You've gone off the rails here my friend. If concepts are meaningless, laws are meaningless.
The word Matrimony means "Mother Ceremony". Mater means mother, just as Pater (as in Patriot) means Father.
How do two faggots make a "mother ceremony"?
If you are okay with bastardizing the meaning of words and bastardizing the meaning of concepts, then I am hard pressed to figure out how you are interested in "conserving" anything.
I do not think Thomas Jefferson would have been okay with "marriage" being redefined as same sex. He proposed a law to castrate homosexuals, you know.
"The question whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has given that power to them more than to the Executive or Legislative branches." - Thomas Jefferson
I think you and Jefferson are both wrong about this. Obviously Lincoln decided constitutional issues the way he wanted and he told the court to go F*** themselves. So did Andrew Jackson. Congress could do it too if they really wanted too. The court gets away with it at the pleasure of the other two branches.
As I said in my last post, I believe that all three branches of the federal government have an obligation to determine the constitutionality of their conduct.
And they do so when they wish. Most of the time they just don't want to do so.
Eisenhower thought the court was wrong about integration, but he didn't over ride them, even though he could. Instead, out of respect for the process, he backed them up with the national guard.
As I said in my last post, I believe that all three branches of the federal government have an obligation to determine the constitutionality of their conduct.
The beneficiaries, no doubt. The very people who would be happy marching all dissenters into camps. The people who have no concept of inherent rights and who support slavery when it suits their own ends.
Beats me. I have no clue and I am not even willing to spend to any time thinking about that.
See, we got on this topic because, at post 463, you provided me with a link to some quotes by Thomas Jefferson because you wanted me to become acquainted with Jefferson's opinion of Natural Law. So, I followed the link and read the quotations. One of the things he said concerned the importance that law be made changeable over time:
"But can they [laws] be made unchangeable? Can one generation bind another, and all others, in succession forever? I think not." - Thomas Jefferson
At post 468, I agreed with Jefferson about that issue. Like him, I do not believe that we have any right to try to bind the world for all time to our views about anything. I still agree with Jefferson about that. We agree with the power of legislatures to change the rules over time. We do not believe that courts have that power. If he and I have "gone off the rails" because we do not believe that we should bind all eternity to our opinions, then we will just have to accept that fate.
I think you and Jefferson are both wrong about this.
Yes, that is correct. You do disagree with us about the proper role of courts. I am ok with that.