It is too bad that the people talking about the sanctity of marriage all the time don't have the same attitude about divorce and the family trauma it induces. Right Newt?

Gee, it seems like just yesterday these guys were complaining about a marriage penalty tax.

The new liberal pass time is quoting Michael Steele out of context to make him appear ridiculous. Americans will catch on to this trick soon.

"The new liberal pass time is quoting Michael Steele out of context to make him appear ridiculous. Americans will catch on to this trick soon."

Please feel free to present to correct quote and give the correct context. Interesting that you whine about something, yet make absolutely no attempt to correct the very thing that you whined about. One has to wonder why that might be.

If only what they said was about facts or logical implications. It's about resentment; in this case, throwing fuel on a dying ember.

"The new liberal pass time is.."

Al, it's 'past time', not 'pass time'. Jesus Christ, at least get the spelling right, even if you can't get the arguement right.

Oh, yes, those meanies, redefining 'spouse' to include pairs of adults in exclusive contracts.

What this really means is that they want to legally be able to offer spouse language to some employees, but not others. You know, let's exclude those gays, lesbians, blacks, and I dunno whatever they're upset about.

Actualy, I think that assuming that Steele was speaking from the perspective of an employer, is perhaps overly gracious. It is giving him the benefit of the doubt, when I don't know that he really even made that much sense.

He really doesn't specify in what regard or from whose perspective he is speaking, but the point about it applying to everyone with a spouse does certainly apply. I think Steele just made the argument for no one getting married without realizing it.

It is better to not be a new spouse because it might cost more money. He doesn't clarify why that might be or why that wasn't understood before, but that is really his only point. Imagine, two people living together costs more than one. Brilliant.

I think the word "Al" was looking for is "pastime" as in, someth--

(Wait, isn't it about time for the moderator to stop incorrect grammar/spelling/usage corrections? Not defending "Al"...)

I would just like to say that some of us gay people (some studies suggest as high as 15%) have children, and a larger percentage of couples would like a child.
When they say "think of the children" they never seem to be thinking about MY children...

I have to say that I am kinda impressed that Steele is able to pack so much wrongness into his brief but frequent public statements. In this latest instance, he unwittingly makes a case against our whole dysfunctional employer-based system and does so by making some fundamentally incorrect economic assumptions. Setting aside the interests that employers have in insuring families as opposed to individuals, Steele seems to be operating under the assumption that modern families are still following the model of 50s sitcoms in which one spouse is the breadwinner while the other is a homemaker with no access to employer based insurance except through their spouse. The fact is that its more likely than not that in modern marriages and particularly gay marriages that both spouses will work. If working gays are now grouping up under one plan, all that means for small businesses is that they are just as likely to reduce their health care costs.

How do progressives recapture the word "family" from the right-wing punks and fundies?

It won't matter once Obama passes his national health care system, so why bring this up?

Steele implys that the insurance for an employees family/spouse is paid for by the employer. In most cases it is not, it is paid for by the employee. Only the employee's amount is paid for by the employer. So Steele fails on this one. At least he's consistent.

I was unaware that Republicans believed in any circumstance in which a business should pay health-care for anyone, much less spouses. These days, those benies are getting more and more paired down anyway.

But Steele also shared with the gun enthusiasts his thoughts on gay marriage, specifically with regards to the economy.

Classic

Wayne says: Only the employee's amount is paid for by the employer. So Steele fails on this one. At least he's consistent

Actually, many small businesses don't "pay" for anyone, they enable the individual workers to access a group rate (which is usually less costly than going on the open market) and might kick in a few dollars per paycheck.

Steele gives indisputable evidence of the Republican view that money is far more important than people; especially rich people’s money. The Republicans have been, are, and always will be the party of the very wealthy and big business.

It won't matter once Obama passes his national health care system, so why bring this up?

Good question -- why would Steele bring something up that's so easily debunked even with the system we have now? Under Steele's construction, employers should be discouraging -- even penalizing -- all of their employees from getting married, because those spouses are going to cost the company money. They should be firing people who have or adopt children, because the healthcare for those children is going to cost the company money.

You'd think that businesses would look at Steele's plan, look at Obama's plan, and think, "It would be way too much trouble to fire all of those employees and find new ones, even in this job market. I should probably support universal health care so it's off my books entirely rather than trying to police my employees' personal lives."

Of course, since conservatives are all about policing everyone else's personal life, they'll never understand why employers might be less enthusiastic about doing so than they are, or why employers might decide that it's a waste of their time to pry into everyone's marital and family status when conservatives absolutely live for poking their noses into places where they have no business going.

There is more irony here: Republicans support child tax credits etc. for the upper middle class etc., thus costing the childless or small even blue-color families lots of $$$ subsidizing well-off kids.

Making all kinds of assumptions about Steele's underlying message here, doesn't he make the case for Republican's supporting universal health care? If American businesses are currently being forced to support non employees via health insurance (which is variably the case) shouldn't Republicans support shifting the costs onto another entity? That has been the underlying Republican mantra since forever.

That's weird. I blogged about this yesterday, based upon an AP article I read, but was having trouble figuring out who Steele was addressing. It only said he was addressing "Republicans at the state convention" in Georgia, so I assumed it was some sort of political convention. Now I see it was an NRA meeting. I wonder why they excluded that from the article.

Doing a search of the page, I see that the caption on the photograph lists that it was an NRA meeting, but nowhere in the actual article does it mention it. I mean, why refer to them as "Republicans" if it's an NRA convention? I know they're basically synonymous, but still, they should have called it an NRA convention instead. Weird.

Actually, Michael Steele's argument makes perfect sense if one accepts that the marriage franchise should strictly be made available to only heterosexual couples. Pure discrimination, in other words. In that realm, no one is bothered by employers paying a little extra for one's new opposite sex spouse, and new offspring. Only when the homos want it too is it a problem.

Disclaimer: obviously, I do not support that bigoted viewpoint. But I think that's where he's coming from.

This crowd simply believes that if you're here and say you're one of us then you obviously think like we do...about everything. Insanity and hypocrisy is not how we think therefor you cannot think like that either...anything sounding to the contrary, you must not actually mean.