Catholicism

@missyann Go into an Evangelical church and you will hear plenty of anti-gay hysteria. I don't blame Catholics for overturning Roe, even though a majority of the court's conservatives are Catholic (Thomas, Alito, Barrett, Kavanaugh,and Roberts). The main force behind anti-abortion and anti-gay activism is from conservative Protestants.

The reports of sexual abuse started coming out in the 90s, although people had been talking about them for decades. John Paul had been much more focused on ending communism. It's very likely that Benedict resigned because he didn't want to oversee the reforms that were needed. However, sexual abuse isn't limited to the Catholic Church by any means. It's prevalent in every religion, as well as business, entertainment, academia, and any other institution where men are in charge and aren't held accountable. What makes it worse in churches is because religion presents itself as the moral arbiter of society, so it should be held to a higher standard. This hypocrisy is one reason why people are abandoning religion today.

The right to privacy was from Griswold v. Connecticut, which legalized contraception. I agree that it's a weak argument for protecting things as important as contraception and abortion. But implying that RBG was anti-abortion, which I've heard from some PL based on her criticism of Roe v. Wade, is absurd. What's needed is legislation to guarantee the right to abortion and contraception, and not reliance on whichever judges happen to be on the Supreme Court at any given time.

@LeopoldBloom RBG was pro abortion and said that the way it was written that the right to privacy protected Drs instead of a woman’s right.

Since all laws are based on morality What laws would you like to see dissolved?

Clarence Thomas is the only just us who suggested that contraception be banned. All the rest said no.

Pro life has the advantage. We did not have the medical technology in 1973 when the right to abortion was written. We know today, without a doubt that human life begins at conception. We know that they are alive and developing. We can actually watch a human life develop from conception to birth.. we know, for a fact that abortion intentionally and deliberately ends a human life. So what will the politicians defense be for the right to abortion ?

@missyann I'm not sure how Roe v. Wade protected doctors but not women. Of course, both should be protected. I can't think of any women who were prosecuted for having abortions under Roe if there was no protection for them. The right to privacy protects everyone. Otherwise, people could be prosecuted for buying contraception, but the clerk who sold it to them wouldn't be. Of course, that's not how it works.

All laws are not based on morality. Many laws are based on popular sentiment or efficiency. A few laws I'd like to see dissolved:

Any restrictions on abortion other than requiring a doctor to be involved
Restrictions on unionization and collective bargaining
Tax exemptions for religious organizations (other than purely charitable activities)
Prohibitions on gender care
Laws against handing out water bottles to people waiting in line to vote (nobody should have to wait hours to vote anyway)

@LeopoldBloom I agree with the law about not handing out water voting stations, Unless you’re disable or any nursing home you should have to vote in person with a government issued ID

@missyann Oregon and Utah have had 100% voting by mail for a long time, with no problems.

Voter fraud is virtually nonexistent. As for ID, many people get by with expired identification. If you're going to require ID, they should be issued free of charge to all eligible citizens. And if you're going to require in-person voting, there need to be enough voting stations so people don't have to wait for hours. Where I grew up in California, polling places were in people's houses. I never had to wait more than five minutes to vote. Here in Georgia, there are so few of them that voting on election day can take a while. Voting in advance is only available in a few places and can take longer. There are also rules about dropping off ballots, making it a problem for nursing home residents as each one needs a unique person to drop their ballot off.

I support making it easier to vote and more people voting. The only reason to restrict voting is either because you want to limit certain groups that vote against your interests, or you've drunk the Kool-Aid and think fraud is widespread despite there being no evidence for it.

@LeopoldBloom There has always been interference in elections. Wayback win candidates bought liquor for people if didn’t just start in the 2020 election.. but we do have the technology to make elections as fair as possible

I think paper ballots, and have both sides counting. We don’t need to know positively who won the presidency that night although it would be nice or have the electronic loading to get an idea, but have paper ballots to prove it, and if both sides are counting and be verified by the elections official at every voting station I don’t see why people wouldn’t trust the elections after this type of counting

Yes, the government can pay for picture IDs for all legal citizens who don’t have drivers license but I’m telling you you need an ID for just about everything. To buy liquor, cigarettes, prescriptions and I guarantee you that most people have IDs. They might have a criminal record and are afraid that will come out or they’re not legal citizens because you know that illegal citizens do drive without license But if they don’t, they can go to a DMV to have a picture ID made and the government should pay for it.. but no one who is not a legal citizen of this country should not be able to vote or dead people or people who vote twice. I don’t care how long someone has been in the country. And has been paying taxes. , If they are not a legal Citizen, they don’t have the right to vote

@missyann I'm opposed to electronic voting machines that don't produce a printed record. Glad we agree on that.

Plenty of people get by with expired licenses. It's not easy to renew them if you have to miss work, travel to some distant location that's only open for a few hours, and bring your birth certificate which you have to get from some other inconvenient location. If you're going to require a current ID for voting, you need to make sure that every eligible voter gets one free of charge, otherwise all you've done is institute a poll tax.

Illegal aliens don't vote. The idea that millions of them are voting is Fox News garbage. Dead people don't vote either unless it's a situation where someone fills out their ballot, mails it, and dies before the election. A few people have been caught voting twice, mostly Republicans.

The 2020 election was probably the most accurate and secure in our nation's history, but Trump and his minions managed to create enough chaos to where many people feel that the results were invalid. I won't be surprised if some Trump followers attack urban polling places in Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Detroit in an effort to interfere with the vote in those states. It wouldn't be as easy to do that if we got rid of the obsolete, slave-era Electoral College and just elected the president by popular vote.

@LeopoldBloom I agree that the government needs to pay for IDs. I don’t see a problem with an ID being expired as long as it has a picture. ID. I also believe that people should receive pay from their job when they go vote..

I am free there was a lot of they said, and they said in the 2020 election but there were the incidence of suitcases trucks. I can’t blame the Trump party questioning it and maybe there was a stealing but we need to let that go Trump and his supporters need to let that go to 2024 is a new election, let it go

Maybe those of us who believe that we need paper and electron l machines H to help make everyone else feel secure. But yes for chrissake let it go it’s over.

@missyann I haven't heard a single proposal for a free national ID card from any of the Republicans pushing for voter ID laws. Whether someone can vote with an expired ID probably depends on whether the poll worker notices it. It might even be illegal in some areas.

The whole suitcase trucks, drop box fraud, votes sent electronically to Italy so the ghost of Hugo Chavez could switch them from Trump to Biden has all been discredited. The Trump campaign brought over 60 lawsuits related to the election, and all of them but one were dismissed, often by judges Trump had appointed. The one successful one had to do with how close monitors could stand to people counting the ballots. Interestingly, none of the lawsuits alleged fraud, because lawyers know that they can get in trouble making false statements in court. The entire "stolen election" narrative was ginned up by Trump, starting even before the election, and included slates of fake electors, hacked voting machines, intimidation of poll workers, and the Jan. 6 riot. 100% of the fraud was on the Republican side.

I personally experienced voter suppression here in Georgia. My wife always votes absentee. She got her primary ballot, no problem, but didn't get the general election ballot on time. I checked into it (I had to go to the registrar in person) and it turned out that in between the primary and the general, someone had changed her address to one we hadn't used for several years. I was able to correct it so she could vote, but if they did that to enough people, that could swing an election. I'm convinced that Biden's margin would have been a lot higher without crap like that. And this was on top of Gov. Kemp overseeing his own election in 2018 as Secretary of State, where he purged voters for reasons like discrepancies between a letter "i" not being dotted or a hyphen missing in someone's name.

Trump is already setting the stage for claiming the 2024 election was "rigged" if he loses. Fortunately, he's not the president and there is a lot Biden can do to make sure MAGA cult members don't get away with stochastic violence or other interference with the voting process.