Gay conservatives have been so critical of the national gay groups, in large measure because these organizations seem more beholden to the political left in general and the Democratic Party in particular than they do to their supposed constituency. With the Service Members Legal Defense Network (SLDN) being the notable exception.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2004 elections, after a Republican president was elected to a second term in the White House and with Republicans making gains in both the House and the Senate, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), instead of picking someone who could work with Republicans, tapped a Democratic partisan (who had most recently worked for a group committed to electing pro-choice Democratic women) to helm its operation.
Guess they were more interested in playing to the left than to influencing the (then-)party in power.
That choice came to mind when I received a recent e-mail from the National Center for Lesbian Rights. When I saw the name Glenn Beck in the subject line, I thought maybe they were going to praise the conservative polevangelist* for acknowledging the obvious that gay marriage isn’t a threat to the country.
Instead Executive Director Kate Kendell (she who devoted her most recent 9/11 letter to ranting against conservatives) included a piece by the group’s Federal Policy Attorney Maya Rupert on Beck’s “Cynical Invasion of D.C.” Now the timing of his “Restoring Honor” Rally may well have been cynical, but, well, what does criticizing this timing have to do with advancing “lesbian rights”?
Ms. Rupert did try to tie her opposition to Beck to her advocacy of ENDA and other government initiatives supposedly advancing our “rights,” but the attack on Beck seemed more designed as a sign of leftist solidarity, that they were marching in lockstep with the other left-of-center groups who so eagerly attacked Beck (and his recent rally). Ms. Rupert referenced nothing Beck said about gay issues — at that rally or otherwise.
It was just that Beck eschewed identity politics. And that upset Ms. Rupert. Well, Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed of a day when we all eschewed such politics.
If Kendell truly wishes to advocate for lesbians, she would seek to make common cause with conservatives whose rhetoric helps undermine a standard social conservative argument against gay marriage rather than lambaste him for a rally which all but ignored gay issues.
That Kendell’s group rushed to condemn Glenn Beck without considering his comments on gay marriage strongly suggests an organization which sees itself as part of a leftist movement for social justice and opposed to all things conservative, even conservatives, beloved by social conservatives, who break from the social conservative line on gay marriage.
Perhaps you can now better see why we’re so skeptical about the sincerity of the national gay groups.
——-
*a term a conservative friend uses to describe the blustering TV talk show host.
But Beck eeeeeeeeevul…. sssssssssss! (knees start jerking)
For a very good reason,Glenn Beck has dodged the whole charge about hijacking Martin Luther King and choosing the MLK “I Have a Dream” anniversary. That reason is because people like Maya Rupert would rather argue about who owns the argument than discuss the topic of “content of character” over skin color.
Cynical is the wrong word entirely, unless you believe that Beck is some demagogue who is planning a national outrage for rebuilding the KKK or forcing Mormonism on everyone or establishing political correct parameters to what defines “content of character.”
Frankly, Martin Luther King did not seal off the Lincoln Memorial from use by others. Nor did he retain exclusive ownership of the concept of the triumph of content of character over skin color. Al Sharpton didn’t get the memo, but most of the little people in America did.
Too many people are so jaded to Hollywood and entertainment phoniness that they have real trouble when a genuine soul turns up in the midst of the charlatans.
Glenn Beck is the real item and it annoys the heck out of people who don’t like him or who have not learned to listen to his message. Isn’t it passing strange that no one can stop this man by upending his claims and research? He only has the entire liberal community and 88% of the media against him. (In fact, very little of his research makes it into Fox News reporting. Which means, that even Fox News is dodging the debate about being Faux News and letting Beck stand on his own research and merits. Which further means, even the Fox News journalists are scared of the MSM club and their access to liberal sources.)
The absurdity is, Glenn Beck praised MLK, urged his audience to support the ideals expressed by MLK, and had MLK’s niece as a speaker.
The progressive left said doing these things made him a racist.
Does that make any kind of rational sense at all?
Gay, Inc. and the Professional Left and are connected at the waist (and the pocket book) while sharing the same brain. They just don’t get it…..
Right, because after all of the great things Republicans have done for gays, we should absolutely be enthusiastic supporters of the GOP. Here’s a pretty simple fact: If not for the Democratic Party, a ban on gay marriage would be enshrined in the US Constitution. That’s pretty much all any gay person I know needs to hear. I’m so glad all you influential gay conservatives managed a whopping FIVE votes to repeal DADT in the House, but I guess you were too busy demonizing Nancy Pelosi for that. Why can’t everyone just realize that John Boehner would do so much more for gays?
For as much as you all claim to disdain “identity politics”, you’re the biggest practitioners of it I’ve ever seen. Not only that, you’re also the biggest victims I’ve ever seen. Why is it up to all of the rest of us to cajole and beg the GOP to give gays any respect. Obviously, all the time, effort, and money the LCR, GOProud, and all of you as individual gay conservatives have expended has resulted in a huge turnaround for the Republican Party, right? A whopping FIVE votes. I’m sure if you have your way, and the Republicans win a Congressional majority, you might get that number up to 7, 8, or maybe even double digits. But of course, we all know that if the Republicans are in control, there won’t be another vote to repeal DADT, will there? Indeed, Republican Senators have threatened to filibuster the DADT repeal in the Senate. I hope you all give them plenty of money!
I have the impression that many advocacy groups are dishonest in their self-description. One example is NOW. They were unconcerned about some serious accusations against Bill Clinton, and unconcerned about the barbaric way that the Taliban treated women. There are other examples. That is because they are really advocates for liberal/leftist politics pretending to be advocates for women.
I haven’t followed gay advocacy groups, but maybe they are the same.
Here’s a pretty simple fact: If not for the Democratic Party, a ban on gay marriage would be enshrined in the US Constitution. That’s pretty much all any gay person I know needs to hear.
So you admit that the only consideration in your life whatsoever is your minority status.
So literally, you don’t care about or have any concerns other than whether or not people pander to your minority identity, and you vote solely based on that.
That is the classic definition of identity politics.
And what’s even funnier is that, given how you support and endorse candidates who support bans on gay-sex marriage on the Federal and state level, as well as a party base that characterizes gays and lesbians as “filthy”, you can’t even do identity politics right.
Seriously, Mike, we know how gays and lesbians like you work. You don’t like DADT, you hand over classified military secrets and be hailed as a hero. You don’t care who gets killed because of it because to you, the most important thing in the world is repealing DADT. Again, sexual orientation and pandering to sexual orientation takes precedence over people getting killed.
If you had half a brain, you might realize that your constant and regular demonstration that gay and lesbian people do not care about anything other than their sexual orientation and make all decisions based on their sexual orientation is an argument against LESS liberties for them, not more. But you are obsessed with your sexual orientation and cannot consider any other factors whatsoever in your decisionmaking, as you make clear with your statement that gay and lesbian people don’t care about anything other than gay-sex marriage.
Why is it up to all of the rest of us to cajole and beg the GOP to give gays any respect.
And again, Mike, you demonstrate the main problem with gay-sex liberals like yourself.
Respect is not given. It is earned. And what have you and your fellow gay-sex liberals been doing lately?
1) Calling Republicans “homophobes” and “religious bigots” for saying they oppose gay marriage — while supporting and endorsing Obama, who opposes gay marriage because of his religious beliefs.
2) Admitting that you don’t care about any other issues and vote solely based on your minority status
3) Saying that Republicans are homophobes and bigots for supporting state and Federal constitutional amendments — while endorsing and supporting as “pro-gay” and “gay-supportive” Obama Party candidates and politicians who support the same.
4) Justifying handing over classified information to the enemy because of DADT.
5) Screaming about the need for “workplace protections” while claiming that investigating you for demanding sex from your subordinates and using your position to abuse those who refuse you sexually is “homophobia and sexism”.
6) Whine about how the lack of marriage affects your “children”, while insisting that marriage has nothing to do with children or procreation.
7) Whine about the traditional value and respect accorded to marriage and how it’s wrong to deny you that while mocking said traditional value and respect such as monogamy as wrong-headed and old.
In short, Mike, you don’t get respect because anyone who observes you recognizes quickly that you take your sexual orientation as an excuse to be a lying, amoral hypocrite.
And the difference between the two parties is this: Republicans don’t want anything to do with amoral, lying hypocrites, while Obama Party members are more than happy to put a leash around their necks, use them to do their “dirty work”, and then throw them under the bus when no longer needed.
The key to gay “liberation” is for gays like yourself to liberate the rest of us from having to tolerate your idiocy in the name of your sexual orientation. You are nothing more than a lavender Al Sharpton, and you should be treated as such.
I guess if that happened, you couldn’t be gay anymore. Who knew?
What identity? Gay? You aren’t gay? That’s not your identity? Who knew?
So, Mike, I join North Dallas Thirty in wondering what you are beyond your obsession with your sexual orientation.
Victim? Downtrodden? Corner cowerer trapped by self-perceived inequality? Grifter determined to get a piece of other people’s money? What? Have you got anything positive to put on your character list? Big tipper, maybe, when no one is looking?
If the crowd is mostly gay, then it’s a gay rally.
If the crowd is mostly blacks, then it’s a black rally.
If the crowd is mostly undocumented workers, then it’s a potential insurrection.
Let’s put that all together, shall we?
If the Glenn Beck crowd is mostly angry white people, then. . .
Oh, Ash…
Didn’t someone have a dream about the color of skin mattering less less than the content of character?…
Must have been some Faux News nut… 😉
Best wishes,
-MFS
5) Screaming about the need for “workplace protections” while claiming that investigating you for demanding sex from your subordinates and using your position to abuse those who refuse you sexually is “homophobia and sexism”.
You forgot to add “while demanding that everyone who contributes to an anti-gay marriage campaign be fired from their job” to that list.
If the commentor’s comments are mostly stupid, then it’s a stupid commentor…
North Dallas Thirty: Let me ask you, what do you think about Log Cabin Repubs and GOProud? More identity politics, huh? Why do they even exist? Why did Ken Mehlman come out of the closet? Why did we all have to hear about his support for ‘gay sex marriage’? I like reading your posts here, not only for the larfs, but also because in criticizing me, you show so much disdain for the publishers of this site as well. Why does this blog even exist? Gaypatriot? Sounds like more identity politics to me!!! Why do you even post at a site dedicated to ‘gay sex’ issues?
Heliotrope: You know who fits right in with what your definition of ‘gay’ should be? Larry Craig. He was straight, right? No gay identity crap for him! He just like to get a little on the side in batjrooms. He was the perfect ‘gay’ republican. Oh and here’s a question: why do you suppose ol Larry was shunned by his colleagues when Diaper Dave Vitter got a standing ovation? Vitter and Craig: the two best examples of the GOP anyone could ever ask for. Oh, and I almost forgot Ken ’40 year old virgin’ Mehlman.
Poor Mikey doesn’t get it.
(Note to Dan, maybe you need to start blogging in picture book form for the slower among us). The point of the article is that this ‘gay group’ is willing to work *against* gay issues by attacking potential allies or even neutral parties at the Left’s command.
GOProud hasn’t AFAIK, come out and attacked other ‘gay groups’ for supporting SSM. in fact, instead of bashing Glenn as the left commands, they reach out.
GOProud is for ‘gay conservatives’ from their own website. For statements like National Centre for Lesbian Rights puts out, it’s clear that they’re progressives first, their choice of bedmates is secondary, if not further down the list.
Mike queries:
Identity politics: single issue politics. Gay patriot=patriots, gay division.
You, Mike, are gay first, last and always and you vote according to what benefits your gay self. And you really do not like gays who do not lead with their gay identity, gay self-perceived inequality, all things gay agenda. In other words, you do not like gay people who put anything ahead of being gay first, last and always. Therefore any gay who is not fully plugged into the gay agenda is a homo-homophobe in your world.
I am a str8 homophobe in your world. I admire the patriots on this site who can bring an adult balance to the pressures being loaded on them by the side of gay world you live in. You jump on these folks if they stray from the gay identity politics in the slightest.
I wonder, Mike, if there is any room in your all gay world for a str8 conservative like me? Or am I a homophobe, first last and always?
So we should all pour our money and votes into the party that hands us a demolished economy, massive debt, massive unemployment, massive tax increases, soft tyranny, kickbacks to unions, government mandates etc. all because they claim to give a shit about gays when election time rolls around.
Good one, Mike. It seems the “equality” you demand is that we all get screwed equally.
A) I don’t know what a batjroom is.
2) Not according to some liberals who thought it necessary to imply that ALL gays have public sex while Gay Inc. kept their mouths shut like good little bitches. Usually Gay Inc. fights for the right of gays to have tea room sex, but they knew their place.
C) Sorta like the Foley kerfuffle when some on the left who implied that ALL gays go after children while Gay Inc. kept their mouths shut like good little bitches.
Frankly, Mike, I don’t know why you bothered to bring that up.
If the Glenn Beck crowd is mostly angry white people, then. . .
And since Ashpenaz supports and endorses Hillary Clinton, who is pro-abortion, pro-promiscuity, and anti-religious, Ashpenaz is pro-abortion, pro-promiscuity, and anti-religious.
Watch how quickly the rules change on that one. Or perhaps Ashpenaz is another example of a Nancy Pelosi Catholic, in which the Pope approves abortion, promiscuity, and antireligious bigotry.
Hillary Clinton is a Methodist who wants to create a society where abortions are no longer necessary because our social programs take care of people from conception to natural death.
Ash, you’re so FUNNY! 🙂 ROFL – You have combined a pathetic lie she tells (that only a child or a moron would believe) – with an ugly truth about her that she would never admit to, namely, that she is a Big Government totalitarian!
Hillary Clinton is a Methodist who wants to create a society where abortions are no longer necessary because our social programs take care of people from conception to natural death.
So you state that abortions are necessary and justified and should be publicly funded because the “social programs” do not, in your opinion, “take care of people” from conception to natural death.
Hillary Clinton supports, promotes, and demands public funding for abortions. Therefore, Ashpenaz, you support, promote, and demand public funding for abortions.
Also, you state that “Catholic social doctrine” supports and endorses abortions as being perfectly justified in the absence of state-supported welfare systems, correct?
(continuing my thought) You’ve also managed to blame fetus-killing, an *individual* *choice* (as Hillary would be first to tell you – she’s *pro-choice*, remember?) on American society for its not living up to your totalitarian ideals!
[ILC’s eyes start to tear from laughing, he wipes them] Come on, Ash – You really are a member of some bizarre political cell, aren’t you? Whether you lean more toward Goebbels or more to Stalin, each would be proud of you.
Hillary Clinton, Ashpenaz proclaims, is a Methodist.
Yeah. Her method is state socialism.
Her method for achieving state socialism is to follow Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
There is method in her madness: She will be in the wealthy elite politburo passing out crumbs to the little people.
That would be Clinton Methodist.
Whether the Methodist Church believes in abortion for convenience, but for taking cradle to grave care of everyone who slips by the abortion clinic and is born, I can not say. I suppose there is some comparative doctrine somewhere at Consumer’s Reports for those who are church shopping.
Meanwhile, I will defer to Ashpenaz who seems pretty impressed with Hillary Clinton’s religious credentials.
…then they come closest to representing the actual American people, who are also mostly white, with MINORITIES of minorities. See that? See how I did that? Used the word minority to mean exactly what it actually means? As in “less than most”, and not “victim”. I do crazy stuff like that. People hate it! Particularly people who are full of sh*t.
Yes, I blame abortions on a society which chooses not to support people with health care from conception to natural death. Anyone who doesn’t support universal health care is complicit in creating a culture of death. Which goes against Catholic Social Teaching.
http://www.catholicsinalliance.org/node/20065
Yes, I blame abortions on a society which chooses not to support people with health care from conception to natural death.
And out comes the true psychopathic blackmailer that is Ashpenaz: pay for my health care, or I will continue to kill children.
And this shows the psychotic insanity of Hillary Clinton and pro-abortion women; either you pay their bills or they will murder children.
You have just proven beyond all doubt how meaningless life is to you, Ashpenaz. You refuse to condemn or criticize abortion, your pro-abortion party, and your pro-abortion Hillary Clinton out of a snit because people refuse to pay your bills for you. Over a million children die annually because of people like you, and you whine that it’s justified because society won’t pay your bills for you.
Also, it’s interesting that you quote “Catholics for the Common Good”, Ashpenaz, which, as has been made regularly aware, is nothing more than a front organization for the Obama Party, funded by Soros and others, that regularly lies about abortion and in fact promotes and supports abortion, including providing unlimited Federal funding for abortions.
Ashpenaz, get a grip! You really need an enema, because you are so backed up your brain is numb.
You want national cradle to grave health care. If they forklift your carcass to the hospital because you can’t pee, should they also provide you with your daily gross of twinkies to keep your tum-tum happy? Or should they turn on your life style and try to liposuction a few hundred pounds off your thighs and staple your stomach? After all, if you are going to put stuff up your nose or cram stuff down your gullet and ride society for the tab, shouldn’t society respect your self-destructive tendencies and provide a buffet of drugs for your pleasure?
Quote me some Bible on how Caesar is supposed patronize gluttony and you are a brother and it is the responsibility of everybody else to keep you fat and sassy.
@ #23 I LOVE ILC, especially when he is kicking Ash! Thanks very much for the laughs.
What I love about Ashpenaz’s comment is that: gays were just gays, blacks were just blacks, but whites were “angry whites.” Did you go to the rally? Can you confirm that all were angry? Who was more angry: the Beck crowd praising God or Al Sharpton’s crowd who did not live up to Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream of unity, but bashed Conservatives the whole time? If Glenn Beck’s rally is somehow racist for being mostly white like some have said, I reckon that Al Sharpton’s rally is equally racist for being mostly black.
OMFG!!! Are you sure you don’t want to send an e-mail to Dan asking him to delete that comment? Are you sure you want to let that stand? What kind of sick bastard are you?
Seriously. Don’t take your issues with your mother out on society.
Not to quibble, but actually it’s a Hoyer Lift. Hoyer’s a brand name, but we call all of them Hoyer Lift.
Ashpenaz,
I was unware that I forced you to have sex and then forced you to have an abortion. I must be naive because I thought we as individuals chose to have sex, therefore choosing to take on the responsibilities of his or her actions and the consequences that follow. The culture of death that you suggest is the death of individual responsibility, which apparently, you lack.
Heh, the other funny/sad thing about Ash is… Reality.
So in Ash’s view, Castro’s Cuba, Communist China, and the old USSR are all ‘cultures of life.” Yet, they still kill babies, frequently.
My partner and I went to the rally. We didn’t announce that we were partners but we certainly didn’t not “de-gay” out interactions with each other or with the other 50 people on the bus.
We were congratulated on our time together. We were invited to group site seeing trips. At the rally, we were offered food, water and chairs. Just like like these things were being offered to other people. We stood close together. We didn’t hear or feel anything negative. Now, when we go to a “liberal” function : we get kicked out for the wrong bumper sticker, we get sneered at for being committed to each other (we don’t swing) and we get yelled at because we think Mr. Beck is a better speaker than Mr. Obama.
So, needless to say…
I am a conservative gay man, not a gay conservative man.
jwxford2: You’re welcome (for the laughs) and thank you (for the very great compliment)!
TL, indeed.
Then, Ash, you have condemned yourself out of your own mouth – and praised me. Because, *in reality, you don’t* support a culture of life. Not at all.
Your ideas would condemn human beings to slavery, as they pay and pay in excess for a ruined health care system that must slowly, but inevitably retrograde as (or if) more and more countries follow suit. The more your ideas, Ash, are put into practice, the more human lives they end.
The only way to achieve a good medical system is to have human freedom, i.e. a free economy under a small government. Equally, it is the only way to continue supporting 7 billion people (and more) on this planet. I love capitalism because I truly support a culture of life. While you, Ashpenaz, support a culture of death. You just don’t want to admit it.
And there we see your hypocrisy and denial at work. Know what else goes against Catholic teaching, Ash? *HILLARY CLINTON AND HER STAND IN FAVOR OF ABORTION.* For Christ’s sake, get a clue.
To coin a T-shirt (or to echo one that was popular in the late 1980s):
Were they taken by force from other people who had “too much”?
Ash is of the mindset that Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about, when he said: “Americans are so enamored with equality, that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.”
Socialism=Death? Yes, they’ve got plenty of death camps all over England, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Spain etc. etc.
“Yes, they’ve got plenty of death camps all over England, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Spain etc. etc.”
Give ’em time. They’ll probably get there. Very likely the militant Islamists whose takeover of their countries they are aiding and abetting will build them.
Correct. It’s called “medical rationing”. It’s sort of a virtualized death camp, in which people stay in their homes – the State is spared the expense of running an actual camp – but people are sent to their deaths, nonetheless. A Canadian provincial Supreme Court found, I think in 2005 (the Chaoulli case), essentially that Canada’s socialized medical system was in itself a massive human rights violation.
Mike, also you forget to mention the other death camps known as “gulags” in Communist China, Cuba, the former Soviet Union, etc. Or North Korea, which country is basically one large death camp. Finally, there were of course the death camps of the National ***Socialist*** nations, the prime example being those of Na(tionale So)zi(alistiche) Germany.
Socialism and freedom battle each other on a continuum. Just as with poisons such as arsenic, not every nation that takes a drop of socialism will instantly die, i.e. turn into a nightmare. Yet socialism / arsenic remains a poison nonetheless. The closer a country comes to implementing the socialist ideal, the more it gradually turns into a nightmare.
Conversely, if some nation implements socialism imperfectly, it imperfections / failures of socialism will make it that much better off. Right now, Germany is more socialist than the U.S. in aggregate, but less socialist than the U.S. in *direction*. Accordingly, Germany’s living standard is still lower than the U.S. in aggregate… but headed in a better *direction*.
I know from your other comments how silly you are Mike, so you won’t learn from a drop of what I just explained. But others might enjoy reading it.
TGC #40, good one 🙂
I took a day off–did I miss anything?
Oh, I get it – Your real problem is that you never read anything.
“Correct. It’s called “medical rationing”. And don’t we have rationing in the US? Isn’t it called “not having insurance”? I love it when conservatives say “But you can’t be turned away from an emergency room.” As if a visit to the emergency room by an uninsured person is free. The government ends up paying for an uninsured person to visit an ER, doesn’t it? So, better to see that the person gets care at a cheaper rate before an ER visit becomes necessary. I have listened to a lot of conservative arguments on health care. Regina Herzlinger is a very smart lady with a lot of good ideas about market-driven solutions to health care problems, and yet, even she admits that her ideas would require an individual mandate to succeed.
Silly? Name calling is the last refuge of someone whose arguments have little merit.
Mike,
The government just sentenced who knows how many women to death, seniors are sure to follow.
Those are called ‘facts’ but by all means don’t let them get in the way of your rainbows and unicorns.
And don’t we have rationing in the US? Isn’t it called “not having insurance”?
So if you choose not to or can’t afford to buy filet mignon, does that mean that food is rationed?
If you choose not or can’t afford to own a car, does that mean that automobiles are rationed?
In both cases, I certainly hope the answer is no; those are examples of consumers exercising their choice on how they wish to spend their dollars and on what services they wish to purchase.
In contrast, the socialist health care systems extract payment from you in advance, whether you want the services or not, and then regulate when, where, and whether or not you’ll be able to access them.
To put that in perspective, it’s akin to the government collecting the cost of providing you filet mignon in advance, even if you’re a vegetarian, and then deciding later whether it actually wants to give it to you and under what circumstances you would receive it.
THAT is rationing.
Next up:
As if a visit to the emergency room by an uninsured person is free. The government ends up paying for an uninsured person to visit an ER, doesn’t it? So, better to see that the person gets care at a cheaper rate before an ER visit becomes necessary.
Interestingly enough, Mike, do you know who the people who use the ER at the highest rate are?
According to the report, released in May, nearly one-third (32 percent) of Medicaid enrollees used the ER at least once during a 12-month period in 2007. Individuals with private health coverage were only about half as likely (17 percent) to visit an ER, and a similar proportion-one in five-of individuals without health coverage did so.
Medicaid enrollees were three times as likely (15 percent vs. 5 percent) as the privately insured, and twice as likely as the uninsured (15 percent vs. 7 percent), to have visited an ER twice in the previous year.
And what is Medicaid? Oh, right, free government health insurance that is designed to provide “care at a cheaper rate before an ER visit becomes necessary”.
So frankly, your line is bullshit. Uninsured people are not the ones taking up the ER space and doing it on the government dime. Indeed, as it turns out, the uninsured actually pay a higher percentage of their ER bills than the government pays for those on Medicaid.
In short, your Medicaid program has three times the use, ALL at government cost, and you’re blaming the uninsured, who use ERs three times less and actually pay a goodly chunk of their bill WITHOUT invoking the government.
Mike, seriously: How stupid are you? Nearly as stupid as Ash? Look here:
1) No one in the United States is turned away from an emergency room. No one. You yourself admit that. In addition to that, charities and Medicaid and other public clinics all exist to help the poor.
2) So then… who are these “uninsured”? To a significant extent, people who MAKE THEIR OWN DECISION TO NOT PAY FOR insurance. You want to take that right away from them: the right to NOT be forced at gunpoint (i.e., threat of arrest or other penalties) to pay for something they want. Know what your desire there makes you, Mike? A fascist.
So, let’s review. So far Mike, in this thread alone, you have managed to be (a) silly, (b) stupid, and (c) a fascist. Seriously. I needn’t even bother refuting the rest of your trash. I easily could, but it is so stupid and not how I choose to spend my time.
Typo: “the right to NOT be forced at gunpoint (i.e., threat of arrest or other penalties) to pay for something they -do not- want”.
For a perspective: I’m a upper-degreed medical professional and I CHOOSE not to have health insurance. I see my doctor twice a year, one visit includes a complete physical and a chest xray, both include full chem panel and std bloodwork and a UA. Five years ago I asked for a ‘cash discount’ and pay less for all of this annually than I paid for two month’s insurance premiums.
I’ve had two serious illnesses in that five years and I asked for a payment plan from those providers. They were happy to give me a very flexible plan, but I had to ask and was careful to keep them apprised of any change in my situation (I had to skip a payment twice.)
How did I honor my debts? I prioritized. These providers cared for my health. I did not renege on my word: I chose to pay them rather than upgrade a cellphone, eat out at restaurants, have a cocktail, take a trip, buy new clothes; I chose ground beef instead of steak.
The solution to ‘uninsured’ persons is in themselves and their local community and charities; all of which require CHARACTER, not some government program.