Mare Tranquillity
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- May 15, 2007
- Messages
- 3,477
This is a value judgment on your part and is hardly an immutable law of the Universe. The one thing above all else that marriage is according to the vows is a "loving committment" and there is no requirement for gender when it comes to love or committment. There are no physical attacks nor trespasses on property rights involved in homosexual people being allowed to marry.Toleration accepts intolerance so long as it does not violate property rights or phisically attack someone else. Homosexuals can not marry each other because that simply is not what marriage is.
Creating law and bringing the power of government to bear upon joe blow in an attempt to make him respect homosexual couples in the same way as he respects married couples is not the recipe for a settled society.
I wondered about the two paragraphs above, you are apparently stating that marriage is deserving of respect but civil unions are not. Yet you are prescribing ONLY civil unions for homosexual people. Is this so that you can continue to disrespect them legally? And thus continue the discrimination, the violence, and the denial of legal rights? Please explain to me how this issue is different from what black people faced.Joe probably could care less if homosexuals are allowed civil unions because that does not bring the force of government to bear on him and does not demand that he give equal respect or face the consequences of the law.
Is respecting another person as an equal human being a right? Is equal respect under the law a human right?Abortion denies the most basic human right to a human being. I have no tolerance at all for that. If homosexuals are being denied basic human rights (and marriage is not a basic human right) then I would be as strongly opposed to those who are denying their rights as I am to those who deny unborns their rights via abortion. If the government can't assure and protect our most basic human rights, exactly what good is it?
No, I don't think this is true, you have a real problem with allowing ALL people to have the same rights that you have--and there is no assault or property involved. Or at least you haven't shown any yet.I don't demand anything from anyone except that they respect my property rights and not assault me.
No, I don't think this is true either. You are only too happy to allow government intrusion to take FREEDOM from women when it comes to control of the insides of their own bodies--and you are willing to do this by law and force if necessary. You are also anxious to deny FREEDOM from religious persecution to homosexual people.Being conservative, I am interested in freedom "FROM". Freedom from government intrusion into my life is freedom.
I don't think this paragraph says very much, depending on how one words the sentence almost any right or privilege could be a "freedom to" or "freedom from".Modern liberalism is much more interested in freedom "TO". This involves making law that intrudes into people's lives. It involves making law that makes demands upon people and the willingness to punish those who don't deliver. Freedom "TO" eventually becomes authoritarianism which in its course, denies everyone both freedom from and freedom to. All tyranys start out promising everyone everything but the fact is, they simply can't deliver.
No, that's not true either, government force has restructured societies all down through history. Just look at how the Draconian one-child law has changed Chinese society.You can't use the force of government to restructure society and you can't successfully mandate respect.
While it is true that one cannot madate respect by law, just like happened with the black people, one can make overt or violent disrectful actions illegal and this tends to encourage people not to do them. As the old hardline bigots die of old age the new generation grows up with the new paradigm of respect and they tend to be better than their parents, later yet their children will be even better.
I think your postion is disingenuous in that like the very same liberals that you decry, you want freedom from government intrusion in YOUR life, but you are only too happy to have government intrude into the lives of others if they don't treat their children as you demand. Your whole argument about human rights would be more believable if you didn't have a single issue on each side of the divide. On one side we have YOU wishing no government intrusion on YOUR freedom, on the other side you demand government intrusion into the freedom of others. If you believed in and campaigned for ALL human rights, then I would find you not only more believable, but more palatable as well.