I’m going to have to ask by what power is the state even given authority to regulate nudity on beaches or selling beer on Sunday. I don’t see anywhere in the Constitution giving them that authority.
That’s what Constitutions are for, innit? 
Well done on the realization thing there.
That’s clearly his opinion, and has nothing to do with my nation’s laws.
I’m glad you agree with me on that. (Actually, it’s quite refreshing to hear that, and you’ve scored a couple of points in my book FWIW.) That’s really all I care about here; anyone else is free to believe whatever they want to believe, but keep it in your own fairy-land and out of my reality.
You raised a very good point, but please note, how in order to raise it, you had to bring up a referendum as a hypothetical example. I think that most laws in your country and mine are created through representative rather than direct democracy (but I’m sure you could correct me on that!). In this more common mode of legislation, the motivations for passing laws are generally made much clearer.
The federal government does not have the authority, true. (Although the current state of jurisprudence on the Commerce Clause may reasonably be read to confer upon Congress the authority since both swimwear and beer impact interstate commerce – but I digress).
The states, however, are separate sovereigns and have plenary police powers. Their power to legislate on any subject is a general one. In other words, unless it’s forbidden by some concept or rule to the states, the states have the power.
That’s not really a meaningful objection, since the issue is no different if the characters are members of the legislature.
Other issues that are more troublesome are:
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Scope Of Government (as Homebrew mentioned above, before getting to the details, the question of how any of this is the government’s legitimate business in the first place needs to be addressed).
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Preferential Treatment (in this example, implementing the social policy of giving everybody a day off in a manner that is rather more helpful to Christians than to Jews or Muslims, and in fact is a significant cost to the latter if they have to take two days off a week, one to satisfy religious obligations and one by mandate of the state).
This may have already been pointed out (apologies - this thread’s getting a bit overlong for me), but surely God created gays gay (as the above quote suggests). That means that He is either playing some rather sick and childish game - creating people with an in-built compulsion to “sin”, who will either live their lives in misery by denying the urge, or be eternally damned by succumbing to it - in which case He does not deserve our veneration, or He loves homosexuals just as much as the rest of us, in which case Christian bigotry (or whatever you want to call it) is the result of a different agenda being pursued by the clergy, and is unrelated to His teaching.
Actually, I’ve thought your comments to be very much to the point of this thread. If someone thinks the Pope is bigoted, he is whether or not he tries to influence secular law. If he does not, then his position might be something that no one but a Catholic should be concerned about, and a Catholic who is concerned has the option of leaving the church.
BTW, I don’t consider him to have chosen the opinions he has - he is not anti-gay out of malice, but out of training and environment. But I don’t agree that this gives him an out. If he looked into his heart, and wondered why God made people gay, he might find god telling him to change the position of the church. Unless god changes his mind, certainly the changes of doctrine some Popes have introduced means that at least one of two Popes with differing views weren’t interpreting god’s desire correctly, right? The church is a far more human and tolerant place than it once was, so maybe that is what god wants. Isn’t it possible that his upbringing and culture has made him deaf to god’s word in this instance, and those in favor of liberalization are just asking him to take the cotton out of his ears?
As a matter of philosophical view, I don’t agree that states have plenary power. In fact, most states have constitutions that, like the federal one, specifically grant powers to the state. I find the idea that a state has plenary power over everything unless specificially limited to be frightening.
Well, I appreciate your discomfiture, but the fact remains that our system accords to states a plenary power. States may limit their own power, and federal law is supreme over state law, so any conflict goes to the feds, but absent those sorts of limitations, there is no boundary for exercise of state legislative power.
If the majority of the population of a country is christian, then it’s only right under a democratic system that their views should be made into law. Not as in, “The Church leadership makes the rules” although that would essentially be the effect, but just allowing people to vote the way they want to. I as an individual non-christian may not be happy, but the majority is, and that’s what democracy’s all about.
So anything a majority wants, no matter how oppressive is okay? Is that really what democracy is about? If so fuck that. I think a Constitutional Democracy is great. The Constitution defines the role of the government and that all it can do. Allowing the majority to trample over the minority is a tyranny and is no better than a dictatorship.
There are some good arguments going on here, but this isn’t one of them. Arguing that whatever predispositions a person have were put there by God and it is therefore righteous for him to act on - or else God is a cruel sadist and does not deserve worship - invites the comparison with the kleptomaniac, the paedophile and the psychopath; all of whom certainly don’t have the moral right to exercise their natural urges.
Now you can respond that homosexual acts should not be considered in the same vein as stealing, child abuse or murder, and I’ll wholeheartedly agree. But the point is that your argument above would have let all three of them through - and to establish why homosexuality is all right and the other three aren’t, we have to look at the individual merits of each case.
Of course God loves homosexuals as much as the rest of us. But this does not much advance the argument as to whether some of us are born with urges that we should suppress. Otherwise I could go right ahead and covet my neighbour’s wife, happy in the knowledge that my predilection to do so was inborn and therefore OK for me to exercise. Indeed, it would be hard to think of any urge for which the argument couldn’t be made.
Huh. And here I thought that the Fourteenth Amendment meant what it said, you know, in the text. *Makes note: In Bricker’s view, American citizens have no rights not specifically granted by a beneficient state government. *
I agree that all powers not delegated to the Federal government by the Constitution nor restricted by explicit Constitutional bans or guarantees of rights are the proper “police power” (and related functions) of the States. I disagree explicitly and vehemently with the statement you make in the quoted post.
Actually, that might be a good argument for why God should not punish people for committing acts he pre-wired them for. It is very different for state sanctions - which are justified in your three examples because of harm to others.
Now, I can see that a church could find something sinful for three reasons:
- God said so. But did god really say so? And does it still make sense today - viz the discussion of wearing clothes with multiple fabrics.
- Damage to others. Your three examples fall in this category.
- Damage to god. Or insult. I can see a church considering blasphemy a sin for this reason. However, can a person acting as God made him to act be considered to be doing damage to god?
And, to repeat, only the second reason is a valid one for a secular law. God’s existence would have to be examined for the others. If someone wanted to sue for libeling Mickey Mouse, they’d have to establish that Mickey Mouse existed, right? (Damage to a trademark is something else again.)
Oppression indicates an oppressed group; so not everyone is happy.
I wouldn’t agree with the term “tyranny”, but I do get your point. A constitutional democracy can be a very good system, but (IMHO) the less actual laws the better.
Poly, are you making a distinction between Federal law and “Constitutional bans or guarantees”? Not sure I’m seeing the distinction between what you and Bricker are asserting.
Establishing the “individual merits” is an extremely trivial matter - child abuse theft, theft and murder are “wrong” because any pleasure they might give to the person committing the act is massively outweighed by the harm they do to the victim. My understanding of religious teaching is sketchy at best, but as I understand it, our priority is meant to be the welfare of others, which neatly establishes the difference between homosexuality and your 3 examples. Whatever your feelings on homosexuality may be, no one can deny that the homosexual act is nothing more nor less than 2 consenting adults engaging in a mutally pleasurable act. What the church disapproves of, therefore, is the urge itself, not the expression of that urge.
See, this is getting back to the good arguments I was talking about. It’s been said upthread that homosexuality can’t be a sin 'cos it doesn’t harm anyone else. But half of the Ten Commandments address sins that don’t harm anyone else: the first four, and the last one. Polytheism, idolatry, blasphemy, Sabbath-breaking and covetousness don’t (or needn’t necessarily) harm anyone with the possible exception of the person who does them. So that argument’s a crock too (which does not, of course, prove that buggery* is a sin; I’m not out to establish that).
Concerning the wearing of mixed fabrics, shellfish-eating (ought to be somethingophagy, but I don’t know my Greek roots well enough), and the modern failure to keep the Sabbath, it’s very much to the point to ask why we should wink at these and foam at the mouth over sodomy*. But that’s been well discussed already, and I’ve nothing to add.
And can a person acting as God made him to act be considered to be doing damage to God? I’ll say “yes” to that. We’re all born with some propensity or other, and most of us with the capacity to overcome them, and just about all of us, I should say, to at least recognise that if we can’t overcome them, we can at least acknowledge the fault before God and ask forgiveness. It’s the wilful refusal to either overcome or acknowledge that crosses the line to unacceptability.
(*Awkward shorthand, but the sense to be conveyed is that “committing homosexual acts” is what is being discussed, not “homosexual orientation”, which I think we’re all agreed is neither anyone’s fault nor inherently sinful.)
Of course establishing the individual merits is extremely trivial; I made no claim else! But the point is that you have to undertake the trivial exercise; you can’t just say “it’s an inborn urge, it must be right to express it or else God is a filthy sadist”.
Anyone can deny that
It’s easy; all I need to do is claim that it is a scandalously impious mockery of the act of union that God intended for a man and a woman. I may be wrong, but there’s nothing difficult about the denial. This “nothing more or less” angle won’t wash; I could as well say that burning a witch at the stake is nothing more or less than raising living tissue to combustion temperatures in the presence of an oxidising atmosphere. My description of the objective facts rather misses the utter horror of the abominable act. (Anyone who now claims that I have equated homosexuality with witch-burning is cordially invited to bite me, and if cordially won’t do, rudely can be arranged.)
And you haven’t established the “therefore” that you introduce in your last sentence. It’s true that Jesus himself inveighs against wrongful urges as well as wrongful actions: he sternly rebukes those who congratulate themselves for being innocent of adultery by pointing out that a man who looks on a woman with lust in his heart is pretty much as bad as an actual adulterer – differing only in opportunity. But the church, in my experience, is remarkably soft on those who only have the propensity to commit certain acts, and discipline themselves not to do them.