Jman, I'm tired and I'm going to bed. I'll respond tomorrow. Needless to say you're still taking me out of context, but I'll get to that later.
No, I understand exactly what you are saying. You believe that people who vote differently than you don't deserve to be treated with the same respect as those who agree with you. Like many right wingers out there, you have taken this divisive, snobbish attitude towards liberals SOLELY because they have different values than you have. "This voter supports gun control, therefore he shouldn't be considered a citizen or expect me to care about him." Funny how that mirrors a statement made by George H.W. Bush when he was in office, when he stated that atheists shouldn't be considered American precisely because they don't believe in God, or a statement made by Sarah Palin earlier this campaign, who said that the real America is in small towns across this country, because city folk don't have the same values or patriotism as small town Americans.
I consider this line of thinking to be the epitome of ignorance which has crapped all over the electoral system in this country in recent years. I tend to think of voters as intelligent, well-informed individuals who mean well and vote because they want what's best for this country. Well, you really have proven the cynicism I have gathered throughout this election, that a very vocal, ignorant, reasonless group of voters still exist who will ultimately have more say than the "ideal" voter I listed above.
I don't care what party you are, I don't care what your personal beliefs are. But I would NEVER vote to deny rights to a conservative voter demographic because I disagree with how they vote. I would never say that Christianity should be wiped out in this country because the majority of Christians support the Republican Party-- which itself has trampled all over the Constitution in the past eight years, denying the right to a fair trial to dozens of Muslim Americans after 9/11, arresting people solely because he or she said the words "bomb" and "Bush" in the same telephone call, or trying to deny freedom of speech and expression by promoting a Constitutional amendment which would ban flag burning and another which would ban gay marriage.
For you to to lump every single homosexual or African American into one category and then to chastise them because their voter demographics tend to support the Democratic Party is absolutely irresponsible. If you disagreed with gay marriage on ideological grounds, I would wholeheartedly understand your rationale for voting YES on Proposition 8. Our argument would have been over a long time ago. But no, you even ADMITTED that you don't care if gays get married. So you took it a step further by shining a light on what little strain of intellectual thought you have, claiming that you are voting YES on Proposition 8 because gays are usually liberal and they support the Democratic Party. Nothing based on ideology, nothing soundly based in an ideological argument-- but a decisions solely made because you want to "stick it to the gays" for voting for the Democratic Party.
People like you shouldn't be able to vote at all. I never thought I'd say this, but Plato, sadly, had a point. This is what our democracy is becoming-- power in the hands of idiots.
