Who cares?
Why do you place the authority of popular whim over the authority of the philosopher kings we call the Supreme Court?
Yes, I can see that. For example, how those liberal lefties led by Scalia decided that the words “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State …” could be redacted from the Second Amendment because they didn’t mean anything, and were only put in there for decoration, so the Court was free to interpret the rest of it any way they felt like without any pesky words getting in the way.
I can see it in how those same liberal lefties ruled in Citizens United, too. Somehow the First Amendment which protects the people and the press from arbitrary censorship was interpreted by these damn leftie judicial activists to mean that corporations could spend without limit to control the political process to their advantage. Scalia (that damned communist leftie!) even said later when asked about what Thomas Jefferson might think of that, that Jefferson would have said “the more speech, the better!”. What Jefferson actually said was, “I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
Damned leftie activists – reading whatever they like into the Constitution! 
Well, one possibility is that all liberals have consumed some kind of Kool-Aid and are incapable of seeing the obvious truths, and all media is also brainwashed and on their side, except for Fox News and alt-right talk radio. And that only you can see the truth.
The other possibility is that you are insane.
One might ask which possibility is more likely.
On that note, you should probably go back to supporting Trump. You know you want to – you’ve already said you’re tempted. Go ahead, it will help feed the crazy in you.
Like “equal justice before the law”? Inscribed that over the Supreme Court, yes? Is that inscription somehow less worthy that the ones on parchment? What’s more important to you, the rules or the reason we have them?
If you mean
we would have to consider the makeup of SCotUS in the time period, the final arbiter.
[QUOTE=The ERA (as proposed)]
Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Sec. 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Sec. 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.
[/QUOTE]
Where exactly “equality of rights” might point to unisex restrooms is far from obvious. If it had a mandate on that issue, it would be that gender-specific facilities should be made sufficiently equivalent (that your gender should not affect the quality/capacity of what you can use). And, of course, there are numerous examples of unisex restrooms that, as far as I can tell, work at least as well as the gender-specific facilities.
One must also consider where it says “… shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State …” which means that the ERA would not directly apply to CBGB or Sears or Stanford: I could be wrong, but I do not believe that anywhere near the majority of facilities available to the public are in government-run properties. It is ridiculous to suggest that the ERA would have put the squeeze on private business.
Then, there is,
where you effectively destroy your own argument. Ms. Schlafly’s assertion was that unisex restrooms would be a problem. That in and of itself appears to be not the case. One cannot honestly sever the implication from the assertion. Sure, putative unisex restrooms (whatever form they might take) might well have made her and a bunch of others somewhat uncomfortable, but humans are notable for the ability and tendency to adapt.
Which is to say, she expressed strong certainty that it would force us into unisex public restrooms, which is very doubtful at worst, but entirely uncertain at best. That makes the main point unarguable wrong, in that that was not a going to be a definite effect of the ERA. Add to that the inescapable implication that that effect would be a bad thing, which even you have backed away from. (Hell, given the trajectory of bodily functions going from a deeply taboo subject to casual conversation in just a few decades, I would not be surprised if, in the next half decade or so, even privacy of elimination itself came to be, um, eliminated from the social norm.)
So really, there is no way one can look at her paranoid raving on this matter that does not reveal it as a lie.
Without the ERA being passed, SCOTUS crafted an intermediate scrutiny framework to analyze gender classification issues. Enabling legislation, such as Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, prohibit sex discrimination in educational programs and activities operated by recipients of Federal financial assistance. Additional guidelines for federal workspace and parallel regulatory guidelines for state discrimination and civil rights agencies have moved almost uniformly towards transgender use of restrooms as mandated to correspond to the gender identity of them individual as opposed to the biological identity of the individual.
That’s mandated with merely intermediate scrutiny.
With the ERA in place, strict scrutiny would be required. That means that in government facilities, gender-separated restrooms woulkd presumably require a showing that separating by gender was a narrowly-tailored solution to further a compelling government interest.
What possible compelling government interest exists to separate people with penises from using a restroom stall next to people with vaginas?
None.
Absolutely true.
But that’s not part of the argument. Your complaint was that Schafly lied when she predicted that the ERA would lead to unisex restrooms. I am showing you that the legal framework suggests just that result. You can’t say she was a liar because unisex restrooms now exist but don’t lead to problems.
Not true. As history teaches us, states and cities have created anti-discrimination frameworks that parallel federal law. Many of the state and local guidelines now in place found their grounding in federal law. It’s not guaranteed, I admit, but it’s not absurd either.
And even if it were, what of it? Schafly’s not a liar if her predictions come true only for federal facilities.
No, no. That’s not a lie. That’s clearly a matter of her opinion – she invited her listeners to conclude that unisex restrooms would exist. That her listeners were uncomfortable with the result is not a lie on her part.
Ii haven’t backed away for it – I never endorsed it in the first place. I have no concerns with unisex restrooms and regard the current disquiet over transgender restroom use to be absurd. I have no objection to transgendered men, transgendered women, cisgendered men, and cisgendered women all sharing restroom facilities – everyone poops.
But the fact remains that her audience did think it was a bad thing, and that’s not a matter of “lie,” or “truth,” but a matter of opinion on a social issue.
What else ya got?
Do you also disagree with the non-slavery parts of my argument? Though I strongly believe that even such “elevating its desired social outcome over the document text” would still have been far less damaging to our country than the institution of slavery and the associated white supremacy has been.
Yes.
Almost all of the federal government’s power over states in the area of civil rights arises from the Fourteenth Amendment. Prior to its passage, the federal government had essentially no enumerated powers to legislate state actions related to civil rights.
I don’t.
To be clearer, I certainly agree that the one instance would not. But the camel’s nose under the tent is inevitably followed by the rest of the camel. And THAT trend would have been damaging.
Well, maybe. Is it a transgendered camel? That would surely be going too far!
Other than that, what dreadful consequences are you worried about? Who cares if somebody pees in peeing station A or peeing station B, or what form of apparatus they use? OK, your prim and legalistic thoughts about preserving the sanctity of the Constitution may be bruised, but, outside of that…what?
If you can’t follow the discussion, don’t try to participate in it.
Camels need shelter, too. It’s cold in the desert at night.
To hear is to obey, thread leader! This unworthy one cringes.
As opposed to one by evil “philosopher kings”? Because *that’s *what we got, not some idealized democracy. A society ruled by an “elite” who worked to justify and protect slavery, and then segregation and other forms of bigotry.
“Democracy” only mattered when it supported that; when it didn’t, then suddenly democracy becomes the enemy and you have everything from the Civil War to modern voter suppression efforts by the Republicans.
It’s true that every now and then the right will manage to come up with a faulty constitutional interpretation. But I’d wager just about any amount you’d care to wager that for every example of the right doing this I could show you 50 by the left. And don’t forget, we’re not talking solely about the Supreme Court either. District courts and federal judges on many levels have been foremost in the judicial activism sweepstakes.
Not if one also takes into account that tens of millions or more of the country’s citizens agree with me, and have for decades.
It’s apparently skipped whatever passes for a brain in your case, but the very reason Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, et al. exist is that there was already a pent up market for what they’re selling. Millions of people were way past fed up with the unfair and biased reportage that’s existed in this country for decades, and while those of your ilk like to tell themselves Fox/Limbaugh/etc. are brainwashing their listers, what they’re really doing is preaching to the choir and offering up real life examples of leftie-hood intended to further ignite the passions of those who disgusted/dismayed/contemptuous of its flaws to begin with.
You need to get acquainted with the fallacy called argumentum ad populum:
http://skepdic.com/adpopulum.html
No good, I have encountered many lies from FOX before, even our own Bad Astronomer, (who is a scientist BTW).
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/02/15/moon-hoax-10/
Early brainwashing from FOX at its best indeed.
Fifty million people can be wrong, but I highly doubt that same 50 million people would simultaneously be insane. And it was in regard to wolfpup’s silly claim that my observation of media bias and judicial activism was the result of insanity that I brought up those tens of millions in agreement with me who may have been wrong…although they weren’t.
Oh hey, a terrible fucking person who made the world worse with her presence and activities died.
Good.
Here’s hoping Rush Limbaugh is next.
…I’m sorry, were we still talking about liberal hypocrisy? I honestly don’t give a shit. Y’wanna know why I have problems with people dancing on, say, Hitchens’s grave, but no problem with dancing on Schafly’s myself? Because Hitchens, for his flaws, was at times a real force for good in the world. His contributions to our culture are significant and many of them are thoroughly positive. Phyllis Schafly, much like Andrew Breitbart or Ann Coulter (fingers crossed, people), was a cancer on the ass of society whose mere presence made countless lives worse. The only solace I have in seeing her live so long is the knowledge that she got to watch every bigoted shit-stained thing she worked for collapse around her like Ted Haggard’s modesty, and at least he admitted he was wrong and owed gays an apology at some point.
And sure, some blowhard could come in here and point out that they didn’t think Schafly was all that bad. But that blowhard would be objectively and factually wrong, and I don’t particularly care about their stupid, stuuuuupid opinion.
Most are demonstratevely wrong about the Moon landings. And just as wrong regarding Climate change and now, while they do officially appear to be in favor of vaccines, FOX news nevertheless gives chances to anti vaxxers to spread their ideas to their viewers and some anchors equivocate recklessly.
It’s not the viewers are insane, the ones that rule at FOX news (and Limbaugh and others) are insane and spread misinformation. Unfortunately, many are following their misinformation.
Then you don’t appear to have read my post. Plessy v Ferguson came after the 14th amendment, as did Jim Crow and all the other horrors of the antebellum, pre Civil Rights south. A “liberal” SCOTUS would have ruled the correct and just way on Plessy v Ferguson, would have invalidated Jim Crow laws, and the country would have been far better off for it.
Fair point.
But there’s a tipping point, especially in those days. The Supreme Court ruled in Worcester v. Georgia that states could not impose conditions on Indian tribes. Georgia essentially ignored the ruling.
(This was the case that gave rise to the apocryphal, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”)
In Plessy, the court pointed out that even in abolitionist Massachusetts, separate schools were constitutional. I am telling you that a decision the other way would face a similar obstacle.
That’s the other side of the philosopher king problem: when the kings need an army.
I have no doubt it would have been messy (as was our real history, obviously). But I strongly believe that any such messiness would have been far less damaging to the republic in the long term (and probably far less “messy” in general, anyway) than what actually happened.
The larger issue is differing ways of interpreting the Constitution. IANAL, obviously. I believe that you subscribe to an attempt at a literal reading and interpretation of the Constitution – I believe that, in general (and especially for large issues related to civil rights and social justice), SCOTUS should strive to interpret law, when possible, in a way favorable to civil rights and social justice (I think Thurgood Marshall was an example of this). And I believe that this way of interpretation is just as legitimate as attempting to literally interpret the Constitution – due to the vagaries of human language, and the different meanings words and phrases can have, even an attempt at a literal interpretation will require supposition and assumption. I don’t believe such an attempt is any more “true” than my/Thurgood’s interpretation philosophy, and I believe that my/Thurgood’s interpretation will result in much better results and far less “messiness” in the long run.
As for the issue of enforcing such rulings, I don’t see why either philosophy is more or less likely to have this problem – both philosophies can result in overturning popular (and unpopular) laws. And with this argument, you seem to be ceding to me that a liberal SCOTUS would have been superior for Plessy v Ferguson and related issues and conflicts, but the results could have had difficulties in enforcement. But imagine such a liberal “activist” SCOTUS in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War (and the 14th amendment), when the South was entirely beaten – segregation could have been outlawed, anti-miscegenation laws could have been outlawed, voting rights could have been guaranteed by law, etc. It might have been messy, but it’s hard to imagine a beaten-down, failed rebellion mustering any significant opposition in the aftermath of their total defeat, especially when compared to the incredible suffering and injustice that the political descendants of this failed rebellion wrought on the country for nearly a century afterwards.