I too regard “obviously desirable” as “should be a right”. I don’t have any problem with implementing rights. I just disagree that by implementing some rights, we’re not creating them, but rather just recognising them.
I believe there is no intrinsic* right* to marry, whatever your sexuality. I would be in favour of creating such a right, legally, however. And it’s legal here.
Yes, I would say the abolitionists were wrong to insist that blacks had intrinsic human rights. I don’t believe anyone has intrinsic human rights.
But you seem to be assuming that because I believe in no intrinsic rights, I must therefore consider any and all legal rights to be exactly correct and fair. I don’t. Why should I? I simply recognise that such rights exist and existed, and were enforced. That doesn’t mean that the existence or enforcing of those rights was therefore perfectly fine and acceptable to me. To the contrary - I am all in favour of legal rights to protect everyone from slavery, among other things. What makes you think i’m not?
What the Athenian did to the Melians is fairly comparable to what the Nazis did to the Jews.* This was not seen as moral wrong in the Ancient World. In fact, to the Athenians, to not kill and enslave the Melians would be contrary to nature:
If our modern liberal morality would not have evolved, from what perspective could we say the Athenians actions (and views) were a moral wrong? From what perspective can we say the Athenians are wrong and the modern liberal view is right?
They killed every man capable of bearing arms and enslaved everyone else.
By the perspective that they wouldn’t have wanted the same thing done to them. And, by the perspective that they are factually wrong; not everyone acts the way they did.
Nothing. So ? If something can’t be violated, it’s not a “right”, but a natural law.
There is a difference between wrong and infringes upon a right. I do not deny that either of those things are wrong; i’m sure I find them as horrifying as you do. But I do not believe that wrong and right-infringment are the same thing. Nor do I believe, should as I think that there are no intrinsic human rights against those things, that what has occurred is any less foul.
Then all we can say about the claim is that it is self-evident to us. It is evident to ourselves. It is not evident to others. It doesn’t matter whether they haven’t thought about it, don’t understand it, or they’re twisted. They do not see it. “Self-evident” is a purely subjective measure, and to apply it is to say “It is something which is perfectly obvious, except to those people for whom it is not perfectly obvious” - and thus no better than saying “In my opinion…”.
Obviousness is subjective. It’s not a measure of the subject, but a measure of the interaction between subject and the person judging it. You aren’t comparing obviousness at all; you’re assuming your perception is accurate and judging everyone else by it. Fine for some things, but when what you’re judging is “how everyone else sees it”, there is no right answer. Obviousness isn’t a quality of something, it’s an interaction.
The Athenians recognized that they wouldn’t want the same thing done to them. They were unwilling to negotiate with Melians precisely to shore up their power so they would not be subjugated by the Spartans.
If we open up their position it comes down to: I have view my view on how the world should work, and you have your view on how the world should work―let’s see who has the power to make his view reality. That is how the world works. The Nazis were not stopped because their morality was wrong. The Soviets did fall apart because their morality was wrong. The Romans did not dominate the Ancient world because their morality was right. America is not the most powerful nation on Earth because of our morals.
I will agree with that part. Whenever anyone attempts to make universal claims about human nature he tends to overstate his point.
What is a right without a remedy other than empty rhetoric?
In a practical sense, at least in the United States, extralegislative human rights do exist; judges (including Supreme Court Justices) allude to them frequently in opinions. Loving v. Virginia, for example:
To a large degree, they did lose because of their unethical attitudes. That’s one of the things that undercut them, distorted their behavior, and made people oppose them so much.
They were also distinctly lacking in morally superior competitors strong enough to resist them, so it didn’t put them at a competitive advantage. But their unethical attitudes, such as slavery, did doom them to stagnation and limited what they could accomplish.
In part, we are. Why do you think other countries have been willing to tolerate us for so long ? And we did become a relatively free country before many others, which gave us an edge. But our present unethical behavior is greatly weakening us, and our unethical behavior of the past always has made us less than we could be.
A right that’s being violated, of course. You appear to be attempting to define ALL rights away, “natural” or not.
There are no natural rights. Rights exist because society forms a consensus and says that they do. Society bequeathes these rights because they lead to the best possible outcome for all involved (in society’s opinion).
So, for one moment, let’s assume that natural rights exist. How do we recognize a natural right? By what mechanism do we differentiate a natural right from something else? If you can’t provide answers, then how can you reasonably state that natural rights exist?
I doubt even somebody as forward-thinking as Earl Warren would have argued for gay marriage in 1967- remember, at the time homosexuality was still considered a mental illness; practicing homosexuals were more or less lumped in with goat felchers and child molesters.
Which suggests that although he said that “Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival,” he was simply wanting to add weight to his opinion on a matter by invoking an ill-defined natural law.
An (possibly) interesting anecdote.
We had a case recently where a boy wore an earring to shcool and the teacher asked him to remove it. He told his parents about it and it became a big issue - the gist being that the school was infringing on his “right” to wear whatever he wanted, although it was against the school rules and everyone else abided by the rules.
My point is that the whole issue of “rights” has been overused and generally misunderstood. I don’t think you have a “right” to wear an earring to school any more than you have a “right” to education in the first place. What you have is the privilege to live in a country that allows you to go to school. If you think health care, education or employment is a “right” then I invite you to visit any of a dozen African countries and try to assert that “right”.
I don’t think you could argue that it was ill-defined then. Now, of course, we understand that homosexuality is a difference, not a defect- and that makes things a lot more complicated- but it was not always so. It follows that a fundamental change in societal mores is not necessarily going to fit well with a well-established historical principle.
All I am saying is that it serves to illustrate that it is not an example of a pre-existing basic civil right, despite the judge asserting that. The problem with natural law is that it tends to not be well defined, so that people use is as a crutch to bolster their arguments – argumentum ad auctoritas – when in fact it is groundless. Appeals to natural law and appeals to religion are simply attempts to argue from a groundless authority.
Saying that marriage (or whatever this issue in debate may be) is of truly great importance to almost all members of society is one thing. Calling it a natural law – a basic civil right of man – is quite something else, for it presumes a pre-existing authority, and lends itself to arguing based on appeals to authority, rather than arguing based on facts, logic, and the needs and desires of individuals, communities and societies. In short, appealing to natural law is sloppy thinking.
Problem with that idea is that you can’t just toss out the idea of natural law. Like it or not, some laws are based in universal or nearly universal beliefs - the right of the individual not to be murdered, for example.
Then stick with that – set out that there is a universal or near universal belief that one should not be murdered. Don’t claim that there is some sort of natural law. If you stick to reality, you will not go astray as often as if you simply make up authority. For example, if the prohibition against murder is posited as a natural law, it does no harm, for in fact there is a universal or nearly universal belief that murder is a very bad thing in most circumstances. If, however, the prohibition against gay marriage is posited as a natural law, then is does harm, for it makes one position appear more authoritative than the other.
Nope. Natural law goes far beyond a simple assertion of pan-cultural belief. Natural law (in the legal sense) presumes that the authority of some legal standards arise out of moral standards that in turn arise out of some objective standards derived from the nature or human beings. That opens the door wide to any number of abuses, such as appeal to natural law to justify discrimination against certain types or classes of people, or even to justify genocide.