Bofferbrauer2 said:
1. I checked all the links, but could't find anything that support your claim that she would still be against homosexuality. The first one is 15 years old and outdated, the Rolling Stone quote is also from that time if you read it correctly. Not sure if you linked the right Ozy video as she's not been talking about homosexuality at any point there. Finally, you seem to think it being impossible that she felt Buescher being left out was because of his religion, which would have violated Article VI of the constitution. However, I agree that was misguided. Now, for some proofs that she has changed her views on the subject: from 2012, where she apologizes for her past. She has opposed the Defense of Marriage Act before it got deemed unconstitutional, and is supporting Obergefell v Hodges, which guarantees the right of same-sex couples to get married. https://www.hrc.org/blog/hawaii-congressional-delegation-calls-for-marriage-equality , where she is part of a movement to bring same-sex marriage to Hawaii, saying that Civil union sare not the same as a reall marriage. This coming from the Human Rights Campaign, which are adamantly in support of same-sex marriage, and the fact that Tulsi has apparently a perfect 100 score with them nowadays shows that she genuinely changed her views on the subject. Considering her religious Father and thus traditional education (even more so as she got home-schooled), I can see how she got raised staunchly against same-sex marriage, but understand that she has wisened up over the years. 2. The problem of deposing a dictator like that is that it creates a power vacuum, which will get exploited by more extremist groups. We could see that in Irak, in Afghanistan and Lybia. This is also the reason why Bush senior left Saddam in office - he was at that point the lesser of the evils. Also, the democracy the US brings always seems to be based on the very outdated US election system, not necessarily helping the case. 3. I think that is based on a misunderstanding how Hinduism works. In contrary to Christianity for instance, there is no standard, orthodox way to it, and everyone lives his faith differently, each with his own philosophy to it. Hence why there are so many different temples. But sites like the one you linked seem to not understand that that is normal and expected to Hinduism and not a splinter sect like it would be in case of a Judaeo-Christian religion. She also declines any Hindu meeting where Vishwa Hindu Parishad participates due to it's being a very nationalistic Indian group doing pretty much everything that the article you linked claims her to be doing. https://www.news18.com/news/world/not-participating-in-indias-partisan-politics-us-lawmaker-tulsi-gabbard-denies-chairing-world-hindu-congress-1871215.html |
1. From the Ozy article, with all relevant quotes quoted in full, so you know I'm not taking this out of context:
About 10 years ago, Gabbard violated some of the tenets that now make her so popular as a Democrat with an EMILY’s List endorsement to boot — she was neither pro-choice nor pro-gay-marriage, and in fact fell in line with her erstwhile Republican father. “She’s definitely distanced herself since,” says Jacqueline Lasky, professor of state politics at the University of Hawaii. “She wouldn’t have been successful otherwise.” (Nationally, there’s little talk about it; Kennedy told me he “didn’t really know” about Gabbard’s early conservative stances.) Hawaii bloggers and reporters widely have Gabbard on record as referring to the agendas of “homosexual extremists” at one point; when I ask her, she replies, “That thing I said ages ago?” Yes, I say. “Honestly, I’d have to go back and look,” she says. After repeated follow-ups, the congresswoman replies with a note about her sponsorship of the Equality Act (adding sexual orientation to categories of prohibited discrimination) and of her support for equal treatment of gay service members’ spouses.
Fittingly for her narrative, though, the explanation for her changed ideology feints us back onto familiar territory — the military. It was, she says, the days in the Middle East that taught her the dangers of a theocratic government “imposing its will” on the people. (She tells me that, no, her personal views haven’t changed, but she doesn’t figure it’s her job to do as the Iraqis did and force her own beliefs on others.)
This article was from 2016, so it's post Obergefell v. Hodges, so after all of your evidence.
And yes, I think it's disingenuous to suggest that Mazie Hirono or Kamala Harris were against Trump's judge for reasons of religious discrimination. That also happened after all your evidence, and shows how she could still hurt the LGBT cause without running afoul of Human Rights Campaign.
2. I won't defend the US election system for a second, as we desperately need to update it, but this nonsense that deposing a dictator inevitably leaves a power vacuum has to stop. I'm not talking about "we came, we saw, he died" I'm talking about what the French did for us in the American Revolution. There is a way to ensure that democratic interests take hold after a dictator is removed, and that is to make sure that the would-be new democratic government is involved every step of the way in doing the deposing, and to never be there ourselves. Supplies and training, not troops. This way the victory, if it is meant to be, is earned entirely by the newly free people, their victory, not our meddling. Also, we need to continue to support them even after the war is over, as we did after WWII with the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan worked. Holy fuck did it work. You are the proof of that. Terrorist groups rise because we leave economic wrecks everywhere we touch and do nothing to help the starving people, while the terrorists do. That's how they recruit people in the first place and win the support of the populace. We keep doing it wrong, we've been doing it wrong since...well WWII actually. We've occasionally got it right on a smaller scale, but never in any high profile situation we can point to. Leaving dictators to rule as long as they want and leaving their people to suffer at their hands is immoral. We can't just do nothing. The longer we do nothing, the more they build up their forces to expand, and in many cases, nuclearize, as we saw with North Korea. That is not safe for human life. The more this style of government spreads, the harder it is to stop it from spreading. I'm not for constant war, as our people deserve to know peace, but so do their people. Helping their people find peace does not have to mean ending our own peace. Regimes have to change eventually, and while we shouldn't do it ourselves, we should be willing to help the brave souls who want to do it for themselves, and to help support their peace in the aftermath.
3. I understand how Hinduism works. That doesn't mean that it's immune to cults. And you seem to fundamentally misunderstand religion altogether. All religions, Christianity included, and practiced by the individual first and foremost. The religious institutions that organize groups of individuals into an orthodox path are just that, institutions, not the religion itself. Hindu may not have such a rigid structure to it as Christianity does, but temples have more than one person that attend them, generally, do they not? A cult is not defined by how many or how few attend it, it's defined by its behavior. They're notoriously hard to prove because they're so secretive. I can say this much, I don't trust the Hare Krishna movement, I don't trust the Science of Identity Foundation, and I don't trust Chris Butler, its founder.
Ask yourself this, is Gabbard your best choice? Truly? Are there no others that have similar viewpoints on war? Sanders is good enough for me on that front. Why is Gabbard your first choice? I recognize you're not a US citizen so your choice doesn't directly matter, but there are a lot of people in this thread mentioning her, and I have to ask, out of seventeen choices and growing, why her? I keep seeing her foreign policy positions mentioned, but you can get that elsewhere, and you can definitely get her economics elsewhere. Do you really want to champion someone who champions dictators, has even the slightest trace of a possible connection to a cult, and attacks her colleagues when they defend the justice system from fundamentalist activists attacking LGBT rights? Is that your girl? Really? You've got nothing better in a veritable sea of candidates?
