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Subject: 
Re: Santorum Fails In His Effort To Pervert The Constitution
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.debate
Date: 
Mon, 19 Jul 2004 19:36:45 GMT
Viewed: 
1477 times
  
In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
   In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:

  
   I’m curious-- how would you respond to an act of congress that went something like this: “The courts are not to rule on matters that have to do with the definition of marriage.”

Clearly, that’s an unconstitutional over-reaching by the Congress.

Clearly. Article 3, section 2:

“The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, etc.

To abridge this function of the judiciary would indeed require an amendment.

  
   We disagree. Every person has the right to marry anyone of the opposite sex.

  
   How more equal can you get?

How more equal? By making the pursuit of happiness available as a viable option for people who don’t share our particular aesthetic or genetic happenstance. Doesn’t that seem more equal that relegating a group of people who, through no fault of their own, are a little different (in a fairly trivial way) than us to second-class citizenship?

  
   Or are you suggesting that the States discriminate based on sex, religion, or sexual preference?

I think I must have missed something. Dave is suggesting the opposite.

  
  
   How so? Explain to me in very precise terms how homosexual marriage threatens the future of America. If you’d claim that it will change the fundamental structure of our culture, then you’ve opened up the argument to include women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery, both of which changed the fundamental structure of our culture.

John, I think you missed addressing Dave’s request for a “very precise” explanation of the threat.

  
   “A certain subset of the population”? Which subset would that be? Just remember that anytime you define something, you have by definition discriminated something from something else and set it apart.

Ah, but to discriminate between is different than to discriminate against.

   If the removal of prohibitions against freedom is indeed discriminatory, then call me discriminatory. I will always favor greater access to rights rather than greater restriction of rights.

Except the set of rights promised by the second amendment, right? :-)

Chris



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Santorum Fails In His Effort To Pervert The Constitution
 
(...) My objection is to the use of the terms "activist judge" or "judicial activism" as short-hand subsitutions for actual debate. Too often Conservative pundits have decried judicial rulings as "activist" without presenting any legitimate (...) (20 years ago, 19-Jul-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)

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