@hawkeye10,
hawkeye10 wrote:
Quote:Extensive and specific science showing a harm to 'society' is the only way that people's rights can be limited, when it is perfectly clear that nobody is being put in any sort of immediate danger by a behavior. The default position is for people to have rights, not for them not to have them; it is the bigot's duty to prove that people should not have rights.
that is trumped by precedence. The entire history of the USA is one where it was accepted fact that homosexuals should not have all of the rights and privileges of those who are not. In this case the onus is upon those who desire the change, and if they can't show good cause then the correct action is to make no change.
No, it is not. A history of religious-fueled bigotry means nothing before the law. Your personal opinion of gays, or that of your ancestors, is meaningless unless you can show actual proof that they do in fact harm society.
That same 'precedence' gave women no rights, blacks no rights, inter-racial marriages no rights, etc..
Quote:Right now the claim is that we can **** all over the beliefs and claims of all of those who came before us, without even taking the time or trouble to prove that they were wrong. This is unacceptable.
Nobody cares whether you find it 'acceptable' or not. The problem is that you think that because things were done a certain way in the past, this provides justification for doing them this way in the future. It does not. Actions and laws have to be justifiable based on solid legal and ethical principles at
any point, regardless of what happened in the past.
You cannot build a case based on legal and ethical principles that gays deserve to be discriminated against. You certainly have not done so here; instead, you have deferred to the past, in an attempt to avoid doing so. This is not logically sound. This is also why courts left and right are finding gay marriage to be legal; see, they know the law, and you do not.
Cycloptichorn