Why aren’t people up in arms about Polygamy not being legal? The gov. is telling you that you can’t have more than 1 wife/husband.
[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
lixy wrote:
bigflamer wrote:
lixy wrote:
I, for one, have no problems with the tyranny of the majority.
Power to the people!
What if the tyranny of the majority wished to round up all of the muslims and suspicious people of ME descent in the US, and herd them into camps such as they did in WWII with the Japanese?
Would you support the tyranny of the majority then?
If it came up in a referendum, then I’d have no problems with it. Not that I would support discrimination, but the will of the majority is supreme in my eyes.
Great. That’s not how our country is set up. We have a bill of rights to ensure protection of even the smallest minority: the individual. [/quote]
Very well stated
[quote]lixy wrote:
bigflamer wrote:
lixy wrote:
I, for one, have no problems with the tyranny of the majority.
Power to the people!
What if the tyranny of the majority wished to round up all of the muslims and suspicious people of ME descent in the US, and herd them into camps such as they did in WWII with the Japanese?
Would you support the tyranny of the majority then?
If it came up in a referendum, then I’d have no problems with it. Not that I would support discrimination, but the will of the majority is supreme in my eyes.[/quote]
You’re trying to have it both ways here.
Are you actually saying that you would have no issue with the herding of muslims and suspicious people of ME descent into camps, if it was passed by referendum?
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
Although I understand the point you fellas are trying to make, I believe that the court made a good decision.
Discrimination against a segment of the population is still discrimination, regardless of whether the people like it or not.
If 75% of Cali voted to take the right of blacks to vote away, would you agree that the judges would be wrong to overturn that? Even if it’s the “Will of the people”?
To me, you can’t fucking vote on whether something is discrimination or not- it either is or it isn’t. This clearly is.[/quote]
Also well stated. I believe that the courts were in their proper place here. Individual rights, in this particular case, were looked after by the courts.
[quote]entheogens wrote:
It seems undemocratic that a certain sector of society would not have the right to get married, if that’s what they want.[/quote]
This absolutely, positively makes no sense as it is written.
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
Although I understand the point you fellas are trying to make, I believe that the court made a good decision.
Discrimination against a segment of the population is still discrimination, regardless of whether the people like it or not.
If 75% of Cali voted to take the right of blacks to vote away, would you agree that the judges would be wrong to overturn that? Even if it’s the “Will of the people”?
To me, you can’t fucking vote on whether something is discrimination or not- it either is or it isn’t. This clearly is.[/quote]
Setting aside that race is in a different category due to its unique history in our country, assuming you are right about discrimination, you are okay with a court mandating that tax laws treating rich and poor alike (therefore no progressive tax), or striking down welfare benefits on the basis that they “discriminate” - i.e., confer a benefit on one category of people without the other category being eligible to share in it - against rich people?
You’d be ok with that, I assume? If not, why not?
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
Although I understand the point you fellas are trying to make, I believe that the court made a good decision.
Discrimination against a segment of the population is still discrimination, regardless of whether the people like it or not.
If 75% of Cali voted to take the right of blacks to vote away, would you agree that the judges would be wrong to overturn that? Even if it’s the “Will of the people”?
To me, you can’t fucking vote on whether something is discrimination or not- it either is or it isn’t. This clearly is.
Setting aside that race is in a different category due to its unique history in our country, assuming you are right about discrimination, you are okay with a court mandating that tax laws treating rich and poor alike (therefore no progressive tax), or striking down welfare benefits on the basis that they “discriminate” - i.e., confer a benefit on one category of people without the other category being eligible to share in it - against rich people?
You’d be ok with that, I assume? If not, why not?[/quote]
good point.
[quote]Phate89 wrote:
Our constitution guarantees equal protection under the law. We live in a Constitutional Republic; the will of the people isn’t supposed to supersede individual rights. It shouldn’t be up to voters. That would be like taking a vote in Georgia the late 1800s whether slavery should be re-instituted and allowing it to continue because the voters wanted it.
Sometimes the minority has to be protected from the tyranny of the majority[/quote]
We’ve argued this to death before on previous threads. Suffice it to say I think your analogy is flawed, and “marriage” is a package of pre-defined government benefits that the government can give to encourage a behavior it wants to encourage - the only benefit of marriage that gay people can’t get via contract is the tax benefit (and this decision doesn’t do anything about federal tax benefits). That’s it for me on this issue on this thread.
And people always get on everyone’s ass about not voting…
[quote]lixy wrote:
bigflamer wrote:
lixy wrote:
I, for one, have no problems with the tyranny of the majority.
Power to the people!
What if the tyranny of the majority wished to round up all of the muslims and suspicious people of ME descent in the US, and herd them into camps such as they did in WWII with the Japanese?
Would you support the tyranny of the majority then?
If it came up in a referendum, then I’d have no problems with it. Not that I would support discrimination, but the will of the majority is supreme in my eyes.[/quote]
Well I guess that explains “libertarian socialism”.
The society has the liberty to do anything.
Why make up a new word for national socialism or communism?
[quote]bigflamer wrote:
Are you actually saying that you would have no issue with the herding of muslims and suspicious people of ME descent into camps, if it was passed by referendum? [/quote]
Yes.
[quote]wirewound wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Doesn’t seem right does it?
It seems perfect. The job of the judiciary is to overturn unconstitutional laws - that’s the whole point.
If you want to get gay marriage banned (why??), you have to change the constitution. Changing the constitution is obviously constitutional. Then no court can strike it down. The threshold for changing the constitution is higher because the constitution and BoR is SUPPOSED to represent a more durable set of fundamental human rights and the proper function of government.[/quote]
How is defining marriage unconstitutional? No ones rights are being violated. A gay man can marry any woman that will have him, just as I can. Same right in the same situation.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
wirewound wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Doesn’t seem right does it?
It seems perfect. The job of the judiciary is to overturn unconstitutional laws - that’s the whole point.
If you want to get gay marriage banned (why??), you have to change the constitution. Changing the constitution is obviously constitutional. Then no court can strike it down. The threshold for changing the constitution is higher because the constitution and BoR is SUPPOSED to represent a more durable set of fundamental human rights and the proper function of government.
How is defining marriage unconstitutional? No ones rights are being violated. A gay man can marry any woman that will have him, just as I can. Same right in the same situation.[/quote]
It seems to defy credulity that a court would discover in 2008 that a Constitution that has been in place since 1879 bans a practice that has similarly been in place since that time, without the Constitution having been amended to address the issue, either directly or indirectly.
You guys still don’t get that the judiciary is the proper place to INTERPRET laws, as written, until new laws are written to reflect changing conditions and times?
Things become much clearer, and simpler, if you stop looking for a vast left-wing conspiracy everywhere.
The answer is simple. Change the constitution, at either the national or state level to reflect issues currently in contention.
Crying over interpretations you disagree with is futile… and misguided.
[quote]vroom wrote:
You guys still don’t get that the judiciary is the proper place to INTERPRET laws, as written, until new laws are written to reflect changing conditions and times?
Things become much clearer, and simpler, if you stop looking for a vast left-wing conspiracy everywhere.
The answer is simple. Change the constitution, at either the national or state level to reflect issues currently in contention.
Crying over interpretations you disagree with is futile… and misguided.[/quote]
I see your view has not changed.
“Interpretation” of laws is not a blank check to invent or prescribe new policy positions out of whole cloth. Nor is it the role of the judiciary to “advance the ball” of social policy and put the legislature on the defensive to go apply a corrective if the collective will of the people doesn’t like the judicial outcome.
That is the opposite of our system of government, going back to documents 200 years ago that mentioned this very problem the California court is engaging in. The Framers predicted such a problem and tried to design around it.
For one main reason - if a judiciary gets to draw all the lines as to what Equal Protection means based on their social preferences, what boundaries do they have? By this rationale, when could a judiciary ever get a decision wrong, if the guiding light is really nothing more than preference?
The question was dealt with even before the federal constitution was ratified.
Your position is untenable, largely because you haven’t considered the unintended consequences. Like Frankenstein’s monster, what happens when a judiciary-as-agent-of-change starts producing policy results you don’t like? When such an active judiciary turns on its creators, suddenly they will discover the beauty of separation-of-powers.
The California Supreme Court invented a new right, and they did so by curiously suggesting that because statutory rights gave gays and lesbians a number of rights, it is therefore a logical outcome that their existence essentially “morphed” into a constitutional right. That makes no sense, and defeats the entire point of a written constitution.
This quote is especially weird:
This suggests that a judiciary can never get the law wrong. False on its face, it also gives entirely too much arbitrary power to a branch of government that is not designed to have those powers.
No thanks - even were your version of government available, we’d pass on it in favor of one more responsible to the republican form of government.
[quote]vroom wrote:
You guys still don’t get that the judiciary is the proper place to INTERPRET laws, as written, until new laws are written to reflect changing conditions and times?
Things become much clearer, and simpler, if you stop looking for a vast left-wing conspiracy everywhere.
The answer is simple. Change the constitution, at either the national or state level to reflect issues currently in contention.
Crying over interpretations you disagree with is futile… and misguided.[/quote]
The problem is the judiciary changing the meaning of the Constitution - it’s a matter of degree, but at a certain point it becomes obvious that the judiciary has stopped interpreting the law and started enacting new law.
[quote]vroom wrote:
You guys still don’t get that the judiciary is the proper place to INTERPRET laws, as written, until new laws are written to reflect changing conditions and times?
Things become much clearer, and simpler, if you stop looking for a vast left-wing conspiracy everywhere.
The answer is simple. Change the constitution, at either the national or state level to reflect issues currently in contention.
Crying over interpretations you disagree with is futile… and misguided.[/quote]
If judges start to interpret black as white in an important part of a constitution I think removing the judges is a better option than re-writing a constitution.
What would stop them from ass-raping it again?
The fact you guys don’t like the decision, and there are those decisions I dislike as well, does not change the fact that laws are often obtuse and difficult to apply.
They are not always as black and white as many of you would like to believe.
In any case, it’s not just my opinion that the judiciary interprets the law, it’s how the system was designed. Apparently, no mere mortal can write perfect laws… go figure.
According to whitehouse.gov itself…
[i]Judicial Branch
The judicial branch hears cases that challenge or require interpretation of the legislation passed by Congress and signed by the President.[i]
[quote]lixy wrote:
bigflamer wrote:
Are you actually saying that you would have no issue with the herding of muslims and suspicious people of ME descent into camps, if it was passed by referendum?
Yes.[/quote]
Wow. I wouldn’t have thought that you would go on record as supporting a government action which crushes an individuals rights, so long as it was passed by referendum. You’re weird.
I get the feeling that you have no idea what you’re talking about. Just a hunch…
[quote]vroom wrote:
The fact you guys don’t like the decision, and there are those decisions I dislike as well, does not change the fact that laws are often obtuse and difficult to apply.
They are not always as black and white as many of you would like to believe.
In any case, it’s not just my opinion that the judiciary interprets the law, it’s how the system was designed. Apparently, no mere mortal can write perfect laws… go figure.
According to whitehouse.gov itself…
[i]Judicial Branch
The judicial branch hears cases that challenge or require interpretation of the legislation passed by Congress and signed by the President.[/i][/quote]
I’m sure you realize this wasn’t responsive to the point.