Check out this gem from the L.A. Times.

[lightningandsnow]

First line:

I'm a liberal Democrat. And I do not favor same-sex marriage. Do those positions sound contradictory? To me, they fit together.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-blankenhorn19-2008sep19,0,2093869.story

:puke:

[tbyg52]

1. I second your

:puke:

Don't favor same-sex marriage? Then don't have one.

That crap about "the children" strikes me about the same way as Repukes being anti-abortion but not caring what happens after that.

[Siyahamba]

2. I wonder what he plans to do about childless married couples, then?

[Ms. Toad]

3. Or about children who cannot be raised by their

biological parents - and who would benefit from the legal benefits that are bestowed on (GLBT) adoptive parents who are allowed to be married to each other.

Lots of inconsistencies in his thinly veiled bigotry.

[offog]

6. And what about unmarried couples with children?

I know common-law couples with kids. I also know a lesbian couple with kids from a previous heterosexual marriage. I know several gays and lesbians who've tried the "straight life" and had kids.

I don't get the big fuss about gay marriage. If two people are committed enough to each other that they want to get married, they should be allowed to, and we shouldn't complain.

I also have a problem with the assumption that the main purpose of marriage is to have children. Are we going to tell married straight people that they have to have kids? Are we going to tell unmarried straight couples with kids that they have to get married? Are we going to tell gays and lesbians with their own biological children that they have to give up their kids?

I think this is just part of the zero-mentality from people afraid that if gays get more rights, then straight people will lose something.

[swimmernsecretsea]

4. OMG. Whatever, quisling.

What an asshole. I know that "liberal Democrat" does not include in its definition depriving people of the right to sanctify their unions, or tell people what they can or cannot be or do. Fuck you, Blankenhorn dickwad.

[Bluenorthwest]

5. Small minded in so many ways

This guy may be a registered Democrat, but my vote is that he is no liberal. His article is nothing but lies and assumptions, and this bigot lacks both the imagination to make up for his limited set of experiences in life, and the curiosity to go forth into the world and learn actual facts.

[WillParkinson]

7. The Author....

About David Blankenhorn

David Blankenhorn is founder and president of the Institute for American Values, a private, nonpartisan organization devoted to contributing intellectually to the renewal of marriage and family life and the sources of competence, character, and citizenship in the United States.

A 1998 profile in the New York Times describes Blankenhorn as a "consensus builder for a moral base in society." USA Today describes Blankenhorn as "leading a grassroots movement" to strengthen marriage (2000) and as "a pioneer in the fatherhood movement" (1999). A 1995 profile in the Los Angeles Times called him "the de facto navigator" of a new fatherhood movement. Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School states: "No one writes about the crisis in American family life with more candor, intelligence, and sympathetic understanding than David Blankenhorn." Norval Glenn of the University of Texas calls Blankenhorn's 1995 book, Fatherless America, "one of the most important and provocative books of this decade." The Idaho Statesman describes Fatherless America as "the bible of the fatherhood movement."

Blankenhorn has co-edited five books: Rebuilding the Nest: A New Commitment to the American Family (1990); Seedbeds of Virtue: Sources of Competence, Character, and Citizenship in American Society (1995); Promises to Keep: Decline and Renewal of Marriage in America (1996); The Fatherhood Movement (1999); and The Book of Marriage: The Wisest Answers to the Toughest Questions (2001).

In 1994, Blankenhorn helped to found the National Fatherhood Initiative, serving as that organization's founding chairman. He also serves on the board of directors of the National Parenting Association. In 1992, he was appointed by President Bush to serve on the National Commission on America's Urban Families. A frequent lecturer, Blankenhorn's ideas have been cited in Time, Newsweek, the Economist, and elsewhere, and his articles have appeared in scores of publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, The Public Interest, First Things, and Christianity Today. He has been profiled by the CBS Evening News and other news organizations, and has been featured on numerous national television programs, including Oprah, 20/20, Eye to Eye, CBS This Morning, The Today Show, Charlie Rose, ABC Evening News, Equal Time, and C-SPAN's Washington Perspectives.

Prior to founding the Institute in 1987, Blankenhorn worked as a community organizer in Virginia and Massachusetts. He served two years as a VISTA Volunteer. A native of Jackson, Mississippi, Blankenhorn attended public schools in Jackson and in Salem, Virginia. As a high school student, he founded the Mississippi Community Service Corps and the Virginia Community Service Corps. In 1977, he graduated magna cum laude in social studies from Harvard, where he was president of Phillips Brooks House, the campus community service center, and the recipient of a John Knox Fellowship. In 1978, he was awarded an M.A. with distinction in comparative social history from the University of Warwick in Coventry, England.

Blankenhorn was born in 1955. He lives in New York City with his wife, Raina, their son, Raymond, and their two daughters, Sophia and Alexandra.

[swimmernsecretsea]

8. ...needs to stfu.

and if he's stoopit, he can look it up here....

[Fearless]

14. K&R

[keepCAblue]

13. Blankenhorn funded by right-wing money

Blankenhorn is what is called a "counterfeit liberal" - his message and mission is funded primarily by right-wing money. His think tank, http://www.americanvalues.org">Institute for American Values is similar in construct and objectives to that of the neo-con think tank, The Heritage Foundation. The largest funding body for Blankenhorn's IAV think tank is http://www.mediatransparency.org/funderprofile.php?funderID=1">The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Inc.. Here's a little info on said funder from the foregoing link:

The overall objective of the Bradley Foundation, however, is to return the U.S. - and the world- to the days before governments began to regulate Big Business, before corporations were forced to make concessions to an organized labor force. In other words, laissez-faire capitalism: capitalism with the gloves off.

To further this objective, Bradley supports the organizations and individuals that promote the deregulation of business, the rollback of virtually all social welfare programs, and the privitization of government services. As a result, the list of Bradley grant recipients reads like a Who's Who of the U.S.Right. Bradley money supports such major right-wing groups as the Heritage Foundation, source of policy papers on budget cuts, supply-side economics and the Star Wars military plan for the Reagan administration; the Madison Center for Educational Affairs, which provides funding for right-wing research and a network of conservative student newspapers; and the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, literary home for such racist authors as Charles Murray (The Bell Curve) and Dinesh D'Souza (The End of Racism), former conservative officeholders Jeane Kirkpatrick, Jack Kemp and William Bennett, and arch-conservative jurists Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia.

Blankenhorn is no doubt getting paid by Prop 8's organizers to plant articles in support of their anti-gay proposition. Between now and the November election, expect to see a flood of these kinds of opinion pieces (written by Blankenhorn and other so-called "experts" and self-proclaimed "liberals") to the editors of all the major newspapers throughout California. This is just the beginning of the right-wing's media barrage to promote their hate-filled proposition and to confuse the voting public. Standard conservative political tactics, something they do, unfortunately, exceedingly well and have had much success with.

[Fearless]

9. It's a clash between old time politics and the new democratic party...

These things will be common in the next ten years as the old guard dies off.

[Zuiderelle]

10. Why can't people like that just shut the hell up?

[Speciesamused]

11. It is contradictory he knows this so why ask to make himself feel

better when a few say no. Just to clarify here is the meaning of
Liberal- 1 a: of, relating to, or based on the liberal arts <liberal education> : of or befitting a man of free birth a: marked by generosity : openhanded <a liberal giver> b: given or provided in a generous and openhanded way <a liberal meal> c: ample , full obsolete : lacking moral restraint : licentious4: not literal or strict : loose : broad-minded ; especially : not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms.
Passing judgment on someones sex life is not a liberal act. Period. Peace

[joeybee12]

12. So women who physically can't have children shouldn't be allowed to marry...

...that is exactly what this so-called Liberal Democrat is saying.

[sui generis]

15. are people going to stop falling in love and living together?

just exactly what does he think a marriage is?

ohhhh. the right to dispose of your property and assets to a person of your choice. That makes sense. Steal from the poor helpless victimy gays. Snork.

I would yank his liberal democrat credentials EXCEPT he ain't. Plenty more like him getting their pretend on in the hate mailbag . . . .

[Toasterlad]

16. What An Appallingly, Unapologetically Ignorant, Heap of Shit.

[One_Life_To_Give]

17. If Marriage Benefits only addressed Children, maybe

If the only legal benefits associated with marriage were establishing paternity, parental rights/obligations then the argument might have some basis. But when we are discussing who can and cannot make legal decisions for a incapacitated spouse or to even visit a terminally ill life partner. Then it has no basis as the Marriage Contract is clearly more and everyone deserves Equal Protection under the Law.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

18. a pedantic asshole is still and asshole