I believe Olson is a conservative in his tight interpretation of the original intent of the constitutional and declarational goal of this nation, that all men (and by extension, women)are created equal. I believe Olson makes a solid reasoning for how denial of government sanctioned opportunities and advantages (and disadvantages as in the marriage tax), ought not be denied to one group of people versus another because of how they self identify.
To use situational ethics to overcome the clearest and strongest tenant of the central faith of our great republic reduces us to the civic equivalent of “cafeteria Catholics” picking and choosing which things we truly believe in and rationalizing away which are unsavory to us. It produces things like 1/8 human, or Octaroons or people as chattel or separate but equal...all used by occupants of a particular era to cocoon themselves in denial, deprive their neighbors of dignity and hide their faces from universal truth. Lincoln said it, Olson repeated it and it deserves to be shouted loud enough to echo through history:
IT WILL NOT STAND! IT WILL NOT STAND!
We all had better get used to it.
Denying rights to individuals we deem somehow less than ourselves will not stand.
‘Denying rights’ is #1 on the pro-gay-marriage hit parade.
‘Deny’ means that something is being withheld or revoked.
‘Rights’ are, of course, those inalienable (?) things we spend so much time on here and elsewhere. The Constitution and Bill of Rights enumerate some of them but they are far from an all-inclusive list.
This is why the definition of marriage is the crucial item. Playing the game of what is a right and what isn’t and who is being denied and who isn’t does not lead to a binary decision on what constitutes marriage which is the crux of the issue. If we define marriage as being between one man and one woman then nothing is being denied and no rights are being infringed because ‘gay marriage’ in theory and in practice cannot and does not exist.
Jim - maybe mods are busy this morning - this guy is consistently pushing the “gay” agenda nonstop!
Not letting homosexuals marry is NOT oppression.
I don’t know of any groups of homosexuals that were picking cotton in southern cotton fields, or forced to build pyramids, or forced to stomp mud into bricks.
Homosexuality is not a civil right.