Authority exists, or it does not. (It does no good to finesse the issue by pointing out – correctly, as far as it goes – that universities have authority in some areas but not in others. Your assertion is that an omission in the General Assembly’s statutory language suffices to identify one of those “not in others” areas where the university lacks authority. That position leads directly to the sort of conclusions found in **Whack-a-Mole’**s example.)
Fallacy of equivocation.
“A list of things upon which state universities are required to discriminate” is not the polar opposite of the “list of things upon which state universities are forbidden to discriminate.” One is a list of protected classes, which the university may not expand upon.
Another is a list of reasons to charge different tuitions.
You know you’re spouting nonsense with that. Your head would explode if you heard that Virginia Tech imposed a formal reprimand to one student for underage drinking, and expelled his roommate for the precise same offense, with the only difference being that the one expelled is from out of state.
Not quite as artful as “you’re like a junkie” or simply ignoring my posts, but “you’ve been wrong before” puts your posts in Jack Hawkins territory.
The purpose of that rejoinder was not to say, “You’ve been wrong before.”
Indeed, who among us has not been wrong before? (Apart from me, of course 
)
It’s just that when I’ve been wrong, I’ve been willing to eat the crow, admit it, acknowledge my prior failing.
This brings, I hope, some well-deserved satisfaction to those on the other side of the argument, who may chalk up a victory of reason (or predictive power) for their side.
My point in linking to that thread is that Diogenes’s modus operandi was to downplay it. “Yeah, whatever, I didn’t care anyway,” as opposed to, “Wow, was I wrong.”
If I didn’t think I was right, I wouldn’t be holding the beliefs I hold would I? The danger is if everybody started doing it, which really isn’t my problem. I see homosexuality as not wrong so I would do all that is possible to ignore or otherwise not enforce those laws. If you are simply angling for the law to do it’s job and the legislators to do theirs, then there are far better examples to pick than one that, to me, is an obvious affront to our anti-discrimination stances we’ve historically taken as a country
You ignore the hundred years of Jim Crow laws before that, where it was legal and mandated for people to discriminate against blacks and other minorities. The South passed all kinds of shit laws when they lost the Civil War and those stood for a century before Lyndon Johnson got up the courage to sign the Civil Rights Act, and still some linger to this day in the guise of less overt racist policies.
Peaceful protests within a legal context did help their PR. But so did illegal ones. The entire thing can be seen as a giant PR fight. Look the most sympathetic on TV and people will rally behind you whether or not you’re right. A hundred years before that, if the former slaves had refused to work for pittance and held rallies and told people how miserably they were being treated, they would have been laughed at and the treatment continued. Luckily we evolved a bit in the ensuing years and that kind of stuff was frown upon.
Later on, perfectly legal things like being told to stand up for whites or move to the back was no longer hitting the same nerves, so people like Rosa Parks could legally disobey and become a huge rallying point for people. She protested illegally be refusing to get up, was that wrong? Did that not garner a lot of sympathy and lead to effective change through the legal means?
It’s nice that people believe the law can work to free those unjustly confined, discriminated against, or marginalized, but sometimes doing it illegally can as well. We differ on this issue in how effective we assume the protests work. I think ignoring an asinine law can work, especially if no one but this doofus insists on enforcing it. I think that will garner huge amounts of sympathy and lead to effective change. I do NOT think that gays just plodding along and going with the flow will get any kind of publicity or sympathy from people who otherwise don’t think about gay issues all that much.
Which makes it a dodge nonetheless. While you and I may agree about Dio, I find your consistent dodging and ignoring to be troubling.
Diogenes, I don’t think that the Universities have complete internal autonomy. They aren’t city states and they are subject to the laws of the Commonwealth. They are creatures of the state whose existence is governed by the State within certain limits as delineated by the General Assembly. The General Assembly can grant them powers and can remove them. In addition to that, the General Assembly can cut their funding.
I also think that the issue of whether the schools are allowed to have a discrimination policy is a grey area of law with legal arguments to be made for either position. I could see a judge ruling either way or finding some other grounds to make a decision on any cases brought forth on the issue.
Former Attorney General and Governor, Gerald Baliles has issued statement in which he argues with the current AG’s position.Link Warning-PDF. He also is of the legal opinion that Dillon’s Rule does not apply to universities, bur rather only to local governments.
I think that Cuccinelli may unintentionally help matters here. By making such a big stink about this issue, he has brought attention to the fact that sexual orientation based discrimination is not banned by Virginia law, and has made it a rallying cry. I’m hoping that this will put pressure on the General Assembly to fix this mess.
You don’t like *anybody *very much here, do you?
Or I can hear this story and think (like many others including your elected governor) that the AG is misreading the law and is wrong. Let’s face it, AG’s aren’t elected on the basis that they’re great lawyers. The one we’ve got down here probably can’t spell law, let alone actually practice it.
I am explaining a logical paradox, which inherently requires a statement that is nonsense. Duh.
I await your resolution, which is nowhere to be found in your post.
Cuccinelli responded to some of the criticism by writing a letter to the editor. My favorite lines of his is: “It is my permanently and long-held belief that government should not single out anyone for negative treatment.” Well, unless that person is homosexual, right? Then you should be free to discriminate on that basis. I also liked the subtle: “Nothing I have said or written authorizes unconstitutional discrimination against any person.”
He reiterates his legal argument in more plain (and untimately unpersuasive) language and relies on the “I’m just doing my job” argument Bricker made. And he did it once again completely ignoring that he didn’t have to isse the statement at all.
And, as an aside, I couldn’t help but notice that he once again didn’t limit his statement to just “student discipline” issues, but rather to the entire anti-discrmiination policy. Looks like even he disagrees with Brickers’ reading.
If you were trying to create a thread to bash “the SDMB’s Left” you should have opened a pit thread.
Regardless, the Virginia AG’s case is as weak as yours. Wow, a newspaper editorial commented on the morality of the situation rather the minutia of Virginia law. Color me shocked.
But what I see in this thread is in fact “the SDMB Left” addressing or at least questioning the actual legal standing of the AG’s statement.
When are you going to admit you were wrong?
Just for perspective: This McDonnell person that Virginians chose as governor wrote a famous thesis at Pat Robertson’s college calling for government policy to favor married couples over “cohabitators, homosexuals, and fornicators”. He claims to have changed as he’s aged and grown, but the evidence of that is a bit murky.
Well, I guess we can now justifiably ignore Cooch as a crackpot:
The latest report is that he has given a “clarification” of his earlier statements – “clarification” evidently being the fine art of maintaining enough distance from the crackpots to avoid losing sane people, but not so much distance as to lose the crackpots. It requires contortionist skills, and is easier when one lacks a spine.
You can’t just ignore a guy who has his amount of institutional authority, unfortunately.
Prophetic. What’s your response to the Cooch’s recent statements, Bricker? Did you not care or were you wrong? Ain’t no other options on the table, bro.
A commendable position. However, may one not judge someone who, in that position, does not resign his post, but instead, actively seeks out and promotes areas of the law which, properly interpreted, allow for even greater discrimination against blacks? Because the objections to Mr. Cuccinelli’s actions seem to (with some exceptions) break down into two camps: that his interpretation of the law is incorrect, and that while his interpretation may be correct, he’s still an asshole for being a willing and eager promoter of unjust law. I can’t say as either strikes me as either as any sort of character or reasoning flaw on the part of the complainer, or remotely unique to the political left of this country.
Which brings me to my second point:
This is really stunningly poor logic, particularly coming from you. I say that not because you are especially logical (although you are), but rather, because you have generally decried this sort of empty political sniping when you, or another conservative, are the target of it. So it’s especially saddening to see you engage in it yourself, when we all know you are more than smart enough to know how pathetic the logical basis for the attack really is.
Are you referring to the interview or the letter to the editor? Or some other statement?
Oh, Bricker you’re back.
Quick question. Virginia is a conceal carry state, is it not? The GA has stated that people are allowed to carry concealled weapons in Virginia?
Can a University make a policy that says that students and teachers are not allowed to carry concealled weapons on campus?