“A civil right is an enforceable right or privilege, which if interfered with by another gives rise to an action for injury. Examples of civil rights are freedom of speech, press, and assembly; the right to vote; freedom from involuntary servitude; and the right to equality in public places. Discrimination occurs when the civil rights of an individual are denied or interfered with because of their membership in a particular group or class. Various jurisdictions have enacted statutes to prevent discrimination based on a person’s race, sex, religion, age, previous condition of servitude, physical limitation, national origin, and in some instances sexual orientation.”
When you google “civil rights” and take the first non-Wikipedia link offered, it’d behoove you to read further down the link than you did:
Note that the law that required parity in public accommodations and public schools was the Civil Rights Act. Your claim that such parity isn’t a civil right in the US is rather suspect.
I didn’t claim that equal access wasn’t a civil right, I said the thing itself isn’t. You have no “right” to public schools. The state could decide to shut them down. If it does have public schools, it just allow access without regard to race, etc.
You imply in the post above that the fact that marriage is a “privilege” in your peculiar definition is significant, and that it’s different therefore from hiring or housing. When pressed, you say:
Well, of course. This pedantic difference may be technically correct, but it’s totally pedantic. Instead of talking about the right to marriage, as every significant court case does, to satisfy this bizarre little distinction all we have to do is talk about the right to equal access to marriage. And then we’re right back where we started. Even if you want to insist that marriage is a privilege, not a right, equal access to marriage is a right, not a privilege.
Yep; it took a Constitutional Amendment to fix this. What’s your point?
Fortunately, we already have a Constitutional Amendment that says this right cannot be infringed. A relatively open permitting process is not an infringement, in itself. If it becomes abused – e.g., one party’s applications are approved but another party’s applications are denied – then the law (and the Constitution) are being violated. We have to be vigilant against this kind of abuse.
(Just as we have seen the abuse of building permits requested for non-Christian churches. The case in Escondido, California, was instructive: in the time in which a request for a permit to build a Krishnan church was denied, permits for several Christian churches were granted.)
Rights have to be defended and protected and safeguarded, for there is no shortage of those who will seek to deny them. Many of those persons are bigots.
Which, if they really don’t have any new fact based reasonble arguments , means nothing at all to this discussion. Justification, is not at all the same as factual , logical and reasonable.
If your point is some reasonable argumant might possibly exist out there somewhere , it’s a rather obvious and pointless argument to make. It’s akin to “You can’t prove God doesn’t exist”
Yes we know, So freakin what?
Is it
“I don’t believe any fact based reasonable arguments agasint SSM exist.”
Well you shouldn’t believe that because even though we’ve examined all that have made iot to the public discussion and found them lacking one still might be out there,…somewhere.
Well, if and when one shows up I’ll consider it them. In the meantime I’ll believe what my considerable efforts this far, have shown me.
If someone opposes SSM, I’m happy to ask them “Why is that?” even though I fully expect to hear some variation of every argument I’ve already heard and examined.
If and when someone presents something that hasn’t already been rehashed many times over, I’ll consider it. Until then it’s safe and not arrogant to say, the opposition to SSM is based on bigotry.
Would it feel better to qualify it with “Based on all the arguments I’ve heard to date” because I kinda thought that was obviously implied.
I asked LHOD upthread what he meant by “principled disagreement” I never got an answer. Perhaps you could define what you mean as “reasonable”. Surely you don’t mean that it has to be an argument you, personally, find convincing, right?
This was in response to lance armstrongs false claim that a right could not require a permit to exercise, the nature of how that was codified is irrelevant.
This debate about gay marriage is not even as old as I am. I’ve certainly learned in my lifetime that I don’t know everything and haven’t heard ever viewpoint or argument, and I’ve changed my mind about things that were rational in favor of other equally rational arguments. I don’t think we can just declare victory and walk away muttering “bigots!”
So you’re open to the possibility that one might show up?
Hey, if a zombie epidemic breaks out and we figure out that marrying a same-sex partner somehow results in rising from the grave to feast on human flesh when you die, I’ll be all for banning it then.
But if a good argument didn’t show up during that frenzy of SSM-banning amendments a couple years back, I don’t think one will ever show. There’s a lot of people against SSM for icky or religious reasons; if someone had a compelling, rational, secular reason it would have been brought out by now.
You forgot the semantic one of “That’s not what ‘marriage’ means.” Which of course is an entirely valid reason to create an entirely separate (but equal!) set of rights.
Is it your view that we have to refrain forever from describing this position as bigoted because someday a non-bigoted argument against same-sex marriage might appear? This issue has been debated at great length in the public sphere over the last decade and I don’t think any new arguments are going to magically appear. Even if they could appear, at some point it’s entirely reasonable to draw a conclusion based on the arguments that have been used.
And it was denied to people based on gender within recent history.