2012 U.S. Presidential Election

[Gavin Luper]

Oh sure Perry has made mistakes no doubt, and personally if I were running I would never run the ad as I am not a social conservative. But that does not mean one cannot appreciate the political calculus in it.

Just like that clever political calculus good ol' Adolf Hitler used, right? He thought the rights of Jews were special rights that needed to be redressed. Just like Perry thinks homosexual rights are special rights that need to be redressed. Your mate is in good company, isn't he? Just appealing to the social conservatives, right? Just arguing that a random group of people is less-deserving of human rights than the rest, right? It's totally worth supporting. Look at all that political calculus!

How you cannot denounce Perry for holding such a position is abhorrent. You might like everything else about him and those credentials might be great, but his position on human rights for homosexuals is immoral and completely untenable.

So Obama not reauthorizing the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom while at the same time basing U.S. Foreign Aid dollars on how well countries treat Homosexuality is not putting one over the other, or contributing to the suppression of religious freedom abroad?

"The United States has put the fight against gay and lesbian discrimination at the heart of its foreign policy, but stopped short of warning transgressor nations they could be stripped of US aid."

[Taken from: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-0...ional/3717162]

That's what the news reported ... that the US stopped short of withholding foreign aid on this matter. So where are you pulling your facts from? If something further has taken place, let me know, please, because I'd like to see the US follow the UK's lead on this.

Again I have no doubt that he is not the biggest Gay supporter, but it is ignorant to take the video and try to peace it together with a quote to try and make the video any thing more than it is.

You are being ignorant on this topic. Unless he makes a public reversal and says "actually, I support gay rights now" we can reasonably assume that someone who repeatedly makes public remarks that denounce gay rights clearly holds a position against gay rights. When he makes a future comment on gay rights, it is quite easy to understand the context of that comment, knowing his very clear and very public position on it. This is called reasoning, not ignorance. You yourself have stated he is courting the social conservatives. I don't understand your feeble attempts to deny or defend Perry's bigotry.

Is it wrong? Of course, and I completely disapprove of it, but then again I am open to having rights for all sexualities, and not just stop with homosexuals. If we begin to pick and choose who gets rights, it does in a way extend to being special rights.

That being said however, you cannot take one statement, place it against another, and automatically infer the second statement is anti gay.

Homosexual rights are NOT special rights! There are no special rights. They are all HUMAN rights. The right to not be murdered by your government just for existing is not "special".

I think you misunderstand. The 'special rights' remark made by Perry, in the foreign aid example, is the right to not be arrested/tortured/executed by the state, or to be openly discriminated against and assaulted in civil society. This is the aid contingency generated by the new Obama approach which Perry so happily rejects.

This is not "just stop[ping] with homosexuals". It is focusing on a mortal necessity. Living is not a special right. Equality under the law is not special. Perry's remarks thus define homosexuals as inhuman.

I am fairly confident that you can take one instance of vicious anti-gay rhetoric and use this to justify an anti-gay interpretation of a second, slightly more ambiguous statement.

Well said.