Posts made by Spintendo

Boy Scouts Expected to End Ban on Gay Leaders
by Erik Eckholm of The New York Times
JULY 26, 2015

The Boy Scouts of America is expected on Monday to end its blanket ban on gay leaders — a turning point for an organization that has been in turmoil over the issue. But some scouting groups will still be able to limit leadership jobs to heterosexuals. To gain the acquiescence of conservative religious groups that sponsor many dens and troops, like the Mormon and Roman Catholic Churches, the policy will allow church-run units to pick leaders who agree with their moral precepts.

Already struggling to reverse a long-term decline in membership, the Boy Scouts have been increasingly consumed over the last two decades by battles over the exclusion of gay people, divisions that threatened to fracture the organization. Conservative partners saw the policy as a bulwark against unwanted social change, but the Boy Scouts’ anti-gay stance was costing it public support and cachet as well as corporate funders, and lately has brought on the threat of costly lawsuits.

In a contentious meeting in 2013, the Scouts decided to permit participation by gay youths but not adults. On Monday, bowing to still-accelerating shifts in opinion and law, the Scouts will relax their policy barring openly gay adults from serving as the den leaders, scoutmasters and camp counselors who are at the heart of the scouting experience. The Scouts will also on Monday bar discrimination based on sexual orientation in all official facilities and paying jobs across the country, heading off potential suits and violations of employment discrimination laws.

But to keep some of the larger church sponsors in the fold, Scout executives concluded that they must allow for diverse policies for local volunteers. Church-based units may “continue to choose adult leaders whose beliefs are consistent with their own,” according to a statement that the Scouts’ top executives sent this month to regional board members. The step, if incomplete in the view of many gay rights campaigners, is nonetheless a momentous one for an organization that has struggled to keep the allegiance of conservatives as it faced open rebellion from more liberal regions.

The proposal follows a public warning in May by Robert M. Gates, the Scouts’ voluntary two-year president and a former defense secretary, that the ban on gay adults “cannot be sustained.” The national governing board, which includes scores of corporate, civic and church leaders who share a devotion to scouting, is expected to provide overwhelming support for the resolution in a meeting to be conducted Monday by telephone.

With this latest change, Mr. Gates and other Scout executives hope to defuse an issue that has caused growing turmoil, even as membership — more than 2.4 million youths in 2014, with nearly a million adult volunteers — has steadily declined. Over time, the share of units sponsored by churches of all denominations has climbed to 70 percent, with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the United Methodists and the Roman Catholics accounting for the largest shares.

Mr. Gates has won praise for acting decisively to resolve a conflict that threatened to fracture the Boy Scouts. An Eagle Scout who ran the C.I.A. and who served as defense secretary under Republican and Democratic presidents, he oversaw the end of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gay service in the military. “Because of his history, he was in a position to exercise leadership on this issue,” said Zach Wahls, 24, an Eagle Scout and executive director of Scouts for Equality, which has mounted public campaigns for change. “The people in the Scouts trusted him to handle it well.”

The Boy Scouts have a tortured history on gay rights, reflecting both the wider culture wars and the pull of regions and partners with conflicting views. In 2000, the Scouts’ exclusionary policy prevailed before the Supreme Court. In a 5-to-4 decision, the court said the Scouts had the right to force out a gay assistant scoutmaster because the private organization’s stance that homosexuality was not “morally straight” was part of the group’s “expressive message.”

But the victory proved Pyrrhic. Many schools and public agencies severed their ties. At the same time, the share of religious sponsors climbed, and the Scouts began attracting more conservative families. In 2012, the group announced that it would retain the ban on gay members. But gay rights groups like Glaad and Scouts for Equality helped publicize cases of discrimination and push several major corporate donors, including Intel, United Parcel Service and Merck, to withdraw their support.

In 2013, the national leadership proposed what proved to be an illusory middle ground — to permit gay youths, a less sensitive issue with conservatives, but to continue to ban openly gay adults. The change was welcomed, but brought little peace. More corporate donors withdrew, and lawsuits claiming illegal discrimination under state laws were brewing that, the Scouts’ own lawyers concluded, the group was sure to lose.

https://forum.gaytorrent.ru/index.php?topic=25644.msg120046#msg120046

@36605domtop:

I recognize that we're off topic

Our exchanges on equality as a context to feelings of fairness are the core to any discussion on throuples. We are completely on-topic.

My issue was with your use of the word equal here:

@36605domtop:

You really have to find two other people that you are totally into on an equal basis.

To be fair, love should be based on equity, not equality. Unless you're dating a man and his genetic clone, love based on equality is unfair—as no two people are identically "the same" enough to merit an exact, equal amount of love.

A throuple where the love is based on equity takes note of this lack of "sameness" and offers a love tailored to each individual boyfriend which is fair and pragmatic for them both.

@revenger:

does anyone knows if it makes me lose muscles or dificults bodybuilding?

Pesta et al. found that although there was no significant decrease in things like grip strength, overall physical work capacity during bodybuilding decreased by 25% in those who used. This may be accounted for by what Renaud and Cormier found, which is that tested subjects who smoked marijuana 10 min before noted a slight but significant decrease in time to exhaustion. Steadward and Singh demonstrated that marijuana did not affect blood pressure, ventilation or oxygen uptake during submaximal exercises such as bodybuilding, however it did increase heart rate both during and after lifting.

How Hip-Hop Is Becoming the Oldies
By Alex French of The New York Times
July 17, 2015

Ever since the earliest days of rock ’n’ roll, time has corroded yesterday’s musical radicalism into today’s pabulum. Thirty years ago, young listeners of hip-hop, with its predilection for violent imagery and unprintable language, might have thought it impervious to this process. But radio conglomerates are proving them wrong. As its listeners grow up and memories of Tipper Gore grow dim, hip-hop is now taking its final step toward respectability: It now qualifies as oldies.

Stations playing hip-hop as oldies target listeners in their mid-20s to mid-40s: people who grew up during rap’s golden era. This is a subset of the population that is outgrowing contemporary hip-hop radio (which targets the 18-34 demographic) but is mostly too young to be nostalgic for ’70s and ’80s stations and too hip for adult contemporary. They are also entering the prime spending years of their lives — marriage, children, car buying and homeownership — and radio, like all forms of media, is figuring out how to catch them.

In a sense, classic hip-hop is following a radio trend that began in the early 1970s, when the first dedicated FM oldies stations started up in Phoenix, playing records by old crooners and doo-wop quartets. The format was a hit, and it quickly spread to Los Angeles and New York, and everywhere else. Oldies reached its zenith in the 1980s, just as classic rock — a new iteration of the same concept — was born. Same story: The format grew as programmers looked for new ways to keep grown-up baby boomers tuned in.

Getting today's listeners to tune-in to classic hip-hop has meant determining which style of hip-hop is best represented by the word 'classic'. There has always been a tension in hip-hop between those songs that are made for radio play and songs that were made for the real fans. Programmers seem to have chosen the former, by playing only the most radio-friendly of the past’s radio-friendly records. Take, for example It Was a Good Day. That song wasn’t even Ice Cube’s biggest hit in 1993, the year it came out; Check Yo Self was. But Check Yo Self is a song typical of early ’90s Ice Cube — angry and violent, with jokes about S.T.D.s, guns and prison rape — and Good Day is downright happy go lucky. In it, Ice Cube eats a halal breakfast; wins at basketball, dice and dominoes; and sees his name written in lights on the Goodyear blimp.

@36605domtop:

I would argue that we strive for equality in most things in life, but that equitability or equitableness is what we usually use to define what we ultimately achieve.

Re-reading your post gave me a better understanding of what you meant by your feeling that equitable was something we end up with, and in that sense we agree. But I don't see equitable as something "settled upon" as if it were somehow less in value than the state of being equal. I believe that equal is a term best used with measurements like "the amount of water in that pool is equal to the amount in that pool." People are much more complex than that.

A bank teller who allots 2 minutes of their time for every customer might feel justified in rejecting the customer with more complex business requiring 5 minutes, believing their service of 2 minutes to everyone to be fair since they all get the same amount of time. But that teller would be wrong. The only fair, equitable thing to do is to ensure each customer gets slightly different amounts of time, just as much as each customer needs, to complete their business. The teller's time distribution to each customer is unequal, but it's a most equitable way of servicing them all.

@36605domtop:

I would argue that we strive for equality in most things in life, but that equitability or equitableness is what we usually use to define what we ultimately achieve.

I think you may have it the other way around. Equal is what people strive for, but that concept of equal as I described it in the shoe parable is an unfair, hardly-acheivable state of affairs. Equitable is what people should strive for, and what they should hope to end up with, in all fairness.

@36605domtop:

Only recently did things like domestic partnerships and civil unions come along as suitable, some might say "equitable" alternatives.

I don't know of anyone who would define domestic partnerships as being an equitable solution to the issue of gay marriage. In fact, the argument posited by those supporting domestic partnerships was that they were "equal enough" to marriage, and in many ways they were equal. But they weren't an equitable (fair) solution.

@36605domtop:

The concept of "equitableness"/"equitability" is probably only "fair" in a legal environment, as there is usually a precedent or set of guidelines that a judge renders their decision using.

You imply a distinction where none exists. As we in the industrialized world live by a system of laws, that legal system and its ramifications are, in effect, indistinguishable from everyday life.

To use your example of gay marriage, people aimed for equality (everyone having a pair of shoes) but what they got was inequity (everyone having a pair of shoes that didn't fit). It was only after five judges used the two concepts you mentioned that fairness was achieved: precedence (United States v. Windsor, Hollingsworth v. Perry) and a set of guidelines (the US Constitution).

As far as I know, of the major studios only Dominic Ford and Treasure Island Media accept Bitcoin.[nb]Henderson, Alex. "Despite Security Scare, Adult Companies Add Bitcoin." XBIZ. June 4, 2014, http://www.xbiz.com/articles/179866
TIM Blog, "Treasure Island Media Is Now Accepting Bitcoin," March 17, 2014, http://blog.treasureislandmedia.com/2014/03/timacceptsbitcoin/ [/nb]

@36605domtop:

You really have to find two other people that you are totally into on an equal basis.  The minute the equality goes on pretty much any basis, I would say that this idea starts heading towards splitsville.

Love is given equitably, not equally. If equal is every child having a pair of shoes, then equitable is every child having a pair of shoes that fits. You can see how there is a difference between the two words, and a throuple where the love was equally doled out would not only be impossibly difficult to maintain it would also be quite unfair to all involved.

Equitable love is not only fair it's also something almost everyone already does. When a person loves two parents or two siblings equitably then there's not much reason to believe they couldn't also love two boyfriends equitably.

@theoneandlee:

Can you really find a friend/Boyfriend? Or is everyone basically just messaging you for sex?

We live in a cosmopolitan society where the distinctions and definitions of what a traditional friend/boyfriend is or does are constantly being altered to fit people in better ways. The belief that someone who you have sex with is someone who cannot also be a friend or boyfriend is a belief that is quickly being outmoded.

@ColinTNM:

I don't know what's wrong with talking to people IRL.

More than a century ago people's social communications IRL were augmented with non face-to-face communications like the writing of letters. Letter writing is just an archaic form of text messaging, or using an app like grindr, in the sense that people communicate by use of writing (or displaying) words which are then read by the other person.

Owing to the primitive state of travel available to people living in a world before the invention of the combustion engine―a world where travel to distant places took many arduous months―a large portion of many relationships historically did not occurr IRL face-to-face but rather were cultivated and nurtured through text without people seeing each other at all for long lengths of time.

Many of these relationships flourished without the supposed need for face-to-face contact. Im my estimation this does not lend much additional benefit to the social relationship developed IRL as opposed to the one developed online. Both are quite possible and successful ways of interacting with others.

Same-Sex Marriage Is a Right, Supreme Court Rules, 5-4
By Adam Liptak of The New York Times
June 26, 2015

WASHINGTON — In a long-sought victory for the gay rights movement, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in the 5 to 4 decision. He was joined by the court’s four more liberal justices.

The decision, the culmination of decades of litigation and activism, came against the backdrop of fast-moving changes in public opinion, with polls indicating that most Americans now approve of same-sex marriage. Justice Kennedy said gay and lesbian couples had a fundamental right to marry. “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family,” he wrote. “In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.”

“It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage,” Justice Kennedy said of the couples challenging state bans on same-sex marriage. “Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in a dissent joined by Justice Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, said the Constitution had nothing to say on the subject.

“If you are among the many Americans — of whatever sexual orientation — who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today’s decision,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of new benefits. But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it.”

In a second dissent, Justice Scalia mocked Justice Kennedy’s soaring language. “The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic,” Justice Scalia wrote of his colleague’s work. “Of course the opinion’s showy profundities are often profoundly incoherent.” As Justice Kennedy finished announcing his opinion, several attendees seated in the bar section of the court’s gallery wiped away tears, while others grinned and exchanged embraces. Justice John Paul Stevens, who retired in 2010, was on hand for the decision and many of the justices’ clerks took seats in the chamber, which was nearly full as the ruling was announced.

As in earlier civil rights cases, the Supreme Court had moved cautiously and methodically, laying careful judicial groundwork for a transformative decision. As late as October, the justices ducked the issue, refusing to hear appeals from rulings allowing same-sex marriage in five states. That decision delivered a tacit victory for gay rights, immediately expanding the number of states with same-sex marriage to 24, along with the District of Columbia, up from 19.

Largely as a consequence of the Supreme Court’s decision not to act, the number of states allowing same-sex marriage has since grown to 36, and more than 70 percent of Americans live in places where gay couples can marry. The court did not agree to resolve the issue for the rest of the nation until January, in cases filed by gay and lesbian couples in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee. The court heard extended arguments in April, and the justices seemed sharply divided over what the Constitution has to say about same-sex marriage.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said their clients had a fundamental right to marry and to equal protection, adding that the bans they challenged demeaned their dignity, imposed countless practical difficulties and inflicted particular harm on their children. The Obama administration, which had gradually come to embrace the cause of same-sex marriage, was unequivocal in urging the justices to rule for the plaintiffs. “Gay and lesbian people are equal,” Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. said. “They deserve equal protection of the laws, and they deserve it now.”

Lawyers for the four states said their bans were justified by tradition and the distinctive characteristics of opposite-sex unions. They said the question should be resolved democratically, at the polls and in state legislatures, rather than by judges. The Supreme Court had once before agreed to hear a case arising from a constitutional challenge to a same-sex marriage ban, California’s Proposition 8, in 2012 in Hollingsworth v. Perry. At the time, nine states and the District of Columbia allowed same-sex couples to marry. But when the court’s ruling arrived in June 2013, the justices ducked, with a majority saying the case was not properly before them, and none of them expressing a view on the ultimate question of whether the Constitution requires states to allow same-sex marriage.

A second decision the same day, in United States v. Windsor, provided the movement for same-sex marriage with what turned out to be a powerful tailwind. The decision struck down the part of the Defense of Marriage Act that barred federal benefits for same-sex couples married in states that allowed such unions. The Windsor decision was based partly on federalism grounds, with Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion stressing that state decisions on how to treat marriages deserved respect. But lower courts focused on other parts of his opinion, ones that emphasized the dignity of gay relationships and the harm that families of gay couples suffered from bans on same-sex marriage.

In a remarkable and largely unbroken line of more than 40 decisions, state and federal courts relied on the Windsor decision to rule in favor of same-sex marriage.

@Masonmason:

I thought burning it to an Iso would do so

One does not burn to an ISO, but from it.

With Little Fanfare, Mexican Supreme Court Effectively Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage
By Randal C. Archibold and Paulina Villegas of The New York Times
JUNE 14, 2015

MEXICO CITY — His church turned him away, his family discouraged him from a public fight and the government of the state where he lives vowed it would never happen.

But it did. Hiram Gonzalez married his boyfriend, Severiano Chavez, last year in the northern state of Chihuahua, which, like most Mexican states, technically allows marriage only between a man and a woman. Mr. Gonzalez and dozens of other gay couples in recent months have, however, found a powerful ally: Mexico’s Supreme Court. In ruling after ruling, the court has said that state laws restricting marriage to heterosexuals are discriminatory. Though the decisions have been made to little public fanfare, they have had the effect of legalizing gay marriage in Mexico without enshrining it in law.

“When I heard the judge pronounce us legally married, I burst into tears,” said Mr. Gonzalez, 41, who, like nearly all gays marrying in Mexico, needed a court order enabling him to exchange vows.

As the United States awaits a landmark decision on gay marriage by the Supreme Court, the Mexican court’s rulings have added the country to a slowly growing list of Latin American nations permitting same-sex unions. Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil already allow same-sex marriage. Chile plans to recognize same-sex civil unions this year; Ecuador approved civil unions in April; and Colombia grants same-sex couples many of the same rights extended to heterosexual married couples. “It’s a huge change from where things were 10 years ago,” said Jason Pierceson, a professor at the University of Illinois at Springfield who studies gay marriage trends in Latin America.

The shift in Mexico, the second largest country in Latin America after Brazil, is the product of a legal strategy that advocates used to bypass state legislatures, which have shown little inclination, and often hostility, to legalizing gay marriage. In 2009, Mexico City, a large liberal island in this socially conservative country, legalized gay marriage — a first in Latin America. There have been 5,297 same-sex weddings there since then, some of them couples coming to the city from other states.

Of the nation’s 31 states, only one other, Coahuila, near the Texas border, has legalized gay marriage. A third state, Quintana Roo, where Cancun is, has allowed gay unions since 2012, when advocates pointed out that its civil code on marriage did not stipulate that couples be one man and one woman. In most of the rest of the country, marriage is legally defined as a union between a man and a woman — laws that may remain on the books despite the court’s decisions.

The Supreme Court upheld Mexico City’s law in 2010, adding that other states had to recognize marriages performed there. Advocates of gay marriage saw that as an opportunity to use the court’s rulings to assert that marriage laws in other states were discriminatory. The court — taking into account international decisions and antidiscrimination treaties that Mexico has signed — has steadily agreed, granting injunctions in individual cases permitting gay couples to marry in states where the laws forbid it.

A major turning point occurred this month when the court expanded on its rulings to issue a decree that any state law restricting marriage to heterosexuals is discriminatory. “As the purpose of matrimony is not procreation, there is no justified reason that the matrimonial union be heterosexual, nor that it be stated as between only a man and only a woman,” the ruling said. “Such a statement turns out to be discriminatory in its mere expression.” The ruling, however, does not automatically strike down the state marriage laws. However, it allows gay couples who are denied marriage rights in their states to seek injunctions from district judges, who are now obligated to grant them.

“Without a doubt, gay marriage is legal everywhere,” said Estefanía Vela Barba, an associate law professor at CIDE, a university in Mexico City. “If a same-sex couple comes along and the code says marriage is between a man and a woman and for the purposes of reproduction, the court says, ‘Ignore it, marriage is for two people.’”

The Roman Catholic Church, often an influential force socially and politically in a country that is 83 percent Catholic, objected to the ruling, saying the court had flouted two millenniums of convention. “We reiterate our conviction, based on scientific, anthropological, philosophical, social and religious reasons, that the family, cell of society, is founded on the marriage of a man and a woman,” Msgr. Eugenio Lira Rugarcía, secretary general of the Mexican bishops’ conference, said in an email on Sunday in response to the decision. He added that the church’s position is “stated in the millennia of Western legal tradition, collected and deepened throughout our history by legislators and judges from very different schools of thought and ideologies.”

In Mr. Gonzalez’s case, the Supreme Court had already ruled that the law in Chihuahua State was unconstitutional, enabling the couple to get an injunction so that their marriage could go forward. State officials in Chihuahua vowed to never legalize same-sex marriage, and Mr. Gonzalez said he was expelled from his local church for being gay. He and his husband refused to go to Mexico City to get married because they believed they should have that right in the state where they pay taxes. The principle, he said, was important. “It is not just the legal battle, but what it involves, the emotional and physical strain of the process,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “At the end, it’s a fight for your dignity.”

Alex Ali Mendez, a lawyer and gay rights activist with Mexico Marriage Equality, took on a case involving three couples from Oaxaca State in 2012, using the Supreme Court’s arguments to challenge the law in that state. The court ruled in the couples’ favor. It was the first such decision in a state case. “We opened the door in Oaxaca, and we are now opening it in different states,” Mr. Mendez said.

Bureaucratic hurdles, and sometimes hostility, remain. Civil registry authorities abiding by state laws can still block couples hoping to marry. It is up to the couples to appeal to the courts, a process that can cost $1,000 or more and take months. Although gay rights advocates are spreading the word, many couples remain unaware that they have a strong legal case to get married. José Luis Caballero, a constitutional scholar who directs the law school at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City, said that even though judges must now rule in favor of gay couples, full equality has yet to be reached. “What has to happen is that the state laws have to be reformed so that couples have the same rights and they don’t have to spend time and money,” he said. “A couple with resources can get married. A couple without resources can’t.”

Victor Manuel Aguirre, 43, and Victor Fernando Urias, 38, in January faced down protesters and bureaucratic roadblocks in Baja California before, with the power of a court injunction, they became the first gay couple to marry there. At one point, they could not get into the civil registry building because of demonstrators. “We were both dressed in white and went back home completely defeated and humiliated and just cried our eyes out,” Mr. Aguirre said. After news media coverage of the fracas, the mayor of Mexicali called them and said that there had been a misunderstanding and that they could marry. “With many setbacks, love triumphed after all,” Mr. Aguirre said.

Mr. Mendez, the lawyer pressing these cases, said the next step in the legal process was compiling enough injunctions in each state to reach a threshold under which the court could formally order state legislatures to rewrite their laws. But experts said that Mexico had already reached a watershed. “It certainly looks like there will be more marriage equality in Mexico in the near future,” said Professor Pierceson. “We don’t know if there will be any backlash or counterprotest to stop it.”

One way to verify you're getting seeds credited is to click on Show Seeding Torrents in your profile. If there has been no interruption (e.g., a client closed and then reopened) from the time your client started leeching a file through till seeding and beyond, then every 30 minutes the totals in the Upl. column on your profile page should match the total in the client's uploading column for that same torrent.

@murr2323:

but I'm watching the upload amounts increase- 2GB in the past 24 hours

You may be uploading 2GB per day but you're downloading over 3GB, a rate which requires only 14 days to reach minimums. The difference between your required minimum ratio and the ratio you're at now is 2.63GB, or about two-thirds of a day's worth of your downloading. If you cash in your bonus points this should bring you closer to your minimums.

@qwertylmoa:

I wanted to know what other Mac users use

Transmission is the gold standard for Mac torrent clients.

Referendum in Ireland Could Complete a Rapid Shift on Same-Sex Marriage
by Douglas Dalby & Dan Bilefsky of The New York Times
May 21, 2015

DUBLIN — In 1993, Ireland was among the last countries in the Western World to decriminalize homosexuality. Some 22 years later, it could become the first to legalize same sex marriages by popular vote.

With a rapidity that has astonished even proponents, Ireland, a country that rescinded its Victorian era law governing homosexuality — the same legislation England used in 1895 to imprison Oscar Wilde — only after it had been dragged before the European Court of Human Rights, will go to the polls on Friday to decide on gay marriage rights. Ireland becomes the latest place — though perhaps a surprising one — to take up the issue, in a global swing that in just the past few years has seen states, countries and people seriously considering expanding marriage to include gays.

Social, religious, political and legal mores have been falling by the wayside, and laws are being changed through legislatures, courts and, in some local cases, popular vote. In Ireland, a Roman Catholic country that has long been known for a seemingly conservative streak, the lack of a strong backlash during the referendum campaign has been notable, even as opponents of the measure have mobilized. Past referendums on divorce and abortion were deeply divisive, but the stature of the Catholic Church has eroded after a series of scandals that included the abuse of children.

Just three years ago, former Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore of the left leaning Labour Party described same sex marriage as “quite simply, the civil rights issue of this generation.” Taking up a recommendation in the 2012 national Constitutional Convention, Mr. Gilmore pushed the issue toward Friday’s vote. Even so, a vote in favor is far from assured. Advocates on both sides will be watching closely for who turns out to cast a ballot, and where. More elderly, rural, conservative voters could ensure the referendum’s defeat.

For Senator David Norris, 70, who took the successful case for decriminalizing homosexuality in Ireland to Europe, the vote is proof that the days when he was considered “the only gay man in Ireland” are done. “In many ways, Ireland hasn’t changed because the Irish people have always been tolerant, decent and compassionate,” he said in a recent interview in his Dublin office. “But you’ve still got to say that it’s extraordinary to have once been considered a criminal and now I might be able to marry — if anyone would have me, that is!”

In the United States, support for gay marriage has grown greatly — and quickly. Gay marriage is now legal in 36 states and the District of Columbia. Its status in a 37th state, Alabama, is unclear because of conflicting state and federal court orders. The United States Supreme Court is now considering whether same sex marriage is a constitutional right; its decision is expected by the end of next month.

In Europe, same sex weddings are legal in more than a dozen countries, including Belgium, Portugal, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Norway. They have also been adopted by countries as diverse as Brazil, Canada, Argentina, New Zealand and Uruguay, according to the Pew Research Center. Yet in many places, the adoption of laws was preceded by heated battles. In France, which prides itself on being the country of liberty, equality and fraternity, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest two years ago when President François Hollande announced plans to make same sex marriage legal. The legislation eventually passed, but it continues to be polarizing, with lingering opposition from traditional churchgoers, political conservatives and many Muslims and Jews.

In many other places around the world, talk of gay marriage is not even a notion. Homosexual behavior in itself remains a crime punishable by death in five countries and in parts of two others; in 70 others it still carries hefty prison terms. Under federal law in Nigeria, it is a crime punishable by imprisonment. In Saudi Arabia, anyone caught engaging in a homosexual act faces death by stoning. Closer to Dublin, British ruled Northern Ireland has refused to join the rest of the United Kingdom in recognizing same sex marriage. Last month the region’s health minister, Jim Wells, resigned after a lesbian constituent confronted him over comments he had made, contending that a child was far more likely to be abused or neglected if brought up by parents in a homosexual relationship. The resignation came a day before the majority right wing Protestant Democratic Unionist Party, to which he still belongs, voted down same sex marriage in the Northern Ireland Assembly for the fourth time in three years.

Much of the opposition there is rooted in religious convictions, based in evangelical Protestantism. The Catholic nationalist Sinn Fein party supports gay marriage in Northern Ireland, but has not been able to overcome the opposition. When First Minister Peter Robinson of Northern Ireland defended his wife, Iris, after she described homosexuality as an abomination and advised a gay man it could be “cured” by psychotherapy, he responded, “It wasn’t Iris Robinson who determined that homosexuality was an abomination, it was the Almighty.” In the Republic of Ireland, the Angelus still tolls twice daily on the state broadcaster, and officially around 84 percent of the populace is Roman Catholic.

But the days when an entire society appeared in thrall to the Vatican have long since given way to secularist pluralism, paving the way for Friday’s vote. Still, many supporters of the same sex marriage law worry that the pockets of resistance are strong and largely silent, perhaps skewing polls that lean in favor of approval. The country over all remains socially conservative, and some still see homosexuality as a sin — or something to mock. Yet Prime Minister Enda Kenny, a churchgoer, supports the amendments. “There is nothing to fear for voting for love and equality,” he said.

Even the right leaning Fine Gael and Fianna Fail parties support the measure, and within the church there is division. The bishops have been resolute in their opposition, but their message appears to have gone unheeded by some of their clergy members. The Rev. Tim Hazelwood, in the village of Killeagh in a rural part of County Cork, told The Irish Times this week that he supports the referendum because gay people are entitled to equal rights. “I feel that as a country and a church we haven’t treated gay people well,” he said, “and I said that at the end of Mass on Sunday, when I said I would be voting ‘yes.’ ”

@Fappydave:

in the last twenty four hours went from 5.91 to 5.82

Your ratio is 0.582 not 5.82 ― which likely means it went from 0.592 to 0.582 in twenty-four hours, or about 250MB an hour.

The G.O.P.’s Gay Pretzels
editorial by Frank Bruni of The New York Times

April 25, 2015

TO: 2016 Presidential Candidates

FROM: The Image Rehabilitation Subcommittee of the R.N.C.

RE: Our big, fat gay predicament

Dear Gentlemen and Carly Fiorina,

No matter how much we’d like the ceaseless chatter about gay marriage to go away, it won’t, not with the Supreme Court about to hear (heard 4/28/2015) another round of arguments on the issue and not with this inextinguishable debate over “religious freedom” laws.

And we Republicans find ourselves in a bind, caught between the Bible Belt and a need for fresh accessorizing, between Mississippi and modernity, with evangelicals over here and millennials and soccer moms over there. We have a primary process that won’t graduate anyone who loves the gays too much but a general election that could, for the first time, punish anyone who loves the gays too little.

And so we must calibrate. Triangulate. Pink triangulation, let’s call it.

This is our mission, manifest in semantic loop-de-loops and oratorical gobbledygook from candidates like Scott Walker, who recently reminisced about an unnamed relative’s same-sex nuptials. Observe how he handled that: by making clear that he didn’t go to the ceremony, only to the reception. That’s called having your wedding cake (presumably from a baker with no religious objections) and eating it, too. Also note Ted Cruz. Out of one corner of his routinely scowling mouth, he speaks of a “jihad” by the gays to force even stern Christians like him to endorse same-sex marriage. Out of the other, he says that if one of his daughters came out as a lesbian, no worries!

Ted trumpeted this tolerance during a fund-raising sweep through New York City, at a meet-and-greet hosted by two wealthy gays. There are two lessons in his relaxed posture. First, fashion different words for different ZIP codes. Second, remember that as loud as Scripture talks, money talks even louder, and some gays have oodles of it.

Let’s fill in a bit of background. We here on the Image Rehabilitation Subcommittee, convened after the 2012 defeat and those unfortunate references to immigrant self-deportation, have reached the conclusion that the gay issue poses real peril for the party. And that’s not so much because a recent survey found that as many as 60 percent of Americans now support same-sex marriage. Most of those Americans don’t vote for a candidate based on his or her position on two men or two women tying the knot. Gay marriage isn’t their first priority and possibly not even their fifth.

But Americans have rallied around the gays to a point where beating up on them just looks crotchety and mean, the precise qualities that we are trying to move the party’s image past. When some Americans in their 20s say that they would never vote for us, it is not because they dislike us on the small-government or limited-regulation fronts. It is not because they think Democrats are better stewards of the economy. It is not about abortion.

It is about the gays. These Americans grew up with the gays among their favorite television characters and with the gays in the house across the street (the one painted in the neighborhood’s most tasteful color). They had beloved teachers whom they knew to be lesbian. They hang with openly lesbian and gay relatives and best friends. They simply don’t understand discrimination against the gays. And anyone who condones it seems to them callous and hopelessly out of touch, which is why our Grand Old Party needs a measure of Gay Young Party. Maybe two heaping tablespoons. Perhaps even three-quarters of a cup.

The political landscape is no longer just pro-gay and anti-gay. There are at least 50 shades of gay acceptance, and it’s important to find the right hue for you.

We do not recommend the tint picked by Bobby Jindal, who just tripled down on his opposition to gay marriage while casting big business — corporate America — as a principal enemy of righteousness on this front. Earth to Bobby!?! We are big business. Big business is our cuddling partner. We spoon with it. We do not vilify it. Bobby is a desperate man, trying to find a point of entry into a crowded primary field with no room for him. Tune him out, and do not, under any circumstances, follow his lead.

Better to mimic Chris Christie. He’s been dealing with this issue longer than most, because they love the gays in New Jersey. And he has mastered the roll-over-and-play-dead approach, wanly voicing personal qualms about gay marriage while stating on occasion that such resistance is futile. He does pro-gay stuff around the edges of same-sex marriage, so that his message to the gays is this: No filet mignon for you, but how about some tasty veggie and starch sides? …. "I can offer you a crackdown on bullying." or...."Watch me sign a ban on conversion therapy!"

YOU can also learn from Marco Rubio, a portrait of the candidate as contortionist. He has said, defiantly, that “supporting the definition of marriage as one man and one woman is not anti-gay, it is pro-traditional marriage.” But he has also said, more recently, that he’d go to a friend’s gay wedding in a festive heartbeat, and that he sees homosexuality as ingrained in most cases, not a choice. By asserting that states should ultimately decide on gay marriage, he has elevated local control above personal conviction and thus surrendered to gay nuptials — sort of — without actually signing off on them. This particular fudge will become more difficult if the Supreme Court makes same-sex marriage the law of the entire land, but Marco has a better chance of squaring that circle than Rand Paul does.

Rand speaks in riddles. Prompt him with “gay marriage” and he muses on “the neutrality of the law that allows people to have contracts with another.” This was on CNN just two weeks ago. We still haven’t figured out if he was referring to the sale of a used Volvo or the consecration of love.

Jeb Bush’s tack is more comprehensible. He utters much of what religious conservatives want to hear. But he also brings enough gays or Republicans who support same-sex marriage into his campaign to give Americans a signal of where so many of us in the party really are. We have gay children, grandchildren, siblings, nieces, nephews, colleagues, bosses, employees. We want the world for them and a world that’s fully open to them.

But we also want to win elections, and our coalition is what it is. So we frequently take stands and mutter sentiments that leave them on the side of the road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Politics is unforgiving that way. And this pink triangulation is a messy, ugly geometry.

@Spintendo:

and then clicking "Show Unread Posts" https://forum.gaytorrent.ru/index.php?action=unread

The Show All Unread Posts link I gave earlier (shown above) was incorrect.

To remove 'Jokes Board' posts flooding the 'Show All Unread Posts' list only, do the following:

Go to:
https://forum.gaytorrent.ru/index.php?action=markasread?board=78.0
(this will mark all posts in the joke board as "Read")

then, go to:

https://forum.gaytorrent.ru/index.php?action=unread;all;start=0
(Show All Unread Posts)

@cannonmc:

I am talking about the 'Show Recent Posts' - https://forum.gaytorrent.ru/index.php?action=recent which is limited to 10 pages.

The Show Recent Posts link displays time-dependent information unaffected by the Read/Unread statuses of posts, so you're correct in saying that the filter I have proposed for users of the Show All Unread Posts link would not apply to use of the Show Recent Posts link.