Posted on 04/15/2005 4:56:59 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Then it's not too late to come over to our side then, and help us form and explain positions that serve the views of the people as well as act as a bulwark against other kinds of tyranny that could encroach when people lose their faith in government and clamor for any possible solution...
A law that gives with one hand, takes away with the other. Explain to me why any kind of strict scrutiny is justified since Lawrence, considering there were no laws on the book discriminating against homosexuals, sans actions that may have resulted from their nature.
Then it's not too late to come over to our side then, and help us form and explain positions that serve the views of the people as well as act as a bulwark against other kinds of tyranny that could encroach when people lose their faith in government and clamor for any possible solution...
Thanks, I think I'll stay libertarian. The prospect that people might lose their faith in government isn't one I find especially worrisome. (Or likely.)
As for forming and explaining positions, I doubt that FR is the place for me to do that. This isn't my sort of conservatism.
You made a post endorsing the legalization of gay marriage as a policy matter?
Thanks for the reply.. I agree with alot of your positions.
Are you dense?
That's what I said. If you don't want the decision to come from a state court either, this is the first time you've suggested as much in this thread.
Never mind, you are dense.
Thank You Judge Roy Moore for standing up to the insane liberal goons.
Others of us are arguing from either a position of natural law, or one in which natural law takes precedence over the authority of our positivist sovereignty.
Samuel Adams referred to natural law as being the source of our rights in his famous Rights of the Colonists speech to the Boston town meeting in 1772. Our Declaration of Independence refers to the laws of nature and nature's God. I would suggest that it will be possible to make an excellent case for proving the intent of our founding fathers to establish natural law as our fundamental system for determining the "correctness" or "merit" of laws.
So long as America is free, and Americans recognize that our rights come from outside the state, from something on a higher plane than ours, something far more eternal than our corruptible opinions and preferences, then we will recognize that mankind is not free to establish sovereigns to determine the laws that rule us. We will not first look to human "progress" or today's "social conscience" fad for arbitration on law. Nature informs us that one man and one woman unite to conceive, bear, nurture, and educate children as a couple. No artificially construed "right" exists outside this simple, observable process. No earthly sovereign can undo that natural fact. Therefore, we are not obligated as citizens to support other arrangements. That this would violate their natural expectations of the system of marriage would be a violation of Locke's agreement of consensual government between citizens and their state.
OhioAttorney seems to have run away, if we are to believe it's homepage.
I was hoping to get some kind of answer to my post #622, but alas, it was not to be.
I do not think natural law, especially the strain reflected in the laws of the first 13 states, would allow or intend to include homosexuality as a 'natural' right. The population almost unanimously considered it an abomination, and very 'unnatural'.
But the question is, have we as a society "progressed" to see it differently since the founding? If we have, enacting into the law of the land would be appropriate. If we have not, is it the place of our government to push us in that direction? "Legal positivism" would argue that yes, that is what our government via our laws should do.
The law is what it is. It is sometimes counterproductive, unfair and immoral, or just plain dumb. It should be obeyed absent very compelling circumstances, with the law breakers prepared to take the consequences. The idea that one should be free to break the law if such laws violate "natural law," is dangerous. Natural law is in the eye of the beholder. Your positing of what is the natural law when it comes to marriage laws in a case in point. You call something natural law, that is really just your a priori assumption that marriage should be about procreation. My mileage differs. It is a term that seems to be used as an attempted trump card to stifle debate and exposure of a priori assumptions.
I am also not comfortable with messing with the federal judiciary, with terms limits and the like, and would oppose that. The system will balance out in time, as it is now, with the judicial appointment mechanism now so politicized. Scalia pointed that out again in a discussion with Breyer and O'Connor, as one of the great costs of judicial overreach. The latter two had nothing to say. They knew he was right. In time, that will act as a check on the judiciary. I think thus, that the food fights about judicial nominations are just what the doctor ordered. It enhances the attention to the issue in the public square.
It is up to the public square and the legislature to be the prime source of suffusing morality into the law, to make the laws just, but the public square has the right to enact unjust laws, and it should be rather rare to strike them down as unconstitutional, if they are not about process; ie, about making debate and the exercise of power in the public square fair. Thus I am a judicial activist on process, issues, such as one man, one vote, voting rights, potentially even redistricting if some useful standard could be fashioned (which I doubt), and the like.
So given all of the above, which I think is rather mainstream fare in the legal guild, what box do I fit in? I would suggest none of the above, which brings us full circle. The boxes are not helpful.
Since Ohio attorney is gone, California attorney will fill in. There was a law discriminating against homosexuals in practice, because homosexuals engage in sodomy. To separate one from the other, is disingenuous. I am not sure the fact that a law is unenforced in practice, is a reason not to vet its constitutionality. The decision, if not the reasoning, in Lawrence, was surely right, given that Roe is on the books. As long as Roe is on the books, it would be a legal absurdity not to have the result in Lawrence. Private sex acts are surely more private, than abortions effected in hospitals.
I'm not arguing the rightness or wrongness of Lawrence. It's on the books, so it it the law of the land.
In light of Lawrence, is it possible for anyone to argue in favor of homosexuals be given specially protected class status. If it can, what would be the basis?
I agree, but I support rules change in the Senate. The "polite" fillibuster should be tossed out on it's ear. Let the debate there begin!
I don't like protected classes, beyond race, which was what the 14th amendment was about. The equal protection clause beyond that really gives SCOTUS license to "pass" any laws it wants. Granted, sometimes they call it privacy, sometimes liberty, sometimes substantive due process, sometimes equal protection. They are just meaningless labels frankly, with the sartorial choice of which is trotted out for a given decision more a function of the aesthetic taste of the justices for what costume to clothe it in, than anything more substantive, all leading to the same thing - the judicial enactment of legislation, near impossible to repeal because it is garbed in the US Constitution. The least we can do is shut down the states from doing it; thus my tagline.
D'accord with that. Absolutely. It is THE issue, of the most importance now pending in the public square. Given the array of available costumes now available in the closet for the judiciary to wear, majority rule on who gets to choose is absolutely essential. We elect legislators by majority vote, and with the third branch of government now in the law making business, that standard must be applied to them.
I agree. I have no problem with a genuine filibuster -- even of judges. It's a way to call attention to a flawed bill or nominee. But if the filibuster takes place, I believe (1) all Senate activity must cease and (2) they actually have to debate continuously on the floor. With 40 Senators, this is not too onerous a burden. It really was never meant to kill legislation anyway. It's a delaying tactic primarily.
It most certainly was. Just ask Sheets. I think the rest of the segregationist senators are now dead.
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