Lol, who you decide to marry IS a choice, Sean, and if you decide to marry someone of another race, that is a choice, too. Are you now trying to say that we are also predisposed to marry people of another race? I think you ought to think about that one a little harder.

I have no problem with people marrying someone from another race, but if you are trying to say that we are born to interracial marriage in the same way you're saying people are born gay I'm gonna laugh my ass off...

nice twist and spin. that was an example of where the courts defended minority rights.

yes he did...i went out and grabbed something to back it up (there is plenty out there)..i happened to copy something that lists him and 15 other famous people who did (including jefferson)...i know it's overkill, just thought you might find it interesting. (btw, "hemp" is another name for marijuana...it is the industrial term..."hemp" fields contain both male and female plants, people who grow today, usually weed out the male plants to reduce seeds and make bigger buds.)

1. SHAYKH AZ-ZAWAJI HAYDAR (c. 1150-1221)


Persian founder of the Haydari order of Sufis, he is credited with discovering hashish and cultivating hemp in his monastery in Khurasan. By his order, hemp was planted around his tomb, which is still visited by Sufi pilgrims.

2. JALAL-UD-DIN MUHAMMAD (1483-1530)


First Mogul emperor of India, he loved hashish sweetmeats and planted hemp near Delhi. His grandson Akbar the Great (1542-1605) expanded the empire to include Afghanistan and Bengal and systemized hemp and poppy cultivation throughout northern India.

3. GARCIA DA ORTA (c. 1490-1570)


Portugese physician in Goa, he grew marijuana and other medicines and discussed their use in his Cooloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India (1563). The third book printed in India, it was widely consulted by herbalists during the Age of Exploration.

4. FRANCOIS RABELAIS (1494?-1553)


French author of Gargantua and Pantagruel, he grew up on a hemp farm which his father had inherited. His intimate knowledge of hemp cultivation is revealed in the chapter on the herb Pantagruelion in book 3 of Pantagruel.

5. LEONHARD FUCHS (1501-1566)


German botanist, he grew marijuana and other drug plants and had his artists draw them from life for his book De Historia Stirpium (1542). Fuchs gave the plant its present botanical name, Cannabis sativa.

6. JAMES I (1566-1625)


Hoping to establish a colonial fiber source, the King of England allowed gardens for hemp and flax cultivation to be given to each Jamestown colonist in 1611; this was the first private property in Virginia. In 1619 the first representative government in the colonies, the Virginia General Assembly, required all householders having any hemp seed to plant it the next season. This was America's first marijuana law.

7. WILLIAM BYRD II (1674-1744)

In 1737 this Virginia planter, trying to collect bounties for hemp offered by the British government, sowed hemp on his 180,000-acre plantation called Westover. Byrd reported: "It thrives very well in this climate, but labour being much dearer than in Muscovey, as well as the freight, we can make no earnings of it."

8. CAROLUS LINNAEUS (1707-1778)

Swedish father of modern botany and inventor of the binomial classification system for plants and animals, in 1753 he subsumed all varieties of hemp under the name Cannabis sativa. Linnaeus raised marijuana on his windowsill while investigating plant sexuality in 1760.

9. GEORGE WASHINGTON (1732-1799)

This U.S. president imported hemp seeds from all over the world and planted them in his vineyard at Mt. Vernon from 1765 to 1796. He hoped to establish an American hemp industry able to compete with those of England, Russia and Italy.

10. THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743-1826)

One of the most versatile U.S. presidents, he planted an acre of hemp at Monticello in 1811, wrote a pamphlet on hemp cultivation, and invented a power machine for breaking hemp in 1815.

11. HENRY CLAY (1777-1852)

U.S. senator from Kentucky, he got a bill passed in 1810 that required the navy to purchase American hemp products rather than imported ones. This established hemp as the foremost cash crop of Kentucky, a position it held until the Civil War.

12. SIR ROBERT CHRISTISON (1797-1882)

Scottish toxicologist and president of the British Medical Association, Dr. Christison cultivated marijuana in his father's botanical garden at the Edinburgh College of Physicians. His noted works on plant drugs are still consulted by modern pharmacologists.

13. THEODORE ROOSEVELT (1858-1919)

This U.S. president established a federal "poison farm" in Washington D.C., in 1904, near the site now occupied by the Pentagon. Fields of marijuana, opium, coca, and other drugs were planted so the U.S. wouldn't have to import them.

14. HENRY FORD (1863-1947)

Pioneer automobile manufacturer, he cultivated a marijuana crop for "experimental purposes," which he surrounded with a cyclone fence. Supposedly the plot was destroyed after his death, but his family later found the marijuana growing wild.

15. LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON (1908-1973)

While U.S. president, he signed a bill establishing the federal marijuana farm at the University of Mississippi in July, 1968, as a research center for the botany, chemistry, and cultivation of the drug. This farm now supplies most of the marijuana used for official medical research in America.

16. TOMMY RETTIG (1941- )

Former child star of the TV series Lassie, Rettig was arrested in 1972 for growing marijuana on his ranch outside San Luis Obispo, Calif.

You sure? What you said was:

"the law pre 67 was such that people thought that it was a "choice" to love a person of another race...and they disapproved of that choice."

Seemed like you were saying that they thought it was a choice and that it wasn't. Sorry if it seemed like I was twisted something, it seemed twisted the way I found it. If you are saying that government can't limit our choices in life, I can give you bunches they cram down my throat every day.

I've been reminded on TV at least three times today that the state troopers are looking to catch me without my seatbelt on...

sc, you missed it.

i never said i thought it was a wrong choice, just that it was a choice.

having sex with someone the same gender as you is not a natural biological need.
you've heard it all before, but the reason for having sex, biologically, is procreation. blah, blah.

i would think that gay being a choice would be a better seller for the thing. why take pride in something that just happened to you.
make a choice, and stand behind the decision. that is something to be proud of.
if you were born gay, i don't get the parades.

gay groups, who have an agenda of making gay seem as normal as possible,(also, don't confuse gays groups with all gay people, any more than you should confuse al sharpton and all black people.)think being born gay makes it seems more legit. i have no proof of that, just a feeling i get.

another thing i have noticed about discussing these things with gay people, or gay defenders, is that it always seems to come back to somehow being afraid or confused by gay people. one of my family members is gay, and one of the members of my band is gay, and in a civil union with their long time partner. one of the best friends i ever had, and who i miss very much, was gay. i am not scared of gay people. i am not confused.

all i'm saying, is that "being yourself" or not, everything you do or don't do is a choice. it's a cop-out to try and lay the responsibility for anything you do on anything but your own beautiful free will.