[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
Worst fail ever.[/quote]
I dunno, I’ve seen some pretty spectacular ones on the RMP forum.
[quote]wirewound wrote:
I believe the word is not ‘rational’ but ‘constitutional’. The courts are designed to ensure that laws are constitutional - and the constitution holds forth the Bill of Rights and the constitutional amendments which increasingly protect the rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority. To the extent that the job of the courts is to ensure adherence to the constitution and the spirit thereof, it is also the job of the courts to protect the civil rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority.[/quote]
Wrong.
When laws treat people differently according to a social categorization, such laws are measured under the Equal Protection clause. Unless the categorization is a heightened category (think race), then so long as the law that treats categories of people differently have a rational basis, they are constitutional.
“Rational” is “constitutional”, under the EP clause- that is the point.
And “rational” doesn’t mean a panel of judges agrees with the policy - it only need be rational in form and purpose.
And, by the way, the BOR does not “increasingly protect” the rights of the people - courts are not vested with any power to create new ones under the BOR. Moreover, courts have never been charged with the power to sit and judge legislation generally on the basis of “fairness”, imposing their sentiments as a matter of law by a general power to second-guess legislatures.
And, to repeat - courts have no general charge to protect the minority from the majority. Courts protect the minority as stated in existing law - courts do not suddenly decide “hey, these poor guys are not getting what they want at the legislative level, and that is unfair - I’m striking this law down.” Absolute hogwash.
It is beyond description how the Left continues to explain a system that we don’t have, but insist we do. What is it about internet anonymity that makes people try and pass off uninformed opinion as fact?
[quote]Mick28 wrote:
And you’ve “proven” that homosexuals should marry? Hah ah…you’ve had your “logic” sliced, diced and handed back to you several times by posters on this thread. You are very close to sounding like a retard with some of your arguments…But I view it as cheap entertainment, with you playing the part of the fool.
Okay…continue…[/quote]
The “proof” over 26(?) pages is comically thin. We only have proof of a few things, unintentionally:
-
Makavali is incurably confused, switching from absolute relativism to absolute truths in human rights, sometimes in the same paragraph, and he needs Ritalin (usually at the onset of a hard question asked of him)
-
Cap’n PlanIt is fairly low wattage, wants Boston to be more respectful by not calling him “stupid”, but defies his desire to be more respectful by slandering everyone who puts up an argument against him as a “bigot”
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Not a single supporter of gay marriage seems to understand basic American civics
-
We have learned that apparently every policy preference in the known Western world is a “civil right”, and the term “civil right” has been disabused nearly to the point of meaningless (do dumb people have a civil right to a National Merit Scholarship, per Boston’s point? do rich people have a civil right to a tax rate equal to poor people?).
-
The Left continues to demonstrate it has no love or patience for democracy in said pursuit of the Progressive Utopia
[quote]
Makavali wrote:
And yet, Western society found slavery to be morally undesirable and cast it off.
Wait… is that… experimentation… and adaptation?
BostonBarrister wrote:
And was it worth the costs?
CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
Are you really asking if ending slavery was worth the costs? There is a question there? Really?[/quote]
This really wasn’t unclear. The question related directly to Makavali’s quoted statement, and his position on change and experimentation - thus the “it” wasn’t slavery, but the experimentation and adaptation process that adopted and then rejected slavery.
Too bad I can’t get the equivalent of speaking extra slowly to translate into the typed sentence - that might help you to keep up.
[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
…
Your argument boils down to this: extending marriage to gays is a risk that is not worth it. I’ve considered your points as to why it’s not, and still disagree; largely on the basis that the reason it’s such a risk in the first place is that we live in a homophobic society. As I said before, that makes the problem the society, not the homosexuals.[/quote]
Please feel free to demonstrate you understand what the risks actually are at any juncture.
Of course, your last sentence implies that you don’t care what the risks are, and that no risks would be too big if you could figure out how to blame it on homophobia - which, for you, would simply involve asserting that it was due to homophobia.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
A good post for this topic, from USD law professor Gail Heriot:
http://therightcoast.blogspot.com/2005/01/marriage-schmarriage-by-gail-heriot-at.html
[i]January 16, 2005
Marriage, Schmarriage
By Gail Heriot
At USD’s Conference on the Meaning of Marriage this past weekend, my friend and colleague Larry Alexander asked why so many people are willing to tolerate or even endorse civil unions between same-sex couples and yet strongly oppose same-sex marriage. Here in California (and I suspect in some other places too), the legal rights and obligations that arise out the two institutions are precisely the same. The fight is thus essentially over the use of the word “marriage” Or, as Larry put it, what if we were to call same-sex unions “schmarriage,” but otherwise treat opposite-sex and same-sex unions the same? Would that be fine with a significant number of those who oppose same-sex marriage?
Well, maybe it would be. But I don’t think that’s evidence those people are acting irrationally. Symbols matter, especially in a debate that is about symbols. And I see the gay marriage debate as primarily about symbols–and only secondarily about marriage.
First of all, it’s important to remember that the debate over same-sex marriage is not about same-sex marriage at all. It’s about the legal recognition of same-sex marriage. There’s nothing to prevent a same-sex couple from simply declaring themselves married right now, this minute, anywhere in the United States of America. Indeed, there’s nothing to prevent the couple from having, as Shania Twain would put it, “the white dress, the guests, the cake, the car, the whole darn thing.” If they want to, they can start their own church to sanctify the union. After all, this is America. The only problem is that the law won’t recognize the marriage. But that doesn’t mean the couple and their friends and family won’t.
Strangely, however, not that many same-sex couples engage in this sort of “self-help.” (Though some do, and I’ll give them some respect for that.) When the City of San Francisco started granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples a little while ago, surprisingly few of the couples who lined up for blocks said that they already considered themselves married and they were just seeking to have the marriage legalized. They just weren’t married.
Why? There are two possible answers that would make sense to me. First is that it’s not the marriage itself that they are interested in, but rather the legal benefits that flow from the marriage. If so, legal recognition is crucial. But if that’s the case, one would expect that civil unions that provide identical benefits would be just as good. Somehow, however, for large numbers of same-sex couples, they wouldn’t be. Why not?
I think the answer is that for many same-sex couples, a legally-recognized marriage is desired precisely because they regard legal recognition as an endorsement by the community of their relationship. It says, “The State regards this relationship as a worthy one that should receive support.” The same is true of the push to have mainline churches recognize same-sex marriages. It’s not the bare fact of a religious marriage ceremony that is central, since some church, somewhere could easily be found (or created) to endorse same-sex marriage. The desire is to have a major church endorse same-sex marriage as a way of endorsing same-sex relationships generally. It’s just plain better to be able to say that the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Methodist Church or (perhaps even better) a very large church like the Roman Catholic Church, with millions of members, endorses your “life style” than it is to say that the “Tiny Church of the Castro District” endorses it. And, for many, having the church in which they were reared in is important. What being asked for is approval. It’s an undertandable thing; we all crave approval.
The problem is that other people’s approval is the one thing they’re just not entitled to. Nobody is. Approval comes voluntarily or not at all. And rightly or wrongly (and I’ll write on that later), most Americans do not wholly approve of same-sex relationships–at least not at this time and quite possibly never. That doesn’t mean that they don’t like gays or lesbians or that they want to ban same-sex relationships. And it certainly doesn’t mean that they want to turn gays and lesbians into lamp shades (One friend of mine recently suggested–with what I hope and believe was a certain degree of hyperbole–that that significant numbers of people do). But it does mean that they have reservations about public declarations that same-sex relationships are just as desirable as opposite-sex relationships. And recent elections suggest that they are not willing to be corraled into such a declaration.
That doesn’t mean that some of them, perhaps many of them, might not be willing to compromise with … uh … schmarriage … I mean civil unions, which do not put same-sex relationships on the same symbolic footing with opposite-sex relationships and hence do not call upon them to endorse same-sex and opposite-sex unions as equally desirable.
But I’ll have to get back to this later …[/i]
ADDENDUM: Turns out that was the first of a series of very good posts. The rest of the links follow:
http://therightcoast.blogspot.com/2005/01/marriage-schmarriage-part-ii-by-gail.html
http://therightcoast.blogspot.com/2005/01/marriage-schmarriage-part-iii.html
http://therightcoast.blogspot.com/2005/01/marriage-schmarriage-part-iv-edmund.html
http://therightcoast.blogspot.com/2005/01/marriage-schmarriage-part-v-same-sex.html
http://therightcoast.blogspot.com/2005/01/marriage-schmarriage-part-vi-will-same.html
http://therightcoast.blogspot.com/2005/01/marriage-schmarriage-part-vii-partial.html
[/quote]
Bumping this to give Makavali, Cap’n Crunch and anyone else interested a chance to read this series of posts, which really do a fantastic job of explaining my position* - and I would go so far as to say that of a few other participating posters - and do it better than I could do in the disjointed manner in which I necessarily presented things in this web dialog.
*The only points these don’t really get into are why having a bunch of kids born outside of traditional marital relationships would be a bad thing for society.
Thanks for the compliment. You seem like an intelligent guy yourself.
But, in this case, your attempt to squish the concept to make your point is weak sauce.
Here’s the important part of what I wrote, which you omitted from your response:
Again, you’re trying to make a point about a political philosophy generally, right? Or is your point simply that “preserv[ing] existing conditions, institutions, etc., or restor[ing] traditional ones, and limit[ing] change” is doomed to fail, which warms the cockles of your heart?
I could give you the dictionary definition of “freedom” or “libertarian” and then try to make a deduction about Libertarians, but that’s absurdly reductive. While we should agree to the meaning of terms we’re going to use to make our points, the standard English dictionary doesn’t have any special authority here, and I’d say it’s a particularly bad source for broad political philosophies. For me, conservatism is essentially the Burkean variety - particularly when we’re discussing social issues.
As an aside, here’s a short article by GMU constitutional law professor and libertarian David Berstein about how conservative judges guard individual rights (as compared to liberal judges):
BTW, this is spot on. There is no right to equality, broadly speaking. And anyone with two eyes can look around and see that this is obviously the case.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
…do dumb people have a civil right to a National Merit Scholarship, per Boston’s point? …[/quote]
Hell, I won one so why shouldn’t all the other dummies?
Yes, my aversion comes from the fact that I am a) not attracted to men and b) find male on male sex gross. But that puts me into the category of ‘heterosexual.’
How many gay men in a relationship are not having sex with one another, unless one partner has HIV? Gay men are just like straight men - horny all the time. Gay men, however, act on it with other men.
Precisely. “Consent!”, “Age of Majority”, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, and “Change!”
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
…
Your argument boils down to this: extending marriage to gays is a risk that is not worth it. I’ve considered your points as to why it’s not, and still disagree; largely on the basis that the reason it’s such a risk in the first place is that we live in a homophobic society. As I said before, that makes the problem the society, not the homosexuals.
Please feel free to demonstrate you understand what the risks actually are at any juncture.
Of course, your last sentence implies that you don’t care what the risks are, and that no risks would be too big if you could figure out how to blame it on homophobia - which, for you, would simply involve asserting that it was due to homophobia.[/quote]
I asked you, repeatedly, to give an example or reason that was not homophobic in nature. You couldn’t, and said that it was irrelevant.
Now you’re trying to say I’m just conjuring it up?
The social value of marriage drops because homosexuals are allowed to participate = homophobia. The same way, had interracial marriage caused the social value to drop would have = racism.
All of your predictions rest on the idea that the social value of marriage would drop. Unless you’d like to correct me there?
[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
It can also mean “irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals”.
So because heterosexuals have an aversion to homosexual sex, we’re all homophobes. So are you a homophobe or a homosexual?
Worst fail ever.[/quote]
I’m just applying the definition. So what side of the spectrum do you fall out on? Have you ever had sex with a man?
You’ve been given your answer repeatedly - READ:
http://www.gideonsblog.blogspot.com/2003_07_01_gideonsblog_archive.html#105952165206390107
And until you do, bugger off.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
wirewound wrote:
I believe the word is not ‘rational’ but ‘constitutional’. The courts are designed to ensure that laws are constitutional - and the constitution holds forth the Bill of Rights and the constitutional amendments which increasingly protect the rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority. To the extent that the job of the courts is to ensure adherence to the constitution and the spirit thereof, it is also the job of the courts to protect the civil rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority.
Wrong.
When laws treat people differently according to a social categorization, such laws are measured under the Equal Protection clause. Unless the categorization is a heightened category (think race), then so long as the law that treats categories of people differently have a rational basis, they are constitutional.
[/quote]
So even if treating people differently based on race would have a rational basis, it would sill be illegal because race is a heightened category?
I’m sorry, I just cant get on board with the arbitary morality that believes a certain way because other people have decided it as such (such as others deciding race is a heightened category, and therefore deserves equality, but sexual preference is not, and therefore does not).
[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
…
I’m sorry, I just cant get on board with the arbitary morality that believes a certain way because other people have decided it as such (such as others deciding race is a heightened category, and therefore deserves equality, but sexual preference is not, and therefore does not).[/quote]
Who knew Cap’n Crunch was a hard-core anarchist?
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
…
I’m sorry, I just cant get on board with the arbitary morality that believes a certain way because other people have decided it as such (such as others deciding race is a heightened category, and therefore deserves equality, but sexual preference is not, and therefore does not).
Who knew Cap’n Crunch was a hard-core anarchist?[/quote]
Who knew indeed.
Question for you, BB: Lets say the government did a study and found that people who wear a size 12 shoe are more productive, smarter, and more successful than people who did not. As such, the government decided to give legal and monetary incentives for wearing size 12 shoes. Would you consider this discrimination against those who did not wear size 12 shoes?
Edit: Or, BB, if the government decided it had rational reason to incentivize people attaining enlightenment. Would the government have the right to give legal and monetary incentives who went through a ceremony or passed whatever tests necessary to prove themselves enlightened?
[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
It can also mean “irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals”.
So because heterosexuals have an aversion to homosexual sex, we’re all homophobes. So are you a homophobe or a homosexual?
Worst fail ever.
I’m just applying the definition. So what side of the spectrum do you fall out on? Have you ever had sex with a man? [/quote]
No, you’re butchering the definition. “homosexuality or homosexuals” is not the same thing as “homosexual sex”.
To read “irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals” and interpreting it to read “irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexual sex” is ridiculous.
Or could your brain not get past the first seven letters in “homosexuality” and “homosexuals”, and could therefore only get up to “homosex”, and were further unable to understand both words not to be about a sexual act?
And, yeah, I’ve hooked up with a few guys, never had sex with any of them, though. Whats your point? Let me guess, you’ll try to insult me for it, while still claiming not to be bigoted against homosexuals, right??
Well, what is “homosexuality” then? The definition doesn’t necessarily need to include the actual act, but it certainly includes a desire to perform the act. But those who don’t actually perform the act certainly would seem to demonstrate some aversion (there’s that word again) to it and probably won’t be trying to get married to another of the same sex any time soon.
I wouldn’t call you bigoted. You don’t fit the definition of “homophobia” since you seem at least curious about male-on-male interactions of that type. I would call myself and other heterosexuals homophobes who haven’t engaged in any such activity and have not plans to.
[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
So even if treating people differently based on race would have a rational basis, it would sill be illegal because race is a heightened category?[/quote]
Are you actually getting dumber?
The point of race is that we have decided there isn’t a rational basis to discriminate on a racial basis (setting aside the Supreme Court’s blessing of affirmative action).
It isn’t subject to rational basis because we don’t lump it in with other distinctions - it gets a privileged position. If you need to ask why - and likely you do - see the Civil War.
Then you are a foolish anarchist. By your rationale, there isn’t a law that deserves to exist - nearly every law treats “other people” a certain way.
Seriously.