Let me put this in terms that are more easily understood because the problem is people get lost in the emotional response and miss the legal issue.
Many municipalities make it unlawful for women to go out in public with no shirt. If a woman walks down main street in the summer with boobs exposed, there's a good chance she's going to get a ticket for indecent exposure (unless I happen to be the cop on duty!) :24:
Well in the 60s and early 70s recall there were all kinds of demontrations, women burning bras and going topless in public. Well, they did have a point--men get to walk around with no shirt so why shouldn't women. Who is it hurting for a woman to walk around bare breasted? Well society has the right to delineate the parameters of behavior.
Now you can be damn sure if it was politically correct to give women the right to walk around in public with no shirts, some douchebag liberal judge would have already decided it was a Constitutional right!!
and he probably woulda been the first guy to ever grace the cover of playboy :nod:
i guess the arguements are similar, as both are about how and when to use body parts....sort of
but aren't you sidestepping the issue of separation of church and state to protect the validity of your point here? (the liberal douchebag point?)
i mean...i didn't even enter into this discussion until you acknowledged that the alleged black homophobia wasn't actually that.....it was an interpretation of religious beliefs, which basically calls for the sanctity of marriage as being between a man and a woman
i'm no biblical scholar, but the arguement is always put forth that this sancitiy needs to be preserved because homosexuality is an abomination, which is a moral judgement based on a specific set of religious criteria, and further presented as a pandoras box that will open up the floodgates, allowing someone to marry their sheep, parakeet, etc -an arguement, frankly, that extends the liberal zealotry of "everybody is equal" into the world of a sixteen year old's answer for any difficult question.....
i.e. "whatever"
and reveals, imo, how shallow the moral arguement is, as a preset for a society built around personal liberties....that being a different preset than the one adhered to by a specific religious viewpoint within that society, who have an equal right to believe whatever they want.
and, within the world of personal liberty -the one defined by constitutional law- it doesn't matter if 2/3 of this country agree with that specific religous viewpoint....if the religious viewpoint wrt to the definition of marriage becomes law, then the separation of church and state has been breeched, imo.....and that, to me, is a far more realistic slippery slope than whether or not some clown is gonna marry his gerbil.
what's most fascinating to me is the ramifications of this vis a vis the point you made earlier....we are a society of compromise and majority rule.
the "check and balance" here is the supreme court, i guess.....which can rule for the minority if it's pov protects the intent of the constitution.
Now--if you really want to understand these issues you have to look beyond your own determination of what's "fair" and ask yourself why does society have the right to tell women they must wear shirts in public yet tell men they don't have to. The answer is simple--because society can make any law it wants as long as it doesn't violate the Constitution. If it wants to define marriage as between a man and a woman it has that right. Marriage is NOT and SHOULD NOT be a constitutional right. The Constitution defines personal liberties. Marriage is a creation of society designed for various purposes--early on it was a means of passing property. More recently its is a means primarily to protect the rights of children and each spouse's property rights. However, that can be done without using the term "marriage." That is society can create family partnerships that protect property and children and they don't need to be called a "marriage".
ok....this confuses me....point out my emotional reasons for not understanding what's "fair" here.....if a law can define marriage anyway it wants, how does that NOT make marriage a constitutional right?
if you're a man and a woman, you have the right to get married.....if you're two men or two women, you don't.
