I'm confused about the American Republican party

[Mavfin]

For some people it may be ideological, but not for everyone. I personally believe in both gay marriage rights and the right to bear arms. But our values also must be prioritized in some way. The question of course is how we do this, and in what way. I'm speaking in more generalized terms, such as freedom vs. equality, order vs justice, and such. But in the case of gay marriage and gun rights, I place a higher value on the former. The reason is because being against it would treat a group of people in our society as second class citizens, while the latter is more of a broad issue, and while I consider people rather than guns to be dangerous, nevertheless there can be potentially harmful consequences on regarding gun laws. There is absolutely no harm done to society by allowing gays to marry. The context of specific values and policy must be measured in some way, saying they both fall under personal freedoms is not enough because it oversimplifies things. Although the right to bear arms could very well end up being necessary to achieve things like marriage equality, ironically enough I will leave strict gun laws to the utopian Libs like Obama. Afterall, us revolutionaries need our guns too. I wouldn't be surprised in the least bit if conservatives changed their position on the right to bear arms if they knew people like me agreed with them, lol.

I wasn't assigning relative values to them, but Eppie obviously was.

Eppie will say gun control doesn't even belong on the same page with gay marriage, which IMO shows his political bias very clearly. He's entitled to have his views; I'm just pointing out that what he accused me of, he did in the act of accusing me of it. My own values did show when I picked these two pet issues of the two sides. To me, at the core, both issues come down to government poking its nose in where it's not needed. At that level, their relative value is the same. Personal freedom is being infringed, and if you don't stop it, they'll just take more of it.

And in case Eppie misunderstood me, I'm *not* against gay marriage. I don't care who's in whose bed, or how many of them there are or what gender they are, as long as all parties are old enough to consent to whatever they're doing. None of my business unless they're keeping me awake with their noise , and definitely not the government's business.

As far as second-class citizens, not letting gays marry definitely does that to them, but taking away people's 2nd amendment rights and only letting the government do it makes *everyone* a 2nd class citizen. So, relative values at that point become tied very much to your personal views. I submit that any party that opposes either one is wrong, and leave it at that. Eppie doesn't like it when I lump the Republicans and Democrats together and say that they're all bad, I guess. To his idea the Democrats are all good, I guess, and I see them as just as freedom-restricting as the religious right in their own way.