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That's what they're doing. Both through the introduction of the Respect for Marriage Act that would basically repeal DOMA, and also through lawsuits such as Gill v. Office of Personnel Management.
Let me submit a similar example: Texting while driving. IIRC, reckless driving is an offense in itself, regardless of if you are under the influence of a drug. Yet, we are looking to specifically legislate texting out of driving. This is unnecessary legislation. It is wasting taxpayer dollars for trying to fix something that isn't broken. The only problem is that, for some reason, cops don't pull people over for texting right now. It is known that it is reckless to drive while texting, and therefore is already an offense.
Another example: Hate crimes. It is illegal to lynch someone. Why is it any more illegal if your motives are different?
It seems like there are means of solving most of the 'benefits' already, and again, some of those things, like joint tax filing, seem trivial. Even single parents get tax benefits for wards. Perhaps benefits should be conferred to any group of people deciding to jointly take care of wards. This is what we should be calling for as a society, not singling out a single group of people, who seem more interested in labeling themselves rather than solving a larger issue.
That's what they're doing. Both through the introduction of the Respect for Marriage Act that would basically repeal DOMA, and also through lawsuits such as Gill v. Office of Personnel Management.
The most pressing problem, as I see it, is that a sizable group of people is being denied the same access to certain rights and protections that the rest of the population is able to obtain without even really trying. If the issue is inequality, I'm not really sure how equality is a band-aid fix.
Nor am I sure how pointed, overt discrimination against a portion of the population qualifies as a non-issue.
If you want to argue the specific rights and protections that are automatically granted with a government recognized marriage contract, have at it. Based on previous posts, I'll likely agree with a number of your arguments. But, really, that's a different fight for a different day.
People making some very true and valid points here!
Why not end with those privileges then? (they aren't rights).
Fully agree.
Huh, what? Since when was that about the philosophical origin to the contract of marriage, whatever that means? Marriage, as an ins ution, contract or whatever, is a subject to philosophy. I'm not even sure what that ideological/financial dichotomy is supposed to mean, but if your suggestion is that the financial aspect of marriage is now more important than in the past I suspect you'd be in trouble to prove that. Heck, Locke disserted about marriage in the scope of his theory of property.
In any case, I was just pointing out that jacob was, consciously or not, presenting marriage as an Hegelian concept (I think in order to refute it). That doesn't change whatsoever - if marriage is seen as more than a contract and therefore deserving of special and unique state protection that's Hegelian. Have you ever read what those guys wrote about marriage?
What you need to prove is that 1) gay marriage solves that (after proving 2) that positive discrimination is always wrong) and that 3) it's the only or better way of solving that.
From my understanding you'd go from situation A - those who are willing to marry a person of the opposed sex and accomplish that are positively discriminate to situation B - those who are willing to marry a person of the opposed sex or the same sex and accomplish that are positively discriminate.
how is this positive discrimination?
What do you mean by "this", Blake?
Apologies -- there was no need to call you Ron Paul, your reply just seemed to sound Libertarian by virtue of diminishing the role of law.
My beef was this: your reply was a historical explanation that said contracts haven't always been maintained or upheld by governments. Fair enough -- I used the infinitive, which you probably took to suggest an absolute statement which, instead, was a description of the present. But the question I was responding to asked who is in the role of protecting contracts. Now. Short of extra-legal en ies like the Mafia (who only protect a very limited number and type of contracts anyway), the answer has to be government. Why? Because the only force that can enforce the process of justice legally is, unsurprisingly, the same en y that administrates the law under whose terms contracts are entered into.
I understand that contracts can happen in spiritual dimensions as they do in the church, but the church does not have any more authority than it's faithful grant it. If a church tries to negotiate child-visitation terms for an estranged couple, and one of the parents doesn't comply with the agreement, the church does not have the authority to take the child away, only the govt does. Same goes for handshake agreements: they may cons ute a contract, but they provide no recourse for justice in and of themselves.
How do you figure the people in your situation A are automaticall in the positive discrimination light to people in situation B...
but forget that.....
I'd rather know why you are telling CF to prove that positive is always wrong
Why don't people just give up on gay marriage? Besides, Obama isn't going budge on the issue. He has stated publicly that he does not support gay marriage. He only supports civil unions and benefits. Besides, when you think about it, if gay people can get married then what's next? What happens when gay people finally get everything they want? Won't their movement/agenda basically have no purpose anymore since they accomplished their goal and got their way? When gay people get everything that they want, they will just be like straight people and not have a cause anymore. However, aren't gay people suppose to be special and unique because of their gayness. If gay people are like straight people because they have the right to get married then doesn't that take away their uniqueness?
Hate crimes are a joke if you ask me. I will explain. During the presidential election, there was a hanging effigy of America's sweetheart Sarah Palin, it wasn't not considered a hate crime because you supposedly can't hate someone because of their gender. However, if it had been Obama then it would have been a hate crime because you can hate someone because of their race. When you think about it, prosecutors could use the "hate crime" approach to any crime. They could be like "well the defendant clearly hated the victim because of the person was ________ so that makes the crime even worse". Hate crimes also trivialize the victim. Hating someone doesn't make the crime more or less illegal. If it's against the law, then it's a crime. It doesn't matter if hate was involved.
Did it occur to you that the whole crux of the issue is that gay couples just want to be legally included by their host culture, whether or not that leaves them "without a cause?" And Obama being in favor of civil unions is not at odds with what sexuals want, given they seem to only want to be eligible for the protections of marriage on a civil union level. They just don't want their unions to be distinguished from heterosexual civil unions, because that, in itself will be a further discrimination. But it doesn't much matter what Obama thinks since this is almost certainly a states' rights issue, not a federal one.
They did hang effigies of Obama during the election. No hate crimes laws were invoked. You also fail to acknowledge that women would be protected by hate-speech laws. Or any individual who is attacked on the basis of belonging to a group, for that matter.Hate crimes are a joke if you ask me. I will explain. During the presidential election, there was a hanging effigy of America's sweetheart Sarah Palin, it wasn't not considered a hate crime because you supposedly can't hate someone because of their gender. However, if it had been Obama then it would have been a hate crime because you can hate someone because of their race. When you think about it, prosecutors could use the "hate crime" approach to any crime. They could be like "well the defendant clearly hated the victim because of the person was ________ so that makes the crime even worse". Hate crimes also trivialize the victim. Hating someone doesn't make the crime more or less illegal. If it's against the law, then it's a crime. It doesn't matter if hate was involved.
I agree with you that the prospect of hate speech laws very possibly challenges first amendment protections, but I also believe that we have to find a way to create dis-incentives for people who organize violence against others. I'd rather err on the side of free speech than otherwise, but I'd support limited and heavily-stipulated limits on certain kinds of speech that lead to violence.
If violence itself is punishable as a crime, why is there any need to punish the intent as a separate crime? It seems like a redundancy to me. It would seem you are arguing the deserts of crime are not disincentive enough.
Why not?
It is already a crime to incite others to riot, or otherwise to threaten public order.
Also, conspiracy laws exist where crimes are not yet manifest, or for some reason cannot be prosecuted. Why wouldn't that cover it?
All your points are well-taken, Wino. So much so that I'd say we're in complete agreement but for one type of case, which I fear cannot be legislated without compromising the 1st amendment anyway. The case I'm thinking of could be termed a "meta-fatwa," wherein a leader of a large following obliquely targets an individual on the basis of whatever group the individual belongs to. They provide information like addresses and schedules of their target, and they passionately demonize their target to their followers, but they never explicitly conspire to kill or harm their target. Instead they conspire to create conspiracy, if that isn't too wonky a formulation. And, more often than not, they get away with it.
When I imagine what an agency that made determinations on this sort of case would be like, however, I shudder at the amount of interpretive leeway they would have to be empowered to wield. So I'm 95% content accepting the lumps of the first amendment as it is currently enforced, but that %5... she does nag at me.
I can see why this bothers you. , it bothers me too. But I basically think, as you suggested yourself at the end of your post, that the solution might well end up being worse than the disease. Any power left in the hands of fallible man will eventually be abused.The case I'm thinking of could be termed a "meta-fatwa," wherein a leader of a large following obliquely targets an individual on the basis of whatever group the individual belongs to.They provide information like addresses and schedules of their target, and they passionately demonize their target to their followers, but they never explicitly conspire to kill or harm their target. Instead they conspire to create conspiracy, if that isn't too wonky a formulation. And, more often than not, they get away with it.
Therefore it were apparently more prudent and wise to rest content with prosecuting, for example, the man who shoots the abortionist and not the preacher who put the idea in his head, even though the the preacher may be the deadlier of the two in the long run.
Last edited by Winehole23; 12-11-2009 at 03:27 PM. Reason: the deadlier of the two
Don't sprain your wrist patting yourself on the back.mogrovejo's right.
Sure. People are free to be hypocritical. Does that prove something?
Spot on. Most religious people don't know jack about the origin of their religion. Religious dogma was instilled in them before they reached an age of critical thinking and it is stuck there.
I was referring to your situation A being "positively discriminate" in regards to your situation B.
That aside, I'd also like to why you are bringing up positive discrimination at all in this thread.
I don't understand what you mean. What I'm saying is that in situation A there's a group who is discriminated towards another part of the population and in situation B exactly the same happens.
Because of the way he phrased the argument - in terms of the estatization of gay marriage solving a discrimination towards part of the population (and the discrimination here is positive, because in the status quo situation no privileges are granted). If discrimination is wrong, then there are the following up questions. Of course, one can always argue that positive discrimination in favour of certain groups is acceptable - but in that case the debate shouldn't be framed in terms of "it's unacceptable that a part of the population is discriminated".
Ah, okay. I'm not a Libertarian and if I could be seen as one then Ron Paul wouldn't. I have no problem with the role of law, quite the contrary; I'd very much like to see the role of legislation reduced.
A huge majority of the contracts signed between parties are private law (a somehow misleading expression in Anglo-Saxonic countries, I think) - they only involve individuals, not the state. There are plenty of private (not state-sanctioned) jurisdictions - in international business for example. The parts just agree with the jurisdiction of a forum. See the arbitrary courts, for example. Are people less prone to comply with those kind of contracts or are contractual disputes more frequent and more difficult to resolve? I don't think so. The state can intervene as a last resort without being part of the contract or sanctioning it.My beef was this: your reply was a historical explanation that said contracts haven't always been maintained or upheld by governments. Fair enough -- I used the infinitive, which you probably took to suggest an absolute statement which, instead, was a description of the present. But the question I was responding to asked who is in the role of protecting contracts. Now. Short of extra-legal en ies like the Mafia (who only protect a very limited number and type of contracts anyway), the answer has to be government. Why? Because the only force that can enforce the process of justice legally is, unsurprisingly, the same en y that administrates the law under whose terms contracts are entered into.
I understand that contracts can happen in spiritual dimensions as they do in the church, but the church does not have any more authority than it's faithful grant it. If a church tries to negotiate child-visitation terms for an estranged couple, and one of the parents doesn't comply with the agreement, the church does not have the authority to take the child away, only the govt does. Same goes for handshake agreements: they may cons ute a contract, but they provide no recourse for justice in and of themselves.
I mean, in the child-visitation terms example you give: what happens if the parents aren't married? Are you saying that the government can only take the child away of the non-complying part if the parents are married?
I think I've already answered those questions in the post above - if not in an intelligible way, let me know. But I wasn't the one bringing up positive discrimination in this thread.
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