Marriage Amendment

Congrats on a totally irrelevant analogy. We're not talking about gay people stealing straight people's marriages. No, they don't. But they do have a right to everything that doesn't hurt other people. Like the man said, "your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose." The corrolary to that is that so long as you don't hit my nose or anybody else's, you can swing your fist as far as you like. And like it says in the Constitution, citizens have all rights not reserved for the government.Whose rights does it take away to allow gay marriage? And I propose that you're so consumed by loathing for homosexual activites that you can't think straight about this.

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TJ said: I'm familiar with a number of these cases(honmosexuals who get married, have kids, and then get divorced and are applauded for having the guts to come out) and it really bothers me.

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CRASH replied: Yeah, it pretty much sucks.

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But pretend for a moment that you're married. And your wife comes to you and says "Honey, I love you, but I've finally decided to admit to everybody and myself what I've always really known - I'm gay. I thought that it was just a thing that I could make go away if I tried hard enough, but I can't, because it's a part of who I am. I'm sorry but I've never been sexually attracted to you, and I never will."

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How exactly do you expect such a marriage to survive? It's never really even existed. Divorce sucks, and we all wish that this situation would never occur, but it does.

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TJ replies: Yes, I understand. The problem here is that the gays should never have gotten married. But seeing that they already made that choice for whatever reason, there may be little hope for the marriage. What gets me is that they are applauded for coming out. That is ridiculous.

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Crash: Now, if you're really committed to preventing that scenario, then you'll support the things it takes to make homosexuality so accepted that people won't feel like they have to enter into sham marriages in order to feel normal. That's the only way to put a stop to it.

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TJ replies: Well, Crash, here is where we differ. The gays cannot/shouldn't claim victim mentality here. There may be some of that pressure, but that doesn't give them the right to ruin someone else's life and maybe the lives of kids fathered.Plus, I know you disagree, but I do not think that we should be giving society the message the homosexuality is just another valid lifestyle that we can choose from. I won't develop that right now.

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TJ said:
If it were up to me, I would make it illegal for gays to adopt because children are meant to have a Mom AND a Dad.

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Crash replied:: Says you. I say that all they need are two parents, of any sex. And the data is on my side - the only difference between children with hetero parents and ones with homosexual parents is generally that the second group tends to be more accepting of homosexuality as a sexual preference. Not exactly a big surprise.

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You're free to feel that gay parents hurt their kids somehow, but until you have some data to prove it, why should we pay attention to you?

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TJ replies: Crash, this is one of the most uncontroversial areas of social science I know of. Are you actually saying that two same sex parents are just as good for a kid as a heterosexual couple? Is that actually your opinion? Now I think the jury is still out on same sex couples, but the fact that kids need a Mom and a Dad - this is the ideal family situation - this is common sense isn't it? a Mom and a Dad is not the ideal family - is that what you are saying?

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Crash continues:
Also, would you ban single-parent adoption? Just curious.

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TJ replies: Yes, Crash, I would be against single-parent adoption for the same reasons. I don't think it is fair to the children.

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TJ continues:
when one of the pair decides to leave in search of greener pastures somewhere else without really trying to work out the problems.

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Crash replies:
How would you "work out" the problem that one of the participants is not now, has never been, and never will be sexually attracted to the other person?

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TJ: Who cares about the kids?

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CRASH: What sort of example do you feel a totally cold and loveless marriage sets for children?

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TJ: If we get married with the idea of splitting if things don't work out, it is too easy to just split.

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CRASH: I guarantee you that in a marriage broken up by the realization of homosexuality, it's never that easy.
Homosexuality doesn't destroy a marriage. Homosexuality means that a marriage never existed in the first place.

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TJ replies:
Crash, I'm sorry, I wasnt' clear here. In this section I was talking about divorce in general and not necessarily the situation I mentioned at the top of the e-mail. I understand that a marriage to a homosexual would be difficult to work on, but there have been cases of people changing and learning to enjoy a heterosexual relationship.
Couples need to get married for the long haul, remain faithful to each other, and get marriage counselling when they run into difficulties. And we all need to be more careful when we choose our mates to begin with.

What revisionist literature have you been reading?! Read this for starters:
http://www.wallbuilders.com/resources/search/detail.php?R...These are quotes by Founding Fathers on the importance of morality and religion IN GOVERNMENT!Of particular note is this quote by Fisher Ames, the framer of the famed First Amendment. Should tell you a lot about what the original intent of the amendment was and was not.Fisher AmesFramer of the First AmendmentOur liberty depends on our education, our laws, and habits . . . it is founded on morals and religion, whose authority reigns in the heart, and on the influence all these produce on public opinion before that opinion governs rulers.(Source: Fisher Ames, An Oration on the Sublime Virtues of General George Washington (Boston: Young & Minns, 1800), p. 23.)If you want to know what he meant when he referred to religion, it might help to know that Fisher Ames was himself a dedicated Christian.Here's another one by him:
A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way.(Fisher Ames,Works of Fisher Ames (Boston: T. B. Wait & Co., 1809), p. 24, Speech on Biennial Elections, delivered January, 1788.) (Ames,Works, p. 384, gThe Dangers of American Liberty,h February 1805)Wow, he was a prophet! Evidently the liberty so many have in mind today was not the liberty the Founding Fathers had in mind. Homosexuality is guaranteed by the constitution - what a bunch of baloney! Only by a revisionist interpretation of the Constitution.Well these are a good start if you want to know the truth. If you are really interested, check out the other quotes on the website.Regards,TJ

Two same sex parents are just as good as one of each. Studies from the San Francisco bay area have shown this quite conclusively.(Edited to add link: http://www.bidstrup.com/hawaii.htm )[This message has been edited by Mr Jack, 03-03-2004]

Well, of course. So stop and ponder for a moment what kind of cultural or religious pressure might exist that would prompt a person to marry straight even though they knew they were gay.Gay acceptance is the issue you have, not gay marriage. I don't think anybody applauds the dissolution of a marriage. Well, you can't exactly put the kids back in and pretend it never happened, right?Nobody's saying that these people - a minority of homosexuals, BTW - have done anything but make a huge mistake. Everybody feels sorry how this is going to affect the kids. But I don't see what that has to do with gay marriage, I guess. Unfortunately for you, gay people disagree. I don't understand who you are to tell gay people that their lifestyle isn't "valid." As it happens, it's a perfectly valid lifestyle to them. Yup. And it's borne out by the data. Kids raised by two gay people turn out just as well as kids from two straight parents. Oh, one thing is different - the kids with gay parents tend to be more accepting of gay people. Obviously. I'm saying what a kid needs - and again the data bears this out - is two parents of any sex. Two parents is better than one. And an extended family, with grandparents, etc. in the household, is usually better than just the parents. So much so that that was the family norm for thousands of years. If you're so concerned about all families being as "ideal" as possible, then why don't you make grandparents move in with parents? Only in cases where the person was already bisexual. But homosexual "treatment" simply doesn't work. Well, I totally agree. And we all need the freedom to choose who that mate is going to be. Hence, gay marriage.

Grab your copy of the U.S. Constitution, turn to the Ninth Amendment, and tell me what it says, please.

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why is it that Republicans insist on demonizing what they call "activist" judges?

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Oh, they don't demonize all activist judges....they only hate the activist judges that they didn't install themselves.

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But someone please tell me what he said on how gay marriage can hurt the country?

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It has little to do with hurting the country and everything to do with hurting his reelection chances if he doesn't bend over in front of the Religious Right on this issue.

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Now I think the jury is still out on same sex couples, but the fact that kids need a Mom and a Dad - this is the ideal family situation - this is common sense isn't it? a Mom and a Dad is not the ideal family - is that what you are saying?

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Actually, the Western/American idea that the "ideal" family unit is one mother that stays at home, one father who is the breadwinner, and children, is one that was invented recently, and has never represented reality.For a long time, up to and including the Victorian era, it was considered ideal for large extended families to live under one roof.In an agrarian society, mothers and fathers both worked the farm, along with any children old enough. Infants and toddlers were often cared for by aunts, grandmothers and grandfathers, and older siblings.Long ago, we lived in clans where the adults raised the children communally.There was a rersurgance of this idealized myth in the 50's to facilitate women returning to the home after working in the factories during the war.The bottom line is that families have never been "nuclear".

I found an excellent essay (it's actually a speech) regarding the history of the various forms that families have taken over time.It busts quite a few myths about the so-called "nuclear family" that many hold as ideal but which has never really existed.http://www.campuschildren.org/pubs/amerifam/amfam1.html"Of course, not everyone considers the Donna Reed nuclear family as the ideal. Some prefer another family form that they remember from past experience, or movies, or reading, or hearing about from others or from another time in history, which they call the "good old days." If we are trying to decide what the family and society should be, is there a period of history that provides the best models and the most promise of solutions to today's problems?Certainly not colonial days. The strict authoritarian rigid puritanism included severe physical punishment for children and adults. The high mortality rates often left children without one or both parents. The frank and graphic talk about sexuality in front of even the youngest children in school, church and family would certainly not pass muster with today's parents or school boards or politicians. "Fornication" was a word in early readers, according to Stephanie Coontz.How about Victorian days? There was the authoritarian but presumably well meaning father. Women didn't have the vote. Women and children were considered property by a patriarchal society. Middle class and wealthy families were dependent upon the work of low income servants, including mothers who took care of other people's children while their own children often had to be neglected.Certainly we don't want to return to the time of the Industrial Revolution with 12-16 hour days for many working mothers and fathers, sweat shop conditions in factories, child labor, children left alone at home or on the streets.The suburban nuclear family after WW II, living in ranch style houses, had a public image that was often very different from what was really happening behind closed doors. Those households had lonely and depressed moms, stressed commuter dads, drugs, alcohol, and adultery, all of which resulted in the highest divorce rate we've ever known. The women who worked to help their veteran husbands go to college and then stayed home to raise the children, often found themselves divorced and replaced by younger women who were the colleagues of their husbands out in the working world. Economically, there was a better life for some families but not for all. There was discrimination against racial and ethnic groups--violence, intimidation, unequal opportunity, and unemployment. The TV image and the fond recollections are at variance with life as lived by many."

Crash,
What I'm saying is that the Founding Fathers had very strong feelings against homosexuality itself. And they did not think this was unconstitutional. Now if the peole who drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights didn't think it was unconstitutional to even outlaw homosexuality, why do we say it is unconstitutional today? Shouldn't the founding fathers know best how to interpret the constitution and the Bill of Rights that they themselves created?If you want to read some of what the founding fathers thought of homosexuality, here it is. It is not very fun reading and I don't post this to bash or for hate reasons or anything. It is simply to make my point. Homosexuality itself, and thus certainly homosexual marriage, was clearly outlawed back when the Constitution and Bill of Rights was drawn up and they saw absolutely no contradiction. That speaks volumes to me.http://www.wallbuilders.com/resources/search/detail.php?R...It can be safely said that the attitude of the Founders on the subject of homosexuality was precisely that given by William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Laws--the basis of legal jurisprudence in America and heartily endorsed by numbers of significant Founders. 5 In addressing sodomy (homosexuality), he found the subject so reprehensible that he was ashamed even to discuss it. Nonetheless, he noted:What has been here observed . . . [the fact that the punishment fit the crime] ought to be the more clear in proportion as the crime is the more detestable, may be applied to another offence of a still deeper malignity; the infamous crime against nature committed either with man or beast. A crime which ought to be strictly and impartially proved and then as strictly and impartially punished. . . .
I will not act so disagreeable part to my readers as well as myself as to dwell any longer upon a subject the very mention of which is a disgrace to human nature [sodomy]. It will be more eligible to imitate in this respect the delicacy of our English law which treats it in its very indictments as a crime not fit to be named; "peccatum illud horribile, inter christianos non nominandum" (that horrible crime not to be named among Christians). A taciturnity observed likewise by the edict of Constantius and Constans: "ubi scelus est id, quod non proficit scire, jubemus insurgere leges, armari jura gladio ultore, ut exquisitis poenis subdantur infames, qui sunt, vel qui futuri sunt, rei" (where that crime is found, which is unfit even to know, we command the law to arise armed with an avenging sword that the infamous men who are, or shall in future be guilty of it, may undergo the most severe punishments). 6
Because of the nature of the crime, the penalties for the act of sodomy were often severe. For example, Thomas Jefferson indicated that in his home state of Virginia, "dismemberment" of the offensive organ was the penalty for sodomy. 7 In fact, Jefferson himself authored a bill penalizing sodomy by castration. 8 The laws of the other states showed similar or even more severe penalties:That the detestable and abominable vice of buggery [sodomy] . . . shall be from henceforth adjudged felony . . . and that every person being thereof convicted by verdict, confession, or outlawry [unlawful flight to avoid prosecution], shall be hanged by the neck until he or she shall be dead. 9 NEW YORK
That if any man shall lie with mankind as he lieth with womankind, both of them have committed abomination; they both shall be put to death. 10 CONNECTICUTSodomy . . . shall be punished by imprisonment at hard labour in the penitentiary during the natural life or lives of the person or persons convicted of th[is] detestable crime. 11 GEORGIAThat if any man shall commit the crime against nature with a man or male child . . . every such offender, being duly convicted thereof in the Supreme Judicial Court, shall be punished by solitary imprisonment for such term not exceeding one year and by confinement afterwards to hard labor for such term not exceeding ten years. 12 MAINEThat if any person or persons shall commit sodomy . . . he or they so offending or committing any of the said crimes within this province, their counsellors, aiders, comforters, and abettors, being convicted thereof as above said, shall suffer as felons. 13 [And] shall forfeit to the Commonwealth all and singular the lands and tenements, goods and chattels, whereof he or she was seized or possessed at the time . . . at the discretion of the court passing the sentence, not exceeding ten years, in the public gaol or house of correction of the county or city in which the offence shall have been committed and be kept at such labor. 14 PENNSYLVANIA[T]he detestable and abominable vice of buggery [sodomy] . . . be from henceforth adjudged felony . . . and that the offenders being hereof convicted by verdict, confession, or outlawry [unlawful flight to avoid prosecution], shall suffer such pains of death and losses and penalties of their goods. 15 SOUTH CAROLINAThat if any man lieth with mankind as he lieth with a woman, they both shall suffer death. 16 VERMONTBased on the statutes, legal commentaries, and the writings of prominent military leaders, it is clear that any idea of homosexuals serving in the military was considered with repugnance; this is incontrovertible, with no room for differing interpretations. 17....Public discussions concerning homosexuality are a purely recent phenomenon; it was long considered too morally abhorrent and reprehensible to openly discuss. Consider, for example, the legal works of James Wilson, a signer both of the Declaration and the Constitution and appointed by President Washington as an original Justice on the U. S. Supreme Court. Wilson was responsible for laying much of the foundation of American Jurisprudence and was co-author of America's first legal commentaries on the Constitution. Even though state law books of the day addressed sodomy, when Wilson came to it in his legal writings, he was too disgusted with it even to mention it. He thus declared:The crime not to be named [sodomy], I pass in a total silence. 24
America's first law book, authored by founding jurist Zephaniah Swift, communicated the popular view concerning sodomy:This crime, tho repugnant to every sentiment of decency and delicacy, is very prevalent in corrupt and debauched countries where the low pleasures of sensuality and luxury have depraved the mind and degraded the appetite below the brutal creation. Our modest ancestors, it seems by the diction of the law, had no idea that a man would commit this crime [anal intercourse with either sex]. . . . [H]ere, by force of common law, [it is] punished with death. . . . [because of] the disgust and horror with which we treat of this abominable crime. 25
John David Michaelis, author of an 1814 four-volume legal work, outlined why homosexuality must be more strenuously addressed and much less tolerated than virtually any other moral vice in society:If we reflect on the dreadful consequences of sodomy to a state, and on the extent to which this abominable vice may be secretly carried on and spread, we cannot, on the principles of sound policy, consider the punishment as too severe. For if it once begins to prevail, not only will boys be easily corrupted by adults, but also by other boys; nor will it ever cease; more especially as it must thus soon lose all its shamefulness and infamy and become fashionable and the national taste; and then . . . national weakness, for which all remedies are ineffectual, most inevitably follow; not perhaps in the very first generation, but certainly in the course of the third or fourth. . . . To these evils may be added yet another, viz. that the constitutions of those men who submit to this degradation are, if not always, yet very often, totally destroyed, though in a different way from what is the result of whoredom.
Whoever, therefore, wishes to ruin a nation, has only to get this vice introduced; for it is extremely difficult to extirpate it where it has once taken root because it can be propagated with much more secrecy . . . and when we perceive that it has once got a footing in any country, however powerful and flourishing, we may venture as politicians to predict that the foundation of its future decline is laid and that after some hundred years it will no longer be the same . . . powerful country it is at present. 26For the footnotes, check out the website I listed earlier.Thanks to our Christian forefathers, we have a fair Constitution and a Bill of Rights. Now we're going to turn around and throw away the morality upon which it was all based and we think it won't matter? How smart is that?Regards,TJ

Schrafinator,It was you who brought up the word nuclear, not me. Yes, the extended family did live together. Great. The point is, they had both a mother and a father. I didn't say anything about whether the mother works or not. The extended family living together probably worked very well. But all the role models for marriage and family were of a father and a mother. That is how it was designed to work. That is why it takes a man and a woman to make a baby! There is a reason for it all and all of a sudden we're trying to explain the obvious away.TJ

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What I'm saying is that the Founding Fathers had very strong feelings against homosexuality itself. And they did not think this was unconstitutional.

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They also had very strong feelings about slavery, and did not think owning slaves should be unconstitutional.However, despite their failings in these areas, they were smart enough to know that they were not perfect, and that their intentions should not rule America forever. That is why we are able to reinterpret and amend the Constitution. That is why we have the fourteenth amendment, which both prevents slavery and demands that homosexuals be allowed to marry.

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Thanks to our Christian forefathers, we have a fair Constitution and a Bill of Rights.

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Just as a heads-up, you misspelled "Deist". It's spelled D-E-I-S-T, not C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N.

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"Perhaps you should take your furs and your literal interpretations to the other side of the river."
-Anya

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What revisionist literature have you been reading?! Read this for starters: (posts link to revisionist literature)... These are quotes by Founding Fathers on the importance of morality and religion IN GOVERNMENT!

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Clap clap clap... bravo! You set a perfect example of citing revisionist literature, complete with quote mining in order to make their point.Your link did NOT include quotes by more important founding fathers which said quite the reverse of people like Ames, not to mention contrary quotes from some of the founding fathers they did quote. I will be happy to start posting contrary quotes if you wish...For example you quote Ames to say:
"The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness [excessive license] which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be, liberty."To which you say:
"Wow, he was a prophet! Evidently the liberty so many have in mind today was not the liberty the Founding Fathers had in mind. Homosexuality is guaranteed by the constitution - what a bunch of baloney! Only by a revisionist interpretation of the Constitution."Yet another founding father has quite the opposite assessment and warning:"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1788.Whose takes precedent? And do you really believe Ames's critique to be true? What license was he and many against, and would you agree with them all?For example many believed ending slavery was a form of license, the practice of which is clearly supported in the Bible. Same goes for not allowing women rights to vote. There were also prohibitions against nudism, fornication, masturbation, adultery, divorce, etc etc. Which practice is license and which is liberty? Is that for YOU to decide, or YOUR Bible? Or Ames's Bible?In addition to its other problems the link you cited was also quite disingenuous as it had many quotes discussing "virtue" and pretending if that means Xian morals, instead of civic virtues which was about how people treated each other.I can just as easily find counter quotes and will start with just a few from just ONE of the founding fathers. But in addition to these quotes check out the treaty of 1797 with Tripoli. It states quite clearly that the US government is not founded on Xianity. No matter what personal beliefs they personally felt should be utmost in the minds of men, they did not believe it should be utmost in the practice of gov't.Okay, here is an interesting (and small) collection of quotes by Jefferson which appear to counter your site's assertions regarding what our founding fathers had intended for our nation..."The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it." --Thomas Jefferson to M. van der Kemp, 1812. ME 13:135"The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government." --Thomas Jefferson to A. Coray, 1823. ME 15:482"All religions are equally independent here, our laws knowing no distinction of country, of classes among individuals and with nations, our [creed] is justice and reciprocity." --Thomas Jefferson to the Emperor of Morocco, 1803. ME 19:136"The laws... which must effect [a people's happiness] must flow from their own habits, their own feelings, and the resources of their own minds. No stranger to these could possibly propose regulations adapted to them. Every people have their own particular habits, ways of thinking, manners, etc., which have grown up with them from their infancy, are become a part of their nature, and to which the regulations which are to make them happy must be accommodated." --Thomas Jefferson to William Lee, 1817. ME 15:101"Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree (for all forbid us to murder, steal, plunder, or bear false witness), and that we should not intermeddle with the particular dogmas in which all religions differ, and which are totally unconnected with morality." --Thomas Jefferson to James Fishback, 1809. ME 12:315"No one has a right to obstruct another exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816. ME 14:490Jefferson also had some assessments and warnings that perhaps seem more apt and prophetic than Ames' given today's events..."I have never dreamed that all opposition was to cease. The clergy, who have missed their union with the State, the Anglomen, who have missed their union with England, and the political adventurers, who have lost the chance of swindling and plunder in the waste of public money, will never cease to bawl on the breaking up of their sanctuary." --Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, 1801. ME 10:259And especially..."If we find our government in all its branches rushing headlong... into the arms of monarchy, if we find them violating our dearest rights, the trial by jury, the freedom of the press, the freedom of opinion, civil or religious, or opening on our peace of mind or personal safety the sluices of terrorism, if we see them raising standing armies, when the absence of all other danger points to these as the sole objects on which they are to be employed, then indeed let us withdraw and call the nation to its tents." --Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 1811. ME 13:29Kerry might think about adding that to any of his speeches during the election campaign. Very fitting.But I think you may have accidentally raised an interesting point... Given the numerous views, sometimes abhorrent personal views our founding fathers held, who cares what they said?Let's say for sake of argument that the founding fathers were all fundamentalist Xians who had NO intention of any other religion existing within society. Have we then not outgrown this shackle as we have racism, sexism, and slavery?Or if not, perhaps this suggests it is high time for those who have moved on intellectually to form a new revolution and a new Constitution and a new government which does not allow religious zealots to rule over everyone else just because of the demographical makeup of the founding fathers looks more like them.Perhaps we can form a new nation based on a recognition of our strength in diversity.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Your wallbuilders are just that... attempting to build walls between people of this society based on anachronisms.I assume these people believe that because slow loading muskets and cannons were the only weapons at the time the right to bear arms is only about muskets and cannons?That because the majority were for slavery that slavery should be reinstated today? After all that was Xian.

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Thanks to our Christian forefathers, we have a fair Constitution and a Bill of Rights. Now we're going to turn around and throw away the morality upon which it was all based and we think it won't matter? How smart is that?

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It's fan-f'ing-tastic smart. After all it was their belief in individual freedom and secular government that gave us the Constitution and Bill of Rights and not their Xianity. If Xianity was the only requirement for those, the middle ages would have been vastly different.Remember our founding fathers were breaking away from another Xian gov't. Their genius was losing the religious domination of gov't.Perhaps they did not succeed in perfectly separating themselves from all ethnocentric beliefs of the time... such as sodomy. Niether had they separated themselves from concepts of slavery and anti-miscegenation.And those last two points are of high interest to the discussion at hand. Jefferson may very well have disliked sodomy. But he also spoke and voted sometimes in support of slavery and separation of races. Yet at the time he was sleeping with a black woman, and at other times of his life wrote of his hopes that slavery would come to an end.Perhaps there were others that said one thing while hoping for a future freedom, with regard to their sexuality.Or perhaps there were people within the nation then, who were just as important, or more important than the founding fathers (if their own words are to be believed of the importance of the people), that wanted their sexual freedom.And without question there are now people who want their freedom. Are the personal beliefs of a specific group of men over 200 years ago, supposed to bind them in chains today? Shall we go about in knickers and tripod hats as well, just because they fancied them the highest of fashion of that day?Hmmmmm, maybe Jefferson has something to say about that..."The Gothic idea that we were to look backwards instead of forwards for the improvement of the human mind, and to recur to the annals of our ancestors for what is most perfect in government, in religion and in learning, is worthy of those bigots in religion and government by whom it has been recommended, and whose purposes it would answer. But it is not an idea which this country will endure." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, 1800.Heheheh... thanks Tom.[This message has been edited by holmes, 03-03-2004]

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)