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There were no grammatical errors - I left out a word, though. What I'm saying is that your definition of right is not in use anywhere but in your head. Here, let's have a look at Wikipedia, too:

Rights are legal or moral entitlements or permissions.

There you go.

For your information, what you should have done is stated the definition of right you were doing with a few respectable sources (NOT BLOGS) to show that your definition is in common usage.



I am. I'm pointing out that the criteria you use to distinguish between a right and a benefit do not work, as no right satisfies them. Do you understand? OK, that's good. The correct response is now to a) accept defeat or b) present an argument showing why I am wrong.

Here's the original stuff, just in case you "forget":

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I read the rest but I have to stop right there. No matter how great you are of a person, and how knowledgeable of your own fields, and no matter that you can quote the Laws of Hammurabi, you have betrayed such a fundamental lack of understanding of the entire social construct and reality that people have lived in the past.

If you have no correct fundamental concept of past living conditions and especially the morés that arose from them, you can have only a superficial understanding of your own present society, culture, and living conditions. It's certainly enough to get by on and function pretty effectively with in the present. But as far as being able to accurately perceive and critically examine your own society and culture, it's insufficient.

If you don't know how something got to be the way it is, you don't know why it is the way that it is, and you can't see all of it.

Marriage always came with socially awarded benefits, as well as rights. Now we've got extra (not new, but extra) financial benefits via the tax and social welfare system as well.

You would like to make a new and modern separation between the rights and tax-and-social-welfare benefits of marriage, depending on the sexual orientation and makeup of the couple entering into it. You want this separation because the marriage of gays breaks your perception of the social contract between you as a taxpayer, and married couples as originators of children who will in future be paying taxes that will support you in old age. Via paying for massive public infrastructure that you will still be enjoying the benefits of, if not directly through an old age pension or health care.

There are several arguments, that I think are very strong solid arguments, against that last paragraph, that I hold in my being. But I truly don't think it's worth wasting your or my time with them. Firstly, I think you are arguing with incomplete data. Secondly, your and my moral constructions and priorities, and your and my conceptions of how an economy functions prosperously, are so far removed from each other that I predict it would take several years of arguing to even have a chance to start affecting each others ideologies.

And I bet you think I'm operating only on ideology and you're operating only on fact.

[10,000 word essay removed on what and why an ideology is, and what facts are, and the physical constraints and possibilities of each human interacting with and operating on facts]

Gbaji, your claim that you're only arguing against taxpayer-financed benefits, not trying to prevent same sex couples from marrying is irrelevant -- Prop 8 doesn't say a word about benefits. It tells same sex couples they cannot be married. Prop 8 isn't about financial benefits. It's about a misguided and oppressive moral judgment that same-sex couples can't be allowed to be married.



Sorry, wrong. It's a legal right. First, it's not that the government "won't" punish you for refusing to testify. It's that the government "can't" punish you. More importantly, it's not just the person who is testifying that has a right not to testify. The person they are testifying against (their spouse) has a right to keep confidential the contents of their MARITAL communication to the person testifying.

Example: Spouse 1 is on the stand testifying. Spouse 2 is the defendant in a criminal case. Prosecutor asks Spouse 1 what Spouse 2 said about "X." Spouse 1 wants to testify because he's disgusted by Spouse 2's crime. Spouse 2's defense attorney objects on the grounds that the response would violate the marital privilege. The prosecutor tries to show why this fits into an exception to the marital privilege. The judge sustains the objection and Spouse 1 does not have the chance to answer the question. If Spouse 1 answers anyway, Spouse 2 might get a mistrial ...

Admitting the confidential marital communication violates the defendant's rights. The court's don't throw cases out for denying due process benefits; in fact I've never heard of due process benefits, only due process rights.

With regard to the miscegenation cases (interracial marriages), Wikipedia actually has this correct:



In Loving v. Virginia, Virginia had argued that the laws didn't discrimate because they treated whites and non-whites equally -- parallel to the argument I've seen from some here that the law denies same-sex marriage to gays and non-gays equally (heh). The Supreme Court rejected the argument.



Where the parallel likely falls short as far as the U.S. Supreme Court goes is that the Court reached this holding because it saw anti-mescegenation laws as designed to maintain White supremacy, which had been defined as denying equal rights to non-Whites. The anti-gay parallel doesn't yet carry the same weight in our society at this point in time. The Supreme Court has not yet held that classification based on sexual orientation will be treated the same constitutionally as classifications based on race (subject to "strict scrutiny").

Fortunately, this specific case isn't about the U.S. Constitution. It's about the California Constitution. The California Supreme Court can find according to its interpretation of California law without reference to the U.S. Supreme Court. And the California Supreme Court has also already said that marriage is a right and that denying same-sex couples the right to marry is unconstituional. The only thing left for them to answer is whether Prop 8 is a legally valid amendment to the California Constitution.

Edited for spelling.

Edited, Feb 24th 2009 10:18am by Ahkuraj

I'd actually prefer to believe that.

What are you raving about? Where did he say the CA Supreme Court could interpret the law outside of California?

I'm not responding just because I'm a noob, even though I am.

I knew who you were. The significance of the post count? Another new identity for you, yes I get it.



The only thing that I said was a right was the right to keep confidential marital communications confidential. Do you disagree?

I quoted the U.S. Supreme Court authoritatively saying marriage is a right. You can argue with them if it makes you happy.

I also observed the CA Supreme Court's authoritative holdings that marriage is a right under CA Constitution and that same-sex marriage was a right under the CA Constitution prior to Prop 8. Again, you can argue with them.

You're right, "Varrus" is synonymous with "Stupid idiotic douchebag" at this point. I needn't say it anymore.

No, just an ignorant bigot.

Poor people can make money. But you'll always be an idiot.