On Feb 11, 2009, at 2:34 PM, Vicky Staubly wrote:
Matthew Taylor wrote:
I respect your life choices - I have made some unorthodox choices
myself. I don't demand others welcome my choices, or even support
my choices. I certainly don't demand that the law be changed to
suit my choices - I do what I can to persuade others to support my
views that the laws should be changed in an orderly manner.
Have I advocated storming city hall and stealing marriage licenses?
I'm
saying that I don't care how unjust laws get changed.
And if you had greater respect for the law rather than your preferred
outcome you would care how the laws are changed. The constitution
and the ordinary body of law have proscribed methods of change, the
latter harder to change than the former. I advocate following the
rules to change the rules, not using judges to change the plain
meaning of the rules or just toss them out as unpopular or
incompatible with the judge's idea of what the law should be when it
clearly is not that.
Did black people
tell the supreme court after "Brown vs Board of Education"... "no, no,
we'll wait until we can get favorable laws in all 48 states"?
How does this apply to our discussion? That decision said the
constitution (14th Amendment chiefly) meant what it said it did -
equal protection.
Did slaves after the civil war say "No, no, I'll wait until my state
of South Carolina outlaws slavery"?
Define wait - it took the 13th Amendment to outlaw slavery nation
wide. The Emancipation Proclamation did not do that.
I wish that the people of the US would reject past injustices sooner,
As do I.
but it seems that it's usually the courts and/or the federal
government that first tries to fix things.
I disagree. Much change comes from ordinary citizens and interest
groups lobbying for incremental change. When the courts are used to
short circuit the process before there is a consensus for change that
usually creates a tremendous backlash.
Then the bigots cry "states rights!"
and let their demand for small/weak federal government (or against
"activist judges") try to justify their bigotry.
Wow, talk about a loaded, inflammatory statement. Am I bigoted
because I support the rule of law? Am I bigoted because I think the
text actually matters? Am I bigoted because I support a republican
form of government rather than direct democracy?
It's also telling that you called it my "lifestyle" and "a choice".
Because everything you do, everything I do, is a lifestyle and a
choice. Those choices can be guided or constrained by external forces
or internal makeup, but as an autonomous individual possessed of free
will, your actions are a choice.
Strangely, your religion, more of a choice than my "lifestyle", does
more damage than my "lifestyle", and yet no one suggests you give it
up.
Argument by unsupported assumption. I have no religion. I am an
agnostic - a militant agnostic. This existence of the supernatural
can neither be proved nor disproved by natural means. And plenty of
people do suggest I give up my agnosticism and find faith - in their
deity naturally. Granted a few don't care which deity, as long as
there is one.
Did I say anything about your lifestyle was damaging, or wrong? I do
not think I did.
You also dragged marriage into the discussion, trying to say I want
more
(or changed) laws, but it was "Lawrence v. Texas" that started this
discussion (for me anyway). That overturned a state law which made
what I do in the privacy of my own bedroom (if I lived in Texas) a
crime. How is having that law "small unobtrusive government"? You
simply
brings up that excuse when it suits your bigotry.
I think that law is a terrible law and should have been REPEALED long
ago. The people of Texas through their elected representatives
disagreed, as is their privilege under our constitutional system. I
do not want any government in my or your bedroom. Under our present
laws though they are allowed to be there in certain circumstances.
That was my point - in our system the state MAY legislate morality. I
do not think they should absent some other compelling interest, but I
do not argue that they may not, for our constitution and the common
law that precedes it are clear that morality can be legislated.
You write as though you think you know me and my views on personal
life and morality. Clearly you do not and have chosen to project a
straw man to denigrate.
I shouldn't have jumped into this political discussion, but I was
simply
trying to show that this kind of bigotry affects real people, people
you
know, but obviously don't care about.
Again, you assume much yet know little about me. Why is this?
Matthew
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