Why gay marriage should be illegal

In response to Ms. Sweet's post about why gay marriage should be legal.

     There are a couple things wrong with your argument that I would like to correct.  First, falling in love is a choice.  When you "fall in love" you become infatuated with your significant other, and you will eventually fall out of love.

    Second, yes, the government shouldn't tell them whom they can and cannot marry, but we shouldn't even have this problem!  Homosexuality is not natural. Just look at the male and female bodies. They are obviously designed to couple. The natural design is apparent. It is not natural to couple male with male and female with female. It would be like trying to fit two screws together and to nuts together and then say, "See, it’s natural for them to go together."

In addition, political protection of a sexual practice is ludicrous. I do not believe it is proper to pass laws stating that homosexuals have 'rights.' What about pedophilia or bestiality? These are sexual practices. Should they also be protected by law? If homosexuality is protected by law, why not those as well? 

My view on free abortions

    In her post on contraception, Juliana Solitro make the argument that all women should be given "preventative medicine", a.k.a.: abortions, free of charge, regardless of their walk in life.  I disagree.

    First, if a women does not want a baby, or is incapable of taking care of one, she should not participate in activities that were made for that reason.

    Second, if we are going to give women free abortions, why not give men free condoms, or the like?  Is it not up to the couple to take these preventive measures? 

    This is just my view on the subject, but if you can't provide for a child, then don't have sex.

Why we might want to consider doing away with Sex Offender Registration.

    In theory, these registries are list of every sex offender in the state, with the his house location and other pertinent facts to help people avoid exposing themselves to such people.  Megan's Law requires sex offenders to register and update law enforcement every time they change location.

    This is not the result.  You have to really hate the guy to make him suffer for the rest of his life, even when his prison time is up.  This sounds perfect for a serial rapist or pedophile, but its not such a great idea if something as trivial as public indecency or streaking can put you on the registry right alongside them.

    So you have a guy who committed a crime.  Will putting him on a list make it better?  wouldn't this only make people shun him, keep him from getting a job, and making friends?   Just for a crime that he may have committed over 15 years ago as a adolescent?  On a side note, one fifth of all rapes are committed by a juvenile.

    And how effective is it? Even if you know about a registered sex offender in the neighborhood, what's to stop him from doing it again?  And that's not taking into consideration that 95 percent of all cases are from someone the victim had already knew?  And if he was really going to do it again, would the fact that he is on a list really going to stop him?

An argument for the Death Penalty

Evaluate the author’s intended audience, the author’s credibility,

     On March 1st, 2012, Mr. Tod Robberson, a editorial writer for the Dallas Morning News, wrote a editorial about how George Rivas makes the best case not to have the death penalty.

    I don't agree with Mr. Robberson.  He bases his claim on the fact that Rivas welcomed execution and calling it "freedom".  Robberson makes the argument that giving Rivas the life-sentence would be worse than killing him had been.  Once again, I disagree.

    First, the whole premise that Rivas welcomed death is outright wrong.  If he had wanted or wished for death, he would have just shot himself, like his fellow Texas 7 escapee, Larry Harper, who committed suicide, rather than be captured and re-incarcerated.  Instead, for 11 years he chose life by surrendering, instead.  He fought against death during his trial. He fought against death with his appeals and asked to have his sentence commuted from death to life.  None of these are the actions of a person willing to chose death/freedom over life.

   Second, Living criminals harm and murder, again - executed ones do not.  Rivas was a known murderer, and had escaped prison once.  If he had gotten life without parole, he could have escaped again.

   Thirdly, Mr. Robberson credentials don't support the fact that he is an expert on this topic.  He's a former foreign correspondent with 25 years' experience covering Latin America, the Middle East and Europe - not a death penalty expert.

    And lastly, Robberson's audience is used to him writing about drug trafficking, border issues, immigration and international affairs; not about a domestic issue like the death penalty.

    Tod Robberson does a good job at making a argument against the death penalty without arguing that it's inhumane.  But he needed to do some homework.

The release of a terrorist. An opinion.

An outrageous deal to release a senior al-Qaeda terrorist - February 23 2012

                In this commentary in the Washington Post on February 23, columnist Marc A. Thiessen writes about why it is wrong to release a senior Al-Qaeda terrorist named Majid Khan because he made a deal with our government. 

                Marc A. Thiessen makes some good points, for example he provides some examples on why Khan should never be released.  Khan has been charged with war crimes, including murder, attempted murder, spying and providing material support for terrorism - with would get him a life sentence twice over.

 

                Thiessen states that "Instead [of going to prison], he might now be released.  For what?  Under the reported deal, Khan has agreed to testify against his fellow terrorists during the next four years at Guantanamo, after which he would then be eligible to be transferred to Pakistan."  

 

                Thiessen identifies the fact that Majid Khan can and has provided valuable information about members and leaders of the Al-Qaeda, is what has lead the United States to offer Khan this deal.  The information Khan provided did prove useful, and lead to the arrest of a man named Zubair, an operative of Al-Qaeda’s Southeast Asian affiliate Jemmaah Islamiyah.

 

                Marc A. Thiessen is a valued columnist at the Washington post, having covered foreign and domestic policy, and contributes to the PostPartisan blog.  He also served as a chief speechwriter to President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and before that as a senior aide to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms.  I agree with Mr. Thiessen.  I think that it is just plain dumb to release a terrorist, much less a senior one - no matter what he can provide.

Internet Piracy has not been Reduced!

    Whatever your stand on internet piracy is, the shutdown of megaupload.com has not affected internet piracy much.  In this post by the Daily Mail, columnist Rob Waugh writes that after the FBI seized megaupload.com and arrested its founder, multimillionaire Kim Dotcom, total internet viewing fell by over two percent.  That is two percent of all of the internet users - about 360 million a day or more than 30% of the whole world. 

    Despite the fact that meagupload.com held over 30% of all file-sharing, file-sharing has not dipped by much.  Most of the users of megaupload either moved their business overseas - also displaying the fact that most of them had used oversea based, file-sharing websites, or stitched to other big file-sharing websites like Putlocker, MediaFire and Rapidshire.  This is also shown by their big jump in traffic.

     The rest of the article is about Kim Dotcom.  The former hacker was in a New Zealand prison and was denied bail at his bail hearing, on the grounds that he would flee the country if given the chance. This was because it is believed he has access to money, and has a history of fleeing charges.  Dotcom told Auckland court he had no intention of fleeing and would fight for his money, some of which was seized by the authorities.

     I would recommend this article because I found it fascinating.  I would like to see if this has any influence on the Sopa and Pipa issue, and whether it will affect the internet as we know it.