Legal to get high, but illegal to love...

I agree. I'm fairly ambivalent on the matter of pot, though I'm slightly in favor of it. But the fact that people seem to care more about getting high than treating homosexuals as human beings is disgusting. I remember hearing about the measure on The Daily Show. Stewart says gay marriage is legal in WA, the people are sorta pleased. Pot is legal, the crowd goes nuts. Seriously, people!? Those are your priorities? Really pissed me off.

 

Because straight people think a lot more about pot than about gay rights. Not really offensive to me, as it's just human nature to care more about things that affect you than those that don't.

 

Sorry, but I really don't see how the two issues are related, never mind how they somehow conflict?

I agree it is somewhat of a sad commentary that more people support marijuana legalization than LGBTQ equality. In Washington state, where both marijuana and marriage equality were on the ballot, marijuana passed by a solid 55.7-44.3 margin while marriage equality was only approved 53.7-46.3.

Interestingly enough, marriage equality actually outperformed pot in King County, where Seattle is located, and where marriage equality passed 67-33 but marijuana only passed 63.5-36.5, meaning Seattle was 7 pts stronger for queer equality than for weed. The results were similar in ultra-liberal San Juan County. It was primarily the rural Republican areas that were more willing to consider marijuana than marriage equality. Contrary to what you said, people in cities and liberal areas actually do place more value on love than on getting high.

But there are thousands of different issues out there to address; yes gay rights are important but that doesn't mean advocating for other issues somehow weakens the cause.

Anyway the fact that marijuana legalization would pass by such a similarly large margin in Colorado (55.32-44.68) as in WA- which at the same time approved of marriage equality- still bodes well for your state's leftward shift on social issues.

Not to mention that marriage equality-supporting Barack Obama carried the state comfortably again, while George W. Bush was able to win there in 2004 with the most shameless fearmongering campaign against gays ever.

In 2006, when Colorado voters passed the state's anti-marriage amendment 55-45, at the same time they rejected a marijuana legalization amendment 59-41. Marriage equality outperformed marijuana then, there's no reason to think it wouldn't happen again if CO got to vote on marriage again.

Clearly minds are changing rapidly there. (And 45% voting against an amendment back in 2006 was actually a strong showing for us)

I really wouldn't doubt that a majority of Coloradans now likely support marriage equality. Perk up, your state is likely the one bright spot in that region surrounded by backward Mormon and Evangelical-dominated states.

 

The War on Drugs is almost as great a human rights abuse as the lack of marriage equality. Tens of thousands of people are being thrown in jails with horrible conditions and having their lives ruined for victimless crimes, and the laws are also being used to unfairly target minority populations. Saying you are opposed to progress in one area because it came before progress in yours is wrong. Its like some of the women's voting advocates who made a big complaint of black men being allowed to vote at the end of the civil war because they got the vote before women.

 

Hear ya man. it will come tho. gay marriage will be acceptable more and more in time.

 

I agree with the OP in some respects, but I disagree with your reasoning overall. You imply that the two issues are comparable when they are not. Drug use has a direct psychoactive effect and rips apart communities (case in point- 1990s crack boom). The laws don't unfairly target minority communities, minority communities are on average more likely to be poorer, and overall poor people use more drugs than rich people. Rural whites from southern and midwestern states are also disproportionately "targeted" because they use methamphetamines at a much higher rate than most americans, but it's not because of their race. It's because of their economic conditions. The problem is primarily an economic one, not a race-based one. Gay marriage has absolutely no effect on the non-gay community, while drug use has concrete effects (neighborhood degradation, increased car accidents, crime) and abstract effects (promising students getting caught up in drugs and failing, a person trying a harder drug while high and getting hooked (both of which are thing's I've seen)) on the non-drug using community. There are many reasons we must legalize gay marriage, especially on human rights grounds, but we can't legalize these drugs because they don't constitute victimless crimes. They directly and negatively impact people's lives.

 

Do you need to be able to get married to love someone and live with them? And is the purpose of marriage to sanction love? It seems strange that government would be concerned with people's love, even if they're heterosexual. I say we take away marriage from everyone.

 

I do concede that that is true for most drugs, but marijuana has been shown to be less harmful than tobacco and alcohol in some ways, yet people still are being thrown in jail for it.

Also, the racial element cannot be ignored. Race and the War on Drugs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia contains plenty of information (all cited within the article) of how blacks are unfairly targeted by police. The statistics for 1998 are particularly telling: "African-Americans, who only comprised 13% of regular drug users, made up for 35% of drug arrests, 55% of convictions, and 74% of people sent to prison for drug possession crimes." When 13% of the drug-using population makes up 74% of the people sent to prison, something is clearly wrong.

 

The real problem is an economic one, though. There's nothing about black people themselves that affects their drug use or lack thereof. It's simply an economic problem with some cultural elements. Again, poor rural whites use drugs like meth at a comparable rate with poor urban blacks. If the average black person made twice what they do now (which would only be the average white income, a sad legacy of our past), their drug use would almost certainly drop. Another problem is that our culture glorifies drug use through songs and movies that promote them as "cool" and "fun". I thought we had gotten past that with cigarettes, only to find certain drugs promoted like that. I'm only a sophomore in high school and I've already seen 6 people kicked out of my grade for drugs. It's a widespread phenomenon and everyone who denounces it is seen as "uptight" and "restrictive." I believe in personal freedom in most cases, but no one should have the freedom to hurt the community as a whole by lowering their own productivity and potential through drug use.

 

My apologies that Colorado Springs is bringing the entire state down.

 

the war on drugs is far worse than the lack of marriage equality. i mean, people are dying everyday, from overdoses, drug cartel wars, gang wars, etc. b/c of the war on drugs.

 

3 out of 5 baptist divorcees want gays to stop destroying marriage.

 

I think the whole government system is screwy! I hate the stupid laws that pass and i hate the laws which dont pass. Its all f*cked up!

 

I'm not saying blacks use more drugs than other people, in fact, the statistics shown shows that the percentage of black drug users was only slightly higher than the percentage of black Americans. However, the application of "justice" is incredibly biased towards blacks, with many more black drug users being punished than those of any other race.

 

The LGBT community should be very happy about the ballot measures passing regardless of their personal opinions on pot. These votes show that the electorate has moved significantly to the left (at least on social issues) and that only bodes well for the LGBT rights movement.

 

Blacks are more likely to be thrown in jail for getting caught with weed than whites. You are underestimating how many whites smoke pot, there are a lot of them. Guess the proportions of people inside jails due to pot smoking?

 

unfortunately something we need to get used to as sexual minorities is that we are… well... minorities. Therefore issues which effect us are cared about and fought for mostly by us. And they are not as likely to be cared about by… well... everyone else. Legalization appeals and effects more non-minority people (as it somehow is intertwined with every day life) than gay rights along with still having the same standing in minority populations. We will always have to fight harder to get issues which effect us on the table, it is just the way it is.

 

To be honest, I don't see how drugs and gay rights are (or should be) connected.

 

Oh, I'm not underestimating. I see enough of it just at school, about one in five people, and I do agree that black people are unfairly targeted. I'm just saying that the whole racial argument is wrong. Other groups, like native hawaiians/americans and rural whites, are also overrepresented in drug crimes because blacks, rural whites, and native peoples all use drugs at higher-than normal rates. It's just that urban jails are overrepresented in portrayals in the media, and predominantly urban blacks are overrepresented in these jails themselves. In rural jails, most offenders are drug-addled whites (or native peoples in places like Alaska and North Dakota, doing time for alcohol-related offenses). And making drugs legal would just make drug use rates (and subsequent crimes) worse, not solving the problems that illegal drug use causes. Again, LGBT rights have NO effect on anyone except for positive effects on LGBT people, but even my neighbor being a drug user would have a direct effect on me (because my future children would see that and think "well, mr. stone uses it and he's ok, so why can't I?").