort to learn more about local populations.
The report also detailed a disturbing practice in which older “men of status” keep young boys on hand for sexual relationships. One of the country’s favorite sayings, the report said, is “women are for children, boys are for pleasure.”
The report concluded that the widespread homosexual behavior stems from several factors, including the “severe segregation” of women in the society and the “prohibitive” cost of marriage.
Yeah, you could say that homosexual behavior is widespread in Afghanistan when even the Taliban is flamin’ gay:
Seven states cross the 50% mark overall as of our current estimates, but the generation gap is huge. If policy were set by state-by-state majorities of those 65 or older, none would allow same-sex marriage. If policy were set by those under 30, only 12 states would not allow-same-sex marriage.
In a paper published March 2 in the San Francisco Chronicle, two law professors from Pepperdine University issued a call to re-examine the role the government plays in marriage. The authors — one of whom voted for and one against Proposition 8, which ended gay marriage in California — say the best way out of the intractable legal wars over gay marriage is to take marriage out of the hands of the government altogether.
Instead, give gay and straight couples alike the same license, a certificate confirming them as a family, and call it a civil union — anything, really, other than marriage. For people who feel the word marriage is important, the next stop after the courthouse could be the church, where they could bless their union with all the religious ceremony they wanted. Religions would lose nothing of their role in sanctioning the kinds of unions that they find in keeping with their tenets. And for nonbelievers and those who find the word marriage less important, the civil-union license issued by the state would be all they needed to unlock the benefits reserved in most states and in federal law for married couples.
Unsurprisingly, California’s Supreme Court likes the idea.
“Until same-sex marriage is legal everywhere and same-sex couples are allowed the rights as every heterosexual couple worldwide, we simply do not think it’s fair or just for a female bride-to-be to celebrate her upcoming nuptials here at Cocktail.”
Interesting how Google’s general counsel’s post presents it as something they are doing solely to defend basic and fundamental rights of their employees. I don’t remember Google mention anything about any rights when it happily obliged to censor China’s Internet at Beijing’s first request. I wonder if things like business and profits didn’t have something to do with it.
Proposition 8 Donor Maps, for San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and Orange County, are now posted at EightMaps.com. Proposition 8, of course, was the proposition that amended the California Constitution to bar legal recognition of same-sex marriage. The map is built — presumably automatically — from the data reported by the California Secretary of State’s office. (The site I linked to contains the committee id’s, but if you click on the committee name, you’ll see the individual contributors.) Many of the listed contributions are $50 or below. I suspect this sort of technology may well make people much more reluctant to donate money to (or against) controversial propositions — and may lead people to rethink whether the government should indeed mandate disclosure of such contributions, especially small contributions.
It can only make people much more reluctant to donate money to conservative propositions, of course. Which is precisely the idea.
I wonder what Google thinks about people using its products to intimidate and possibly punish political opponents, and what it would do if the political sides were reversed.
In “Proposition 8 — The Musical,” Neil Patrick Harris argues “there’s money to be made” — from weddings (and subsequent divorces) if California legalizes same-sex marriage. But my coauthor Jennifer Gerard Brown beat him to the punch. In “Competitive Federalism and the Legislative Incentives to Recognize Same-Sex Marriage” 68 S. CAL. L. REV. 745 (1995) she:
estimated that the present value of a change in marriage law for the first-mover state could reach three or four billion dollars. [E]ach tourist dollar spent generates additional private income, tax revenue, and jobs. Forbes magazine recently estimated that if same-sex couples currently living together would marry, they would spend $16.8 billion in the first several years following legalization.
Complete with an obese Jesus Christ (Jack Black) promoting gay marriage by saying the Bible doesn’t really mean what it says (kind of like the U.S. Constitution). Who said Hollywood has a problem with Jesus? Not when it can use him to advance its causes.
Robbie Cooper on Proposition 8 protests (terrorizing peaceful white churches while making sure to keep away from blacks and Muslims – those staunch supporters of gay marriage) and their effect:
I’m a pretty socially tolerant guy. Even for a right-wing-whacko Conservative.
I might have even voted to support gay marriage.
But not now. Your community’s reactions and subsequent actions after the voters decided against you — well, it’s pitted me firmly against you.
Now?
I’ll vote AGAINT gay marriage any and every change I get.
