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On October 21 2011 00:51 Bibdy wrote:Show nested quote +On October 21 2011 00:39 Kiarip wrote:On October 20 2011 19:07 Penitent wrote:
That said, your second paragraph is pretty accurate, and I think the Court has made statements on this in the past. (but I can't remember the context and it's too late for me to search google for more than 5 minutes, which was unsuccessful. my apologies.) Basically, as long as a law has a secular purpose, then religious support for the law doesn't disqualify it constitutionally. For example if a bill was being considered to broaden welfare programs and Johnny was in favor of that because Jesus said to feed the poor, that's okay (Constitutionally) because the law itself clearly has a secular purpose. Or if somebody supported capital punishment because at times it was mandated by God in the Bible, that's also okay Constitutionally, because clearly the purpose of capital punishment isn't to advance religion and it has secular support.
You are correct that Supreme Court jurisprudence over the last century and a half has largely followed this train of thought. Consider, however, that the Supreme Court (or to be more precise, the portion of the Court that agreed with this line of thinking) could be wrong. I repeat the irrefutable claim that there is nothing in the Constitution which requires any law made at any level of government to have some "secular" purpose. I challenge any and all who disagree with me to find in the text or the history of the text any hint whatsoever that the Framers of the Constitution or its subsequent Amendments ever intended to pass into law a general, universally binding requirement that all laws have some "secular" purpose. There is a reason why the Framers never did so, and why they would be appalled to know that our Supreme Court has unilaterally inserted such a requirement into the Constitution by raw judicial fiat. Consider the consequences of such a requirement (which in technical legal parlance is actually framed as the requirement that all laws have some "rational basis"). Who decides what is "rational"? Why, the Supreme Court does. So if all laws everywhere must be "rational", who then commands ultimate veto authority over every single law in America? Why, the Supreme Court does. Consider carefully that what is "rational" to some will be madness to others. There is no infallible way of establishing the boundaries of "rationality". Because of this, any legal requirement that a law be "rational" - or in your terms, have a "secular" purpose - is effectively nothing more than a power grab by the one branch of our government that is immune to electoral challenge. The very idea that a law must have some "secular" purpose or "rational" basis is repugnant to the concept of a democracy. This is America, where we have the right to elect our rulers and replace them if they rule for ill. I didn't sign up to be ruled by a minimum of five unelected elites wearing black robes, and I suspect neither did you.
As I said, I don't find it hateful if somebody wants to make marriage a religious ceremony and make civil unions about the legal rights. I don't find it hateful if someone wants to deregulate marriage entirely. Or even if they want government marriage for heterosexuals and civil unions with full legal benefits for homosexuals. (which I very strongly disagree with - "separate but equal" has tended to fail miserably - but won't go so far as to say it's definitely indicative of hatred)
But if someone wants the law to expressly treat homosexuals as second class citizens, to the point of not even accepting if we take the literal word "marriage" and keep it hetero-only and come up with a different word for gays, how can I not find that hateful? That's no different that saying gays should be arrested for living together or shouldn't be allowed to vote.
Okay, so let's take your stand against "hatred" to the next logical step. Do you support polygamous marriage? If not, why do you hate people who just want to engage in loving, polyamorous relationships? What about incestuous marriage? Or, if you think the possibility of genetically deformed children is too great a risk, what about homosexually incestuous marriage? Do you support that? If not, why do you hate family members who want to engage in loving, sexual relationships with each other? What about pedophiliac marriage? The age of consent in many countries around the world is as low as 13; isn't it hateful for us to bar significantly older adults from taking willing spouses at young ages? I know you'll probably try to call this a straw man argument, but it isn't because it gets to the heart of the problem of officially recognizing gay marriage - that doing so obliterates the original purposes of having the institution of marriage in the first place, and having done that, there's no logical reason why the institution of marriage should be denied to other possible sexual groupings of people. The whole point of marriage was to create stable bonds between the two halves of our species so that they could pool resources and work together to birth and raise the next generation of children. Governments realized that it was in their best interests to promote and protect marriage and correspondingly recognized marriage and included it in the basic framework of governance. You are free to disagree with this understanding of marriage, as indeed most everyone still participating in this thread does, but recognize too that if you choose instead an understanding of marriage as the mere conference of special rights and benefits, there is no logical reason why marriage shouldn't also be extended to sexual groupings of people that even the most die-hard gay marriage supporters would find repugnant.
That's the problem with a statement like "across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history." "All" is a pretty strong word. Saying "all prime numbers are odd" is actually false, just because of little ol' number 2. Similarly your statement is incorrect. Something like "the vast majority of marriages throughout human history have been heterosexual" would be correct.
I also wouldn't consider the Emperor of Rome insignificant myself.
Fair enough. As for the Emperor of Rome, however, I will note that Nero is widely recognized as having been a seriously disturbed and psychopathic individual; he "married" a man because he was the emperor, and no one says no to the emperor, especially when he's as likely to cut your hand off as shake it.
Religion and philosophy have their place in our society and in human thought, but it's not in the laboratory.
I'd have quoted the entire section but it was quite long and all I had to say in reply is that if there is in fact more to speciation than I have been able to find on my own, then I'm quite happy to have evolution taught in public schools as a proper scientific theory. As it is, I have yet to find anywhere a sufficiently plausible theoretical model for how a fish becomes a zebra a billion generations down the line. But I do think it is overly simplistic to say that ID boils down to finding the gaps in evolutionary theory and then saying "that's where God is". Many of the questions posed by scientists who support ID are eminently valid ones for which, to my knowledge, evolutionary biologists have yet to formulate any answers, theoretical or otherwise (such as the problem of irreducible complexity on a molecular level - and no, exaptation does not explain how the molecular pieces of a ribosome could have come together for some other purpose only to magically chance upon the awesomeness of being a ribosome). But I digress.
I'm not trying to take away anyone's right to vote. Anyone is free to vote like a complete jackass if they want to, and I'm free to call a spade a spade if I want to. Democracy does NOT mean you can't call people out if they take stances you find reprehensible. It seems like you're objecting to me objecting to other people's positions/voting behavior. You can have your opinion on an issue, but I can have my opinion on your opinion.
You're definitely right that you and everyone else is free to call me out for opposing gay marriage. But the manner in which that "calling out" is done is what so often devolves into hypocritical bullshit. If you want to say that you disagree with me because you believe that homosexual relationships are exactly the same as heterosexual relationships and should be accorded the same rights and benefits, fine. But to claim that my position is bad or illegitimate simply because it is based on my religious beliefs is hypocrisy because the opposite position isn't based on anything better (and I direct this not at you in particular but to liberals in general). Why do you support gay marriage? Because I believe in equality for all people. Why do you want equality for all people? Because of the following 32 reasons, all of which boil down to equality being a good thing. Why is equality a good thing? Because ... um ... because it is. Why? Because it just is. Well, why is it better to support good things instead of bad things? Because I think good things are better than bad things. Why? Because. That, right there, is the opposing viewpoint's foundational religious belief on this matter. At some point, every value preference must be rooted in a belief that is accepted without question or further basis, be it religious in origin or not. So to claim that religious voters, like myself, who vote their values, are somehow imposing our religion on others while non-religious voters, who vote their values, are not, is complete and total hypocrisy. They ARE imposing their religious values on others when they vote - they just don't see it as such because they don't organize their values and beliefs into coherent, internally consistent religions like religious voters do.
No, that's another straw man argument. At this point I'm starting to think you're an atheist trolling the forum... either that or you don't know how to have a discussion without being extremely combative.
Exactly what about my argument makes it a "straw man"? When a liberal (not necessarily you btw) blithely declaims that religious nutjobs like me are ruining the country by imposing our religious values on everyone else, how is that not also a statement that my religious values and beliefs are somehow less legitimate than the values and beliefs of those who disagree with me? Everyone says that I am imposing my religion on homosexuals when I deny with my vote a homosexual's ability to marry his sexual partner, but no one seems to understand that they too impose their "religion" (i.e., value and belief system) on me when they vote to recognize and support something which I want society to reject. No, I am not being forced to marry a man, but I am being forced to live in a country that officially recognizes and accepts and promotes homosexual relationships - something which I do not want. The whole point of my original post and these succeeding replies is to counter the notion that religious values and beliefs are a less legitimate source of political preferences than a-religious / atheistic / "secular" / "rational" / spaghetti monster values and beliefs. When a person supports gay marriage, he isn't attacking religious beliefs... He is defending some individuals' rights to an act that fits into their right of pursuit of happiness without infriging on the rights of any other citizens. When a person supports banning gay marriage he is supporting the Federal infrigement of personal liberties... How is the distinction not obvious? No one is making any do gay marriages just because they're legal, it just gives people that want to a legal ability to do so. As for evolution. Yes it's not a complete theory, but tons of theories are incomplete at this point for example in particle physics, and etc. There's nothing found so far to contradict evolution, although it's true that there phenomena found that evolution has not yet explained. There's a difference. If there's counter evidence that it becomes obvious that the theory is wrong in its curent state, but if there are phenomena that the theoy hasn't yet explained it simply means that our understanding of nature doesn't yet encompass that particular phenomenom. An example of disproving a theory for example, is how in early 20th century physicists believed that everything existed in some kind of medium, called ether, but then astronomists measured the red shift, and this directly contradicted the possibility of existence of ether. Plus the Michelson-Morley experiment. That one put the final nail in the coffin. It's the ultimate hypocrisy within the religious base of the Republican party. They want smaller government and less intervention like moderate conservatives, but then simultaneously wants the government to go to great lengths to control social behaviour. And this guy (Penitent) had the audacity to call out liberals as being hypocrits earlier in the post, calling them too blind and stupid to realize it. Oh the irony. Edit: I shouldn't say non-religious conservatives, because there are plenty far-right non-religious conservatives who want to put a stop to anything they deem is changing society too much, too. Usually older people who want society to go back to the way it was when they were kids.
Yeah... I already talked about this earlier, but it's the reason I hate when people make claims about libertarians like Ron Paul that they are far right wing.
Because based on today's standards far right-wing generally means, very socially constricting, and pro-war/imperialism, etc.
Some people say Ron Paul is very far right, and then Democrats are obviously on the left, but then somehow as you move across this political line more right, before you get to libertarian, for some reason you need cross the territory of the war-hawks, the homophobes, and the Federal bankers... All of whom are considered right-wing, but all of whom also support big government.
The Republicans have lost their way, and it gives libertarians a bad name too, because Libertarians were the original "Right-wing," and now it's polluted with mild fascists.
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On October 20 2011 19:07 Penitent wrote:Show nested quote +
That said, your second paragraph is pretty accurate, and I think the Court has made statements on this in the past. (but I can't remember the context and it's too late for me to search google for more than 5 minutes, which was unsuccessful. my apologies.) Basically, as long as a law has a secular purpose, then religious support for the law doesn't disqualify it constitutionally. For example if a bill was being considered to broaden welfare programs and Johnny was in favor of that because Jesus said to feed the poor, that's okay (Constitutionally) because the law itself clearly has a secular purpose. Or if somebody supported capital punishment because at times it was mandated by God in the Bible, that's also okay Constitutionally, because clearly the purpose of capital punishment isn't to advance religion and it has secular support.
You are correct that Supreme Court jurisprudence over the last century and a half has largely followed this train of thought. Consider, however, that the Supreme Court (or to be more precise, the portion of the Court that agreed with this line of thinking) could be wrong. I repeat the irrefutable claim that there is nothing in the Constitution which requires any law made at any level of government to have some "secular" purpose. I challenge any and all who disagree with me to find in the text or the history of the text any hint whatsoever that the Framers of the Constitution or its subsequent Amendments ever intended to pass into law a general, universally binding requirement that all laws have some "secular" purpose.
The fact that the Supreme Court has, for over a century, followed this train of thought is itself evidence that your argument is not "irrefutable." There may not be any refutations that you personally are willing to accept. I'm choosing to side with the interpretation elaborated by Jefferson's writings, declared in the Treaty of Tripoli, and ruled upon by a century of Supreme Court justices over the interpretation elaborated by yourself / conservative think tanks / etc.
There is a reason why the Framers never did so, and why they would be appalled to know that our Supreme Court has unilaterally inserted such a requirement into the Constitution by raw judicial fiat. Consider the consequences of such a requirement (which in technical legal parlance is actually framed as the requirement that all laws have some "rational basis"). Who decides what is "rational"? Why, the Supreme Court does. So if all laws everywhere must be "rational", who then commands ultimate veto authority over every single law in America? Why, the Supreme Court does. Consider carefully that what is "rational" to some will be madness to others. There is no infallible way of establishing the boundaries of "rationality". Because of this, any legal requirement that a law be "rational" - or in your terms, have a "secular" purpose - is effectively nothing more than a power grab by the one branch of our government that is immune to electoral challenge.
It's not a power grab, it's the design of the very system. The Constitution gives the Supreme Court veto authority over every law in America. You may personally disagree with the some of the criteria they're using to declare laws unconstitutional, but the ability of the Supreme Court to review literally every law that COngress passes and the President signs is how the system is supposed to work.
Remember that the Founders were wary of actual democracy and mob rule, and deliberately built our system to have some degree of resistance to the will of the masses. (the Electoral College is another such example) The Supreme Court was given the power of judicial review so that some faction couldn't simply have one or two good elections and be given complete power to pass whatever laws they wanted.
The opinions of men, the Framers of the Constitution, and the justices on the Supreme Court (past and present) aren't infallible. You can make the argument that nothing is purely rational. Okay fine, the First Ammendment arbitrarily included the Establishment Clause, and based on its text the opinion of the majority of Supreme Court justices has been that laws must have a secular basis. Their opinions can't be objectively defined as rational, but the Constitution gives them this power nonetheless.
The very idea that a law must have some "secular" purpose or "rational" basis is repugnant to the concept of a democracy. This is America, where we have the right to elect our rulers and replace them if they rule for ill. I didn't sign up to be ruled by a minimum of five unelected elites wearing black robes, and I suspect neither did you.
There's a difference between ruling us and preventing others from ruling us. In declaring a law unconstitutional, the Supreme Couty does the latter. You can make the argument that preventing a majority from being able to pass whatever laws they want is itself a form of rule, and to that I reply that this is how our government is designed to work. The Founders erred on the side of protecting people from the tyranny of the majority, even if it meant stepping on the freedom of the majority to step on the rights of the minority.
It just means that the threshold for passing a law that it violates the Constitution is that you have to ammend the constitution, which requires more than a simple 50%+1 majority. If 90% of this country wanted Sharia Law, they'd be able to ammend the Constitution to allow it, and then the Supreme Court would be bound to follow that. Until then, the First Ammendment prohibits it even if 218 Representatives, 51 Senators, and one President were to pass such legislation.
Okay, so let's take your stand against "hatred" to the next logical step. Do you support polygamous marriage? If not, why do you hate people who just want to engage in loving, polyamorous relationships? What about incestuous marriage? Or, if you think the possibility of genetically deformed children is too great a risk, what about homosexually incestuous marriage? Do you support that? If not, why do you hate family members who want to engage in loving, sexual relationships with each other? What about pedophiliac marriage? The age of consent in many countries around the world is as low as 13; isn't it hateful for us to bar significantly older adults from taking willing spouses at young ages?
I know you'll probably try to call this a straw man argument, but it isn't because it gets to the heart of the problem of officially recognizing gay marriage - that doing so obliterates the original purposes of having the institution of marriage in the first place, and having done that, there's no logical reason why the institution of marriage should be denied to other possible sexual groupings of people.
I'd call it a slippery slope argument rather than a straw man  Because in no way does recognizing gay marriage imply or lead to things like pedophilia, beastiality, etc.
I'm fine with the concept of polygamous marriage, and I'm certainly opposed to throwing people in jail for practicing polygamy (assuming they haven't broken other laws in the process, such as laws against pedophilia). In practice, I'm not sure how to legislate the official sanction of polygamy in a way that doesn't allow everybody in Michigan to enter into one gigantic statewide marriage as a way to game the system. How would divorce be handled in such a case? Would employers/insurers be required to extend benefits to all million-plus spouses if they offered benefits to any? (which in practice would mean the elimination of spousal benefits) If not, how does the law fairly decide how many of the spouses receive benefits? There are legal issues present with legislating polygamy that aren't present with a framework that allows any two consenting adults to marry.
Incest and pedophilia are a question of consent. (the latter is more obvious -- for the former, consider whether or not a daughter is truly under no coercion if her father wants sexual intercourse and she doesn't. I don't think consent exists between family members the way it does between people who aren't related.) I'm against pedophilia because I'm against rape.
You have a point that there is no perfect/objective way to define the age of consent. I accept that the law will merely be as good as we can make it; it will never be perfect. If age of consent is 13 in a given country, then teenagers should be allowed to marry. If that age is 17, then they have to wait until they're 17.
These questions could just as easily be turned around as well. In biblical times, the average age of betrothal for women was 12 (this is also about how old Mary was when she was betrothed to Joseph). Indeed it's a departure from millennia of established tradition, in both Christian and non-Christian societies, to declare that people that young can't get married. Do you oppose pedophiliac marriage? Likewise, to whatever extent marriage has been a religious institution, in that context it has been an institution that enables members of that religion to marry each other. Do you oppose interreligious marriage, or for that matter atheist marriage?
Show nested quote +
I'm not trying to take away anyone's right to vote. Anyone is free to vote like a complete jackass if they want to, and I'm free to call a spade a spade if I want to. Democracy does NOT mean you can't call people out if they take stances you find reprehensible. It seems like you're objecting to me objecting to other people's positions/voting behavior. You can have your opinion on an issue, but I can have my opinion on your opinion.
You're definitely right that you and everyone else is free to call me out for opposing gay marriage. But the manner in which that "calling out" is done is what so often devolves into hypocritical bullshit. If you want to say that you disagree with me because you believe that homosexual relationships are exactly the same as heterosexual relationships and should be accorded the same rights and benefits, fine. But to claim that my position is bad or illegitimate simply because it is based on my religious beliefs is hypocrisy because the opposite position isn't based on anything better (and I direct this not at you in particular but to liberals in general).
I'll reiterate, a lot of the strongest objections are directed at people who aren't stopping at making marriage a hetero-only institution, but are also opposed to civil unions and equal rights. To whatever extent protecting the institution of marriage in accordance with Christian tradition is actually the goal, there are ways to do that that still treat everyone equally under the law.
That, right there, is the opposing viewpoint's foundational religious belief on this matter. At some point, every value preference must be rooted in a belief that is accepted without question or further basis, be it religious in origin or not. So to claim that religious voters, like myself, who vote their values, are somehow imposing our religion on others while non-religious voters, who vote their values, are not, is complete and total hypocrisy. They ARE imposing their religious values on others when they vote - they just don't see it as such because they don't organize their values and beliefs into coherent, internally consistent religions like religious voters do.
I'll address the main argument this presents in the next section. But specific to this:
If we're talking about religious conservatism in America, I don't agree with your assessment that these beliefs are applied in a consistent manner. Leviticus prohibits getting a tattoo, but most of the people in this country who oppose the government recognition of gay marriage are fine with the government granting business licenses to tattoo parlors. Many of them are against government programs that fight poverty, when helping the poor is one of the most frequent things decreed in the Bible. Many are against business regulations, when the Bible is full of them. If American religious conservatives were more interested in creating a government and legal framework based on all of the Bible instead of just the parts that fit into their political ideology (again, I've given Ireland and the FG as an example of what this might look like), I'd be less likely to see the opposition to gay marriage as hate. Since it's one biblical commandment that's cherry picked out of thousands (the vast majority of which aren't followed by the majority of Christians today), I have to suspect that there is some motive, be that conscious or ingrained, beyond just wanting to enforce what the Bible says.
A lot of the churches that focus on social justice are guilty of the same inconsistency, since they push for an economically progressive agenda with the Bible as their motivation, while ignoring what the Bible says about homosexuality, the roles of men and women in society, etc.
The Bible itself is internally consistent, at least on the level of "do what the Bible says." The political translation of that is far from consistent.
For that matter, I disagree with the implication that non-religious philosophies such as secular humanism, objectivism, libertarianism, etc aren't coherent or aren't internally consistent. Now if you were to argue that some liberals as individuals, or the Democratic Party as an organization, don't consistently follow any particular one of these philosophies, I'd agree with that.
Everyone says that I am imposing my religion on homosexuals when I deny with my vote a homosexual's ability to marry his sexual partner, but no one seems to understand that they too impose their "religion" (i.e., value and belief system) on me when they vote to recognize and support something which I want society to reject. No, I am not being forced to marry a man, but I am being forced to live in a country that officially recognizes and accepts and promotes homosexual relationships - something which I do not want.
[...]
Why do you support gay marriage? Because I believe in equality for all people. Why do you want equality for all people? Because of the following 32 reasons, all of which boil down to equality being a good thing. Why is equality a good thing? Because ... um ... because it is. Why? Because it just is. Well, why is it better to support good things instead of bad things? Because I think good things are better than bad things. Why? Because.
[...]
Exactly what about my argument makes it a "straw man"? When a liberal (not necessarily you btw) blithely declaims that religious nutjobs like me are ruining the country by imposing our religious values on everyone else, how is that not also a statement that my religious values and beliefs are somehow less legitimate than the values and beliefs of those who disagree with me?
[...]
The whole point of my original post and these succeeding replies is to counter the notion that religious values and beliefs are a less legitimate source of political preferences than a-religious / atheistic / "secular" / "rational" / spaghetti monster values and beliefs.
You've been arguing, if I may put this into broad terms, that all beliefs are equally valid because at the end of the day, whether we classify them as "religious" or not, they're all just the manifestation of electrochemical interactions in our brain that have no definitive rational basis. At the end of the day we all say "just because" if someone keeps asking "why?" More or less? But in that case, the belief that laws that don't have a secular basis are invalid is itself a belief (and all the neurology that that translates into) and therefore is equally valid.
You've also argued that by opposing the legitimacy of your or others' opposition to gay marriage, we're being hypocritical because we're not considering your views to be of equal merit, and we're effectively classifying them as inferior. But by arguing that our view of your view is hypocritical or not logically consistent, you're implying that hypocritical or logically inconsistent beliefs are inferior to non-hypocritical or logically consistent beliefs. But that contradicts the supposition that no belief is inferior to another, and is therefore not logically consistent.
Lastly you've said that our objection to you wanting to prohobit gays from marrying is equally intolerant as as the prohibition of gays from marrying itself, because we are not letting you do what you want (which is to prevent them from doing what they want). ie it is intolerant of intolerance. But that argument itself is showing intolerance of intolerance of intolerance.
I hope I explained that well enough, but this summary should be clear in any case: Through these arguments, you've basically demonstrated why pure relativism fails. Because at some point I have to either draw a line and take some level of absolutist stand, or I have to concede that even something as repulsive as Nazism (as one example, I'm not calling you this) is no better and no worse than all other philosophies. And I'm willing to draw that line. If my unwillingness to consider Nazism a moral system on equal footing with my own can in some abstract sense be called anti-Nazi Nazism, I'll bite that bullet.
Are you familiar with Russell's paradox? The idea that the unwillingness to tolerate the unwillingness of others to tolerate others is itself an example of the unwillingness to tolerate others sounds kinda like the barber. On that note, I suppose any effort to formulate a complete and consistent philosophy that can still be usefully applied to everything we encounter in life may in some sense fall victim to Gödel. Damn set theory.
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United States7483 Posts
+ Show Spoiler +On October 21 2011 02:06 Signet wrote:Show nested quote +On October 20 2011 19:07 Penitent wrote:
That said, your second paragraph is pretty accurate, and I think the Court has made statements on this in the past. (but I can't remember the context and it's too late for me to search google for more than 5 minutes, which was unsuccessful. my apologies.) Basically, as long as a law has a secular purpose, then religious support for the law doesn't disqualify it constitutionally. For example if a bill was being considered to broaden welfare programs and Johnny was in favor of that because Jesus said to feed the poor, that's okay (Constitutionally) because the law itself clearly has a secular purpose. Or if somebody supported capital punishment because at times it was mandated by God in the Bible, that's also okay Constitutionally, because clearly the purpose of capital punishment isn't to advance religion and it has secular support.
You are correct that Supreme Court jurisprudence over the last century and a half has largely followed this train of thought. Consider, however, that the Supreme Court (or to be more precise, the portion of the Court that agreed with this line of thinking) could be wrong. I repeat the irrefutable claim that there is nothing in the Constitution which requires any law made at any level of government to have some "secular" purpose. I challenge any and all who disagree with me to find in the text or the history of the text any hint whatsoever that the Framers of the Constitution or its subsequent Amendments ever intended to pass into law a general, universally binding requirement that all laws have some "secular" purpose. The fact that the Supreme Court has, for over a century, followed this train of thought is itself evidence that your argument is not "irrefutable." There may not be any refutations that you personally are willing to accept. I'm choosing to side with the interpretation elaborated by Jefferson's writings, declared in the Treaty of Tripoli, and ruled upon by a century of Supreme Court justices over the interpretation elaborated by yourself / conservative think tanks / etc. Show nested quote +
There is a reason why the Framers never did so, and why they would be appalled to know that our Supreme Court has unilaterally inserted such a requirement into the Constitution by raw judicial fiat. Consider the consequences of such a requirement (which in technical legal parlance is actually framed as the requirement that all laws have some "rational basis"). Who decides what is "rational"? Why, the Supreme Court does. So if all laws everywhere must be "rational", who then commands ultimate veto authority over every single law in America? Why, the Supreme Court does. Consider carefully that what is "rational" to some will be madness to others. There is no infallible way of establishing the boundaries of "rationality". Because of this, any legal requirement that a law be "rational" - or in your terms, have a "secular" purpose - is effectively nothing more than a power grab by the one branch of our government that is immune to electoral challenge.
It's not a power grab, it's the design of the very system. The Constitution gives the Supreme Court veto authority over every law in America. You may personally disagree with the some of the criteria they're using to declare laws unconstitutional, but the ability of the Supreme Court to review literally every law that COngress passes and the President signs is how the system is supposed to work. Remember that the Founders were wary of actual democracy and mob rule, and deliberately built our system to have some degree of resistance to the will of the masses. (the Electoral College is another such example) The Supreme Court was given the power of judicial review so that some faction couldn't simply have one or two good elections and be given complete power to pass whatever laws they wanted. The opinions of men, the Framers of the Constitution, and the justices on the Supreme Court (past and present) aren't infallible. You can make the argument that nothing is purely rational. Okay fine, the First Ammendment arbitrarily included the Establishment Clause, and based on its text the opinion of the majority of Supreme Court justices has been that laws must have a secular basis. Their opinions can't be objectively defined as rational, but the Constitution gives them this power nonetheless. Show nested quote +
The very idea that a law must have some "secular" purpose or "rational" basis is repugnant to the concept of a democracy. This is America, where we have the right to elect our rulers and replace them if they rule for ill. I didn't sign up to be ruled by a minimum of five unelected elites wearing black robes, and I suspect neither did you.
There's a difference between ruling us and preventing others from ruling us. In declaring a law unconstitutional, the Supreme Couty does the latter. You can make the argument that preventing a majority from being able to pass whatever laws they want is itself a form of rule, and to that I reply that this is how our government is designed to work. The Founders erred on the side of protecting people from the tyranny of the majority, even if it meant stepping on the freedom of the majority to step on the rights of the minority. It just means that the threshold for passing a law that it violates the Constitution is that you have to ammend the constitution, which requires more than a simple 50%+1 majority. If 90% of this country wanted Sharia Law, they'd be able to ammend the Constitution to allow it, and then the Supreme Court would be bound to follow that. Until then, the First Ammendment prohibits it even if 218 Representatives, 51 Senators, and one President were to pass such legislation. Show nested quote +
Okay, so let's take your stand against "hatred" to the next logical step. Do you support polygamous marriage? If not, why do you hate people who just want to engage in loving, polyamorous relationships? What about incestuous marriage? Or, if you think the possibility of genetically deformed children is too great a risk, what about homosexually incestuous marriage? Do you support that? If not, why do you hate family members who want to engage in loving, sexual relationships with each other? What about pedophiliac marriage? The age of consent in many countries around the world is as low as 13; isn't it hateful for us to bar significantly older adults from taking willing spouses at young ages?
I know you'll probably try to call this a straw man argument, but it isn't because it gets to the heart of the problem of officially recognizing gay marriage - that doing so obliterates the original purposes of having the institution of marriage in the first place, and having done that, there's no logical reason why the institution of marriage should be denied to other possible sexual groupings of people.
I'd call it a slippery slope argument rather than a straw man Because in no way does recognizing gay marriage imply or lead to things like pedophilia, beastiality, etc. I'm fine with the concept of polygamous marriage, and I'm certainly opposed to throwing people in jail for practicing polygamy (assuming they haven't broken other laws in the process, such as laws against pedophilia). In practice, I'm not sure how to legislate the official sanction of polygamy in a way that doesn't allow everybody in Michigan to enter into one gigantic statewide marriage as a way to game the system. How would divorce be handled in such a case? Would employers/insurers be required to extend benefits to all million-plus spouses if they offered benefits to any? (which in practice would mean the elimination of spousal benefits) If not, how does the law fairly decide how many of the spouses receive benefits? There are legal issues present with legislating polygamy that aren't present with a framework that allows any two consenting adults to marry. Incest and pedophilia are a question of consent. (the latter is more obvious -- for the former, consider whether or not a daughter is truly under no coercion if her father wants sexual intercourse and she doesn't. I don't think consent exists between family members the way it does between people who aren't related.) I'm against pedophilia because I'm against rape. You have a point that there is no perfect/objective way to define the age of consent. I accept that the law will merely be as good as we can make it; it will never be perfect. If age of consent is 13 in a given country, then teenagers should be allowed to marry. If that age is 17, then they have to wait until they're 17. These questions could just as easily be turned around as well. In biblical times, the average age of betrothal for women was 12 (this is also about how old Mary was when she was betrothed to Joseph). Indeed it's a departure from millennia of established tradition, in both Christian and non-Christian societies, to declare that people that young can't get married. Do you oppose pedophiliac marriage? Likewise, to whatever extent marriage has been a religious institution, in that context it has been an institution that enables members of that religion to marry each other. Do you oppose interreligious marriage, or for that matter atheist marriage? Show nested quote +
I'm not trying to take away anyone's right to vote. Anyone is free to vote like a complete jackass if they want to, and I'm free to call a spade a spade if I want to. Democracy does NOT mean you can't call people out if they take stances you find reprehensible. It seems like you're objecting to me objecting to other people's positions/voting behavior. You can have your opinion on an issue, but I can have my opinion on your opinion.
You're definitely right that you and everyone else is free to call me out for opposing gay marriage. But the manner in which that "calling out" is done is what so often devolves into hypocritical bullshit. If you want to say that you disagree with me because you believe that homosexual relationships are exactly the same as heterosexual relationships and should be accorded the same rights and benefits, fine. But to claim that my position is bad or illegitimate simply because it is based on my religious beliefs is hypocrisy because the opposite position isn't based on anything better (and I direct this not at you in particular but to liberals in general). I'll reiterate, a lot of the strongest objections are directed at people who aren't stopping at making marriage a hetero-only institution, but are also opposed to civil unions and equal rights. To whatever extent protecting the institution of marriage in accordance with Christian tradition is actually the goal, there are ways to do that that still treat everyone equally under the law. Show nested quote +
That, right there, is the opposing viewpoint's foundational religious belief on this matter. At some point, every value preference must be rooted in a belief that is accepted without question or further basis, be it religious in origin or not. So to claim that religious voters, like myself, who vote their values, are somehow imposing our religion on others while non-religious voters, who vote their values, are not, is complete and total hypocrisy. They ARE imposing their religious values on others when they vote - they just don't see it as such because they don't organize their values and beliefs into coherent, internally consistent religions like religious voters do.
I'll address the main argument this presents in the next section. But specific to this: If we're talking about religious conservatism in America, I don't agree with your assessment that these beliefs are applied in a consistent manner. Leviticus prohibits getting a tattoo, but most of the people in this country who oppose the government recognition of gay marriage are fine with the government granting business licenses to tattoo parlors. Many of them are against government programs that fight poverty, when helping the poor is one of the most frequent things decreed in the Bible. Many are against business regulations, when the Bible is full of them. If American religious conservatives were more interested in creating a government and legal framework based on all of the Bible instead of just the parts that fit into their political ideology (again, I've given Ireland and the FG as an example of what this might look like), I'd be less likely to see the opposition to gay marriage as hate. Since it's one biblical commandment that's cherry picked out of thousands (the vast majority of which aren't followed by the majority of Christians today), I have to suspect that there is some motive, be that conscious or ingrained, beyond just wanting to enforce what the Bible says. A lot of the churches that focus on social justice are guilty of the same inconsistency, since they push for an economically progressive agenda with the Bible as their motivation, while ignoring what the Bible says about homosexuality, the roles of men and women in society, etc. The Bible itself is internally consistent, at least on the level of "do what the Bible says." The political translation of that is far from consistent. For that matter, I disagree with the implication that non-religious philosophies such as secular humanism, objectivism, libertarianism, etc aren't coherent or aren't internally consistent. Now if you were to argue that some liberals as individuals, or the Democratic Party as an organization, don't consistently follow any particular one of these philosophies, I'd agree with that. Show nested quote +
Everyone says that I am imposing my religion on homosexuals when I deny with my vote a homosexual's ability to marry his sexual partner, but no one seems to understand that they too impose their "religion" (i.e., value and belief system) on me when they vote to recognize and support something which I want society to reject. No, I am not being forced to marry a man, but I am being forced to live in a country that officially recognizes and accepts and promotes homosexual relationships - something which I do not want.
[...]
Why do you support gay marriage? Because I believe in equality for all people. Why do you want equality for all people? Because of the following 32 reasons, all of which boil down to equality being a good thing. Why is equality a good thing? Because ... um ... because it is. Why? Because it just is. Well, why is it better to support good things instead of bad things? Because I think good things are better than bad things. Why? Because.
[...]
Exactly what about my argument makes it a "straw man"? When a liberal (not necessarily you btw) blithely declaims that religious nutjobs like me are ruining the country by imposing our religious values on everyone else, how is that not also a statement that my religious values and beliefs are somehow less legitimate than the values and beliefs of those who disagree with me?
[...]
The whole point of my original post and these succeeding replies is to counter the notion that religious values and beliefs are a less legitimate source of political preferences than a-religious / atheistic / "secular" / "rational" / spaghetti monster values and beliefs.
You've been arguing, if I may put this into broad terms, that all beliefs are equally valid because at the end of the day, whether we classify them as "religious" or not, they're all just the manifestation of electrochemical interactions in our brain that have no definitive rational basis. At the end of the day we all say "just because" if someone keeps asking "why?" More or less? But in that case, the belief that laws that don't have a secular basis are invalid is itself a belief (and all the neurology that that translates into) and therefore is equally valid. You've also argued that by opposing the legitimacy of your or others' opposition to gay marriage, we're being hypocritical because we're not considering your views to be of equal merit, and we're effectively classifying them as inferior. But by arguing that our view of your view is hypocritical or not logically consistent, you're implying that hypocritical or logically inconsistent beliefs are inferior to non-hypocritical or logically consistent beliefs. But that contradicts the supposition that no belief is inferior to another, and is therefore not logically consistent. Lastly you've said that our objection to you wanting to prohobit gays from marrying is equally intolerant as as the prohibition of gays from marrying itself, because we are not letting you do what you want (which is to prevent them from doing what they want). ie it is intolerant of intolerance. But that argument itself is showing intolerance of intolerance of intolerance. I hope I explained that well enough, but this summary should be clear in any case: Through these arguments, you've basically demonstrated why pure relativism fails. Because at some point I have to either draw a line and take some level of absolutist stand, or I have to concede that even something as repulsive as Nazism (as one example, I'm not calling you this) is no better and no worse than all other philosophies. And I'm willing to draw that line. If my unwillingness to consider Nazism a moral system on equal footing with my own can in some abstract sense be called anti-Nazi Nazism, I'll bite that bullet. Are you familiar with Russell's paradox? The idea that the unwillingness to tolerate the unwillingness of others to tolerate others is itself an example of the unwillingness to tolerate others sounds kinda like the barber. On that note, I suppose any effort to formulate a complete and consistent philosophy that can still be usefully applied to everything we encounter in life may in some sense fall victim to Gödel. Damn set theory.
I should point out that the argument that all opinions are equally valid because they are opinion is nonsense. An informed opinion is by definition superior to an uniformed opinion.
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Just to add, living in a world devoid of things you don't agree with is neither a fundamental human right, nor a protection given to you by the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. When homosexuals marry, that does not infringe on some right of yours to 'live in a world without having to deal with it'. When a TV channel broadcasts a show featuring a transsexual, that does not infringe on your 'right to watch TV without any transsexuals on it'. None of your rights get infringed upon and claiming otherwise leads people to believe that the root of your problem is bigotry because the opposite, preventing homosexuals from marriage, DOES infringe on THEIR rights.
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What in the hell is Cain saying or doing that is actually getting him this lead???? I do not understand at all.
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People like his southern accent
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On October 21 2011 02:25 Hawk wrote:What in the hell is Cain saying or doing that is actually getting him this lead???? I do not understand at all.
The 9-9-9 plan got him a lot of attention, and 90% of politics is getting people to remember your name in the first place. Plus, while he's been scrutenized on that plan a lot, he hasn't completely floundered like Perry.
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United States7483 Posts
On October 21 2011 02:25 Hawk wrote:What in the hell is Cain saying or doing that is actually getting him this lead???? I do not understand at all.
People are begging for someone other than Romney to be viable.
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On October 21 2011 02:27 Bibdy wrote:Show nested quote +On October 21 2011 02:25 Hawk wrote:What in the hell is Cain saying or doing that is actually getting him this lead???? I do not understand at all. The 9-9-9 plan got him a lot of attention, and 90% of politics is getting people to remember your name in the first place. Plus, while he's been scrutenized on that plan a lot, he hasn't completely floundered like Perry.
I thought he's been getting hammered from the left and right about it???
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/herman-cains-misleading-pitch-for-the-999-plan/2011/10/12/gIQAHszPgL_blog.html
one of many obviously, but it's not as if either side is particularly happy I thought??
no one in the party seems to be happy with any of the choices, and as someone who can go either way in the election next year, it's kind of sad to see how bad some of these choices are 
most of romney's criticism is that he's a flip flopper and mormon? or what is it these days
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Bold ideas (even if somewhat flawed) and charisma go a long way. Cain has both in spades.
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On October 21 2011 02:44 Hawk wrote:Show nested quote +On October 21 2011 02:27 Bibdy wrote:On October 21 2011 02:25 Hawk wrote:What in the hell is Cain saying or doing that is actually getting him this lead???? I do not understand at all. The 9-9-9 plan got him a lot of attention, and 90% of politics is getting people to remember your name in the first place. Plus, while he's been scrutenized on that plan a lot, he hasn't completely floundered like Perry. I thought he's been getting hammered from the left and right about it??? http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/herman-cains-misleading-pitch-for-the-999-plan/2011/10/12/gIQAHszPgL_blog.htmlone of many obviously, but it's not as if either side is particularly happy I thought?? no one in the party seems to be happy with any of the choices, and as someone who can go either way in the election next year, it's kind of sad to see how bad some of these choices are most of romney's criticism is that he's a flip flopper and mormon? or what is it these days
Nobody wants Romney because he's kind of a faux-conservative. The man's ideals and explanations keep changing based on the audience he's standing in front of. When Fox News ask him about the Wall Street protesters, he's against it. When he's standing in front of them, he's on their side. When he was governor of Massachusetts he instated a healthcare plan (forced healthcare for everyone) which became the model for Obamacare. He's now claimed was good on the State level, not the Federal level, and people have their doubts. The man was a Democratic representative just a decade ago and said he was pro-choice back then. Now that he's a Republican candidate, he's pro-life. He's a politician through-and-through; say what needs to be said to get these people on your side, because any conflicting viewpoints will get forgotten over time.
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On October 21 2011 03:10 Bibdy wrote:Show nested quote +On October 21 2011 02:44 Hawk wrote:On October 21 2011 02:27 Bibdy wrote:On October 21 2011 02:25 Hawk wrote:What in the hell is Cain saying or doing that is actually getting him this lead???? I do not understand at all. The 9-9-9 plan got him a lot of attention, and 90% of politics is getting people to remember your name in the first place. Plus, while he's been scrutenized on that plan a lot, he hasn't completely floundered like Perry. I thought he's been getting hammered from the left and right about it??? http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/herman-cains-misleading-pitch-for-the-999-plan/2011/10/12/gIQAHszPgL_blog.htmlone of many obviously, but it's not as if either side is particularly happy I thought?? no one in the party seems to be happy with any of the choices, and as someone who can go either way in the election next year, it's kind of sad to see how bad some of these choices are most of romney's criticism is that he's a flip flopper and mormon? or what is it these days Nobody wants Romney because he's kind of a faux-conservative. The man's ideals and explanations keep changing based on the audience he's standing in front of. When Fox News ask him about the Wall Street protesters, he's against it. When he's standing in front of them, he's on their side. When he was governor of Massachusetts he instated a healthcare plan (forced healthcare for everyone) which became the model for Obamacare. He's now claimed was good on the State level, not the Federal level, and people have their doubts. The man was a Democratic representative just a decade ago and said he was pro-choice back then. Now that he's a Republican candidate, he's pro-life. He's a politician through-and-through; say what needs to be said to get these people on your side, because any conflicting viewpoints will get forgotten over time.
Not only that, but if he wins the ticket and goes up against Obama, he's sure to go down in flames. Obama is just more talented at playing the politician than Romney is. He knows how to pander to his audience while appearing sincere, which is something I think Romney lacks.
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To keep at least part of this response on topic, I think it a good thing that Cain is now leading Romney in the polls. The GOP needs someone who's going to do what conservatives want and need him to do in the White House, not someone who's only executive experience has more closely mirrored Obama's than Reagan's.
Still though, I fear that Cain may not have the fundraising strength or the political machine necessary to win a primary, let alone the general election. But hopefully he and the other candidates will force Romney to commit strongly enough to the right that he won't be tempted to weasle his way to the left if he takes office.
The fact that the Supreme Court has, for over a century, followed this train of thought is itself evidence that your argument is not "irrefutable." There may not be any refutations that you personally are willing to accept. I'm choosing to side with the interpretation elaborated by Jefferson's writings, declared in the Treaty of Tripoli, and ruled upon by a century of Supreme Court justices over the interpretation elaborated by yourself / conservative think tanks / etc.
This reflects poor jurisprudential thinking. Bear in mind that the Supreme Court has an extraordinarily poor history of making bad legal calls that have had disasterous consequences for the nation. Remember Dredd Scott? Remember the Warren Court? Remember the insane declaration that capital punishment was unconstitutional (despite Congress having explicit authority under Article III to set the punishment for treason), a declaration that was itself overturned by the same court just a few years later? What about the incorporation doctrine - a mainstay of modern Supreme Court jurisprudence and also a demonstrably illogical and grammatically impossible extension of the Court's powers based on the Civil War Amendments? The Court's long adherence to some provably defunct legal interpretation is in no way a reflection of the merit of that interpretation. Tell me, if the Court decided that the Amendment against slavery only counted for blacks, and that it was okay to enslave asians, would you go along with that, or would you read the words of the 13th Amendment and call bullshit?
Yes, my position IS irrefutable, because you CAN'T find anywhere in the text of the Constitution any requirement that any law have a "rational basis" or have some "secular purpose". It isn't in the Constitution and to say that it is is to be willfully ignorant of the truth.
It's not a power grab, it's the design of the very system. The Constitution gives the Supreme Court veto authority over every law in America. You may personally disagree with the some of the criteria they're using to declare laws unconstitutional, but the ability of the Supreme Court to review literally every law that COngress passes and the President signs is how the system is supposed to work.
Remember that the Founders were wary of actual democracy and mob rule, and deliberately built our system to have some degree of resistance to the will of the masses. (the Electoral College is another such example) The Supreme Court was given the power of judicial review so that some faction couldn't simply have one or two good elections and be given complete power to pass whatever laws they wanted.
The opinions of men, the Framers of the Constitution, and the justices on the Supreme Court (past and present) aren't infallible. You can make the argument that nothing is purely rational. Okay fine, the First Ammendment arbitrarily included the Establishment Clause, and based on its text the opinion of the majority of Supreme Court justices has been that laws must have a secular basis. Their opinions can't be objectively defined as rational, but the Constitution gives them this power nonetheless.
More bad jurisprudential thinking.
The Constitution does not give the Supreme Court veto authority over all laws everywhere in America. What it does do is give the Supreme Court the power to decide whether any given law brought before it is consistent or inconsistent with the Constitution itself. Note the significant difference between the two: the former vests the power in the Court, whereas the latter vests the power in the Constitution. Why is this important? Because under the former the Court can decide to permit or reject whatever laws they want for whatever reasons they have, whereas under the latter the Court can only permit or reject laws based on their fidelity or lack thereof to the Constitution. The former is called living in an oligarchy. The latter is called living in a constitutional democracy (or if you want to be seriously nit-picky about it, a constitutional democratic republic, sheesh).
You and other posters before you are right to point out that the Constitution prevents majorities from violating the rights of minorities by sheer political force - but this only works for those rights expressly protected by the Constitution and the constitutions of political subunits (states, counties, cities, etc.). Seeing as how gay marriage is not a right guaranteed by the Constitution (and again, if you think that it is, please direct me to the specific area of the Constitution where gay marriage is mentioned), political majorities are free to ban - or promote! - gay marriage as they see fit. No, it is not an infringement of their rights because no one has the right to a homosexual marriage in the first place. And if Tenth Amendment guy reads this and raises, correctly, the matter that the powers not reserved for the feds devolve to the states and to the people, I simply say then that that very devolution of power is what gives political majorities the ability to ban or promote gay marriage in the first place.
There's a difference between ruling us and preventing others from ruling us. In declaring a law unconstitutional, the Supreme Couty does the latter. You can make the argument that preventing a majority from being able to pass whatever laws they want is itself a form of rule, and to that I reply that this is how our government is designed to work. The Founders erred on the side of protecting people from the tyranny of the majority, even if it meant stepping on the freedom of the majority to step on the rights of the minority.
It just means that the threshold for passing a law that it violates the Constitution is that you have to ammend the constitution, which requires more than a simple 50%+1 majority. If 90% of this country wanted Sharia Law, they'd be able to ammend the Constitution to allow it, and then the Supreme Court would be bound to follow that. Until then, the First Ammendment prohibits it even if 218 Representatives, 51 Senators, and one President were to pass such legislation.
This is right, for the most part. Now, tell me where in the Constitution I can find the requirement that laws have a "rational basis" or a "secular purpose". Or is it in one of the Amendments? Ah. That right there is the problem. It ISN'T in the Constitution, is it?
I'd call it a slippery slope argument rather than a straw man Because in no way does recognizing gay marriage imply or lead to things like pedophilia, beastiality, etc.
I didn't mean to imply that gay marriage would lead to an epidemic of incest or bestiality or polygamy. But I think I have made a persuasive argument that IF you explode the original purposes of the institution of marriage by recognizing homosexual couples, you also remove any logical basis for denying recognition to other sexual groupings. The issue of having difficulty setting out the legal procedures to deal with the consequences of officially recognizing new sexual groupings is irrelevant minutiae. Some lawyers at some point will come together and design a working legal framework for any and all sexual groupings. The real problem is what to do when two brothers show up at the county courthouse and demand a marriage license. Do you deny them a marriage because of the incestuous nature of their relationship? If so, does that not smack of the same "bigoted hatred" and rank discrimination that religious conservatives now direct towards homosexuals who want to be married? If not, why not?
I'll reiterate, a lot of the strongest objections are directed at people who aren't stopping at making marriage a hetero-only institution, but are also opposed to civil unions and equal rights. To whatever extent protecting the institution of marriage in accordance with Christian tradition is actually the goal, there are ways to do that that still treat everyone equally under the law.
Equal rights for whom, exactly? Should we extend this "equal right" to marry the person of your choosing to everyone? What about, like I've mentioned earlier, a brother who wants to marry his brother? Or are people who wish to engage in incest somehow "less equal" than the rest of us? Are people who want to marry animals similarly "less equal" than the rest of us too? What about people who want to marry more than one person?
Much of the angst over this issue stems from the incorrect assumption that the right, such as it is, in question is the right to marry the person of your choosing. This is NOT the right in question. Even before gay marriage registered as a blip on the national mind, it was well established that you do NOT have the right to marry the person of your choosing. You can't choose to marry a family member (well, in most places anyway). You can't choose to marry someone who is already married. You can't choose to marry someone who is extremely young. You can't choose to marry someone who is dead. You can't choose to marry an animal. You can't choose to marry someone who wilfully rejects being married to you (shotgun wedding?). You can't choose to marry someone who is unconscious. And on and on and on.
No, the right in question has always been a significantly narrower right than is assumed, and that right has always been grounded in the idea that it is in the state's best interests to promote marriages between committed men and women so that they can bear and raise children who will become the next generation of citizens. Pardon me if I reject gay marriage because of the further harm it would do to an already severely weakened institution.
Note too that this does not AT ALL crowd out the possibility that homosexuals may form unions of their own in private ceremonies. Just because I don't want the state to recognize gay marriage doesn't mean that I want the state to actively hunt down and prosecute homosexuals who decide to publicize their unions with private ceremonies before their friends and families. Let them do as they will - it's a free country - but don't destroy the institution of marriage for the sake of forcing the public to recognize and accept your sexual choices.
If we're talking about religious conservatism in America, I don't agree with your assessment that these beliefs are applied in a consistent manner. Leviticus prohibits getting a tattoo, but most of the people in this country who oppose the government recognition of gay marriage are fine with the government granting business licenses to tattoo parlors.
There is much to criticize of religious conservatives in America; their inconsistency is probably not it. The argument you raise here is repeated in a variety of different forms and serves only to demonstrate an ignorance or unfamiliarity with, in this case, Christianity. The standard form of the argument goes like this: (a) cite obscure law or command from the Old Testament, (b) cite inconsistent law or command from the New Testament or inconsistent behavior from religious conservatives, and (c) point out hypocrisy. The argument is bunk, however, because any Christian with a rudimentary understanding of his faith knows that the New Testament supercedes the Old Testament. Christ Himself declared in the New Testament that all of the food consumption laws of the Old Testament are null and void by teaching that it is what comes out of a man's heart that renders him unclean, not what he eats (I'm paraphrasing Jesus very poorly here, but that's the gist). I could expand further on this point, but I think it's been made.
For that matter, I disagree with the implication that non-religious philosophies such as secular humanism, objectivism, libertarianism, etc aren't coherent or aren't internally consistent. Now if you were to argue that some liberals as individuals, or the Democratic Party as an organization, don't consistently follow any particular one of these philosophies, I'd agree with that.
I apologize if my use of the term "internally consistent" came off as an insult, that was not my intent. I meant, rather, to distinguish between religious conservatives who vote their values and beliefs and are readily identifiable as doing so (e.g., Penitent voted his Catholic values and beliefs), versus a-religious liberals who similarly vote their values and beliefs but are not as readily identifiable as doing so (e.g., that dude over there voted his values and beliefs but I'm not sure he has a religion or otherwise subscribes to a belief system with a name). It is easier, in my view, for liberals to point fingers and say "how dare he impose his religious values and beliefs on me" than it is for conservatives to point fingers back and say "how dare he impose his ... values and beliefs on me". I also happen to think that conservatives trust more strongly in the concept of democracy and are therefore more willing than liberals to accept that other people may not agree with us.
I hope I explained that well enough, but this summary should be clear in any case: Through these arguments, you've basically demonstrated why pure relativism fails. Because at some point I have to either draw a line and take some level of absolutist stand, or I have to concede that even something as repulsive as Nazism (as one example, I'm not calling you this) is no better and no worse than all other philosophies. And I'm willing to draw that line. If my unwillingness to consider Nazism a moral system on equal footing with my own can in some abstract sense be called anti-Nazi Nazism, I'll bite that bullet.
It's extraordinarily easy to draw the line when Nazis are involved, but that's because we've defeated them in war and have exposed to the world the horrors of their rule. When you start saying, however, that religious conservatives have beliefs that are similarly worthy of outright rejection and delegitimization, you start coming off as a partisan hack. People motivated by religious zeal have done incredibly good things for humanity over the millennia, and continue to do so today, so for a liberal to dismiss a religious conservative as a mindless drone is to attack a system of beliefs and values that has done great good throughout the world and is probably worthy of better credit than Nazism.
To put it another way, would it be reasonable for me to dismiss the political preferences of a liberal by saying something like "he's nothing but a godless libertine seeking to foist his perversion and corruption upon everyone"? No? Then I'd say it would be equally unreasonable for a liberal or a leftist to dismiss the political preferences of religious conservatives by saying that we're nothing but mindless sheep who want to impose our religion on everyone.
Note too that this is NOT an argument that all systems of moral value and belief are equal. I do not believe that they are. Rather, this is an argument that political discourse in our democracy ought to take the form of "your position is bad for reasons X, Y, and Z" instead of "your position is bad because you're just a religious nutjob who wants to force everyone to follow his religion".
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On October 21 2011 03:10 Bibdy wrote:Show nested quote +On October 21 2011 02:44 Hawk wrote:On October 21 2011 02:27 Bibdy wrote:On October 21 2011 02:25 Hawk wrote:What in the hell is Cain saying or doing that is actually getting him this lead???? I do not understand at all. The 9-9-9 plan got him a lot of attention, and 90% of politics is getting people to remember your name in the first place. Plus, while he's been scrutenized on that plan a lot, he hasn't completely floundered like Perry. I thought he's been getting hammered from the left and right about it??? http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/herman-cains-misleading-pitch-for-the-999-plan/2011/10/12/gIQAHszPgL_blog.htmlone of many obviously, but it's not as if either side is particularly happy I thought?? no one in the party seems to be happy with any of the choices, and as someone who can go either way in the election next year, it's kind of sad to see how bad some of these choices are most of romney's criticism is that he's a flip flopper and mormon? or what is it these days Nobody wants Romney because he's kind of a faux-conservative. The man's ideals and explanations keep changing based on the audience he's standing in front of. When Fox News ask him about the Wall Street protesters, he's against it. When he's standing in front of them, he's on their side. When he was governor of Massachusetts he instated a healthcare plan (forced healthcare for everyone) which became the model for Obamacare. He's now claimed was good on the State level, not the Federal level, and people have their doubts. The man was a Democratic representative just a decade ago and said he was pro-choice back then. Now that he's a Republican candidate, he's pro-life. He's a politician through-and-through; say what needs to be said to get these people on your side, because any conflicting viewpoints will get forgotten over time.
QFT. Conservatives want anyone but Romney because we all have a sinking feeling in the pit of our stomaches that the moment Obama passes the torch to him he's going to turn into ... Obama. Heh.
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"Women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be submissive, as the law also says." (1 Corinthians 14:34)
"Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression." (I Timothy 2:11-14)
"Judge for yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her as a covering." (1 Corinthians 11:13-15)
"if evidences of virginity are not found for the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones..." (Deuteronomy 22:20,21)
"For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man." (I Corinthians 11:8-9)
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Whoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death. He that sacrificeth unto any god, save to the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed." (Exodus 22:18-20)
"One of illegitimate birth shall not enter the congregation of the Lord." (Deuteronomy 23:2)
"Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh." (1 Peter 2:18)
"And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes." (Luke 12:47)
"Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property." (Leviticus 25:44-45)
"If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death." (Leviticus 20:10)
"For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him." (Leviticus 20: 9)
"If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death." (Leviticus 20:13)
"For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day, a Sabbath of rest to the LORD. Whoever does any work on it must be put to death. " (Exodus 35:2)
"Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men." (1 Peter 2:13)
Yup. I think it's pretty clear in there that the gays need to be stopped. Can we please stop feeding the troll?
Herman Cain. I think that as 999 is gets more analytical attention, he is going to have more and more problems. That was my concern about the deceptive simplicity in the first place. It unavoidably appears to significantly lower taxes on the rich and raise them on the poor and middle class. I still think that Romney has it in the bag, despite the shots he took the other day.
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On October 21 2011 05:43 Senorcuidado wrote:
"Women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be submissive, as the law also says." (1 Corinthians 14:34)
"Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression." (I Timothy 2:11-14)
"Judge for yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her as a covering." (1 Corinthians 11:13-15)
"if evidences of virginity are not found for the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones..." (Deuteronomy 22:20,21)
"For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man." (I Corinthians 11:8-9)
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Whoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death. He that sacrificeth unto any god, save to the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed." (Exodus 22:18-20)
"One of illegitimate birth shall not enter the congregation of the Lord." (Deuteronomy 23:2)
"Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh." (1 Peter 2:18)
"And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes." (Luke 12:47)
"Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property." (Leviticus 25:44-45)
"If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death." (Leviticus 20:10)
"For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him." (Leviticus 20: 9)
"If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death." (Leviticus 20:13)
"For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day, a Sabbath of rest to the LORD. Whoever does any work on it must be put to death. " (Exodus 35:2)
"Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men." (1 Peter 2:13)
Yup. I think it's pretty clear in there that the gays need to be stopped. Can we please stop feeding the troll?
Herman Cain. I think that as 999 is gets more analytical attention, he is going to have more and more problems. That was my concern about the deceptive simplicity in the first place. It unavoidably appears to significantly lower taxes on the rich and raise them on the poor and middle class. I still think that Romney has it in the bag, despite the shots he took the other day.
Yeah but homo sex is one of the few ones that won't ever effect them or their families, so that's why you can make a deal out of it. It's a sin they'll never commit, so it's easy to condemn.
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On October 21 2011 04:40 Penitent wrote:
This reflects poor jurisprudential thinking. Bear in mind that the Supreme Court has an extraordinarily poor history of making bad legal calls that have had disasterous consequences for the nation. Remember Dredd Scott? Remember the Warren Court? Remember the insane declaration that capital punishment was unconstitutional (despite Congress having explicit authority under Article III to set the punishment for treason), a declaration that was itself overturned by the same court just a few years later? What about the incorporation doctrine - a mainstay of modern Supreme Court jurisprudence and also a demonstrably illogical and grammatically impossible extension of the Court's powers based on the Civil War Amendments? The Court's long adherence to some provably defunct legal interpretation is in no way a reflection of the merit of that interpretation. Tell me, if the Court decided that the Amendment against slavery only counted for blacks, and that it was okay to enslave asians, would you go along with that, or would you read the words of the 13th Amendment and call bullshit?
I directly stated that "the opinions of [...] justices on the Supreme Court (past and present) aren't infallible." Nonetheless, I'm not convinced by an argument that since the SC has made wrong decisions in the past, then this decision is necessarily wrong.
Yes, my position IS irrefutable, because you CAN'T find anywhere in the text of the Constitution any requirement that any law have a "rational basis" or have some "secular purpose". It isn't in the Constitution and to say that it is is to be willfully ignorant of the truth.
[...]
This is right, for the most part. Now, tell me where in the Constitution I can find the requirement that laws have a "rational basis" or a "secular purpose". Or is it in one of the Amendments? Ah. That right there is the problem. It ISN'T in the Constitution, is it?
Establishment Clause: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Passing religious laws has been interpreted as establishing a state-sponsored religion. This is obviously something you disagree with, which is why you think it's okay to pass theocratic laws as long as they don't force people to follow one specific religion. On the other hand, this interpretation is something I do agree with, hence why I think the necessity of a rational/secular basis is the correct interpretation.
btw RANDOMLY capitalizing words IN the middle of sentences DOESN'T make your point more VaLiD. I can read just fine.
More bad jurisprudential thinking.
The Constitution does not give the Supreme Court veto authority over all laws everywhere in America. What it does do is give the Supreme Court the power to decide whether any given law brought before it is consistent or inconsistent with the Constitution itself. Note the significant difference between the two: the former vests the power in the Court, whereas the latter vests the power in the Constitution. Why is this important? Because under the former the Court can decide to permit or reject whatever laws they want for whatever reasons they have, whereas under the latter the Court can only permit or reject laws based on their fidelity or lack thereof to the Constitution. The former is called living in an oligarchy. The latter is called living in a constitutional democracy (or if you want to be seriously nit-picky about it, a constitutional democratic republic, sheesh).
If you're going to bust my chops because I parroted an informal phrase that you initially used ("veto power over all laws") as a metaphor for the correct description (ability to declare a law unconstitutional)... well, congrats. You earned that cookie.
I used your phrase because I thought you understood that a Supreme Court "veto" can only happen if the Court rules that a law is unconstitutional.
You and other posters before you are right to point out that the Constitution prevents majorities from violating the rights of minorities by sheer political force - but this only works for those rights expressly protected by the Constitution and the constitutions of political subunits (states, counties, cities, etc.). Seeing as how gay marriage is not a right guaranteed by the Constitution (and again, if you think that it is, please direct me to the specific area of the Constitution where gay marriage is mentioned), political majorities are free to ban - or promote! - gay marriage as they see fit. No, it is not an infringement of their rights because no one has the right to a homosexual marriage in the first place. And if Tenth Amendment guy reads this and raises, correctly, the matter that the powers not reserved for the feds devolve to the states and to the people, I simply say then that that very devolution of power is what gives political majorities the ability to ban or promote gay marriage in the first place.
You can find the part of the Constitution where gay marriage is specifically mentioned right after the part where mandatory health insurance is specifically mentioned. But I bet you won't be complaining if the Supreme Court "vetoes" PPACA, will you?
That's the thing about this whole judicial activism / legislating from the bench complaint. Nobody minds when it's done in their favor.
I didn't mean to imply that gay marriage would lead to an epidemic of incest or bestiality or polygamy. But I think I have made a persuasive argument that IF you explode the original purposes of the institution of marriage by recognizing homosexual couples, you also remove any logical basis for denying recognition to other sexual groupings. The issue of having difficulty setting out the legal procedures to deal with the consequences of officially recognizing new sexual groupings is irrelevant minutiae. Some lawyers at some point will come together and design a working legal framework for any and all sexual groupings. The real problem is what to do when two brothers show up at the county courthouse and demand a marriage license. Do you deny them a marriage because of the incestuous nature of their relationship? If so, does that not smack of the same "bigoted hatred" and rank discrimination that religious conservatives now direct towards homosexuals who want to be married? If not, why not?
Equal rights for whom, exactly? Should we extend this "equal right" to marry the person of your choosing to everyone? What about, like I've mentioned earlier, a brother who wants to marry his brother? Or are people who wish to engage in incest somehow "less equal" than the rest of us? Are people who want to marry animals similarly "less equal" than the rest of us too? What about people who want to marry more than one person?
Much of the angst over this issue stems from the incorrect assumption that the right, such as it is, in question is the right to marry the person of your choosing. This is NOT the right in question. Even before gay marriage registered as a blip on the national mind, it was well established that you do NOT have the right to marry the person of your choosing. You can't choose to marry a family member (well, in most places anyway). You can't choose to marry someone who is already married. You can't choose to marry someone who is extremely young. You can't choose to marry someone who is dead. You can't choose to marry an animal. You can't choose to marry someone who wilfully rejects being married to you (shotgun wedding?). You can't choose to marry someone who is unconscious. And on and on and on.
These are all poor comparisons though.
You can't marry someone who willfully rejects you (ie does not consent) because you cannot force people to enter into a marriage against their will. This is about their rights.
You can't marry someone who is dead because they are no longer a legal person.
You can't marry someone who is unconscious because they cannot give consent in that condition. This is about their rights.
You can't marry a family member because family dynamics preclude true consent. Incest is essentially rape. I'm open to being convinced otherwise, but so far I've found the arguments that it is rape more convincing than the arguments that it isn't, especially when you consider that the majority of incest in this country isn't between two 45 year old brothers but more likely a 16 year old girl (who in some states is of the age of consent) and her 35 year old father. I am a pragmatist and I place a high priority on protecting children.
You can't marry a child because children cannot consent. Pedophilia is rape; that's fairly non-negotiable. If you think someone is no longer a legal child at age 13, work to lower the age of consent in your state. When that happens, the framework is already in place for them to marry.
You can't marry an animal because animals a) are not legal persons b) cannot consent and c) cannot enter into any legal contracts. If animals were legal people, then I could buy an ant farm and claim 200 dependents, never having to pay taxes again. On the other hand, if the Vulcans showed up and Spock wanted to marry a human, I'd be fine with that. (side note - It's really appalling to me that more social conservatives would probably accept human-alien marriage than gay marriage.)
Homosexuals are people. They have the ability to consent (assuming they are of age and not family members). They have the ability to enter into legal contracts. The things that prevent a man from entering into a consensual relationship with his son or a 14 year old girl or his pet dog don't apply to whether he can enter one with another man.
No, the right in question has always been a significantly narrower right than is assumed, and that right has always been grounded in the idea that it is in the state's best interests to promote marriages between committed men and women so that they can bear and raise children who will become the next generation of citizens. Pardon me if I reject gay marriage because of the further harm it would do to an already severely weakened institution.
In no way would gay marriage harm the institution of marriage. Marriage in the states and countries that do allow gays to marry has stayed the same as it was in the years right before it was legalized.
Note too that this does not AT ALL crowd out the possibility that homosexuals may form unions of their own in private ceremonies. Just because I don't want the state to recognize gay marriage doesn't mean that I want the state to actively hunt down and prosecute homosexuals who decide to publicize their unions with private ceremonies before their friends and families. Let them do as they will - it's a free country - but don't destroy the institution of marriage for the sake of forcing the public to recognize and accept your sexual choices.
So I ask yet again, what about state recognition of civil unions (not marriages) for gay people? The tax filing, the hospital visitation rights, full protection under the law. It's the rejection of civil unions that is the line between arguably just wanting to nationalize a religious tradition versus clear bigotry.
There is much to criticize of religious conservatives in America; their inconsistency is probably not it. The argument you raise here is repeated in a variety of different forms and serves only to demonstrate an ignorance or unfamiliarity with, in this case, Christianity. The standard form of the argument goes like this: (a) cite obscure law or command from the Old Testament, (b) cite inconsistent law or command from the New Testament or inconsistent behavior from religious conservatives, and (c) point out hypocrisy. The argument is bunk, however, because any Christian with a rudimentary understanding of his faith knows that the New Testament supercedes the Old Testament. Christ Himself declared in the New Testament that all of the food consumption laws of the Old Testament are null and void by teaching that it is what comes out of a man's heart that renders him unclean, not what he eats (I'm paraphrasing Jesus very poorly here, but that's the gist). I could expand further on this point, but I think it's been made.
Except that I'm intimately familiar with Christianity and that wasn't the argument I made.
The New Testament is the more progressive part of the Bible. It's turn the other cheek, the Sermon on the Mount, the man asking Jesus if it's okay for him to hoard wealth as long as he follows the other commandments, story of Lazarus, etc etc. When people protest carrying Lev 18:22 (this is by far the most commonly cited passage against homosexuality) signs as support of their political causes and they aren't trying to get the government to enact policies based on the hundreds of New Testament passages that amount to what we'd call "social justice," they're the ones guilty of missing out on that rudimentary understanding of faith. On a worldwide level, Christians totally get this. The Pope gets it. Within the American right wing, not so much.
NT superseding OT is a better argument in defense of what the social justice churches are selectively active in than what the socially conservative churches are.
I also happen to think that conservatives trust more strongly in the concept of democracy and are therefore more willing than liberals to accept that other people may not agree with us.
This is kinda a minor point, but I've generally experienced the opposite. Consider: which side is more keen to replace the Electoral College with a direct popular vote? (the latter of which is closer to democracy) Also in my personal experience, I've found that I'm way more likely to be accused of being un-American/unpatriotic for espousing liberal beliefs than conservative ones.
But I also think this is totally different from person to person; overall I doubt either side is significantly more accepting of beliefs that they're really, fundamentally opposed to.
It's extraordinarily easy to draw the line when Nazis are involved, but that's because we've defeated them in war and have exposed to the world the horrors of their rule. When you start saying, however, that religious conservatives have beliefs that are similarly worthy of outright rejection and delegitimization, you start coming off as a partisan hack. People motivated by religious zeal have done incredibly good things for humanity over the millennia, and continue to do so today, so for a liberal to dismiss a religious conservative as a mindless drone is to attack a system of beliefs and values that has done great good throughout the world and is probably worthy of better credit than Nazism.
To put it another way, would it be reasonable for me to dismiss the political preferences of a liberal by saying something like "he's nothing but a godless libertine seeking to foist his perversion and corruption upon everyone"? No? Then I'd say it would be equally unreasonable for a liberal or a leftist to dismiss the political preferences of religious conservatives by saying that we're nothing but mindless sheep who want to impose our religion on everyone.
I chose Nazis because I wanted us to be able to agree on the concepts of outright rejecting an ideology and how it can be okay to be intolerant of intolerance. If I tried to make a perfect analogy, we wouldn't agree on it being a valid example, because we don't agree on the issue in the first place. I tried to make it clear that I wasn't comparing your or your beliefs to Nazism; apologies if I did not succeed in doing so.
Note too that this is NOT an argument that all systems of moral value and belief are equal. I do not believe that they are. Rather, this is an argument that political discourse in our democracy ought to take the form of "your position is bad for reasons X, Y, and Z" instead of "your position is bad because you're just a religious nutjob who wants to force everyone to follow his religion".
Okay. So if I argue that "position A is bad because it doesn't have a rational basis" that sounds like "your position is bad for reason X." Bigotry from atheists is every bit as bad and irrational as bigotry from religious people; my rejection of laws that don't have a rational secular purpose doesn't apply specifically to religious nutjobs. (Ayn Rand for example was bigoted against homosexuals, and she was a hardcore atheist.)
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On October 21 2011 01:56 Kiarip wrote:Show nested quote +On October 21 2011 00:51 Bibdy wrote:On October 21 2011 00:39 Kiarip wrote:On October 20 2011 19:07 Penitent wrote:
That said, your second paragraph is pretty accurate, and I think the Court has made statements on this in the past. (but I can't remember the context and it's too late for me to search google for more than 5 minutes, which was unsuccessful. my apologies.) Basically, as long as a law has a secular purpose, then religious support for the law doesn't disqualify it constitutionally. For example if a bill was being considered to broaden welfare programs and Johnny was in favor of that because Jesus said to feed the poor, that's okay (Constitutionally) because the law itself clearly has a secular purpose. Or if somebody supported capital punishment because at times it was mandated by God in the Bible, that's also okay Constitutionally, because clearly the purpose of capital punishment isn't to advance religion and it has secular support.
You are correct that Supreme Court jurisprudence over the last century and a half has largely followed this train of thought. Consider, however, that the Supreme Court (or to be more precise, the portion of the Court that agreed with this line of thinking) could be wrong. I repeat the irrefutable claim that there is nothing in the Constitution which requires any law made at any level of government to have some "secular" purpose. I challenge any and all who disagree with me to find in the text or the history of the text any hint whatsoever that the Framers of the Constitution or its subsequent Amendments ever intended to pass into law a general, universally binding requirement that all laws have some "secular" purpose. There is a reason why the Framers never did so, and why they would be appalled to know that our Supreme Court has unilaterally inserted such a requirement into the Constitution by raw judicial fiat. Consider the consequences of such a requirement (which in technical legal parlance is actually framed as the requirement that all laws have some "rational basis"). Who decides what is "rational"? Why, the Supreme Court does. So if all laws everywhere must be "rational", who then commands ultimate veto authority over every single law in America? Why, the Supreme Court does. Consider carefully that what is "rational" to some will be madness to others. There is no infallible way of establishing the boundaries of "rationality". Because of this, any legal requirement that a law be "rational" - or in your terms, have a "secular" purpose - is effectively nothing more than a power grab by the one branch of our government that is immune to electoral challenge. The very idea that a law must have some "secular" purpose or "rational" basis is repugnant to the concept of a democracy. This is America, where we have the right to elect our rulers and replace them if they rule for ill. I didn't sign up to be ruled by a minimum of five unelected elites wearing black robes, and I suspect neither did you.
As I said, I don't find it hateful if somebody wants to make marriage a religious ceremony and make civil unions about the legal rights. I don't find it hateful if someone wants to deregulate marriage entirely. Or even if they want government marriage for heterosexuals and civil unions with full legal benefits for homosexuals. (which I very strongly disagree with - "separate but equal" has tended to fail miserably - but won't go so far as to say it's definitely indicative of hatred)
But if someone wants the law to expressly treat homosexuals as second class citizens, to the point of not even accepting if we take the literal word "marriage" and keep it hetero-only and come up with a different word for gays, how can I not find that hateful? That's no different that saying gays should be arrested for living together or shouldn't be allowed to vote.
Okay, so let's take your stand against "hatred" to the next logical step. Do you support polygamous marriage? If not, why do you hate people who just want to engage in loving, polyamorous relationships? What about incestuous marriage? Or, if you think the possibility of genetically deformed children is too great a risk, what about homosexually incestuous marriage? Do you support that? If not, why do you hate family members who want to engage in loving, sexual relationships with each other? What about pedophiliac marriage? The age of consent in many countries around the world is as low as 13; isn't it hateful for us to bar significantly older adults from taking willing spouses at young ages? I know you'll probably try to call this a straw man argument, but it isn't because it gets to the heart of the problem of officially recognizing gay marriage - that doing so obliterates the original purposes of having the institution of marriage in the first place, and having done that, there's no logical reason why the institution of marriage should be denied to other possible sexual groupings of people. The whole point of marriage was to create stable bonds between the two halves of our species so that they could pool resources and work together to birth and raise the next generation of children. Governments realized that it was in their best interests to promote and protect marriage and correspondingly recognized marriage and included it in the basic framework of governance. You are free to disagree with this understanding of marriage, as indeed most everyone still participating in this thread does, but recognize too that if you choose instead an understanding of marriage as the mere conference of special rights and benefits, there is no logical reason why marriage shouldn't also be extended to sexual groupings of people that even the most die-hard gay marriage supporters would find repugnant.
That's the problem with a statement like "across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history." "All" is a pretty strong word. Saying "all prime numbers are odd" is actually false, just because of little ol' number 2. Similarly your statement is incorrect. Something like "the vast majority of marriages throughout human history have been heterosexual" would be correct.
I also wouldn't consider the Emperor of Rome insignificant myself.
Fair enough. As for the Emperor of Rome, however, I will note that Nero is widely recognized as having been a seriously disturbed and psychopathic individual; he "married" a man because he was the emperor, and no one says no to the emperor, especially when he's as likely to cut your hand off as shake it.
Religion and philosophy have their place in our society and in human thought, but it's not in the laboratory.
I'd have quoted the entire section but it was quite long and all I had to say in reply is that if there is in fact more to speciation than I have been able to find on my own, then I'm quite happy to have evolution taught in public schools as a proper scientific theory. As it is, I have yet to find anywhere a sufficiently plausible theoretical model for how a fish becomes a zebra a billion generations down the line. But I do think it is overly simplistic to say that ID boils down to finding the gaps in evolutionary theory and then saying "that's where God is". Many of the questions posed by scientists who support ID are eminently valid ones for which, to my knowledge, evolutionary biologists have yet to formulate any answers, theoretical or otherwise (such as the problem of irreducible complexity on a molecular level - and no, exaptation does not explain how the molecular pieces of a ribosome could have come together for some other purpose only to magically chance upon the awesomeness of being a ribosome). But I digress.
I'm not trying to take away anyone's right to vote. Anyone is free to vote like a complete jackass if they want to, and I'm free to call a spade a spade if I want to. Democracy does NOT mean you can't call people out if they take stances you find reprehensible. It seems like you're objecting to me objecting to other people's positions/voting behavior. You can have your opinion on an issue, but I can have my opinion on your opinion.
You're definitely right that you and everyone else is free to call me out for opposing gay marriage. But the manner in which that "calling out" is done is what so often devolves into hypocritical bullshit. If you want to say that you disagree with me because you believe that homosexual relationships are exactly the same as heterosexual relationships and should be accorded the same rights and benefits, fine. But to claim that my position is bad or illegitimate simply because it is based on my religious beliefs is hypocrisy because the opposite position isn't based on anything better (and I direct this not at you in particular but to liberals in general). Why do you support gay marriage? Because I believe in equality for all people. Why do you want equality for all people? Because of the following 32 reasons, all of which boil down to equality being a good thing. Why is equality a good thing? Because ... um ... because it is. Why? Because it just is. Well, why is it better to support good things instead of bad things? Because I think good things are better than bad things. Why? Because. That, right there, is the opposing viewpoint's foundational religious belief on this matter. At some point, every value preference must be rooted in a belief that is accepted without question or further basis, be it religious in origin or not. So to claim that religious voters, like myself, who vote their values, are somehow imposing our religion on others while non-religious voters, who vote their values, are not, is complete and total hypocrisy. They ARE imposing their religious values on others when they vote - they just don't see it as such because they don't organize their values and beliefs into coherent, internally consistent religions like religious voters do.
No, that's another straw man argument. At this point I'm starting to think you're an atheist trolling the forum... either that or you don't know how to have a discussion without being extremely combative.
Exactly what about my argument makes it a "straw man"? When a liberal (not necessarily you btw) blithely declaims that religious nutjobs like me are ruining the country by imposing our religious values on everyone else, how is that not also a statement that my religious values and beliefs are somehow less legitimate than the values and beliefs of those who disagree with me? Everyone says that I am imposing my religion on homosexuals when I deny with my vote a homosexual's ability to marry his sexual partner, but no one seems to understand that they too impose their "religion" (i.e., value and belief system) on me when they vote to recognize and support something which I want society to reject. No, I am not being forced to marry a man, but I am being forced to live in a country that officially recognizes and accepts and promotes homosexual relationships - something which I do not want. The whole point of my original post and these succeeding replies is to counter the notion that religious values and beliefs are a less legitimate source of political preferences than a-religious / atheistic / "secular" / "rational" / spaghetti monster values and beliefs. When a person supports gay marriage, he isn't attacking religious beliefs... He is defending some individuals' rights to an act that fits into their right of pursuit of happiness without infriging on the rights of any other citizens. When a person supports banning gay marriage he is supporting the Federal infrigement of personal liberties... How is the distinction not obvious? No one is making any do gay marriages just because they're legal, it just gives people that want to a legal ability to do so. As for evolution. Yes it's not a complete theory, but tons of theories are incomplete at this point for example in particle physics, and etc. There's nothing found so far to contradict evolution, although it's true that there phenomena found that evolution has not yet explained. There's a difference. If there's counter evidence that it becomes obvious that the theory is wrong in its curent state, but if there are phenomena that the theoy hasn't yet explained it simply means that our understanding of nature doesn't yet encompass that particular phenomenom. An example of disproving a theory for example, is how in early 20th century physicists believed that everything existed in some kind of medium, called ether, but then astronomists measured the red shift, and this directly contradicted the possibility of existence of ether. Plus the Michelson-Morley experiment. That one put the final nail in the coffin. It's the ultimate hypocrisy within the religious base of the Republican party. They want smaller government and less intervention like moderate conservatives, but then simultaneously wants the government to go to great lengths to control social behaviour. And this guy (Penitent) had the audacity to call out liberals as being hypocrits earlier in the post, calling them too blind and stupid to realize it. Oh the irony. Edit: I shouldn't say non-religious conservatives, because there are plenty far-right non-religious conservatives who want to put a stop to anything they deem is changing society too much, too. Usually older people who want society to go back to the way it was when they were kids. Yeah... I already talked about this earlier, but it's the reason I hate when people make claims about libertarians like Ron Paul that they are far right wing. Because based on today's standards far right-wing generally means, very socially constricting, and pro-war/imperialism, etc. Some people say Ron Paul is very far right, and then Democrats are obviously on the left, but then somehow as you move across this political line more right, before you get to libertarian, for some reason you need cross the territory of the war-hawks, the homophobes, and the Federal bankers... All of whom are considered right-wing, but all of whom also support big government. The Republicans have lost their way, and it gives libertarians a bad name too, because Libertarians were the original "Right-wing," and now it's polluted with mild fascists.
I was just reading Milton Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom" and he is quite insistent in the first chapter that he prefers the term "liberal". He didn't think that "conservative" accurately represented his views at all. These days we call such views libertarian, and while the Republican party does pay some lip service to the economics, modern conservatism is something quite different. Putting libertarians on that linear spectrum is pretty nonsensical.
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On October 21 2011 07:00 Senorcuidado wrote:Show nested quote +On October 21 2011 01:56 Kiarip wrote:On October 21 2011 00:51 Bibdy wrote:On October 21 2011 00:39 Kiarip wrote:On October 20 2011 19:07 Penitent wrote:
That said, your second paragraph is pretty accurate, and I think the Court has made statements on this in the past. (but I can't remember the context and it's too late for me to search google for more than 5 minutes, which was unsuccessful. my apologies.) Basically, as long as a law has a secular purpose, then religious support for the law doesn't disqualify it constitutionally. For example if a bill was being considered to broaden welfare programs and Johnny was in favor of that because Jesus said to feed the poor, that's okay (Constitutionally) because the law itself clearly has a secular purpose. Or if somebody supported capital punishment because at times it was mandated by God in the Bible, that's also okay Constitutionally, because clearly the purpose of capital punishment isn't to advance religion and it has secular support.
You are correct that Supreme Court jurisprudence over the last century and a half has largely followed this train of thought. Consider, however, that the Supreme Court (or to be more precise, the portion of the Court that agreed with this line of thinking) could be wrong. I repeat the irrefutable claim that there is nothing in the Constitution which requires any law made at any level of government to have some "secular" purpose. I challenge any and all who disagree with me to find in the text or the history of the text any hint whatsoever that the Framers of the Constitution or its subsequent Amendments ever intended to pass into law a general, universally binding requirement that all laws have some "secular" purpose. There is a reason why the Framers never did so, and why they would be appalled to know that our Supreme Court has unilaterally inserted such a requirement into the Constitution by raw judicial fiat. Consider the consequences of such a requirement (which in technical legal parlance is actually framed as the requirement that all laws have some "rational basis"). Who decides what is "rational"? Why, the Supreme Court does. So if all laws everywhere must be "rational", who then commands ultimate veto authority over every single law in America? Why, the Supreme Court does. Consider carefully that what is "rational" to some will be madness to others. There is no infallible way of establishing the boundaries of "rationality". Because of this, any legal requirement that a law be "rational" - or in your terms, have a "secular" purpose - is effectively nothing more than a power grab by the one branch of our government that is immune to electoral challenge. The very idea that a law must have some "secular" purpose or "rational" basis is repugnant to the concept of a democracy. This is America, where we have the right to elect our rulers and replace them if they rule for ill. I didn't sign up to be ruled by a minimum of five unelected elites wearing black robes, and I suspect neither did you.
As I said, I don't find it hateful if somebody wants to make marriage a religious ceremony and make civil unions about the legal rights. I don't find it hateful if someone wants to deregulate marriage entirely. Or even if they want government marriage for heterosexuals and civil unions with full legal benefits for homosexuals. (which I very strongly disagree with - "separate but equal" has tended to fail miserably - but won't go so far as to say it's definitely indicative of hatred)
But if someone wants the law to expressly treat homosexuals as second class citizens, to the point of not even accepting if we take the literal word "marriage" and keep it hetero-only and come up with a different word for gays, how can I not find that hateful? That's no different that saying gays should be arrested for living together or shouldn't be allowed to vote.
Okay, so let's take your stand against "hatred" to the next logical step. Do you support polygamous marriage? If not, why do you hate people who just want to engage in loving, polyamorous relationships? What about incestuous marriage? Or, if you think the possibility of genetically deformed children is too great a risk, what about homosexually incestuous marriage? Do you support that? If not, why do you hate family members who want to engage in loving, sexual relationships with each other? What about pedophiliac marriage? The age of consent in many countries around the world is as low as 13; isn't it hateful for us to bar significantly older adults from taking willing spouses at young ages? I know you'll probably try to call this a straw man argument, but it isn't because it gets to the heart of the problem of officially recognizing gay marriage - that doing so obliterates the original purposes of having the institution of marriage in the first place, and having done that, there's no logical reason why the institution of marriage should be denied to other possible sexual groupings of people. The whole point of marriage was to create stable bonds between the two halves of our species so that they could pool resources and work together to birth and raise the next generation of children. Governments realized that it was in their best interests to promote and protect marriage and correspondingly recognized marriage and included it in the basic framework of governance. You are free to disagree with this understanding of marriage, as indeed most everyone still participating in this thread does, but recognize too that if you choose instead an understanding of marriage as the mere conference of special rights and benefits, there is no logical reason why marriage shouldn't also be extended to sexual groupings of people that even the most die-hard gay marriage supporters would find repugnant.
That's the problem with a statement like "across all cultures at all times in all of recorded human history." "All" is a pretty strong word. Saying "all prime numbers are odd" is actually false, just because of little ol' number 2. Similarly your statement is incorrect. Something like "the vast majority of marriages throughout human history have been heterosexual" would be correct.
I also wouldn't consider the Emperor of Rome insignificant myself.
Fair enough. As for the Emperor of Rome, however, I will note that Nero is widely recognized as having been a seriously disturbed and psychopathic individual; he "married" a man because he was the emperor, and no one says no to the emperor, especially when he's as likely to cut your hand off as shake it.
Religion and philosophy have their place in our society and in human thought, but it's not in the laboratory.
I'd have quoted the entire section but it was quite long and all I had to say in reply is that if there is in fact more to speciation than I have been able to find on my own, then I'm quite happy to have evolution taught in public schools as a proper scientific theory. As it is, I have yet to find anywhere a sufficiently plausible theoretical model for how a fish becomes a zebra a billion generations down the line. But I do think it is overly simplistic to say that ID boils down to finding the gaps in evolutionary theory and then saying "that's where God is". Many of the questions posed by scientists who support ID are eminently valid ones for which, to my knowledge, evolutionary biologists have yet to formulate any answers, theoretical or otherwise (such as the problem of irreducible complexity on a molecular level - and no, exaptation does not explain how the molecular pieces of a ribosome could have come together for some other purpose only to magically chance upon the awesomeness of being a ribosome). But I digress.
I'm not trying to take away anyone's right to vote. Anyone is free to vote like a complete jackass if they want to, and I'm free to call a spade a spade if I want to. Democracy does NOT mean you can't call people out if they take stances you find reprehensible. It seems like you're objecting to me objecting to other people's positions/voting behavior. You can have your opinion on an issue, but I can have my opinion on your opinion.
You're definitely right that you and everyone else is free to call me out for opposing gay marriage. But the manner in which that "calling out" is done is what so often devolves into hypocritical bullshit. If you want to say that you disagree with me because you believe that homosexual relationships are exactly the same as heterosexual relationships and should be accorded the same rights and benefits, fine. But to claim that my position is bad or illegitimate simply because it is based on my religious beliefs is hypocrisy because the opposite position isn't based on anything better (and I direct this not at you in particular but to liberals in general). Why do you support gay marriage? Because I believe in equality for all people. Why do you want equality for all people? Because of the following 32 reasons, all of which boil down to equality being a good thing. Why is equality a good thing? Because ... um ... because it is. Why? Because it just is. Well, why is it better to support good things instead of bad things? Because I think good things are better than bad things. Why? Because. That, right there, is the opposing viewpoint's foundational religious belief on this matter. At some point, every value preference must be rooted in a belief that is accepted without question or further basis, be it religious in origin or not. So to claim that religious voters, like myself, who vote their values, are somehow imposing our religion on others while non-religious voters, who vote their values, are not, is complete and total hypocrisy. They ARE imposing their religious values on others when they vote - they just don't see it as such because they don't organize their values and beliefs into coherent, internally consistent religions like religious voters do.
No, that's another straw man argument. At this point I'm starting to think you're an atheist trolling the forum... either that or you don't know how to have a discussion without being extremely combative.
Exactly what about my argument makes it a "straw man"? When a liberal (not necessarily you btw) blithely declaims that religious nutjobs like me are ruining the country by imposing our religious values on everyone else, how is that not also a statement that my religious values and beliefs are somehow less legitimate than the values and beliefs of those who disagree with me? Everyone says that I am imposing my religion on homosexuals when I deny with my vote a homosexual's ability to marry his sexual partner, but no one seems to understand that they too impose their "religion" (i.e., value and belief system) on me when they vote to recognize and support something which I want society to reject. No, I am not being forced to marry a man, but I am being forced to live in a country that officially recognizes and accepts and promotes homosexual relationships - something which I do not want. The whole point of my original post and these succeeding replies is to counter the notion that religious values and beliefs are a less legitimate source of political preferences than a-religious / atheistic / "secular" / "rational" / spaghetti monster values and beliefs. When a person supports gay marriage, he isn't attacking religious beliefs... He is defending some individuals' rights to an act that fits into their right of pursuit of happiness without infriging on the rights of any other citizens. When a person supports banning gay marriage he is supporting the Federal infrigement of personal liberties... How is the distinction not obvious? No one is making any do gay marriages just because they're legal, it just gives people that want to a legal ability to do so. As for evolution. Yes it's not a complete theory, but tons of theories are incomplete at this point for example in particle physics, and etc. There's nothing found so far to contradict evolution, although it's true that there phenomena found that evolution has not yet explained. There's a difference. If there's counter evidence that it becomes obvious that the theory is wrong in its curent state, but if there are phenomena that the theoy hasn't yet explained it simply means that our understanding of nature doesn't yet encompass that particular phenomenom. An example of disproving a theory for example, is how in early 20th century physicists believed that everything existed in some kind of medium, called ether, but then astronomists measured the red shift, and this directly contradicted the possibility of existence of ether. Plus the Michelson-Morley experiment. That one put the final nail in the coffin. It's the ultimate hypocrisy within the religious base of the Republican party. They want smaller government and less intervention like moderate conservatives, but then simultaneously wants the government to go to great lengths to control social behaviour. And this guy (Penitent) had the audacity to call out liberals as being hypocrits earlier in the post, calling them too blind and stupid to realize it. Oh the irony. Edit: I shouldn't say non-religious conservatives, because there are plenty far-right non-religious conservatives who want to put a stop to anything they deem is changing society too much, too. Usually older people who want society to go back to the way it was when they were kids. Yeah... I already talked about this earlier, but it's the reason I hate when people make claims about libertarians like Ron Paul that they are far right wing. Because based on today's standards far right-wing generally means, very socially constricting, and pro-war/imperialism, etc. Some people say Ron Paul is very far right, and then Democrats are obviously on the left, but then somehow as you move across this political line more right, before you get to libertarian, for some reason you need cross the territory of the war-hawks, the homophobes, and the Federal bankers... All of whom are considered right-wing, but all of whom also support big government. The Republicans have lost their way, and it gives libertarians a bad name too, because Libertarians were the original "Right-wing," and now it's polluted with mild fascists. I was just reading Milton Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom" and he is quite insistent in the first chapter that he prefers the term "liberal". He didn't think that "conservative" accurately represented his views at all. These days we call such views libertarian, and while the Republican party does pay some lip service to the economics, modern conservatism is something quite different. Putting libertarians on that linear spectrum is pretty nonsensical.
The only reason we're thrown into one of two buckets is because we're stuck with a two-party system. The political process has become 'us vs them' and it's poison.
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Here's a statistical analysis of the media's coverage of the candidates and the President.
http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/cr
Supporters of Ron Paul will be shocked, shocked, to learn that he's receiving substantially less coverage than the other candidates. Also the positive coverage of Perry (which turned negative later) and negative-to-positive coverage of Cain arguably accounts for their change in popularity.
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EPT
