It’s embarrassing enough that our Republican-dominated legislature was able to get a constitutional ban on gay marriage put on the ballot (which was approved by the rest of the right-wing morons in this state). Now they want to try to overturn a state supreme court ruling on providing health and other benefits to same-sex partners; not all partners, just same-sex. Well isn’t that special.
I’m sure that any thinking person on this board, right or left, would agree that constitutions should be about providing rights, not barring them. Alaska’s constitution was painstakingly thought out and written with future generations in mind. It is often called a ‘model constitution’ by scholars of those types of documents. Then comes the current crop of idiots who believe that it is their responsibility to legislate “morality”.
One of our esteemed dickheads had this to say:
So how’s that whole hetero marriage thing working out for everyone? There is a skyrocketing divorce rate in the nation, spousal abuse is rampant, and we have the highest rape rate in the nation right here in good ol’ Alaska. All those “healthy additions to society” are just fun-loving folks, aren’t they?
Um…no. I’m a thinking person. But I also have a fucking dictionary.
A constitution is only a document of an establishment of structure, fundamentals. Rudiments, not rights. Constitutions may contain a “Bill of rights” or something similar, but in and of themselves constitutions do not provide rights.
If you ever read the U.S. constitution you’ll see that up until the B.O.R. it’s all about structure, not rights.
Well…you’re wrong. Constitutions, in and of themselves, should NOT be about just providing rights. They SHOULD be about the structure of the society they are part of, including indicating what cannot be done as well as what can.
Your bitch SHOULD just be with those that disagree with your position on gay marriage, not with how they’re doing it.
Using a Constitution to prohibit something is just as valid as having it allow something. It works both ways as it SHOULD!
Well obviously the bulk of most constitutions is taken up with describing the structure of gov’t. I think what the OP is saying is that it shouldn’t tell individual what they can and can’t do. Thus the bill of rights in many constitutions telling the gov’t what can’t pass laws on (and thus garanteeing peoples rights in these areas), but there aren’t many saying what citizens can and can’t do.
In the US constitution the only counter example I can think of is the 18th amendment (prohibition) which perhaps is a good example of why making those sort of laws into a constitution is a bad idea.
Article I Section 2 No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years
Section 3 No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years
Article II Section 1 No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
Are we going to start whinning because the Constitution says we can’t do something?
The OP’s legit bitch is that at this point of history a majority of people hold a view point that he deems wrong.
But the idea that Constitutions are, or should be only about providing rights is flawed.
pkbites, I think there’s an important distinction you’re missing here, I noticed it in your previous post where you said “constitutions should be about the structure of society they are part of”. Did you really mean “society”? Because I’m pretty sure the US constitution sets rules for the government to follow, not society. Indeed I’d go further, and say that if that constitution did set rules for society, then it would pretty much undermine the whole point of the American experiment (government exists to serve the people, not the other way round).
Also you pointed out a number of apparent counter-examples to Malodorous’s claim. But actually they reinforce his claim. He was saying that the prohibitions contained in the US constitution, are prohibitions on government positions, not on the behaviour of individuals. All your excerpts confirm this.
No, “society” was a very poor choice. I suppose Republic would be a better word.
But I maintain that a constitution isn’t strictly about rights or government limits.
It’s about structure of the republic, or in this case, the state, and that can include prohibiting as well as allowing something.
The 13th Amendment protects some from slavery, and at the same time denies others the right to own a slave, yet allows the governemt to use involuntary servitude in some cases. In this case, the governement is allowed to do what the individual can’t.
The 16th allows the government to take any amount of an individuals income it sees fit. That doesn’t sound like a limitation on government authority to me!
The 18th of course was repealed, but did in fact prohibit an individual from doing something. Doesn’t sound like freedom to me.
The 22nd Amendment denies an individual the ability to run for a constitutionally created public office soley on the basis that they were successful at it in the past. It also limits who voters can elect to the highest office. I thought you said the constitution was about limiting government, not the people.
While the 26th guarantees a right to some, it is discrimitory against anyone under 18. Doesn’t sound like full equality to me.
The marriage amendments being tossed around do limit what some people can do, but they also limit government in that they limit what type of contracts government can recognize.
Agree or disagree with gay marriage, there is nothing in any preamble of any constitution I’ve read that says such amendments cannot be added.
And the beauty & genius of any constitution is, it can be changed.
It’s pretty obvious why a constitutional amendment was needed, since the MA Supreme Court decided SSM was constitutionally guaranteed. If I were anti-SSM (which I’m not), I wouldn’t stop at a state law to ban SSM, beacuse that could be challenged in court. Now it might be that the Alaska constitution differs significant from MA’s, but it might not be so obvious to the voters.
And a constitutional amendment banning SSM doesn’t really limit behavior. It limits the state’s ability to grant governemtal goodies to certain couples. Gays can still live together, have sex or get married in a gay-friendly church. Things like spousal benefits aren’t “rights” in the same sense that free speech is a right, since the state could refuse to recognize any married couples if it wanted, or it could recognize marriage but not give it any preffered status. Where I’d see an infringenemt on rights would be for the state to legislate against gay sex or cohabitation.
I agree with this. Marriage is in fact a contract. A contract between a person, another person, and a governemnt entity.
What the majority has done is limit the government from who/when it can enter into such a contract. This was done in most places via law, but in some places the laws were overturned by activist judges. Hence the need for a constitutional amendment.
Many of these amendments don’t just discriminate against gays. The ones that are worded “one man, one woman” also bar polygamist from their practice.
In many places this was the case. How that SCOTUS decision remedied that I don’t know. Are locales obeying it?
My point was supposed to be that those who hold up hetero relationships as being stable and hetero “lifestyle” as being normal, while at the same time decrying homosexuality as an “(un)healthy addition to society” should probably look in the mirror. The rape figures for our state are very high and I would bet (without bothering to check), that 99.99% of them are perpetrated by a hetero male.
Marriage is a fundamental right under the federal constitution. Richard Ramirez will be celebrating his tenth wedding anniversary in six months. The idea that I live in a country where the Constitution guarantees the right of a man who’s been convicted of over a dozen murders to marry a woman but doesn’t guarantee the right of two men or two women to marry horrifies me.
Whoever said that didn’t know what he was talking about. (Yeah, I know it was a Supreme Court Justice.)
Alaska could, if it wanted to, eliminate the legal status of marriage. It could not eliminate the status of free speech. There is a fundamental difference between those two “rights”. Another example: Different states set different standards for marriage (age, anti-incest laws). If marriage were a “fundamental right”, the states could not do that. So, you can call it a fundamental right, but it is not protected like a fundamental right.