I did read the link, but didn’t find it convincing. I’ll go back and see specifically what issues I had.
When Jesus came to earth, he did not come to judge but to help people follow him. Judgement isn’t unit the end. That’s all that means. He will judge, just not then or now.
How he will judge and for what is up to him and we don’t know how he is going to do it.
How did this turn into that?
Oh. Well, if that’s the issue, save yourself some time. I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I’m expressing only my own opinions as seen through my own interpretation. All the quotations are for is to illustrate from what my opinions derived.
Your posts are selective word choice plus personal interpretation. Is that to say that they are no different from posts at Stormfront?
Lib was expressing a subjective interpretation of scripture which is informed by a lot of thought, introspection, prayer and personal revelation.
Yes, the bigots say the same thing.
One difference is that Lib is holding himself out as the ultimate moral authority. Another difference is that he is not demanding that anyone else must agree with him.
He expressed an opinion that was meant in good faith and was meant to be optimistic, tolerant and supportive. We can accept or reject his offerings as we choose. I see no reason, though, to continue buttonholing him on this stuff since he didn’t insult anyone and was condemning bigotry.
As to the OP, I understand the anger, and I agree in principle that prohibitions on SSM are stupid, backwards, hurtful and pointless. However, this decision was not about SSM in principle but simply about the process for getting there.
If a mayor in Massachusettes decided unilaterally to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couple in order to conform to his personal interpretation of the state constitution it would be shot down by the court as well.
I don’t believe the mayor himself ever believed that this would hold up in court. It was an act of civil disobedience from the beginning.
NOT. Lib is NOT holding himself up as the ultimate moral authority. I ahve to learn to preview.
:smack:
Understood, which is why I went straight to the Pit with it, because I’m too pissed to be civil in Great Debates or MPSIMS.
I’m tired of people passing the buck and hiding behind non-arguments like “it’s the will of the majority,” and “let the states decide” and “it’s the way it’s always been.” I just want to go to each person and say, “Fuck that. What do you think? If you’re against it, tell me why, directly.”
I’m not praising the ruling, you fool. I was pointing out that the people who SUPPORTED judicial legislation are hoist by their own petard. I objected to the METHOD then, and I used this ruling to point out that not always does the judiciary do what you want; rallying around a cause of “let the courts rule us” is thus bound to have some bad consequences.
I do not exult in this ruling. It was wrong of Newsom to give false hope to sso many by issuing marriage licenses that were not worth the paper they were printed on, but I am not blind to the fact that so many people were made so happy by the gesture and must now have the emotional stuffing knocked out of them. That wasn’t fair, that wasn’t right, and it wasn’t necessary. I don’t glory in it. I am saddened by it.
- Rick
Seems you agree with me. Glad we see eye-to-eye.
Which was my point. Righteousness is in the eye of the beholder and all that. I can quote passages and spin them to support anything I’d like. You can contradict me with other passages. But if I already believe I’m right, it won’t matter.
I apologize if it came off as an attack directed at Lib.
The fundies are happy about this, believe me.
If the subject gets enough press coverage, eventually it will sink in, I think.
Critical mass, and all.
If I’m a fool, which is looking more and more likely, it’s because I made too many assumptions about the marriages performed earlier this year, and I was ignorant of the laws that proceeded it. I had mistakenly assumed that Newsom were issuing the licenses to force the state’s hand and prove that the marriages weren’t legal. I wasn’t aware that state legislation had been passed specifically defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
I can only assume that the reason such legislation passed was because of people like me, who either weren’t aware of it or didn’t act on it because they didn’t feel that it affected them personally. At least if any good did come from Newsom’s “civil disobedience,” it was to draw attention to the issue and get people like me off our asses.
I still maintain that it’s wrong to talk as if judges and mayors and supreme courts are making laws up out of whole cloth, denying the will of the people. The very fact that the law could pass in the first place proves that the majority does not always act with the best interests in the minority at heart. When this unjust law is overturned, it will be because of the judiciary, and it won’t be a case of unaccountable judges making up new laws and forcing unpopular views down the throats of an unsuspecting and unwilling populace.
I didn’t take it as an attack, even though you dodged the point of my question to you. The difference between my view on the matter and the view of the “homos are damned” crowd is that my views are logically derived and logically defensible whereas theirs is neither. I invite you to query me if you doubt this. (Although, it would be better if you would take it elsewhere.) As Dio has said with his typical kindness of spirit, my views are “informed by a lot of thought, introspection, prayer and personal revelation”. I did not come at this with any preconceived notion of how God felt, and then select passages to bolster my argument. Rather, I examined the text and, from it, deduced that the essence of Jesus’ teachings was love. Others are entitled to disagree, but I am willing to debate them. Just because I was not attempting to convince John Mace of anything doesn’t mean that I’m not confident in my beliefs. He asked a question which I answered. His follow up seemed to challenge, not the method by which my opinion was derived, but the underlying opinion itself. Unless a man is willing to examine the means by which a derivation is made, then examination of the derivation itself is a waste of everyone’s time.
If you don’t mind, I’ve chosen to respon to the second portion of your post first. It may help clarify my position.
Again, I didn’t intend to single you out personally. My intent was to state that selective quoting and spin can be used to defend a preconceived notion. In retrospect, I could have come up with a better example. Indeed, my initial post was meant to demonstrate the general ignorance of those using the bible to defend their condemnation of homosexuality("…that book Jesus wrote."), so throwing myself into this argument with you was silly, on my part. I should’ve just said “I know, Lib, I was satirizing the fundamentalist view.”
The question being “Is that to say that [Earthworm Jims posts] are no different from posts at Stormfront?” My posts may differ in content from those of others on this board or Stormfront, or Unaboard, or the Pizza Parlor, or wherever. But ultimately, my posts are expressions of my own opinions. I may or may not have arrived at them through careful thought, but in the end the righteousness of that opininion is decided by the reader. So I have to say my posts are no different from those at Stormfront.
Do I think that my opinions are more informed, more logical, more righteous if you will? That’s a different question.
We can take the reduction as far as you like. Ultimately, all posts are nothing more than probability distributions, just like the rest of the universe. I do appreciate your clarifications, however, and I’m sure that you and I would both agree that Fred Phelps and his ilk have mutilated the message of Christ. Listening to them would be like listening to the Ku Klux Klan explain the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr. Your perception is correct: when I saw the remark about the book that Jesus wrote [sic], I felt compelled to address the ignorance.
Fair enough, and I appreciate your willingness to look at the issue again rather than simply continue to lash out.
I must continue to disagree. There was no Massachusetts precedent to support the decision that if the state offers marriage at all, it must offer it to same-sex couples. It wasn’t a right deeply rooted in the nation’s history. It wasn’t fundamental to the notion of ordered liberty. It was the discovery of a new right in language that the authors of would have been stunned to learn was interpreted this way.
That’s been true for a long time. The Supreme Court used the same kind of reasoning to decide Dred Scott - an odious decision that needed a constitutional amendment to reverse it. It’s not always good and right when courts undertake to write new law. New York bakers hoping for a fair shake in their working conditions were dismayed when the Supreme Court decided Lochner on the same flawed reasoning, ruling that there was a federal constitutional “right to contract” and that the state of New York could not make laws that forbid bakers working more than sixteen-hour days.
What I see is broad support for courts discovering new rights when they are rights you support. I’m pointing out that it won’t always be that way, and that we’d do better to rein in courts from the discovery of new rights and leave the creation of substantive new law to the legislature.
- Rick
I continue to be mystified at your logic, Bricker, as well as your continued comparison of the MA marriage ruling to Lochner. There was no new “right to marry” discovered in Massachusetts. What was “found” was that the state constitutional guarantee of equality under the law required the state to make marriage available to couples without regard to the sex of the members of the couple. The words “right to contract” do not appear in the federal Constitution. The words “equality under the law” do appear in the MA constitution. Lochner truly invented a right out of nothing. Goodridge did not and the comparison is invalid.
“Equality under the law” cannot be interpreted precisely literally - and I say that as the champion of literal interpretation.
If it could, then a law forbidding 12-year-olds to marry would be unconstitutional. A law forbidding siblings to marry would be unconstitutional.
“Equality under the law” notwithstanding, the law MUST permit the state to draw lines based on certain criteria.
Right?
So with that accepted, the question then becomes - what criteria are permissible and what criteria are impermissible?
When the MA court found that it was impermissible for the state to forbid same-sex marriage, it reached a conclusion that was new. It set precedent, and in did so in a fundamental new area. You cannot look at that decision and claim that it was merely another day in interpreting the existing law.
But doesn’t that deny the possibility of cultural shifts allowing reinterpretation?
Certainly SSM is more acceptable now that 200 years ago. Shouldn’t the law be reinterpreted to represent that fact?
Or would you rather a cut-and-dried reinterpretation through the legislature?
When did I ever say that the Goodridge decision was merely another day in interpreting the existing law? Of course it was a precedent-setting case. Of course it was a new interpretation of the state constitution (although not the first time a state supreme court had so interpeted a state constitution so it really shouldn’t have come as such a shock that it happened again). To argue against a decision on the basis of its precedent-setting nature is foolish. I have to wonder, given that you are on record as opposing same-sex marriage and in favor of creating all-the-rights-and-responsibilities-of-marriage-but-call-it-something-else-because-the-word-“marriage”-ought-to-be-kept-for-heterosexuals-because-we’re-special-relationships, excuse me, I mean “civil unions,” if your thundering against Goodridge truly derives from your dismay at courts setting precedent. It never fails to amaze me when a lawyer, who supposedly is interested in justice, gets bent out of shape when justice is actually done.