Massive, crushing defeat for Marriage Equality in New York

[Duckie]

Are you kidding? If the supreme court decides something according to the constitution, the majority can rewrite the constitution to uphold their bigotry. They just need to try hard for the united states since it sensibly protects against majority tyranny. That's obvious for anyone who isn't an idiot (so all of us, I guess, save you), especially since it happened in California.

Incidentally it's interesting you believe the majority should decide rights. I suppose that means that the Nuremburg Laws are correct, no?

What a stupid piece of shit. The idea and you. The idea of a minority's rights being voted by a majority is so patently absurd and can only come from an illegitimate and immoral political philosophy. Some people never learn lessons from the past I guess.

But oh no, the fucking homophile supreme court is making tyranny! Who cares about the minority, the majority is being oppressed by having tolerance for minorities imposed upon them against their wishes? When will someone remake the water fountains for the Niggers? I never agreed for fucking Niggers to be using my water! The PUBLIC WILL is against such PUBLIC MISCEGENATION.

Do your country a favour and renounce your citizenship and place a gun to your temple and fire. Use as big a one as you can get, a .22 might fail.

[Duckie]

Since you're such a brainless nitpicking fuckshit who merely regurgitates anything they google, I will clarify and say that you, by your argument, mean the Nuremburg Laws were moral and correct in 1935 since most people supported them, and that Desegregation in the 60s was wrong in the south because southerners didn't want blacks using their water fountains.

In fact, Southerners only had the "right" to a marriage with a black imposed upon them rather recently. Is that right quote-marks and fake because it's made by judicial tyranny? Alabama voted to legalise miscegenation (as a moral thing, since the supreme court already mandated it) by less than 60% in 2002. Should before the 50%+1 threshhold have passed miscegenation have been illegal in the state of Alabama back in the 90s? After all, the people of Alabama are concerned about judicial tyranny imposing blacks marrying white people upon them.

I'm sure you'll have some silly explanation about how somehow if you were born just 40 or 70 years ago your philosophy would not have made you a racist or an enabler of the holocaust.

It's too bad you'll have to lie to do it.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Sera,m I know oyu must be busy, but so far you have responded to others who have posted after me.. PLEASE respond to the following assertions...

Apparently you are too dumb to understand that minority rights is one of the few issues that should not be decided by a popular vote.

And you seem to be ignorant about from whom the power flows. Under US law, only the majority has a right to determine what things are "rights" and what thing are not and only the majority has the power to remove those representatives who do not seem to understand who has the power to make that determination. Sorry to say, Ray, that the majority rules.

Wow, thats how America works then?

So its a good thing the "Majority" of Americans decided that slavery was just fine right? Or that instituting JIm Crow laws was ok? Or that a "Majority" of Americans where ok criminalizing Blacks in a significant part of the country?I hate to break this to you, but while most on the right HATE us to do so, the cause for Gay rights is little different then the cause for equality among blacks.

For a large part of this nations history, blacks where enslaved, brutalized, marginalized, and criminalized by "the majority" of Americans. The striking down of jim crow laws and "Separate but equal" was only done on a Federal level and done so highly against the wishes of "the majority" of many MANY americans.

Any argument that the anti gay marriage movement today is perfectly fine because it is supported by "the majority" OR that it would be 'wrong' fro the federal government or courts to step in and Impose their will upon states Fails when compared to the past.. You CAN NOT argue that what is happening today is right without saying what happened to blacks was also right. It is a rather glaring Fact that large parts of this nation, had the Government NOT stepped in and imposed its beliefs, would still be using separate but equal and criminalizing blacks at every turn.

Unless oyu wish to argue this is a good thing, you will CEASE using the idiotic "It is the will of the people" argument to defend Anti Gay rights.

Thank you.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Apparently you are too dumb to understand that minority rights is one of the few issues that should not be decided by a popular vote.

And you seem to be ignorant about from whom the power flows. Under US law, only the majority has a right to determine what things are "rights" and what thing are not and only the majority has the power to remove those representatives who do not seem to understand who has the power to make that determination. Sorry to say, Ray, that the majority rules.

Then you are not a conservative, that's for sure, since the central fundamental tenet of American conservatism is that certain enumerated rights essentially are inherent to the status of sapience. Our constitution is based on inalienable rights, those exact same rights, and is explicitly anti-democratic to preserve them, no matter how much populists have tried to weaken it over the years. Judges are the professional adjucators of which rights are inalienable and which aren't, and circumventing their will is circumventing the will of the framers of the constitution. Your argument is directly contradictory with conservative principles in the government of the United States.

[Alyrium Denryle]

What three clauses of the Constitution do you say have been violated? I can only think of one that could potentially be included in any allegation of a violation: the equal protection of the law clause in the 14th Amendment.

Full Faith and Credit Clause which DOMA violates, and the 9th amendment. The catch all amendment for not otherwise listed but self-evidently existing rights.

[Coyote]

Serafine, that which is "popular" is not always "right", and many times is not even "just" as well. However, other shere have already done a quite handy job of pointing this out. But it behooves you to remember that "the majority" can be awfully difficult to ethically defend when in the realm of human rights. The early Abolitionist movement was ridiculed and marginalized as a minority movement, even in the north.

[Invictus ChiKen]

And the best thing that people can do for gay marriage rights right now is to just assert them even if they don't have them. If you're in a committed relationship, if you've got a civil union or a domestic partnership, endlessly, constantly, always refer to your partner as your husband/wife, always say you're married, never, never let other terms be used around. Make the average person aware of and acclimated to the idea that you're married. Just insist you are, and act like it. This is much easier certainly in domestic partnership states, but that includes huge numbers of the US population.

The only time you couldn't do this is for a few very strictly legal minor circumstances. But in day to day life? Hell yes you can do it, and you should.

Take your time, build things up with little things like that, and slowly the country will come around. You're being utterly, and out of proportionally hysteric. I mean, christ, New York accepts gay marriage from any state where it's legal and any country. The money HRC spent lobbying the New York Senate would have been better spent starting a charity which provides free Amtrak tickets to Hartford for Gay and Lesbian couples in New York.

Is it okay if I use some of this for an upcoming article I am putting together?

One thing I'd add is even if you cannot get the license go ahead and have the ceremony if you can find someone to do it. And make that date the aniversary and celibrate it, even put out announcements like normal. An every party arrasted should sue to high heaven as they broke no laws and even try for religious discrimination issues.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Yeah, sure, go ahead. Don't attribute it, please.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, I knew that bit obviously, but the idea of people just randomly being able to have an election to get rid of any law they feel like just seems weird to me. I mean, there are plenty of laws out there which are unpopular, yet necessary (like taxes). Giving people the option to vote them down seems like foolishness to me.

Considering what happened to American tax rates over the past three decades without the ability to randomly vote down laws by direct democracy, I'm not sure it makes that much of a difference. Legislators aren't that much smarter than the general populace in a republic. They're selected for popularity and not for intelligence or responsibility, so they can do very well by removing unpopular laws whether the public has the power to remove them directly or not.

If you could guarantee that all legislators would be very intelligent without introducing systematic biases that exist independently of that intelligence, that would be another story. But no one has implemented that so far as I know.

Full Faith and Credit Clause which DOMA violates, and the 9th amendment. The catch all amendment for not otherwise listed but self-evidently existing rights.

To be fair, gay marriage bans did not violate either of those clauses until fairly recently. The Full Faith and Credit aspect was irrelevant until it passed somewhere, and gay marriage was not considered a "self evident" right until recently. I may think it's self evident, but that doesn't mean it is unless a suitably large group of intelligent people agree with me. Which, until maybe a decade or two ago, they didn't.

Some people haven't gotten the memo on the violation of those two clauses yet, I guess. It really shouldn't matter, since the bans were a Fourteenth Amendment violation all along, even though no one was ready to admit it.

One thing I'd add is even if you cannot get the license go ahead and have the ceremony if you can find someone to do it. And make that date the aniversary and celibrate it, even put out announcements like normal.

That plan seems to be working for my cousin, though I don't know if she's doing the anniversary celebration announcements. I don't normally get those, because most of the family lives on the other side of the continent.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

I really should have asked this back when it happened, but why does Maine have this thing that lets citizens overturn legislation passed by the state? And why does it only seem to apply for things like marriage equality and not for things like revisions of occupational health and safety regulations and new building standards?

I might be mistaken, but I think all of this 'direct citizen participation' business turned up as a part of the progressive movement in the first part of the 20th C., right alongside the sweep across the states to make state constitutions easily changeable by the citizenry as well.

Yes, a lot of it came from that portion of the progressive movement. To expand a bit more on this, California's constitutional amendment system is a result of that. The idea is that the populace should have the ability to make changes to the constitution if there is enough support for it and there is not enough trust in the legislative bodies to act according to the people's wishes. To be fair, it's not that bad of an idea assuming that a voter's initiative can only be possible if it was only wildly popular enough to amend the constitution. That, in theory, is true in California where requiring voters to collect over a million signatures in a very short frame of time is a task of immense difficulty that would need very strong majority support and energy. In practice, however, that's not the case. The reason being is that California state law does not prohibit private companies to run signature petition drives for a price. As a result, virtually almost every proposition put on the ballot (aside from the occasional legislative action) is a result of signatures gathered from a few volunteers and signatures gathered from paid signature gatherers, who are funded millions of dollars by individuals/organizations. For example, "Protect Marriage" and "NOM" both spent roughly a 2-3 million dollars last year in paid signature gatherers to qualify proposition 8 on the November, 2008 election.

In California, it's really a progressive idea that's been turned upside down on its head where changes to the constitution and state laws can be easily put up to a popular vote not by an energized populous movement but by groups that have the financial means to do so. In fact, I believe California Supreme Court Chief Justice George lamented in his majority ruling to uphold proposition 8 that the California constitutional amendment system was essentially fucked up because of this. With every major gay rights organizations in California opting out of the movement to repeal proposition 8 in 2010, that makes the chances of such a ballot initiative qualifying in 2010 next to remote because the people who are now actively behind the 2010 movement are largely grassroots groups that simply do not have a couple million dollars in their pocket. I doubt they will be able to fund raise that amount of money hire signature gatherers to make up for the signatures that they will not be able to collect in time.

[Serafine666]

Sera, I know you must be busy, but so far you have responded to others who have posted after me.. PLEASE respond to the following assertions...

Gladly. Sorry for the delay.

Wow, thats how America works then?

So its a good thing the "Majority" of Americans decided that slavery was just fine right? Or that instituting Jim Crow laws was ok? Or that a "Majority" of Americans where OK criminalizing Blacks in a significant part of the country? I hate to break this to you, but while most on the right HATE us to do so, the cause for Gay rights is little different then the cause for equality among blacks.

A majority of Americans in specific states although not generally (since the antislavery North was significantly more populous than the proslavery South). The more significant point, however, is that the will of the majority changed and Southern representatives abandoned race-baiting politics to a large extent the moment they could "feel the heat" of facing black voters. Heck, even George Wallace for all of his racist speech and actions was able to win the votes of blacks when running for governor. As to whether the cause for gay "rights" resembles the struggle for black equality... I honestly see no legitimate comparison. Perhaps you could explain how you see them as being the same.

For a large part of this nation's history, blacks where enslaved, brutalized, marginalized, and criminalized by "the majority" of Americans. The striking down of Jim Crow laws and "separate but equal" was only done on a Federal level and done so highly against the wishes of "the majority" of many MANY Americans.

Localized majorities, yes. But as a point of fact, "separate but equal" couldn't be struck down by anyone BUT the Supreme Court because the doctrine was given legal sanction by the Supreme Court--and the only appeal of the Court's rulings is amending the Constitution. Had Plessy v. Fergussen never been issued, it would have remained vulnerable to Southerners changing their minds and ridding themselves of the racist laws in the same way that various localities were striking down sodomy laws before Lawrence v. Texas wiped them all away.

Any argument that the anti gay marriage movement today is perfectly fine because it is supported by "the majority" OR that it would be 'wrong' for the federal government or courts to step in and impose their will upon states fails when compared to the past. You CAN NOT argue that what is happening today is right without saying what happened to blacks was also right. It is a rather glaring fact that large parts of this nation, had the Government NOT stepped in and imposed its beliefs, would still be using separate but equal and criminalizing blacks at every turn.

Well, actually, I can argue that because I do not regard the two cases as being similar. One was a case of a large minority being persecuted and prosecuted and their actual rights being disregarded until there was a democratic consensus to make it stop. The other is a case of a smaller minority that once experienced similar persecution but presently does not and also enjoys the full exercise of every explicit and implicit Constitutional right with a single exception. Besides social consensus, however, the only reason that there is a right to marry at all is that the Supreme Court determined that under the 9th Amendment, heterosexual marriage was a right because it was understood at the time of the writing of the 9th Amendment that the government had no power to interfere in whether a couple got married except in the way of deciding whether or not to accept their certificate of civil marriage (at some point, the government ruled that only marriages performed by a legally registered minister or a justice of the peace were legitimate). The discovery of this right was wholly dependent on the sexuality of the couple and as of yet, courts have ruled that it is written in such a way as to be impossible to apply to homosexual marriage. The discovery of an equivalent right for gays would have to depend upon another amendment (I don't see any other amendment that could be used for this purpose except for the 14th). Like Plessy v. Fergussen this is an issue where Supreme Court action sort of mandates that only the Supreme Court can entirely fix it.

Unless you wish to argue this is a good thing, you will CEASE using the idiotic "It is the will of the people" argument to defend anti gay rights.

I will, will I? I admire your audacity and sympathize with your genuine moral outrage but I hardly think that you have any authority to command me to abandon an argument that is not blatantly and explicitly racist/sexist/etc. I think a request from a fellow board member would be much more appropriate and something I'd be rather more open to than a command.

[Serafine666]

Then you are not a conservative, that's for sure, since the central fundamental tenet of American conservatism is that certain enumerated rights essentially are inherent to the status of sapience. Our constitution is based on inalienable rights, those exact same rights, and is explicitly anti-democratic to preserve them, no matter how much populists have tried to weaken it over the years. Judges are the professional adjucators of which rights are inalienable and which aren't, and circumventing their will is circumventing the will of the framers of the constitution. Your argument is directly contradictory with conservative principles in the government of the United States.

Your Highness, with due respect, it is not so simple as all that. Moreover, the framers of the Constitution provided a mechanism (albeit a very difficult one) to circumvent even the highest court by altering the Constitution itself. The enumerated rights are those that ares directly mentioned in the Constitution itself and every one of those is available on an unfettered basis to all minorities. There are an entire set of unenumerated rights that were later invented by various courts, however, and there is nothing at all wrong with opposing them.

[Duckie]

In a thread on the death penalty I pointed out how you were cribbing wholesale from googling questions to pretend you were knowledgeable and using wikipedia and wikianswers without even checking their sources.

You said nothing.

In a thread on Obama and Afghanistan you refused to address any points of my own or Coyote's about your sociopathic disregard of the social contract.

You said nothing.

In a thread on Gay Marriage you refused to address my post about your willingness to stand by and enable bigotry as long as it doesn't affect you, and how your ideology would led to segregationism and antisemitism in the 1960s of America and the 1930s of Germany.

You said nothing.

How long can you keep running, Serafine? How long until the moderators notice you're a dishonest little shit who knows nothing about anything save what the Young Libertarians Club tells you about rights and whatever you can type into google? How long until they notice you keep dodging points like the fact that you know nothing about stem cell research and just regurgitate what you find by typing in "Stem Cell Opposition" into google and that you ignore posts that ask uncomfortable questions?

Do you really think you can survive on SDN? Do you think we'll forgive you such faults because we like you as a person regardless of your bigotry, your stupidity, your belief that google searches make you knowledgeable about anything, your inability to create a competant moral code that boils down more to "I have my rights, fuck those who want more" and "Majority can oppress Minority or it's tyranny!", and your smarmy, holier-than-thou 'Oh you stupid libs' attitude?

[Serafine666]

Full Faith and Credit Clause which DOMA violates, and the 9th amendment. The catch all amendment for not otherwise listed but self-evidently existing rights.

Full faith and credit is a bit shaky in that there hasn't been a ruling as to how much it applies to a situation of one state demanding that another state honor something that is explicitly illegal in the other state. One state makes a law legalizing gay marriage and the next one over bans it. Can the first state force the second state to make an exception to their laws? I've not heard of a ruling that has said "yes" or "no" to this question.
9th amendment is an interesting one solely in that it was used in a ruling that recognized marriage as a right... and was written to specifically exclude non-heterosexual marriage (according to all courts that have ruled on the applicability of Loving v. Virginia to homosexual marriage).
The 14th Amendment is such a catch-all that I don't even know how to look at the question. Its like some sort of omni-tool, able to apply to any and all situations to justify just about anything.

[Serafine666]

In a thread on the death penalty I pointed out how you were cribbing wholesale from googling questions to pretend you were knowledgeable and using wikipedia and wikianswers without even checking their sources.

You said nothing.

In a thread on Obama and Afghanistan you refused to address any points of my own or Coyote's about your sociopathy.

You said nothing.

In a thread on Gay Marriage you refused to address my post about your willingness to stand by and enable bigotry as long as it doesn't affect you, and how your ideology would led to segregationism and antisemitism in the 1960s of America and the 1930s of Germany.

You said nothing.

Duckie, as Crossroads Inc seems to have noticed, I don't always get around to replying to every single post in a timely fashion although I am genuinely doing my best with the fact that I cannot possibly camp out on this message board all day long; your last example was posted about the same time Crossroads' post was and I was getting around to replying to it. If you're paying attention, you might notice that I'm generally working in order of posts received. I'll go back to the threads and see if I can find whatever the heck you're talking about and seeing if I can make a reply that can't be classified as "one-line spam." Saavy?

How long can you keep running, Serafine? How long until the moderators notice you're a dishonest little shit who knows nothing about anything save what the Young Libertarians Club tells you about rights and whatever you can type into google? How long until they notice you keep dodging points like the fact that you know nothing about stem cell research and just regurgitate what you find by typing in "Stem Cell Opposition" into Google?

Actually, I typed "adult stem cell paralysis" and "adult stem cell treatments" into Google (and "adult stem cells clinical trials paralysis" to answer Omega's challenge about clinical trials) because I was interested in scientific articles addressing the viability of ASC research since that was actually the point I was arguing with Omega18 in between some more esoteric discussion with a few others.

Do you really think you can survive on SDN? Do you think we'll forgive you such faults because we like you as a person regardless of your bigotry, your stupidity, your belief that google searches make you knowledgeable about anything, your inability to create a competant moral code that boils down more to "I have my rights, fuck those who want more" and "Majority can oppress Minority or it's tyranny!", and your smarmy, holier-than-thou 'Oh you stupid libs' attitude?

Of course I think I can survive on SDN, Duckie. Otherwise, I wouldn't make any attempt at all. Your opinion, however, is duly noted.

[Serafine666]

Serafine, that which is "popular" is not always "right", and many times is not even "just" as well. However, others here have already done a quite handy job of pointing this out. But it behooves you to remember that "the majority" can be awfully difficult to ethically defend when in the realm of human rights. The early Abolitionist movement was ridiculed and marginalized as a minority movement, even in the north.

That is perfectly true, Coyote, but as others have also pointed out, the current level of support for gay "rights" among the majority was unimaginable even a few years ago and this support has not come because some all-wise minority on high has struck the heretics down but simply because the will of the majority has the proven tendency to evolve and repent for past transgressions. The minority, by the way, is not exactly sterling silver either in the area of human rights: the concept that the regular citizens can mock and rail on the monarch without retaliation is new relative to the many thousand years of human history and the courts have been known to be shamefully supportive of pretty grotesque concepts from the idea that a black man may never be equal to a white man (from Dred Scott v. Sandford) to it being quite legitimate to drag Americans of Japanese descent from their homes and imprison them (Korematsu v. United States). However, I hold that the will of the majority is easier to change and more prone to sympathy than the imperious will of a minority.

[Serafine666]

Since you're such a brainless nitpicking fuckshit who merely regurgitates anything they google, I will clarify and say that you, by your argument, mean the Nuremburg Laws were moral and correct in 1935 since most people supported them, and that Desegregation in the 60s was wrong in the South because southerners didn't want blacks using their water fountains.

Surely you realize, Duckie, that my arguments are too eloquent to have been picked off Google fully-formed. To be nitpicky (since you seem to want me to be), the Nuremberg Laws were not subjected to popular referendum however the populace supported them but segregation was... under the full protection of federal law that was subject only to the Supreme Court or a constitutional amendment (since it had been given legal cover by Plessy v. Fergussen). With a few bumps, it came apart remarkably fast after the Supreme Court dismantled the legal cover and the federal government passed legislation allowing the entire majority (now including blacks) to punish representatives who maintained segregation.

In fact, Southerners only had the "right" to a marriage with a black imposed upon them rather recently. Is that right quote-marks and fake because it's made by judicial tyranny? Alabama voted to legalise miscegenation (as a moral thing, since the supreme court already mandated it) by less than 60% in 2002. Should before the 50%+1 threshhold have passed miscegenation have been illegal in the state of Alabama back in the 90s? After all, the people of Alabama are concerned about judicial tyranny imposing blacks marrying white people upon them.

Actually, the quote marks are for things that have no clear Constitutional basis but the right to (heterosexual) marriage does. I'm not all that surprised by Alabama's vote... for some strange reason, even in the most liberal and progressive states, measures to remove outdated and racist language from the law code just as a form of housecleaning don't pass unanimously or even with an overwhelming majority. The more important measurement with Alabama, however, isn't how long they had the law on the books but when they stopped enforcing it since you're interpreting my argument as majority support being the basis of interpreting rights; when enforcement was no longer possible because of majority consensus, the law was effectively null even if it was not repealed.

I'm sure you'll have some silly explanation about how somehow if you were born just 40 or 70 years ago your philosophy would not have made you a racist or an enabler of the holocaust.

It's too bad you'll have to lie to do it.

Actually, I had no intention of arguing that but you can always request that I try if you really want to hear it.

[Alyrium Denryle]

That is perfectly true, Coyote, but as others have also pointed out, the current level of support for gay "rights" among the majority was unimaginable even a few years ago and this support has not come because some all-wise minority on high has struck the heretics down but simply because the will of the majority has the proven tendency to evolve and repent for past transgressions

And they dont do this on their own. They never will. How long was it exactly until someone came out and really said "Hey guys... slavery is kinda wrong" and be listened to by anyone? The 18th century? how long did it take to catch on? A hundred years.

However, I hold that the will of the majority is easier to change and more prone to sympathy than the imperious will of a minority.

And where exactly is anyone claiming that the will of the minority is a better metric? You seem to, through your short posting history, make a nice little career out Missing the Point, or blatantly misrepresenting your opponent's positions. Either that or your reading comprehension skills are poorer than those of my 7 year old cousin (the one that is not a child prodigy...).

As for your position: Not once in US history have easily recognizable minorities gotten a fair shake of things without a court decision in their favor as far as I can tell. Ethnic minorities, women (to an extent...), the (political if not numeric minority who until the early-mid 20th century were practically enslaved in cities and mining towns) working class and now Gays. Sure a few states treat us like human beings but by and large that is not the case and it will not change by popular demand. We will win in the SCOTUS on 14th amendment grounds (once Scalia, a pox be upon, dies) well before we are granted legal personhood nationwide by a popular vote.

Your position is counter-indicated by history, and human nature. People historically have tended to ruthlessly oppress those considered outsiders, this is an empirical fact of life and you need to get your idealistic head out of the clouds/sand.

[Serafine666]

In a thread on the death penalty I pointed out how you were cribbing wholesale from googling questions to pretend you were knowledgeable and using wikipedia and wikianswers without even checking their sources.

You said nothing.

Look again (bottom of page 1 on that thread). I replied immediately and you never responded.

In a thread on Obama and Afghanistan you refused to address any points of my own or Coyote's about your sociopathic disregard of the social contract.

You said nothing.

I responded to Coyote and he has yet to respond to me. By the time you read this reply, I'll have either begun or completed my response to your latest post. Sorry for not getting to it sooner.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Serafine, that which is "popular" is not always "right", and many times is not even "just" as well. However, others here have already done a quite handy job of pointing this out. But it behooves you to remember that "the majority" can be awfully difficult to ethically defend when in the realm of human rights. The early Abolitionist movement was ridiculed and marginalized as a minority movement, even in the north.

That is perfectly true, Coyote, but as others have also pointed out, the current level of support for gay "rights" among the majority was unimaginable even a few years ago and this support has not come because some all-wise minority on high has struck the heretics down but simply because the will of the majority has the proven tendency to evolve and repent for past transgressions. The minority, by the way, is not exactly sterling silver either in the area of human rights: the concept that the regular citizens can mock and rail on the monarch without retaliation is new relative to the many thousand years of human history and the courts have been known to be shamefully supportive of pretty grotesque concepts from the idea that a black man may never be equal to a white man (from Dred Scott v. Sandford) to it being quite legitimate to drag Americans of Japanese descent from their homes and imprison them (Korematsu v. United States). However, I hold that the will of the majority is easier to change and more prone to sympathy than the imperious will of a minority.

The relationship between popular opinion and public policy goes two days. While shifting popular opinion will result in the change of public policy, the opposite can also be said to be true. In the case of marriage equality, the legalization of marriage rights for same-sex couples have shown to have moved popular opinion to be in greater favor of such rights. This is evidenced in states like Massachusetts and in countries like Canada where marriage equality has existed for several years now. The anti-gay bigots know this and are fighting hard tooth and nail to keep such laws from becoming a reality.

[Duckie]

It's great that you finally responded to posts critical of you like I asked.

It's too bad you kept being a dishonest shit though.

How stupid do you think I am, Googlebot? You can lie to me, but you can't expect me to not notice it.

Since you're such a brainless nitpicking fuckshit who merely regurgitates anything they google, I will clarify and say that you, by your argument, mean the Nuremburg Laws were moral and correct in 1935 since most people supported them, and that Desegregation in the 60s was wrong in the South because southerners didn't want blacks using their water fountains.

Surely you realize, Duckie, that my arguments are too eloquent to have been picked off Google fully-formed. To be nitpicky (since you seem to want me to be), the Nuremberg Laws were not subjected to popular referendum however the populace supported them but segregation was... under the full protection of federal law that was subject only to the Supreme Court or a constitutional amendment (since it had been given legal cover by Plessy v. Fergussen). With a few bumps, it came apart remarkably fast after the Supreme Court dismantled the legal cover and the federal government passed legislation allowing the entire majority (now including blacks) to punish representatives who maintained segregation.

And so you still believe in majority granting minority rights despite the goddamn Jim Crow laws? How stupid are you, to stand up here and lie to people and tell them majority votes are the best way to grant minority rights? The Majority for a hundred years voted to keep blacks as second class citizens. Do you know how long a hundred fucking years is? Let me spell it out for you so that you can understand such a huge number with your tiny brain: Go measure your dick end to end 50 times and that'll be as many inches as there are years in that time, okay?

Are you a complete blithering idiot? Desegregation is not some kind of triumph for your views that the majority is the best way to give rights. Segregation was a fucking century of the complete failure of your magical majority to fail to produce equality. That eventually northern democrats and republicans manned up and did it in nineteen fucking sixty five is completely irrelvant when it started in the 19th century.

Are you a recipient of a genetic disorder of some kind? I should hope not, my opinion of the developmentally disabled would go down.

In fact, Southerners only had the "right" to a marriage with a black imposed upon them rather recently. Is that right quote-marks and fake because it's made by judicial tyranny? Alabama voted to legalise miscegenation (as a moral thing, since the supreme court already mandated it) by less than 60% in 2002. Should before the 50%+1 threshhold have passed miscegenation have been illegal in the state of Alabama back in the 90s? After all, the people of Alabama are concerned about judicial tyranny imposing blacks marrying white people upon them.

Actually, the quote marks are for things that have no clear Constitutional basis but the right to (heterosexual) marriage does. I'm not all that surprised by Alabama's vote... for some strange reason, even in the most liberal and progressive states, measures to remove outdated and racist language from the law code just as a form of housecleaning don't pass unanimously or even with an overwhelming majority. The more important measurement with Alabama, however, isn't how long they had the law on the books but when they stopped enforcing it since you're interpreting my argument as majority support being the basis of interpreting rights; when enforcement was no longer possible because of majority consensus, the law was effectively null even if it was not repealed.

Oh, and where in the Constitution does it say heterosexual marriage has a constitutional basis? Hint: Right where it says Gay Marriage also has a constitutional basis, next to the right to privacy and the Miranda Rights and fucking bigfoot. Miscegenation was imposed by minority tyranny against a huge portion of the country's states by a few justices and you know it. Legalisation of Homosexuality was imposed by minority tyranny against a huge portion of the country's states by a few justices. Don't you fucking lie to me, googlebot.

"Right" is just a word you use to mean "Right I really care about having". You don't think there's a right to health care because you don't want government health care personally. You don't feel there's a right to gay marriage because you don't want one. You're a selfish prat, as your "I don't want to have increased taxes even if it means 45,000 lives saved a year" statement in the afghan thread shows.

Your very existence makes me ashamed to be a human being, as if I am somehow tainted by your stupidity and malice just by sharing the same clade with you.

Also, you're lying out your ass here because you know absolutely nothing about desegregation, apparantly. Enforcement didn't stop because of majority consensus. It stopped because the north and the supreme court imposed it on the South on bayonet point. Do you not remember the 101st fucking airborne escorting a girl into a school?

I'm sure you'll have some silly explanation about how somehow if you were born just 40 or 70 years ago your philosophy would not have made you a racist or an enabler of the holocaust.

It's too bad you'll have to lie to do it.

Actually, I had no intention of arguing that but you can always request that I try if you really want to hear it.

It's good that you're not contesting the point that your viewpoint on who grants rights and that rights should follow majority wishes at the time would result in you being a segregationist in the 1960s of America or a Camp Guard in 1930s Germany- the only difference is you pretend that the right of a Jew to marry or reproduce or the right of a black to vote or marry a white is self-evident in the constitution, but then hem and haw and pretend that the right of a gay to get married isn't because... you're an idiot, I guess?

You're speaking from both sides of your mouth: "The 14th amendment makes blacks equal, but not gays because no court has found that yet." "The ninth amendment grants marriage rights and privacy rights and the like, but not gay marriage because no court has found that yet." "I dislike minority tyranny of 5 evil judges who impose their will to invent whimsical "rights" on the majority.". This position is inconsistent unless your only goal is to argue against equal rights for gays, or if your philosophy is composed mostly of stupidity and kneejerk reactions.

I was going to say that I hoped your children weren't being raised with such an odious doctrine, but to have children you need a wife, and no human being could love you.

[Serafine666]

And they dont do this on their own. They never will. How long was it exactly until someone came out and really said "Hey guys... slavery is kinda wrong" and be listened to by anyone? The 18th century? how long did it take to catch on? A hundred years.

Not really sure what to do with that because you first say that the majority doesn't repent on their own and then say that it takes a long time (implying that they DO repent on their own). Condemnation of slavery as a moral evil started in the early 16th century with the writings of Spanish Catholics and in the early 19th century, the evangelical Wilbur Wilberforce led England to ban the slave trade and then ban slavery itself. Clearly, despite a very long timeline, the majority DID choose (in most instances) to rid itself of the stain of slavery without a minority fiat.

And where exactly is anyone claiming that the will of the minority is a better metric? You seem to, through your short posting history, make a nice little career out Missing the Point, or blatantly misrepresenting your opponent's positions. Either that or your reading comprehension skills are poorer than those of my 7 year old cousin (the one that is not a child prodigy...).

No one is claiming that and I didn't say they were. I hardly saw the need to state that either a minority decides rights or a majority does but thought that pointing out that the alternative is less good than the current situation would be a fair point.

As for your position: Not once in US history have easily recognizable minorities gotten a fair shake of things without a court decision in their favor as far as I can tell.

States were legalizing voting rights for women in advance of the 19th Amendment; it makes no sense to argue that the trend wouldn't have continued whether or not there was a constitutional amendment (and there wasn't actually a court decision). Blacks benefited from the decision in their favor that dismantled a previous decision against them and then from federal legislation; Brown v. Board of Education was a reversal of Plessy v. Fergussen without which there would have been no legal veneer to justify mistreatment. Gays benefited from Lawrence v. Texas only in the most vague of fashions since the laws that Lawrence struck down were being eliminated anyway by democratic action due to their fundamental uselessness. In a couple of other occasions, what is styled as "gay rights" has been imposed by a court but with very little exception, "gay rights" have been created by legislatures and popular referendum/initiative. Even "hate crimes" laws are a product of Congress' lawmaking power. The other minorities you refer to (I can only guess you mean industrial workers generally) benefited from federal legislation but were held down for some time by court decisions wielding anti-trust laws against them. For my purposes, since Congress is elected by and is meant to do the will of, the majority, I regard them as a manifestation of majority will.

Sure a few states treat us like human beings but by and large that is not the case and it will not change by popular demand. We will win in the SCOTUS on 14th amendment grounds (once Scalia, a pox be upon, dies) well before we are granted legal personhood nationwide by a popular vote.

It's possible but it is also rare that the SCOTUS accumulates the judicial composition to invent rights out of thin air out of moral conviction. In fact... the Warren Court was pretty much unique in that way (except for Roe v. Wade at the beginning of the tenure of Warren Burger). Given the consensus in Washington and California, you're going to get majority support before minority support.

Your position is counter-indicated by history, and human nature. People historically have tended to ruthlessly oppress those considered outsiders, this is an empirical fact of life and you need to get your idealistic head out of the clouds/sand.

It is true that people are xenophobic; it is also true that when something is no longer unfamiliar or different to them, they accept it. It seems like your argument is boiling down to "the minority does it sooner" which, while true, isn't the same as "the minority is the only one that does it."

[Serafine666]

The relationship between popular opinion and public policy goes two ways. While shifting popular opinion will result in the change of public policy, the opposite can also be said to be true. In the case of marriage equality, the legalization of marriage rights for same-sex couples have shown to have moved popular opinion to be in greater favor of such rights. This is evidenced in states like Massachusetts and in countries like Canada where marriage equality has existed for several years now. The anti-gay bigots know this and are fighting hard tooth and nail to keep such laws from becoming a reality.

Fighting and, it would seem, losing. But court-enforced gay marriage legalization isn't the only thing that moves public opinion in the direction you describe. Many states started on the path with "domestic partnership" laws and while these are not the same as marriage, they are aimed at achieving it... and they generally enjoy majority support.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

The relationship between popular opinion and public policy goes two ways. While shifting popular opinion will result in the change of public policy, the opposite can also be said to be true. In the case of marriage equality, the legalization of marriage rights for same-sex couples have shown to have moved popular opinion to be in greater favor of such rights. This is evidenced in states like Massachusetts and in countries like Canada where marriage equality has existed for several years now. The anti-gay bigots know this and are fighting hard tooth and nail to keep such laws from becoming a reality.

Fighting and, it would seem, losing. But court-enforced gay marriage legalization isn't the only thing that moves public opinion in the direction you describe. Many states started on the path with "domestic partnership" laws and while these are not the same as marriage, they are aimed at achieving it... and they generally enjoy majority support.

Domestic partnership and civil union laws already exist for states like California and Maine. Fighting for marriage equality is the logical next step.

[Serafine666]

Domestic partnership and civil union laws already exist for states like California and Maine. Fighting for marriage equality is the logical next step.

That it is. But that a step has been provably taken with the support of the majority indicates that the majority can enact the next step as well and, given trends, might very well do so without a court backhanding them.