Gay marriage: Policical View: Up to the states Personal View: No
Guns: No restrictions for anyone except for emotionally/mentally unstable people and convicted violent felons
Prayer in School: Private prayer by students is ok, school-led prayer is wrong in public schools
Death Penalty: No (Life in prison is a worse punishment)
Abortion: No, except for rape/incest (Victims can have the option of pressing murder charges if they abort a rape baby)
Evolution in School: Must be taught alongside intelligent design, with parent option to have their child skip the unit
War in Iraq: Should have been a two-month shock-and-awe with a pullout
War in Afghanistan: Stay until the Taliban and al-Queda are burning in hell
Gitmo/CIA Blacksites/Torture: Yes if the CIA can prove that the prisoner in question was an illegal combatant. If not, the prisoner must be released to their home country

That's all I can think of. Tell me if I forgot something or you have a question.

I'm getting sick of reading your views.

Well, hopefully that's the last time I'll have to post them.

Should there be a parent option to have children skip Intelligent Design, or is that mandatory for everyone?

what does that parenthetical statement after "rape" mean? does it imply that the woman choosing the abortion can then go after the rapist for murder?

No, it should be mandatory, as should evolution. They are both scientific theories and should be discussed.

Death Penalty: I'm not sure on this one, its a big issue to discuss, but at a local debate on it recently someone brought up the financial statistics. Do you realise just how expensive it is to keep someone in maximum security (the people who would otherwise be terminated)?

Abortion: "Victim" - who do you mean? The rapist, the incestrial or the dead baby :/

Evolution - see top re Stukus.

War in Iraq/War in Afghanistan - Watch the BBC 2-parter on Laurence of Arabia and his effect on the middle East if at all possible (currently on I-player). Very interesting take on the issue. Both should have been fought, but in each case the longer term should have been better considered, rather than as a separate exercise.

G'mo: Sorry, feel heartless to say it, but if they're in there I believe they're probably guilty. In response to the last thread on that one though, there are many who will be less radical than when they went in. That sort of treatment is going to make you question if your ideals are worth it.

What do you think about China becoming the great superpower of the 21st Century?
What do you think about Sarah Palin?
What do you think about Michael Jackson?

All I saw is this
"rape" - bbdaniels
"it should be mandatory" - figlesquidge

re: ID -- that's really a religious theory, not a scientific one. there's not a shred of evidence from the fossil record in favor of it. teaching it in school is absolutely unsound.

However bb, it does fairly point out we have no evidence on the age of fossils other than backward extrapolation. Not that I support it, I believe that Evolution is probably right, but equally it does hold water as a theory to discuss.

Figle, you're a bad person.

ID is not science, though.

I guess I'll do this, too, then.

Gay marriage: Yes
Guns: I'd favor limitations of some sort. Definitely psychological tests, even if just brief and simple ones, first.
Prayer in School: Private and personal, OK. Official, no way.
Death Penalty: I support it, but mostly because it's A) cheaper, and B) more humane. If we, as a society, value freedom, what's worse than depriving someone of their freedom for decades? I don't think the law code should be Draconian or anything, but it should be a possibility.
Abortion: Yes.
Evolution in School: Yes. It's a theory, just like gravity and the germ theory of disease. You could argue it's more sound than gravity, since at least we can see DNA. We're still looking for the basis of gravity.
War in Iraq: We should have finished this back in the First Gulf War. Since we didn't, we should have gotten more support and perhaps established a government-in-exile ready to take over.
War in Afghanistan: Stay until things are stable enough for us to leave.

I agree with bbdaniels. ID is religious, not scientific. Science can be proven or disproven; it's falsifiable. I'm an atheist, and that's a matter of faith. The existence of gods can't be proven or disproven.

Better question, why does anyone care what you (or anyone else) thinks?

I'll try:
Gay Marriage: Absolutely positively not.
Guns: Same as Master Warrior
Prayer in school: Same as Master Warrior
Death Penalty: Yes
Abortion: Never, not even in cases of Rape/Incest
Evolution in school: Same as Master Warrior
Wars in Afganistan/Iraq: Stay until the job is done.

figle: carbon-dating? soil-age-consistency? mitochondrially-consistent amber-preserved fossils? actually having seen evolution happen (Mendel's work)?

stukus: seconded; save for the wars. we should never have started in Iraq this time around, and there was no justification for doing more than we did in '91. getting involved has set a bad, bad precedent for US foreign policy.

afghanistan: just a mess. it makes no sense to wage war on "nations" in the western sense of the word anymore... this fact was not apparent in '01, so we're stuck there now to clean up our own mess. it has actually been the case since Vietnam -- actually, no nation has declared war on another since 1942. the age of modern war is over, and we don't yet understand postmodern war.

conservative man, gj at being a hack. your positions are even less clear/nuanced than master warrior's.

and "stay until the job is done" has no meaning at all. the "war on terror" (the ostensible "job" of those two wars) will never end. hence the military actions in iraq and afghanistan cannot.

Gay Marriage: People have a right to do what ever they want with their lives, as long as it does not harm anyone else. Not letting them marry somebody is terrible, it defies the liberty that our own country is built upon.

Guns: Must have a permit to own, and must be an adult to purchase, 14 to legally use.
Prayer in school: Sure, but teachers shouldn't FORCE a child to pray, but it should be voluntary.

Death Penalty: Only when neccisairy.

Abortion: Only in cases of Rape or other un-voluntairy acts of you know what. If the parent isn't able to take care of the child, then the child should be admitted to an adoption facility. But, free-will is in effect, so people can do what they want as long, yet again, it doesn't harm anything.

Evolution in school: Voluntairily only.

Wars in Afganistan/Iraq: Pull out of Iraq: no reason to be there. Stay in Afganistan until the job is done.

Oh and also, for the guns thing, people who have murdered or harmed somebody is not allowed to have a gun. Also somebody who is mentally or emotionally ill should not be able to have a gun.

Gay marriage: Yes of course
Guns: No guns allowed
Prayer in School: No prayers in school
Death Penalty: Of course not. We are not still in the dark ages
Abortion: Freely done for whatever reason
Evolution in School: Of course yes. We are not still in the dark ages
War in Iraq: Shouldn't have started
War in Afghanistan: Shouldn't have started
Gitmo/CIA Blacksites/Torture: Shouldn't exist

Gay marriage: Attempts to deny this violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
Guns: Outright banning violates the 2nd amendment. However, restrictions on heavy military weapons are constitutional.
Prayer in School: Private individual prayer is fine, but organized events involving prayer have better places to do this than our public schools
Death Penalty: Up to the States, personally think its pointless to execute.
Abortion: Yes. Any particular line we draw saying its ok on this side and not ok on this side is by nature arbitrary. I'm not ok with it in the third trimester, keeping with the Roe v Wade SC decision.
Evolution in School: Of course. Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory at all (a theory must at least have a potential test one way or another.) ID is nothing more than creationism with a modern cloak.
War in Iraq: Pointless. So pointless that I spent the entire invasion playing with myself underneath the polar ice cap (I'm not even joking a little bit)
War in Afghanistan: We should have found Osama, and screwed the pooch on that. We owe Afganistan a lot of money to rebuild their country after we helped blow it up both now and against the Soviets.
Gitmo/CIA Blacksites/Torture: No. We should declare them as prisoners of war, which allows us to keep them imprisoned until the war is over. However, this affords them certain rights under the Geneva Convention. This would be a nice balance between the needs of security and human rights.

Gay Marriage- Yes
Guns- Nothing with scopes or explosives
Prayer in School- Optional
Death Penalty- Yes
Abortion- Only until the end of the first trimester
Evolution- Yes
Wars In The Middle East- Iraq is almost done we just pulled out of Anbar so it won't be too much longer. As for Afghanistan we should be putting more focus there and attacks into Pakistan because thats where their leadership symbols are.
Gitmo- Terrible idea to shut it down. I felt a lot better with terrorists in a hostile communist country as oppose to right outside of Chicago
Torture- HELL YES. Any enemy wants to kill as many of us as possible. That includes everyone I love. If it came to it I'd torture them myself
CIA- The few failures of it are known. The exponentially more successes are classified. They keep you safe.

TMW if you want people to know your view put them as your comment and when it comes up tell people to look at your profile

Actually, TMW, Although I completely disagree with you, I generally respect your views and can agree to disagree with you except for one. Science Classes should teach Science-based curriculum. Intelligent design still has zero scientific evidence - it's based on faith. Faith has a place, it's called religion. It's not science. If someone ever comes up with a theory that agrees with the scientific evidence and is based on the scientific evidence, then that theory can take it's place as a scientific hypothesis that should be taught in science classes.

I still don't get the point of Intelligent design. It's not testable, it's not provable. There's absolutely nothing in the theory of evolution that assumes the non-existence of God. So if you're not stuck on the whole universe in 7 days dogma, then what's the problem with God having created a system that allows his creation to take time? Why not? If God proves he exists, then faith becomes useless. Why wouldn't he create a system that provides for reasonable doubt, so that faith becomes something that you must hold to WITHOUT evidence?

@figle - If you think ID is a scientific theory, you need to bone up on your basic scientific method.

Remember that old New Yorker cartoon where two scientists are talking about a process on a blackboard, and at one point all the processes go into a cloud which says "And then a miracle happens", and then it points to "Success"? THAT is what happens when you throw out the scientific method. Any "theory" that requires you to take something without ANY scientific evidence isn't science. NOTE: There are plenty of theories for which we have no direct scientific evidence, and even some where there is no evidence. BUT...none of them can NEVER have the evidence. Just because we've never seen a Biggs-Hogson (I think I got that wrong) particle doesn't mean they don't exist - but unlike the existence of God, we think that we will eventually find one!

Intelligent design is not a legitimate scientific theory, and hence does not belong in any public educational system.

In science, we postulate hypotheses and gather evidence. It's called the scientific method. We do not create theories based around fantasies. We do not push theories further than the evidence warrants. Case in point: in Plato's academy, it was postulated that the sex of a child was determined by which testis the sperm came from. This was quickly tested (you can imagine how) and almost as quickly (w/in 9 months or so) refuted.

jbalcorn, I think you meant Higgs boson.... ;)

Should Alchemy be taught alongside Chemistry?
Should Astrology be taught alongside Astronomy?

@abgemacht - Excellent point!

@PatDragon - Yeah, that's it! :-)

The court fees to get someone on death row far outweigh the amount it takes to keep them in prison for 50+ years. But why does money even matter there?

Intelligent design, while a legitimate idea, and don't get me wrong it is a PERFECTLY legitimate idea, is not science. It is not provable. It is philosophy. That is that. Doesn't mean it's not true, doesn't mean it shouldn't be taught, but not in BIOLOGY class. Philosophy class or theology class is where it belongs.

We never should have gone to Iraq... how can you say there should have been a 2-month shock and awe? That's barbaric and worse than what we're doing now, which at least sort of considers the well-being of Iraqis.... if belatedly.

Torture is also wrong. When the Vietcong tortured Americans who were totally certainly enemy combatants, were they justified in doing so? Also, studies show that torture does not produce credible intel anyway. It's similar to the death penalty in that it's not only wrong in every case, it's not even worth it.

The rest of your views though, they surprised me in that they are reasonable. Keep modifying and maybe one day all your positions will be reasonable. And believe me, they should and do change over time. If they do not, then there is a problem.