pooh: Personally? I do.
As opposed to what? NON-personally?!? IMpersonally?!?
You seem reluctant to commit. If i asked you whether blacks are persons, would you answer "Personally? Yes"?
Legally? My personal preferences don't matter a hill of beans unless I can enact statutory law to that end.
Yes, they most certainly do. Ask Abe Lincoln whether his personal preferences mattered even when it caused him to buck the SCOTUS. Or the personal preferences who sided with the abolitionists in the union.
PERSONHOOD is not primarily defined by statutes, but by the laws of God. That's why the declaration of independence states "we are endowed by our CREATOR with certain unalienable rights. Tha among these are LIFE, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
The whole historical conservative position is that the state is not an the all powerful authority that grants (or "loans") rights, but rather GOD grants those rights. They are God given.
The state has a certain function, to be sure, but your value as a PERSON (or a black man or an unborn child) is not derived from the state (as communist leaders--and others-- erroneously assume), but from God.
In reply to your comment, let me ask the question again this way:
Before the civil war, the emancipation proclamation, and the following amendments, was a black man truly a person? Or was he a non-person just because the court said so?
Was the SCOTUS correct, and Lincoln wrong in your opinion?
tame, this is the third time you have attempted to suggest that I am a racist.
Cease and desist from these personal attacks.