"Smaller government" advocates

[Skylar]

And your opinion doesn't define objective reality.

True... but I didn't state an opinion, I stated an observation of undeniable facts of nature. Not a single one of which have you so much attempted to contest.

Yes, you did state an opinion. Quite a few of them.

You made up 'laws of nature of marriage'. Which are your opinion. You've imagined that marriage can have only one purpose, that sex can have only one purpose. Both of which are your opinion. You've pretended to speak for god. Which is just you offering us your subjective interpretations of what you imagine god to be. You can't objectively back up your interpretations.

Yet again and again you insist that your subjective opinions are objective facts. Its the only argument you make. And none of your subjective opinions define any objective truths.

Subject is not objective, my little relativist. This is why you always lose. As you have nothing but this fallacy.

But the reason you have not contested a single point is that there's nothing for you TO contest, as the points are... as noted above: IRREFUTABLE.

But hey... you feel free to pick one.

Here's a List:

Nature designed the human species.

With two distinct but complementing genders.

Irrefutable clearly doesn't mean what you think it means. As that's fucking. Not marriage. Your argument breaks already, as they aren't the same thing. Its not your individual conclusions that break your argument. Its the relationships you assume between them.

You assume that 'two distinct but complimenting genders' define marriage. But they don't. That's merely your opinion. And your opinion is obviously contradicted by numerous examples of marriage that doesn't follow your assumptions. Yet you insist that whenever your assumptions aren't met, its not true marriage.

That's the 'no true scotsman' fallacy.

Nor can you back your assumptions with anything but your opinion. Its circular nonsense. Where you must be right because you say you are.

Nope. That's another fallacy of logic. In this case the 'begging the question' fallacy.

Each, respectively and specifically designed to JOIN WITH, the other.

Thus defining Marriage.

Again, that's sex. Not marriage. You equate the two. And they aren't equal. That's the 'false equivalency' fallacy. If not for fallacies, your posts would be little more than punctuation.

 

[Dan Daly]

I'm not denying the 14th Amendment and I am not against equal protection under the law...I am against the federal government's wacky notion of what protection is.

What's 'wacky' about it?


Just one example should cover it...to protect my right to bear arms...they infringe upon my right to keep and bear arms.

A piece of paper cannot protect your rights. Government is about protecting their rights, not yours.

Governments don't have rights. They have powers. People have rights. And those rights protect them from government abrogation. The constitution doesn't define what rights we have. The constitution defines what powers the government has.



And the 14th amendment gave the federal government the power to prevent the abrogation of rights by the States. By design. Read Howard and Bingham on the intent of the amendment. And take a look at Barron V. Baltimore, a case they cite as the basis for the need for the amendment.

Its the case where the Supreme Court affirmed that the States were NOT bound to the bill of rights. And that the States could violate those rights with impunity as the BOR only restricted federal action.

The history of the violation of rights by the States is what prompted this amendment. And the rulings that followed about a generation after its passage that began to restrict state actions against its own citizens.

Which I have no problem with.

You are the only person who can protect your rights...becoming dependent on others...especially government...to do it for you is a fool's game that never has a happy ending.

Actually *we* can protect my rights. And yours. And all of ours. Through a variety of means. One of which is our government, our legislature and our judiciary. Rights of the majority are fairly easy to protect. Its rights of the minority that are subject to the tyranny of the majority. And more often need protection.

Your assertion that the government protecting rights never works out well is a fantastically broad overgeneralization. You didn't even use the qualifies or 'usually' or 'most often'. But 'never'. An absolute. Where every instance of the government protecting rights has a bad outcome.

I disagree. As would pretty much anyone who valued individual rights over government power.

It's no more of a fantastically broad overgeneralization than your "What many of the 'small government' folks want is to strip people of Federal protections and then turn rights into crimes at the State level.".

you think we need more government, to define and protect classes of people....I maintain that less government is better protection because the history of government protection isn't compatible with either a free society nor the best interests of those "protected" classes.

 

[Where_r_my_Keys]

Actually *we* can protect my rights. And yours. And all of ours. Through a variety of means. One of which is our government, our legislature and our judiciary.

You're speaking of the government that just scuttled the entire US Medical Insurance industry. Or the one that recently provided a nine member panel of jurists to overturn the legislative > DEMOCRATIC < will of the people, effectively licensing degeneracy, in direct defiance of "We: The People"?

Should we spend any time on your cult twice electing an individual with a dubious history, steeped in Communism and Islam, in the wake of a catastrophic failure of socialist policy... right in the midst of a war with a fair percentage of Islam, who has sat over placing Islamists in control of the Middle East, reversing a decade of progress in isolating and destroying Islamic terror? Not to mention the 7 years of economic stagnation, adding 9 trillion in US Federal Debt, doubling the number of welfare recipients, promoting cultural degeneracy, undermining law enforcement authority... and promoting a race war.

LOL! You've really put a LOT of thought into this haven't ya Sis?

 

[Dan Daly]

What do I want to dish out? I don't want to dish out anything. I just happen to believe that marriage is the institution of one man and one woman. That's not dishing anything out. It's just like calling my chair a chair. Sure, I could call my chair a fire hydrant, but that doesn't make it a fire hydrant. It's still a chair.

You don't have a "right" to force your desires against the will of the voters. Marriage is not a right, it's a religious rite that was adopted by the government in order to provide benefits to the normal family. And no, Don, Sam and their adopted son is not a normal family.

Here's the thing, once we allowed government to get involved in marriage, we pretty much have to bow to government's definitions of it (for their purposes)....that whole "You don't have a "right" to force your desires against the will of the voters." comes back to bite us in the ass. Moral of the story...government has no business in the religious rite of marriage.

Nor does it have a thing to do with the 'religious rite'. But the socially recognized legal contract of marriage? That's a different story. That's not religious. That's civil. Any church can still deny the validity of any marriage they don't agree with. Catholics can refuse to accept that same sex marriages are marriages under Catholic law for example.

But under civil law they're as valid as a marriage of a man and a woman. And civil law is not subordinate to religion. But autonomous of it.

And you don't seem to understand the difference between rights and powers. Rights are freedoms from government action. Powers are actions the government can take. You're insisting that rights can never override powers. And that's obviously horseshit. They can and in most cases, should.

If they want a civilian equivalent for legal purposes, fine, we could avoid this entire debate if they'd call it something else. Come to think of it...they did dooded that..they're called "civil unions", so rather than futzing around with marriage, why not just give civil unions the same legal rights as those who are married?

There is the civil equivalent: marriage.

No marriage existed as a religious right long before secular governments even existed. Government has no business in it, never did, never will. If they want a non-secular equivalent, then use what we already have...civil unions...and make them legally identical. Not rocket surgery...if you want to provide true equality rather than division and strife.

 

[Skylar]

I'm not denying the 14th Amendment and I am not against equal protection under the law...I am against the federal government's wacky notion of what protection is.

What's 'wacky' about it?


Just one example should cover it...to protect my right to bear arms...they infringe upon my right to keep and bear arms.

A piece of paper cannot protect your rights. Government is about protecting their rights, not yours.

Governments don't have rights. They have powers. People have rights. And those rights protect them from government abrogation. The constitution doesn't define what rights we have. The constitution defines what powers the government has.



And the 14th amendment gave the federal government the power to prevent the abrogation of rights by the States. By design. Read Howard and Bingham on the intent of the amendment. And take a look at Barron V. Baltimore, a case they cite as the basis for the need for the amendment.

Its the case where the Supreme Court affirmed that the States were NOT bound to the bill of rights. And that the States could violate those rights with impunity as the BOR only restricted federal action.

The history of the violation of rights by the States is what prompted this amendment. And the rulings that followed about a generation after its passage that began to restrict state actions against its own citizens.

Which I have no problem with.

You are the only person who can protect your rights...becoming dependent on others...especially government...to do it for you is a fool's game that never has a happy ending.

Actually *we* can protect my rights. And yours. And all of ours. Through a variety of means. One of which is our government, our legislature and our judiciary. Rights of the majority are fairly easy to protect. Its rights of the minority that are subject to the tyranny of the majority. And more often need protection.

Your assertion that the government protecting rights never works out well is a fantastically broad overgeneralization. You didn't even use the qualifies or 'usually' or 'most often'. But 'never'. An absolute. Where every instance of the government protecting rights has a bad outcome.

I disagree. As would pretty much anyone who valued individual rights over government power.

It's no more of a fantastically broad overgeneralization than your "What many of the 'small government' folks want is to strip people of Federal protections and then turn rights into crimes at the State level.".

I used qualifiers: many small government folks. Not all. And Keyes turned around and affirmed my point by confirming my entire premise:

What has been said is that women who choose to engage in sexual intercourse, then murder their pre-born baby, should be charged with murder, prosecuted and tried on the evidence and where the facts asserted in the charges are found to be accurate and true, to be summarily punished.

And there you have it: a small government advocate insisting that we take the federally protected right to privacy that encompasses abortion, strip it from our citizens and turn it into a crime.

One that can carry the death penalty.

That's not the application of 'rights' or 'freedom'. That's the application of power. And many conservatives get them mixed up.

you think we need more government, to define and protect classes of people....I maintain that less government is better protection because the history of government protection isn't compatible with either a free society nor the best interests of those "protected" classes.

I think when the states violate the rights of its citizens they can and should be checked by the federal government. That the tyranny of the majority is an insufficient basis to strip people of rights.

You favor government power instead of individual rights. And that's where fundamentally disagree. Rights should not be subject to a vote. You insist they should be.

 

[Where_r_my_Keys]

That's fucking. Not marriage.

ROFLMNAO!

I say it HERE and it comes out ^ THERE ^.

Now ... let's recall the cry of Evil: "Atheists and Leftists can be moral too!"

I disagree... and as evidence of that I simply submit the above debauched assertion.

So... should we discuss the downside to sex outside of marriage?

STDs? Unwanted pregnancies? Low Self-Esteem in Teenage Girls? Broken homes?

Now does that behavior increase or decrease the potential for the abuse of alcohol and drugs?

Where does the "Right to Murder your Pre-born" Stem from?

Does an entitlement to Murder one's own Children sink into some other entitlement?

Could it become an entitlement to murder others, who are an inconvenience? Is there a sense of such an entitlement being witnessed throughout the cities long governed by the advocates of such; the Ideological Left? Is that manifested in the form of rampant violent crime, murder, abuse, alcoholism and drug abuse rates... not to mention the recent drive to murder of police officers on the stated basis of unbounded absurdity?

Personally... I can't see how, given how it is, that it could turn out any other way.

Reader, there's nothing complex about any of this.

We're simply dealing with a rise evil. Malevolent destruction of whatever it touches.

So pick a side... as that is the only choice any of us really have.

 

[Skylar]

What do I want to dish out? I don't want to dish out anything. I just happen to believe that marriage is the institution of one man and one woman. That's not dishing anything out. It's just like calling my chair a chair. Sure, I could call my chair a fire hydrant, but that doesn't make it a fire hydrant. It's still a chair.

You don't have a "right" to force your desires against the will of the voters. Marriage is not a right, it's a religious rite that was adopted by the government in order to provide benefits to the normal family. And no, Don, Sam and their adopted son is not a normal family.

Here's the thing, once we allowed government to get involved in marriage, we pretty much have to bow to government's definitions of it (for their purposes)....that whole "You don't have a "right" to force your desires against the will of the voters." comes back to bite us in the ass. Moral of the story...government has no business in the religious rite of marriage.

Nor does it have a thing to do with the 'religious rite'. But the socially recognized legal contract of marriage? That's a different story. That's not religious. That's civil. Any church can still deny the validity of any marriage they don't agree with. Catholics can refuse to accept that same sex marriages are marriages under Catholic law for example.

But under civil law they're as valid as a marriage of a man and a woman. And civil law is not subordinate to religion. But autonomous of it.

And you don't seem to understand the difference between rights and powers. Rights are freedoms from government action. Powers are actions the government can take. You're insisting that rights can never override powers. And that's obviously horseshit. They can and in most cases, should.

If they want a civilian equivalent for legal purposes, fine, we could avoid this entire debate if they'd call it something else. Come to think of it...they did dooded that..they're called "civil unions", so rather than futzing around with marriage, why not just give civil unions the same legal rights as those who are married?

There is the civil equivalent: marriage.

No marriage existed as a religious right long before secular governments even existed.

So? What's your point? Religious law was civil law long before secular governments even existed too. Priests could summarily have you executed for heresy answerable to no one but the church. Churches used to keep birth, tax and death records too.

We've moved on.

Government has no business in it, never did, never will.

Nonsense. You're simply stating your opinion. You're not giving us a why. Why shouldn't the government recognize marriage? Why shouldn't it protect it? Why shouldn't secular law define it under the law?

Again, religious laws are completely intact. Catholics don't have to recognize a couple married under secular law as married under Catholic law. Neither do Muslims, Mormons, Jedi, or Pastafarians.

If they want a non-secular equivalent, then use what we already have...civil unions...and make them legally identical. Not rocket surgery...if you want to provide true equality rather than division and strife.

We have a non-secular equivalent: marriage. And if civil unions are genuinely identical....why the need for them?

Simple: they aren't equal. Which is the point. Separate but equal has a lousy track record. If marriage and civil unions were genuinely identical there would be no need for the distinction.

Your solution is complicated, pointless, duplicitous, and completely unnecessary. Which is why weren't not using it.

 

[Skylar]

That's fucking. Not marriage.

ROFLMNAO!

I say it HERE and it comes out ^ THERE ^.

Now ... let's recall the cry of Evil: "Atheists and Leftists can be moral too!"

I disagree... and as evidence of that I simply submit the above debauched assertion.

So... should we discuss the downside to sex outside of marriage?

STDs? Unwanted pregnancies? Low Self-Esteem in Teenage Girls? Broken homes?

Now does that behavior increase or decrease the potential for the abuse of alcohol and drugs?

Where does the "Right to Murder your Pre-born" Stem from?

Does an entitlement to Murder one's own Children sink into some other entitlement?

Could it become an entitlement to murder others, who are an inconvenience? Is there such an entitlement being witnessed throughout the cities long governed by the advocates of such, in the form of rampant murder rates an the murder of police officers?

Personally... I can't see how, given how it is, that it could turn out any other way.

Reader, there's nothing complex about any of this.

We're simply dealing with a rise evil. Malevolent destruction of whatever it touches.

So pick a side... as that is the only choice any of us really have.

And you abandon your entire argument, babbling about abortion.

Again, Keyes...if you were going to just cut and run, why bother in the first place. You're equating sex with marriage. They aren't the same thing. Its not your individual conclusions that break your argument. Its the relationships you assume between them.

You assume that 'two distinct but complimenting genders' define marriage. But they don't. That's merely your opinion. And your opinion is obviously contradicted by numerous examples of marriage that doesn't follow your assumptions. Yet you insist that whenever your assumptions aren't met, its not true marriage.

That's the 'no true scotsman' fallacy.

Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
Person B: "But my uncle Angus likes sugar with his porridge."
Person A: "Ah yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

Save in your case, its marriage that doesn't meet your assumptions. And you know your argument doesn't work. Which is why when I point out the flaws in it.....you abandon it and start babbling about abortion.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

Oh, obviously. What many of the 'small government' folks want is to strip people of Federal protections and then turn rights into crimes at the State level.

This they call 'freedom'.

If you need to be protected by government, I call it "dependent".

I call it protecting the rights of citizens from the tyranny of the majority.

and only the federal government...can do that...gotcha.

Check the 14th amendment. They can absolutely check the States when the States create laws that abrogate the rights of Federal citizens.

Its why the Supreme Court could overturn Chicago gun laws forbidding the ownership of handguns. Because of the federally recognized 'right to self defense with a fire arm' that the States could not violate.

Its why the Supreme Court could overrule State marriage laws forbidding same sex marriages. Because of the federally recognized 'right to marry', 'Due process' and 'equal protection'.

Your argument pretends that the 14th amendment doesn't exist. Which is problematic.....as it does exist.

That is where we fundamentally disagree. Government is better at oppression than they are at protection. Hell look at the poor black folks...government freed them and started protecting them over a century ago and they are less free now than when they were freakin slaves.

That's obvious horeshit. You're going to argue that say, former Attorney General Holder has less freedom than a black slave is delusional nonsense. Not in terms of freedom. Not in terms of the horrors of slavery.

Slavery is not freedom. No matter how hard you try to convince yourself otherwise.

I'm not denying the 14th Amendment and I am not against equal protection under the law...I am against the federal government's wacky notion of what protection is. How well has the government done in protecting our rights under some of the other Amendments...like the 1st...or maybe the 2nd, or the 4th?

A piece of paper cannot protect your rights. Government is about protecting their rights, not yours. You are the only person who can protect your rights...becoming dependent on others...especially government...to do it for you is a fool's game that never has a happy ending.

The 14th Amendment concerns state and local governments, incorporating the Bill of Rights to the states, acknowledging the fact that residents of the states are first and foremost citizens of the United States, and residents of the states subordinate to that, who do not 'forfeit' their civil rights merely as a consequence of their state of residence.

It is ridiculous and inconsistent to say the Federal government may not violate a citizen's right to counsel, for example (6th Amendment), while allowing state governments to do exactly that with impunity. If citizens' protected liberties are inalienable – rights that can be neither taken nor bestowed by any government, constitution, or man – and immune from attack by the Federal government, then they are just as immune from attack by state and local governments.

Hence the doctrine of selective incorporation, applying the Bill of Rights to the states, such as the 6th Amendment's right to counsel (Gideon v. Wainwright), acknowledging the right to counsel as indeed being inalienable.

Consequently, the issue isn't the Federal government's 'wacky notion' of what constitutes protecting our civil rights; rather, it concerns consistently safeguarding all citizens' protected liberties from attack by all governments – Federal, state, and local.

Last, the 14th Amendment acknowledges our two most fundamental and important of rights: the right to due process of the law and the right to equal protection of the law, where the 5th Amendment prohibits the Federal government from violating citizens' right to due process, and the 14th Amendment prohibits the states from doing the same. And the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment requires the states and local jurisdictions to allow citizens of the United States equal protection of (equal access to) state and local laws, prohibiting the states from denying citizens access to state laws for invalid reasons such as race, religion, or sexual orientation.

 

[Where_r_my_Keys]

And there you have it: a small government advocate insisting that we take the federally protected right to privacy...

There's no potential for a right to privacy, where the action at issue is a function of GOVERNMENT (Public) POLICY... and there sure as hell is not right to privacy, where the privacy is used to conceal the taking of the life of an innocent. This is a longstanding legal precedent... .

As far as I am concerned, a woman who performs an abortion on herself, in private, having told no one else... is irrelevant to this discussion, as there is no means to do a dam' thing about that.

With no other consideration, she will suffer the consequences of such... through a life of unquenchable shame, if she doesn't bleed to death in the process itself.

So what we're discussing here is PUBLIC policy... not private behavior.

Which merely highlights the 6th failure to sustain your assertions IN A ROW.

Best bring it up a notch sis.

 

[Skylar]

Actually *we* can protect my rights. And yours. And all of ours. Through a variety of means. One of which is our government, our legislature and our judiciary.

You're speaking of the government that just scuttled the entire US Medical Insurance industry.

I don't think 'scuttled' nor 'entire' mean what you think they mean. As our medical industry is still here.

Or the one that recently provided a nine member panel of jurists to overturn the legislative > DEMOCRATIC < will of the people, effectively licensing degeneracy, in direct defiance of "We: The People"?

The people of a given state don't have the authority to vote in laws that abrogate rights. See the 14th amendment.

Rights trump powers. You're insisting that powers trump rights. And you're wrong. Your remaining babble about 'communism' is just an irrelevant nonsense.

 

[Dan Daly]

What do I want to dish out? I don't want to dish out anything. I just happen to believe that marriage is the institution of one man and one woman. That's not dishing anything out. It's just like calling my chair a chair. Sure, I could call my chair a fire hydrant, but that doesn't make it a fire hydrant. It's still a chair.

You don't have a "right" to force your desires against the will of the voters. Marriage is not a right, it's a religious rite that was adopted by the government in order to provide benefits to the normal family. And no, Don, Sam and their adopted son is not a normal family.

Here's the thing, once we allowed government to get involved in marriage, we pretty much have to bow to government's definitions of it (for their purposes)....that whole "You don't have a "right" to force your desires against the will of the voters." comes back to bite us in the ass. Moral of the story...government has no business in the religious rite of marriage.

Nor does it have a thing to do with the 'religious rite'. But the socially recognized legal contract of marriage? That's a different story. That's not religious. That's civil. Any church can still deny the validity of any marriage they don't agree with. Catholics can refuse to accept that same sex marriages are marriages under Catholic law for example.

But under civil law they're as valid as a marriage of a man and a woman. And civil law is not subordinate to religion. But autonomous of it.

And you don't seem to understand the difference between rights and powers. Rights are freedoms from government action. Powers are actions the government can take. You're insisting that rights can never override powers. And that's obviously horseshit. They can and in most cases, should.

If they want a civilian equivalent for legal purposes, fine, we could avoid this entire debate if they'd call it something else. Come to think of it...they did dooded that..they're called "civil unions", so rather than futzing around with marriage, why not just give civil unions the same legal rights as those who are married?

There is the civil equivalent: marriage.

No marriage existed as a religious right long before secular governments even existed.

So? What's your point? Religious law was civil law long before secular governments even existed too. Priests could summarily have you executed for heresy answerable to no one but the church. Churches used to keep birth, tax and death records too.

We've moved on.

Government has no business in it, never did, never will.

Nonsense. You're simply stating your opinion. You're not giving us a why. Why shouldn't the government recognize marriage? Why shouldn't it protect it? Why shouldn't secular law define it under the law?

Again, religious laws are completely intact. Catholics don't have to recognize a couple married under secular law as married under Catholic law. Neither do Muslims, Mormons, Jedi, or Pastafarians.

If they want a non-secular equivalent, then use what we already have...civil unions...and make them legally identical. Not rocket surgery...if you want to provide true equality rather than division and strife.

We have a non-secular equivalent: marriage. And if civil unions are genuinely identical....why the need for them?

Simple: they aren't equal. Which is the point. Separate but equal has a lousy track record. If marriage and civil unions were genuinely identical there would be no need for the distinction.

Your solution is complicated, pointless, duplicitous, and completely unnecessary. Which is why weren't not using it.

Yeah, it only honors that 1st Amendment thingy....you know " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"....which is exactly what they did when they got their butts involved in the religious rite of marriage. (I have been getting a giggle over your obvious confusion over a "rite" and a "right"). According to your own words, the 14th Amendment makes the 1st Amendment binding on the States...so there ya go.

This entire debate....and all the division, ugliness and bullshit it has caused and still is causing...is what is pointless and could have been easily avoided by simply giving civil unions the same legal rights as marriage. But that's what big government does to protect us...they over-complicate things to the point where we are at each other's throats.

 

[Skylar]

And there you have it: a small government advocate insisting that we take the federally protected right to privacy...

There's no potential for a right to privacy, where the action at issue is a function of GOVERNMENT (Public) POLICY... and there sure as hell is not right to privacy, where the privacy is used to conceal the taking of the life of an innocent. This is a longstanding legal precedent... .

There is the potential for the right to privacy as a function of individual liberty. With the federal government empowered to protect those rights from abrogation by State law by the 14th amendment.

Again, Keyes.....you have no command of the actual law and the actual constitution as you assume your opinion defines both. But it doesn't. Leaving you with a process that has a nearly perfect record of failure of predicting actual legal outcomes.

As you keep imagining that the courts are bound to whatever pseudo-legal gibberish you make up. And they aren't.

As far as I am concerned, a woman who performs an abortion on herself, in private, having told no one else... is irrelevant to this discussion, as there is no means to do a dam' thing about that.

"As far as I am concerned" is a standard of personal opinion. And you're more than welcome to it. But it doesn't define our laws, the constitution, the federalist papers, god, morality, or anything objectively.

It defines your subjective beliefs.

And the vast chasm between what you subjectively believe and the *actual* objective outcomes is where your process is demonstrated to be meaningless gibberish.

With no other consideration, she will suffer the consequences of such... through a life of unquenchable shame, if she doesn't bleed to death in the process itself.

Unless she doesn't. Remember, you don't have any say in this. You define nothing. And your personal opinion doesn't define her reality anymore than you pretending you are nature defines marriage.

You're again assuming that your imagination defines her mental and physical health.

It doesn't.

So what we're discussing here is PUBLIC policy... not private behavior.

We're discussing public policy toward private behavior. And your inability to use the former to effect the latter in terms of abortion. Or marriage. Or sex.

And you define nothing for anyone else on any of these topics.

 

[Dan Daly]

If you need to be protected by government, I call it "dependent".

I call it protecting the rights of citizens from the tyranny of the majority.

and only the federal government...can do that...gotcha.

Check the 14th amendment. They can absolutely check the States when the States create laws that abrogate the rights of Federal citizens.

Its why the Supreme Court could overturn Chicago gun laws forbidding the ownership of handguns. Because of the federally recognized 'right to self defense with a fire arm' that the States could not violate.

Its why the Supreme Court could overrule State marriage laws forbidding same sex marriages. Because of the federally recognized 'right to marry', 'Due process' and 'equal protection'.

Your argument pretends that the 14th amendment doesn't exist. Which is problematic.....as it does exist.

That is where we fundamentally disagree. Government is better at oppression than they are at protection. Hell look at the poor black folks...government freed them and started protecting them over a century ago and they are less free now than when they were freakin slaves.

That's obvious horeshit. You're going to argue that say, former Attorney General Holder has less freedom than a black slave is delusional nonsense. Not in terms of freedom. Not in terms of the horrors of slavery.

Slavery is not freedom. No matter how hard you try to convince yourself otherwise.

I'm not denying the 14th Amendment and I am not against equal protection under the law...I am against the federal government's wacky notion of what protection is. How well has the government done in protecting our rights under some of the other Amendments...like the 1st...or maybe the 2nd, or the 4th?

A piece of paper cannot protect your rights. Government is about protecting their rights, not yours. You are the only person who can protect your rights...becoming dependent on others...especially government...to do it for you is a fool's game that never has a happy ending.

The 14th Amendment concerns state and local governments, incorporating the Bill of Rights to the states, acknowledging the fact that residents of the states are first and foremost citizens of the United States, and residents of the states subordinate to that, who do not 'forfeit' their civil rights merely as a consequence of their state of residence.

It is ridiculous and inconsistent to say the Federal government may not violate a citizen's right to counsel, for example (6th Amendment), while allowing state governments to do exactly that with impunity. If citizens' protected liberties are inalienable – rights that can be neither taken nor bestowed by any government, constitution, or man – and immune from attack by the Federal government, then they are just as immune from attack by state and local governments.

Hence the doctrine of selective incorporation, applying the Bill of Rights to the states, such as the 6th Amendment's right to counsel (Gideon v. Wainwright), acknowledging the right to counsel as indeed being inalienable.

Consequently, the issue isn't the Federal government's 'wacky notion' of what constitutes protecting our civil rights; rather, it concerns consistently safeguarding all citizens' protected liberties from attack by all governments – Federal, state, and local.

Last, the 14th Amendment acknowledges our two most fundamental and important of rights: the right to due process of the law and the right to equal protection of the law, where the 5th Amendment prohibits the Federal government from violating citizens' right to due process, and the 14th Amendment prohibits the states from doing the same. And the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment requires the states and local jurisdictions to allow citizens of the United States equal protection of (equal access to) state and local laws, prohibiting the states from denying citizens access to state laws for invalid reasons such as race, religion, or sexual orientation.

The federal government's track record of protecting anyone's rights isn't something I would be crowing about. All they have done, as governments naturally do, is infringe upon them, not protect them. History is on my side here, pal.

 

[Where_r_my_Keys]

And you abandon your entire argument, babbling about abortion.

False...

Again, Keyes...if you were going to just cut and run, why bother in the first place. You're equating sex with marriage.

Nature equates sex with marriage. As Marriage is the consequence of sex... wherein the female conceives, is largely debilitated by gestation, requiring the assistance of her mate, to feed and protect her; the male whose DNA is running up HALF of the child growing inside the female... and who is biologically tethered to the child, who trains the child against and along side, the nurturing of female. Imparting his character into his progeny.. as the mother imparts hers.

There's nothing even remotely debatable here.

Which is why you're failing post for post TO debate it. With the grope for a point in the absurdity that there is no potential correlation between SEX AND MARRIAGE!

Reader... the Left has been in power for only 7 YEARS. Degeneracy has only been licensed by the Federal government for what, six months?

So we are only 7 years from a cultural point where MOST people would admit that SEX is something in which should RIGHTLY be engaged IN MARRIAGE.

And here we are... at a point where a public advocate comes to demand that there is NO CORRELATION between SEX and Marriage.

Slippery Slope?

NOoooo...

What we're looking at here is a CLIFF and a culture in FREE FALL!

And this only 6 months since the obama/clinton government, federally licensed DEGENERACY!

 

[Skylar]

What do I want to dish out? I don't want to dish out anything. I just happen to believe that marriage is the institution of one man and one woman. That's not dishing anything out. It's just like calling my chair a chair. Sure, I could call my chair a fire hydrant, but that doesn't make it a fire hydrant. It's still a chair.

You don't have a "right" to force your desires against the will of the voters. Marriage is not a right, it's a religious rite that was adopted by the government in order to provide benefits to the normal family. And no, Don, Sam and their adopted son is not a normal family.

Here's the thing, once we allowed government to get involved in marriage, we pretty much have to bow to government's definitions of it (for their purposes)....that whole "You don't have a "right" to force your desires against the will of the voters." comes back to bite us in the ass. Moral of the story...government has no business in the religious rite of marriage.

Nor does it have a thing to do with the 'religious rite'. But the socially recognized legal contract of marriage? That's a different story. That's not religious. That's civil. Any church can still deny the validity of any marriage they don't agree with. Catholics can refuse to accept that same sex marriages are marriages under Catholic law for example.

But under civil law they're as valid as a marriage of a man and a woman. And civil law is not subordinate to religion. But autonomous of it.

And you don't seem to understand the difference between rights and powers. Rights are freedoms from government action. Powers are actions the government can take. You're insisting that rights can never override powers. And that's obviously horseshit. They can and in most cases, should.

If they want a civilian equivalent for legal purposes, fine, we could avoid this entire debate if they'd call it something else. Come to think of it...they did dooded that..they're called "civil unions", so rather than futzing around with marriage, why not just give civil unions the same legal rights as those who are married?

There is the civil equivalent: marriage.

No marriage existed as a religious right long before secular governments even existed.

So? What's your point? Religious law was civil law long before secular governments even existed too. Priests could summarily have you executed for heresy answerable to no one but the church. Churches used to keep birth, tax and death records too.

We've moved on.

Government has no business in it, never did, never will.

Nonsense. You're simply stating your opinion. You're not giving us a why. Why shouldn't the government recognize marriage? Why shouldn't it protect it? Why shouldn't secular law define it under the law?

Again, religious laws are completely intact. Catholics don't have to recognize a couple married under secular law as married under Catholic law. Neither do Muslims, Mormons, Jedi, or Pastafarians.

If they want a non-secular equivalent, then use what we already have...civil unions...and make them legally identical. Not rocket surgery...if you want to provide true equality rather than division and strife.

We have a non-secular equivalent: marriage. And if civil unions are genuinely identical....why the need for them?

Simple: they aren't equal. Which is the point. Separate but equal has a lousy track record. If marriage and civil unions were genuinely identical there would be no need for the distinction.

Your solution is complicated, pointless, duplicitous, and completely unnecessary. Which is why weren't not using it.

Yeah, it only honors that 1st Amendment thingy....you know " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"....which is exactly what they did when they got their butts involved in the religious rite of marriage. (I have been getting a giggle over your obvious confusion over a "rite" and a "right"). According to your own words, the 14th Amendment makes the 1st Amendment binding on the States...so there ya go.

Huh? If I get a civil marriage....how does that deprive you of any 1st amendment right? It doesn't. You have no 'why' in insisting that the government shouldn't be involved in marriage. You simply insist it should be so.

That's not good enough. Not by half.

This entire debate....and all the division, ugliness and bullshit it has caused and still is causing...is what is pointless and could have been easily avoided by simply giving civil unions the same legal rights as marriage.

So your solution is to invalid ALL marriage certificates, elmiinatre all marriage law and all legal recognition of marriage......just to keep the gays from getting married?

That's ridiculous. Its wildly complicated, utterly pointless and completely unnecessary. Especially since you've admitted that civil unions and marriage would be identical. If they are genuinely identical, we don't need civil unions.

Here's a much simpler solution: legally recognize same sex marriages. And done.

It deprives you of no right. It doesn't effect you. And it leaves your religious right to not recognize their marriage under religious law perfectly intact. As your religious law is gloriously irrelevant to the recognition of civil marriage under civil law.

 

[Where_r_my_Keys]

There is the potential for the right to privacy as a function of individual liberty.

True...

But Individual Liberty can only be sustained where the Individual bears the responsibilities intrinsic to the right to be free.

And the first of those responsibilities is trustworthiness.

And there is no potential for trust, where one hides behind a locked door in pursuit of the injury to an innocent.

Again, this is a long standing tenet of western jurisprudence.

There's no potential for a viable right to privacy defense for the commission of ANY crime. PERIOD.

And what is crime? It's an immoral act... which sets injury to another's means to exercise their rights.

Unless you want to define a crime as something else?

LOL! Reader, Skylar will not come to demand that a crime is a violation of a legal statute. Remember, she'll do so as she implies that she is a MORAL person too... despite being a degenerate, an Anti-Theist and a communist.

But far be it from me to put words in her mouth... Skylar, please take a sec and define crime for us... and explain to the Reader what the purpose of criminal statutes are, why they exist and on what foundation they rest.

(Enjoy Reader... although I should warn you, this isn't going well for Skylar... and it never does, and its usually around this point where she is suddenly struck with an irresistible fascination with something else... (anything else).

 

[Skylar]

Nature equates sex with marriage.

Blithering nonsense. Nature obviously doesn't. If such were the case, then any act of sex in nature would be the same thing as marriage.

You can't even make such a horseshit equivalency work within our species. Let alone across all of nature. People fucking and people being married aren't the same thing. Nor does one require the other. Nor does the former define the latter by any imaginary 'law of nature'. Or any application of logic or reason.

Marriage is a human construct. We define it. It means whatever is decide it means. Not what YOU decide it means. Even when you pretend you are the 'laws of nature'. And it has often varied significantly from your assumptions.

Your assumptions, opinions and imagination do not define objective reality. They define your subjective beliefs. Subjective is not objective.

As Marriage is the consequence of sex... wherein the female conceives, is largely debilitated by gestation, requiring the assistance of her mate, to feed and protect her; the male whose DNA is running up HALF of the child growing inside the female... and who is biologically tethered to the child, who trains the child against and along side, the nurturing of female. Imparting his character into his progeny.. as the mother imparts hers.

Obviously not. As every act of sex isn't an act of marriage. If marriage was the consequence of sex then any act of sex in nature.....any at all, would be marriage.

It isn't. Your equivalency is meaningless nonsense. As one does not equate to the other. Nor is one the consequence of the other. Not in our species. Not any species. And certainly not in nature. Sex doesn't require marriage. Nor does marriage require sex. Or procreation.

These are all your opinion. Which again, define no objective fact.

There's nothing even remotely debatable here.

Unsurprisingly, the worse your argument gets....the more you say this.

 

[Where_r_my_Keys]

So your solution is to invalid ALL marriage certificates, elmiinatre all marriage law and all legal recognition of marriage......just to keep the gays from getting married?

Marriage is the Joining of One Man and One Woman. There are NO laws anywhere which seek to prevent sexual deviants from marriage... as long as they seek to marry another person of the distinct gender.

(Reader, I just eviscerated "THE BIG QUEER LIE!"... No homosexual was ever prevented from marrying anyone... within the natural defining standards of Marriage... thus there was no discrimination against the sexual deviant. There was only the standard of the cultural nucleus, which they've simply sought to destroy.)

 

[Skylar]

There is the potential for the right to privacy as a function of individual liberty.

True...

But Individual Liberty can only be sustained where the Individual bears the responsibilities intrinsic to the right to be free.

The intrinsic right to be free....according to who? Bearing responsibility....according to who?

This is where your argument breaks. As in both instances you insist that YOU get to define both the intrinsic right to be free and its responsibilities.

You define neither. As your personal opinion defines nothing 'intrinsically'. It merely defines your subjective beliefs. And as always, your entire argument is dependant on us accepting YOU as defining all terms you wish to discuss.

And you define none of them.

A woman is in a far better place to decide what is best for her than you are pretending to speak for 'intrinsic rights' and 'intrinsic responsibilities'. Individual liberty is rooted in the individual. Not you pretending that you speak for all individuals.