This is a complex proposal… and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Didn’t want you to think it was ignored, but didn’t want to post a substantive answer before I had one, either.
No problem. I figured we couldn’t just leave the thread with a simple agreement…
I think it pitsa few different interests against one another: social welfare and public safety against government frugality. Personally I think it falls on the right side of the line (I think the public safety benefits of teaching folks to control their powers would be pretty high), but I can see it going either way (especially the first time someone uses their government-subsidized training to go all supervillainy).
Daniel
It seems that both you, and LHOD agree a list is a good thing. Do you see any scenarios where your proposed list could be used for persecution?
It’s possible. But for that to happen, massive changes in the legal and social structure would have to occur. The government would have to pass additional laws, laws that would go far beyond the mandatory test/voluntary disclosure contemplated here. For such laws to survive, antipathy towards the mutant population would have to grow dramatically, and the judicial system would have to be convinced of at least a rational basis for the laws. (As suggested above, it’s likely that the standard would even be higher: intermediate scrutiny).
I view the cumulative likelihood of those events as slight.
I got a ton of problems with this.
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The government’s general curiosity (aka their right to “track general x-factor trends”) does not outweigh my…er…any given mutant’s right to privacy. AIDS is a communicable disease. Does/should the government have a right to require everyone to be tested for AIDS? Why or why not? You could offer people with AIDS a one-time shot at social services too. Ditto with women who get abortions. Should they be put on a registry somewhere? If there was an immediate, tangible benefit to law-enforcement/public safety, I might agree: but since we all seem to be in agreement that there’s not (what would be the point without listing individual powers and creating a mutant ‘registry’*)…well…why should the government get my demographics? In addition, since most mutants do NOT have combat-level super-powers (see Professor Xavier’s comments regarding Doug Ramsey prior to his joining the New Mutants or the hordes of Morlocks/Genosha mutants who have very low level abilities…assuming that their mutation isn’t simply a terrible deformity), testing them puts them at risk (by an anti-mutant mob. Or Sentinels. Or groups that exploit mutant ‘brainwaves’ (The Secret Empire, for example)) for no benefit to them (one doesn’t need training to know how to best use the ability to change the color of one’s urine) and no benefit to society.
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Given the level of anti-mutant prejudice, why should we…er…they trust the government? Mutants get “mutant bashed” on a weekly basis. Hell, we had some visitors from another dimension here recently and the first thing they encountered (this was a Quicksilver type guy in a red costume) was a mutant bashing incident-it’s that common. Granted, it’s recently been reaffirmed that the police have no duty to protect any individual citizen, but still…there’s clearly a huge danger to any mutant who’s outed.
In addition, this is the same government which has, on (at minimum) three times allowed and (at least paritally) paid for the creation of giant anti-mutant robots charged with capturing ALL mutants. No search warrant needed. You’re a mutant? A giant robot can destroy your house, grab you and put you in an over-sized test-tube inside some hidden facility somewhere. And if you resist? You get squished (Larry Trask, creator of the Sentinels Mark II got squished by his creations when they discovered he was a mutant. In several of these cases, the Sentinels were activated without authorization–but they were created with that programming.
This is also the same country in which the government ran ads in a number of major magazines saying "AMERICA: IT’S 1984(?). DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR CHILDREN ARE?" with a photograph that outed a 5 year old child (Franklin Richards) as a mutant (the public didn’t realize that Franklin had powers at that point). Why should the government be trusted, especially given their track record?
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Why single out mutants and not others with super powers? Invisible Woman of the Fantastic Four isn’t a mutant and is far more dangerous than, say, Cannonball. Ditto Thor vs, say, Doug Ramsey. Or Hulk vs Shadowcat. This clearly violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection amendment.
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Earlier someone (Bricker, perhaps?) said that this wouldn’t violate anti race-based laws. Um…in point of fact, it would. Unlike mere differences in skin pigment and eye shape, being a mutant really is being part of a separate race: normal people are Homo Sapiens, mutants are Homo Superior. This is literal racial (species?) profiling.
One more point to consider. Anyone remember their Aesop? Who bells the cat? Right now, we’ve got mutants who can casually turn off the sun (Phoenix–she’s dead at the moment, but she’ll be back), or destroy the climate (Storm) or affect every human brain on the planet (Professor Xavier-who was recently ‘outed’ as a mutant). They’re currently on our side. It’s a fait accompli that these mutants will refuse to be tested–everything we know about the X-Men points to this fact.
A) Are we prepared to criminalize a whole group of people who have stood for tolerance and understanding AND have protected us from the predations of the less law-abiding of their species?
B)And if we are prepared to criminalize them, what will be the penalty? A fine? Jail time? How are you going to capture them to use those inhibitor collars on them? To date, our method of dealing with super-powered criminals has been to allow volunteer or quasi-sanctioned super-volunteers. The Fantastic Four have said (and many of the Avengers have said similar) that they oppose this act and will not cooperate in forcing testing. We’ve tried using super-villians to enforce government edicts. Anyone remember the debacle that was Freedom Force? What’s the next step? Reactivate the Sentinels? And if we do, aren’t mutants correct to resist this and not trust us?
Fenris
*And if there was a mutant registry, assume a crime was committed and ice was left behind at the scene of the crime. You could look on this registry and get Iceman and Storm from the X-Men, but you wouldn’t get, say, The Blizzard–a human who uses an ice-gun. Very few mutant powers can’t be duplicated by technology. So the registry is idea is pointless from a profiling/law enforcement standpoint, even if it wasn’t a gross invasion of privacy.
I’m completely unaware of any of the people or incidents alluded to above. If this were a world in which the government had funded the creation of giant anti-mutant robots, I suspect I’d agree that the registration act was a bad idea. As I explained above, my only knowledge about this proposed legislation was watching two movies about the subject.
I have no way of knowing if your specific claims are correct, but if they are, I certainly revise my opinion.
However, if they are, I would also suggest that GD is not the place for this thread. The reason for this threa being in GD is - in my view, anyway - the application of the mutant registration act to today’s real social, legal, and political structure. While it’s absolutely valid to point out that the …er… source material for these suppositions is richer than a few movies, it’s also true that not everyone is aware of that background, AND that if the goal is to discuss a completely fictional world informed by that material, CS is probably the right forum.
Just my view.
Told ya there was more to the story Bricker 
To get this thread back in to great debates territory, I’m still curious how you resolve the threat issue. It has yet to be proven that a mutant is inherently more dangerous than a human. Without them being more of a threat, the rationale of the MRA falls apart.
I’m willing to continue the discussion if we can set some ground rules about what is, and isn’t… er… true. It does me no good to confidently assert that A, B, and C have, historically, never happened, only to discover that not only HAVE they happened, but they were all implemented by government-funded, artificially-intelligent cyborg-driven flying devices.
Fair enough! I admit to being something of a geek on these issues 
and I think that the thread is more interesting here, so allow me to withdraw the source material specific stuff.
However, I’d be interested in your take on the first part of point 1 (what real, tangible benefit does the government get via the “Just tracking for demographic purposes” version of registration and how does that outweigh a mutant’s right to privacy.) and/or your take on the “racial profiling” point in #3 and the "equal protection in point #4.
I figure that for now we can leave out the giant flying robots, secret government organizations, and other things that have been left out of the two movies. Extradimensional stuff is also right out, as are aliens. Other heroes are as Marvel has cranked out a few more movies as are villains as long as they don’t cross the giant flying robot and such line. Also, no Magneto having a space station asteroid or base in the prehistoric land hidden in antarctica.
Basically somewhat fictional with a heavy grounding in reality. We’ll even keep the present republican administration.
Sound good to everyone involved?
I’m comfortable sticking to the movies, as long as the general knowledge that the rest of the Marvel universe is there too since one of the interesting facets of the act is that it singles out mutants, regardless of super-power level but ignores anyone else with super powers.
(On preview, what Harborwolf said)
While this is not really a question, and thus against the dare I am participating in, I have to say it. I say thee nay.
In the movies, we see many, many cameos from know mutants. We can only know their background from the comic books. Thus, certain facts about them can only be know from the comics. Also, so far in this thread, there have been many references to the comics, with no problem. If someone makes a statement about something they claimed has happened in the comics, but they are lying, it should be quite obvious to many of the people here, and they will likely get called on it.
Right, but for the sake of keeping this thread realistic, I think we should leave the governmental stuff right out and keep it within our real world governmental system.
Some comic book stuff is okay, but noone is going to debate that using three story tall robots armed with lasers and questionable programming in areas with a large civilian population is a good idea.
This thread lured me back to the SDMB–I’d really rather it continue here in GD with the Harborwolf rule ;). Perhaps a parallel thread in CS could be opened where we can have a geek triviafest.
Bricker’s point the impetus of this thread shouldn’t be obscure comic knowledge was very well taken.
Well, yeah, but that goes without saying. In the canon marvel universe, George Bush is president, the previous president was Clinton, and there is not Gotham, or Metropolis, but New York and Chicago.
Also, no one here knows anything about sentinels. Some years ago, some crazy scientist declared that he invented giant robots. One of them supposedly kidnapped him, unless it was some kind of publicity stunt. Later, one of those giant robots attacked a bunch of costumed vigilantes. No one here in the thread knows that the government was behind any of this. To date, while sentinels exist, no one here has any ability to know this, except by quoting from some kinda tabloid (Quoting from a hobo) claiming the existence of a machine colony in caves and junkyards .
If you’re allowing the comics, why in the world wouldn’t anyone here know about Sentinels? That “crazy scientist” debuted them on nationwide tv (X-Men #14) and they’ve been seen on TV most times that they’ve shown up since then (most recently, during the Onslaught thing). The comics don’t back your statement, and you can’t just make up arbitrary ground rules about what people know and don’t as you go.
And this is exactly the reason we shouldn’t allow the comics: this will degenerate into a trivia contest.
The basic idea is that people could point out that they are a government plot. However, while that would be a point for my side, no one here could really use that argument, since while they are known to exist, no one can tie them to the government.
This is because, in the concept of this discussion, all the comic books we own of from the marvel universe. Thus, they have been government censored to not show the guilty parties, real names of superheroes, or anything besides what a civilian would not know from reading a newspaper. No need for trivia, just basic outlines.
Based on the comics, you’re wrong and I’ll happily provide cites from comics in another thread if you’re inclined to start one in CS.
You are free to start one if you want, since this is now a full fledges hijack. While there following is a statement, it is needed to close the hijack. Ok, harborwolf, lets stick to the movies, and a very broad defintion of the comic books, with facts modified to reflect reality. Whether I am right or not, on no one knowing about the sentinel/government connection, I agree that it is a good thing to dispose of them from this discussion.
If we’re using the Harborwolf rule, could someone please give me a broad sketch of the “Marvel universe” and how it differs from ours? Superheros / supervillans etc?
Truthfully, I may have to bow out even from that discussion because I simply don’t know enough to meaningfully contribute. Fenris asks a good question: why should mutants be singled out when there are other people with superpowers? I didn’t know there WERE other people with superpowers. How many? Who are they? What is the general record with respect to law-abiding or non-law-abiding? Can any conclusions be drawn? Are there any laws extant about the use of such abilities?
See what I mean? If we stick to the movies, period, I feel I have a sense of that – it’s THIS world, with a few mods. Anything beyond that, and I’m not an informed citizen, so I can hardly offer an informed opinion.