Oooh! OooH! Me! Me! Pick me!!
I saw the same bit – it was, IIRC, on Olbermann sometime mid-week. As I pointed out upthread, the argument is one of the thirteen historical American arguments presented in Howard Fineman’s new book. Fineman is a regular on Olbermann – seems like he’s on almost every night.
I understood the question of the reporter to refer as a ‘person’ as one that shared equality by law.
Women and gays and other sinners are still not considered equal. Women and gays and other sinners are still denied their retained rights of liberty and justice.
No one has denied this, no one has defended this. Enough side tracking.
Step up to the plate Ravenman & John Mace:
Do you deny women and gays and other sinners are denied peaceful and well regulated pursuit of happiness?
Peace
rwj
Well, in God’s eyes we are all sinners. Yes?
You can’t even be considered a sinner unless you are a person.
In the end, there exists the separation of church and state which prohibits the state and federal government of even recognizing the term. So the point and term is moot.
The questions in the original post are based upon a faulty premise: that someone who is not provided equal treatment under the constitution is not a “person.” This is a stupid assertion.
Now, however, let’s get to the meat of the question that underpins the OP: we offer a special protected status to persons on the basis of their race and/or national origin. We do this by strictly scrutinizing efforts by government to draw distinctions in the law on the basis of these characteristics. As a rule, but not an incontrovertable rule, we do not let government draw these distinctions to determine how government will act. Thus, “blacks” (for example) have obtained a relative equality with “whites” under the eyes of the law.
However, we do not extend the same protection to people on the basis of gender or sexual preference. How come not?
This, I believe, is the underlying question to the rather poorly worded questions in the OP.
I agree we are all sinners. The point and term is not moot as there still does not exist a separation of church and state. Why else does McCain still court the Huckabees?
My point is exactly that women and gays and other sinners are denied liberty and justice by religion (morals).
Peace
rwj
That is indeed part of the underlying question.
How come women and gays and other sinners are not entitled to their inalienable and retained rights of liberty and justice for all?
Peace
rwj
Now is a good time for change.
Women and gays are afforded a panoply of legal protections, from recourse to violence, torts, and so on. So are children. The protections that they do not enjoy – primarily from social attitudes – does not undefine them as people.
I seriously do not understand how sinners relate to this discussion in any way whatsoever.
Certainly. Ironically, you’re preaching to the choir here. We seem to still be on a road to an idealistic society. So, are you lumping women and gays in with “sinners”, in so far, that you are labeling them as transgressors of some sort? I’m just not groking.
Still, I contest that the refinement of the separation of C & S is one of the most crucial and ongoing aspects of making our country and society work. Still a work in progress, but I believe is at the root of your argument.
Ugh, I hate it when a word with a rather unique and useful meaning gets generalized to be a ‘mere’ synonym. Please just say you’re not ‘getting’ it. Grok means to understand something complicated (e.g., relating to engineering or philosophy) on an intuitive level.
oookay… if it makes you feel better, I don’t get what he’s getting at. :rolleyes:
Women are; cf. the Nineteenth Amendment and relevant portions of the various Civil Rights Acts.
Gays are; that was the underlying principle behind the decision in Romer v. Evans.
“Other sinners” (do you consider being a woman sinful? or being gay, for that matter?) – well, traditional Christian doctrine is that everyone (except Jesus, and Mary in Catholic thought) is a sinner, redeemed from sin by Jesus’s Atonement. Arguing the merits of that concept would be the Virgin Mother of All Hijacks (;)), but I think it’s important to note that there’s no neat line between “righteous” and “sinners”, much less one affecting personhood.
And IMO, bringing the implications of that bit of theology home to the Religious Right which claims to subscribe to it might be a catalyst for the change you advocate (and with which in general I’d probably agree).
Grok, the only surviving term from Old High Martian, means to comprehend something in all its facets – its causes, components, consequences, significance to the Universe, etc. – so completely that you in effect make it a part of yourself. In origin, it means “water.” So the level of complexity or the mode of comprehension is not strictly relevant – though in your defense I must admit that the principal uses of it in SIASL were occasions of intuitive Gestalt comprehension of a complex concept or of a human behavior learned by most of us at a subconscious level over years.
The real question is, why isn’t Grok a person? Why can’t Martians have their liberty, too?
I’m not, and I reject your implication.
Are you saying that because politicians court the religious right, that this implies we don’t have separation of church and state? Because that doesn’t make any sense.
It is hard to deny a strong christian influence within our country and politics. There are some that view this separation as anti-christian, or what have you, and would rather see our nation identify as a christian nation, the constitution be damned. When you have such strong religious beliefs, they’re going to effect some the people you court and how you vote in issues of liberty according to what their faith has to say about it. If they would stop this pissing all over our very neutral constitution, we might just achieve true separation not only in the eyes of the law, but in society as well.
As an example, if in the eyes of the federal or state law, marriage is a word borrowed from religion, but has now been refitted to mean a financial joint between two individuals, then why couldn’t homosexuals marry? If christianity weighs into the equation, now we can see why it is still illegal in most states.
Clarifications for this discussion:
It matters not. If you forgive the transgressions of others, you are already forgiven.
Are you saying that you were not aware that the state persecutes sin as crime and denies liberty to gender and sinner? Please explain how it is if still you do not understand.
Panoply is not same as equality; no matter by how short. The question is whether and how you would defend that women and sinners are denied their full right of liberty.
The underlying question I find in wonder is "How is it in this day and age, that a woman or sinner is still not treated as equal?
Are there any McCain or Huckabee supporters lurking out there? Please defend why McCain courts those that would deny liberty by gender or sin.
Yet still, I am an optimist. I find that with proper teaching and preaching, voices choir louder and longer and in greater harmony.
[altogethernow] I’d like to teach the world to sing. [/atn]
ItS
Liberty
rwj
It is pretty hard to debate a topic when the OP gets to arbitrarily decide what the definitions of words are. Why don’t you provide specific cites for those definitions?
lol, ok. I’ve just seen it used in English. When I first read it, I thought to myself, “what an apt word.” All the other synomyms of ‘to understand’ get so tossed around so much. E.g., if you ‘understand’ something you’ve just read, you’re mostly saying you knew what the words meant. If you say you ‘get’ a concept, then it’s probably cuz somebody asked you if you did. I was going to mention the multiple facets thing too. If an issue is to be ‘groked’, it’s got to have multiple elements to keep in one’s head at once.