Translation for those uninformed about how politics really work: He must have gotten paid really, REALLY well by the telemarketers.
District Judges aren't really political creatures. Once they're appointed, they're there for life, and their ONLY politicking is jockying for a seat on the Apellate Circuit or the Supreme Court.
For the uninformed about how the courts work: the Telemarketers got a very good lawyer, and got lucky.
I seem to recall those Ancient Greeks in Athens being rather fond of their secret ballots. Speaking of f(o)undations...
Got a cite? I always thought that they had their Senate meet in the open, much like ours, and only had secret votes when the situation demanded it, such as for highly controversial issues.
OTOH, students have extremely high data transfer needs
Yeah. They need to scan in their handwritten notes and send them to their professiors sans-compression, which takes all of--no, wait, that's not it.
I mean, yeah, they need to stream WAVs of the lectures from the professors... no, not that.
er, I mean, they need to transfer their written by-hand linux configuration to their CompSci professor--no, wait, that can better be done by handing in a burnt CD, and no one would waste class time on that...
Wait, I got it! Students need to engage in a copyright-free multimedia environment that's littered with, ah, er... entertainment...
VoIP sounds like a better and better use of student bandwidth--especially given that most student projects can be transmitted in a manner of minutes over a dial-up connection. As long as the acutal research projects at the University still have enough, no one should really care.
Especially when you realize that the dollars spent on maintaining the POTS system can be funneled into networking, thus offsetting the cost of the new VoIP system once POTS can be discontinued.
(Oh, and one more thing--if you've ever seen a VoIP system, it needs a real data connection--otherwise it wouldn't be "VoIP".)
... don't give a damm for basic democratic principles. "The vote is secret"...
No, that's not a basic democratic principle. That's a current principle used to encourage everyone to vote without fear of reprisal, but it's hardly a fundamental aspect of the system.
The civilisations which existed in this hemisphere before the arrival of Europeans have been consistently looked down upon as "uncivilised" by modern culture. A finding like this leads to surprise and even disbelief. Where is the surprise? They were too busy trying to survive to develop culture, etc? Bah.
The surprise is that we thought that THIS part of S.America was never settled. We--that being, "everyone who has ever even heard about native American culutres"--aren't surprised that they existed at all, but that they existed "in this place we've never seen them before".
And, to be pendantic, we can safetly look down on everyone before the Reinassance as "uncivilized" if we want to. Or, for an easier measure, any society that hasn't undergone the industrial revolution... (which, of course, includes early Europeans at the same level as most Americans.)
I haven't used/played with any other PDAs besides the Zaurus (never wanted to:), so I'm not sure if other ones have the "pickboard" input option that it does. Essentially it's a keyboard on the lower portion of the screen that allows you to use the stylus to choose letters. If you don't like to use a mini keyboard, and don't like hand writing recognition, that may be the option for you.
YES!
That's a standard feature of Palm OS--Graffitti and the keyboard as input devices.
Read as: "We want online music to be hosted by our business partners, protected by DRM and for which we get get paid every nickel we think we're due."
Add in "our artists's" between "want" and "online" and you've got yourself an extremely reasonable business statement--but they won't say that because, just like any record store wants to have everything that will sell, every association wants to have as wide a membership as possible.
The judges are not bothering to consider whether the DMCA is constitional, nor if the way it is being abused is constitional, but whether or not it was intended to be used the way it is - this is NOT a good sign. It isn't going to help on the larger issue, but maybe it'll clean up the smaller one.
Has a defense lawyer put forth a reasonable notion that the DMCA is unconstitutional? Heck, have any of these cases gone against a defendant with the funds to pursue an appeal all the way to the Supreme Court?
Main thing I think we need to remind our congressman about - the RIAA is NOT a law enforcement agency, and should be slapped the hell down if they think they can step into that role.
RIAA isn't trying to enforce the law--they are trying to press claims on behalf of their members. They're acting more akin to a collection agency than a police department.
I'm simply a little outraged at the treatment gays and lesbians are currently getting in the states, primarily because the extreme religious right has so much political clout right now.
You're probably a bit misinformed. Homosexuals have gotten more legal advancement in the last year than the past 10--Every sodomoy law across the country has been unilaterally ruled unconstitutional (and thus void), and several states have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation.
That's silly... I think we can agree that there are certain things which can be considered universally immoral (murder, rape, etc, etc). One of those things, which is codified in American law, is descrimination based on race, religion, etc. How is sexual orientation any different?
The law is not moral, and morality is not law.
With just a few very small exceptions, the law doesn't care if you're amoral, unethical, or just plain mean. It also, exempting only jury nullification and personal discretion, doesn't care if your moral, ethical, or a nice guy.
My religion tells me that murder, rape, et al are ammoral/immoral. My country tells me that they are illegal. While the former may influence the latter and the latter is forbidden from influencing the former, they aren't synonyms and, like you said, have clear seperations.;)
At the other extreme, outside of business and politics and law, discrimination is necessary. We choose our mates and our friends based on their sexual orirentation, gender, race, color, favorite activites, hometown, et cetera.
The only difference is the genders of the people involved, by why does this matter?
Children. Well, children and history, but mostly children.
There is, of course, a simple way to handle this, that will unfortunately never happen. Simply have everyone in the English language vote if "gay marriage" will be called "marriage" or "civil union", and settle it once and for all.:)
Let's say the US military allowed women into the armed forces, but refused to call them soldiers, because traditionally, soldiers were men. Would you agree that the nomenclature still implies a level of subconscious discrimination?
Yes, but that'd be a good thing. Men and women do perform differently, are trained differently, and think differently. If "soldier" wasn't a gender-netural term, we would use the different terms--instead of having rules for "male soldiers", "female soldiers", and "male and female soldiers."
If men and women are equal under the law, and the US Constitution leads one to believe this is so
They aren't. There have been numerous attempts to get the "Equal Rights" amendment passed, but it's been defeated because there are many, many instances where discrimination based on gender is a good thing.
You justification that "children are naturally drawn to their fathers" is nothing more than an assumption on your part, and likely a false one at that... in fact, in my experience, most daughters have a closer relationship with their fathers than their mothers.
I am more than willing to concede the possibility that "slightly" is either wrong or insignificant. However, taking assumptions as fact is an unfortunate assumption in politics.
In my opinion, one such unsupported assumption is that sexual orientation is a genetic or biological thing, rather than an aquired taste. But that's irrelevant to the discussion, because the fact is that people are rather set in their sexual orientation, and no ethical psychologial treatment can change that.
Not quite. The law remains what it is until the current generation decides to change it. It's not an open question, but rather a loaded one that requires consensus and action to alter.
Making same-sex marriage illegal doesn't protect people from each other, but it does restrict one particular group of people's freedom, which by definition makes the law unconstitutional.
Wrong. I mean, gun-nut-revolutionary-milita wrong.
Our system of law is not a "clear victim-only" crime. All sorts of activities, such as drug use or firearms waiting periods or suicide, have no victims but are still crimes. "It doesn't hurt anyone" isn't nearly enough to get a law declared unconstitutional or have the courts recognize a new constitutional right.
You want to change the law. Great. I wish you all kinds of luck on it. Just don't legally call it "marriage".
I'm going to assume that you're gay. If you're not, well, I'll change my assumption. (I would apologize, except there's nothing to apologize for, as sexual orientation is neither a sin nor a mental illness nor a crime.)
And you have no "absolute right" to impose your beliefs regarding what is and isn't marriage on other individuals.
You're right. I don't. But I do have a right--and others don't have an absolute right to redefine what is and isn't marriage, either.
So you're saying that these examples were morally correct because the majority of Americans supported it? What about the burning of witches? The majority of puritans supported that... does that make it okay?
Were they OK in a relativistic political-science kind of way? Yes. On an absolute level? Hell no, and you know it. Of course, absolute-level morality is a religious thing...
The fact is, non-heteros are [discriminated] against purely because the majority disagrees with their lifestyle. Unfortunately, the majority agreed with slavery of the blacks, and I think we can agree that was wrong. So why is it that it's okay for the majority to impose their will on gays and lesbians?
I don't know where you're living, but my state (NY) just passed a law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation, and if the military ever got comfortable with the idea, it'd happen on a federal level as well.
I don't think it's discrimination to not allow marriage between same-gender couples. It'd be one thing if marriage laws required the couple to be sexually active, or forbade sex outside of marriage, or forbade giving spousal benefits to non-married couples for any reason. But even then it might not be unfair discrimination, as hererosexual couples all can, at least in theory, concieve and raise children. (please note the word "might." This is conjecutre, not my stance.)
While I'm in the far-right field of legal-political-moral conjecture, slavery was in itself OK. The absence of laws protecting the rights of slaves, and the presence of laws that unreasonably discriminated based on ancestry, were at the least bad ideas, and very certainly morally wrong.
I'm a troll because I believe in separation of church and state?
Apology extended. You replied in a harsh and reactionary way to my comment, to an extent that it seemed very probably that reasonable conversation could not commence: The very definiton of a troll.
Shall we continue the discussion? You're welcome to call me a reactionary bigot if it'd make you feel better.
Okay, so majority rules. Gotcha. So, if the majority decides that computer geeks deserve to be burned at the stake, I guess that's okay, right? It is, after all, the will of the people... well, most of them, anyway.
Actually, if you could find enough political support to amend the constitution to cause computer geeks to be burned at the stake, you'd wind up with only an extreme minority of very foolish computer geeks who hadn't fled the country or converted very, very quickly.
American-style Democracy works because of legal inertia. The law takes a long time and a lot of effort to change, and too-fast changes are subject to rapid reversal. The presence of a hard-to-change law helps curtail the worst parts of democracy, while allowing the best results to show through.
Because of this legal inertia, more than anything else, we have no lawfully-recognized state of union between homosexuals. Considering that just a hundred years ago homosexuality was (legally) a mental illness in most of modern civilization, a certain lack of acceptance is to be expected. (Especially given the natural sub-grouping of homosexuals for couple-matching purposes, and the unfortunately extreme behavior of some homosexuals that helped spread the AIDS disease.)
I don't give a damn what it's called as long as hetero and gay relationships are given the exact same standing under the law
You can only use "cultural" in that sense to mean "religion", because some religions allow a person to have multiple spouses
Christianity has, in the past, allowed multiple spouses.
I did not mean religion. I mean culture. Our European and Colonial forefathers did not approve of polyamory. It wasn't part of their culture, and it isn't part of the culture that they handed down to us. The beliefs of a subculture are not the beliefs of the mainstream culture, and the second one is, by and large, what controls the law.
Since your country claims to have freedom of religion, then having the government pass a law that makes the practices of several religions illegal, only on the grounds of maintaining the "cultural meaning" of a word is a violation of your country's constitution. Not to mention, an unnecessary restriction of freedoms.
So, we should allow human sacrafice, forced marriage, man-boy love, bestiality, cascade marriages, religious absolution of crimes, honor killings, and witch burning? They're all religous practices that have contradicted American common and criminal law, and the courts come down almost unanimously on the side of the law.
For what it's worth, I agree that the government should recognize and enforce the rights of each party in any romantic union. But we should do this because it is a good idea and protects our less fortunate citizens from the more agressive citizens--not because redefining terms to get your political end is a basic right.
That isn't a *right*, any more than the prohibitionists had the right to enforce their values on the rest of American society. Or supporters of slavery could enforce their values on blacks. Or the Catholic Church has the right to enforce their values regarding contraceptives on the rest of the American public.
All three of those are "rights." Not "absolute right", but "right." (Thought you phrased them in a poor fashcion, you didn't do enough damage to negate the meaning of the freedom.)
Prohibition was passed, and later repealed, by democratic process. Slavery was totally and perfectly legal until the states outlawed it. The Catholic Church, even today, is perfectly welcome to fund churches and deny contraceptives, or to attempt to convince just about anyone that contraceptives and abortion are wrong; they can't do more, because the right of someone to control their own reproductive process outweights the right of the Catholic Church to enforce their dogma.
The fact is, the government should not exist to impose the moral/religious values of one set of people (heteros who want to "preserve the institution of marriage") on another (gays and lesbians).
Wow, a gay troll.
I am NOT--I repeat, NOT--against the creation of a legal institution to recognize and enforce homosexual (or polyamorous!) romantic relationships. I just don't want this new legal institution called "marriage," just as I don't want a new religion that says there is no afterlife and Jesus Christ was just a myth to be called "Christianity."
The state does not exist in a vacum. It is a product of and by its citizens, and American citizen, by and large, are tolerant, heterosexual Christians. The state's role is carrying out the will of the people--and the current expressed will of the American people is that "marriage is between a man and a woman."
Care to convince me how not being able to call your Civil Union a "marriage" is an infringement on your basic rights?
I'd take my mouse and keyboard over a joystick any day.
So would I--but after playing Halo enough to get used to the controls (about an hour), I must say that the X-box dual-stick controller is a better choice.
Government exists to restrict rights, soas to allow its citizens to prioritize their rights. This is very much in keeping with the legal theory embodied in Amendment X of my country's constitution.
I feel that my right to maintain the cultural meaning of "marriage" outweighs the right of others to call their nontraditional (homosexual or polamorous) romantic union a marriage.
Oh, and you have the ideology slightly wrong. It's "things that do harm to society or infringe on the rights of others." Legal theory doesn't put a barrier between you and your property--a $50,000 tort against one is the same as a $50,000 tort against the other.
I own an iPaq (3635 or something). It has been upgraded to PocketPC 2002 because the original version it shipped with just sucked. I have the CF card sleeve so that I can use CF cards (IBM 1GB microdrives (2 of them), and an AmbiCom Wireless CF wlan card).
The battery life absolutely SUCKS. Even if I leave it OFF in my bag while I am out Geocaching all day, by the time I get home it is warning me that my battery is near dead. Great.
So, you have an iPAQ, the battery life sucks, and it's too slow...
"Serves 'em right for grabbing that. Shoulda' got a palm."
Unless you can prove that having two or more spouses is harming someone
Actually, non-warlike polygamous socieites to tend to be unfair to poor men and second wifes.
And, as we don't live in an anarchy, I don't mind the concept of the government restricting freedoms--just as long as they're not basic freedoms* and the citizens have a right to attempt to modify the government.
(*: Now, I don't consider mating a basic right. A tresaured liberty, sure, but not a fundamental right that should not be denied anyone without extreme reason.)
That's the essence of social libertarianism, and that's also why the U.S. has forgotten what freedom means.
Actually, we haven't. At worst, we've reverted to what the founding fathers considered freedom to mean.
As for the larger issue--while I'm all for homosexuals being able to have a legally sanctioned relationship of some kind with benfits and duties comparable to marriage, I can't marry a second woman, or a cat, so why should I be able to marry a man?
Pardon me for being picky and off-topic, but this is a little peeve of mine...
Definition: Entropy
n 1: (thermodynamics) a measure of the amount of energy in a system that is available for doing work; entropy increases as matter and energy in the universe degrade to an ultimate state of inert uniformity [ant: ectropy]
That's backwards.
As time goes on, the avaliable energy goes down. If enthropy increases as time goes on, it must be a measure of the energy that is NOT avaliable for doing work.
And it's probably fair game to include elements of a system that force unnecessary expenditures of energy within "enthropy".
Re:Application programming is a dying paradigm
on
Ford To Move To Linux
·
· Score: 1
I use a web-based call tracking application in my IT job. Its slow, buggy, and not enterprise worthy by any standard.
Wait--you said you use it at your job.
But it's not enterprise worthy by any standard...
so you wouldn't use it at your job.
But you do......
AHH!!! logical paradox! Stop! You have to retract your statement before the entire universe implodes!
But pretty much anywhere I've been in Europe people don't reject you just because of your opinions.
I'm sure that they do--you just haven't got extreme enough opinions.
Or, I could be wrong. In which case, I don't want to live in Europe. I treasure my ability to pick and choose my companions on any stance that I want--be it hair color, skin color, or political alliance.
FWIW, I'm of the opinion that the natural growth of America's socially-concious capitalism is an elimination of minimum-wage and overtime laws, and the creation of a social "bottom line" to take over their function. We have robots and computers--we should stop employing people just to employ people.
(The key to this is to make the bottom line poor enough that those that want luxury have to find at least some income--and that the "great dole" reduces in a proportional manner for each dollar earned, but at a rate such that you never net less money by working.)
Slashdot Mirror
Translation for those uninformed about how politics really work: He must have gotten paid really, REALLY well by the telemarketers.
District Judges aren't really political creatures. Once they're appointed, they're there for life, and their ONLY politicking is jockying for a seat on the Apellate Circuit or the Supreme Court.
For the uninformed about how the courts work: the Telemarketers got a very good lawyer, and got lucky.
Probably.
;)
But the best way to react to trolls is to, for the most part, not akwnowldge their existance.
Must be my interactions with real human beings, who frequently are just as bad as the worst troll's aping. Ce la vie.
At least I got karma for it.
I seem to recall those Ancient Greeks in Athens being rather fond of their secret ballots. Speaking of f(o)undations...
Got a cite? I always thought that they had their Senate meet in the open, much like ours, and only had secret votes when the situation demanded it, such as for highly controversial issues.
OTOH, students have extremely high data transfer needs
Yeah. They need to scan in their handwritten notes and send them to their professiors sans-compression, which takes all of--no, wait, that's not it.
I mean, yeah, they need to stream WAVs of the lectures from the professors... no, not that.
er, I mean, they need to transfer their written by-hand linux configuration to their CompSci professor--no, wait, that can better be done by handing in a burnt CD, and no one would waste class time on that...
Wait, I got it! Students need to engage in a copyright-free multimedia environment that's littered with, ah, er... entertainment...
VoIP sounds like a better and better use of student bandwidth--especially given that most student projects can be transmitted in a manner of minutes over a dial-up connection. As long as the acutal research projects at the University still have enough, no one should really care.
Especially when you realize that the dollars spent on maintaining the POTS system can be funneled into networking, thus offsetting the cost of the new VoIP system once POTS can be discontinued.
(Oh, and one more thing--if you've ever seen a VoIP system, it needs a real data connection--otherwise it wouldn't be "VoIP".)
... don't give a damm for basic democratic principles. "The vote is secret" ...
No, that's not a basic democratic principle. That's a current principle used to encourage everyone to vote without fear of reprisal, but it's hardly a fundamental aspect of the system.
The civilisations which existed in this hemisphere before the arrival of Europeans have been consistently looked down upon as "uncivilised" by modern culture. A finding like this leads to surprise and even disbelief. Where is the surprise? They were too busy trying to survive to develop culture, etc? Bah.
The surprise is that we thought that THIS part of S.America was never settled. We--that being, "everyone who has ever even heard about native American culutres"--aren't surprised that they existed at all, but that they existed "in this place we've never seen them before".
And, to be pendantic, we can safetly look down on everyone before the Reinassance as "uncivilized" if we want to. Or, for an easier measure, any society that hasn't undergone the industrial revolution... (which, of course, includes early Europeans at the same level as most Americans.)
I haven't used/played with any other PDAs besides the Zaurus (never wanted to :), so I'm not sure if other ones have the "pickboard" input option that it does. Essentially it's a keyboard on the lower portion of the screen that allows you to use the stylus to choose letters. If you don't like to use a mini keyboard, and don't like hand writing recognition, that may be the option for you.
YES!
That's a standard feature of Palm OS--Graffitti and the keyboard as input devices.
But at this point I think that the boss fight in Wind Waker was the best of the series.
Wind Waker had more story than any other Zelda, but the Ganon-fight sucked; it was too scripted.
I hope Wind Waker's sequal is a bit more imaginative and challenging...
Read as: "We want online music to be hosted by our business partners, protected by DRM and for which we get get paid every nickel we think we're due."
Add in "our artists's" between "want" and "online" and you've got yourself an extremely reasonable business statement--but they won't say that because, just like any record store wants to have everything that will sell, every association wants to have as wide a membership as possible.
It is unfortunate that you (and many others) will sacrifice your principles for a game.
Whoever said that they were his principles?
If MS does the job best, use MS. If Linux does the job best, use Linux.
And you really expect someone using pirated windows to take a stand on "software principles?" Sheesh.
The judges are not bothering to consider whether the DMCA is constitional, nor if the way it is being abused is constitional, but whether or not it was intended to be used the way it is - this is NOT a good sign. It isn't going to help on the larger issue, but maybe it'll clean up the smaller one.
Has a defense lawyer put forth a reasonable notion that the DMCA is unconstitutional? Heck, have any of these cases gone against a defendant with the funds to pursue an appeal all the way to the Supreme Court?
Main thing I think we need to remind our congressman about - the RIAA is NOT a law enforcement agency, and should be slapped the hell down if they think they can step into that role.
RIAA isn't trying to enforce the law--they are trying to press claims on behalf of their members. They're acting more akin to a collection agency than a police department.
I'm simply a little outraged at the treatment gays and lesbians are currently getting in the states, primarily because the extreme religious right has so much political clout right now.
;)
:)
You're probably a bit misinformed. Homosexuals have gotten more legal advancement in the last year than the past 10--Every sodomoy law across the country has been unilaterally ruled unconstitutional (and thus void), and several states have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation.
That's silly... I think we can agree that there are certain things which can be considered universally immoral (murder, rape, etc, etc). One of those things, which is codified in American law, is descrimination based on race, religion, etc. How is sexual orientation any different?
The law is not moral, and morality is not law.
With just a few very small exceptions, the law doesn't care if you're amoral, unethical, or just plain mean. It also, exempting only jury nullification and personal discretion, doesn't care if your moral, ethical, or a nice guy.
My religion tells me that murder, rape, et al are ammoral/immoral. My country tells me that they are illegal. While the former may influence the latter and the latter is forbidden from influencing the former, they aren't synonyms and, like you said, have clear seperations.
At the other extreme, outside of business and politics and law, discrimination is necessary. We choose our mates and our friends based on their sexual orirentation, gender, race, color, favorite activites, hometown, et cetera.
The only difference is the genders of the people involved, by why does this matter?
Children. Well, children and history, but mostly children.
There is, of course, a simple way to handle this, that will unfortunately never happen. Simply have everyone in the English language vote if "gay marriage" will be called "marriage" or "civil union", and settle it once and for all.
Let's say the US military allowed women into the armed forces, but refused to call them soldiers, because traditionally, soldiers were men. Would you agree that the nomenclature still implies a level of subconscious discrimination?
Yes, but that'd be a good thing. Men and women do perform differently, are trained differently, and think differently. If "soldier" wasn't a gender-netural term, we would use the different terms--instead of having rules for "male soldiers", "female soldiers", and "male and female soldiers."
If men and women are equal under the law, and the US Constitution leads one to believe this is so
They aren't. There have been numerous attempts to get the "Equal Rights" amendment passed, but it's been defeated because there are many, many instances where discrimination based on gender is a good thing.
You justification that "children are naturally drawn to their fathers" is nothing more than an assumption on your part, and likely a false one at that... in fact, in my experience, most daughters have a closer relationship with their fathers than their mothers.
I am more than willing to concede the possibility that "slightly" is either wrong or insignificant. However, taking assumptions as fact is an unfortunate assumption in politics.
In my opinion, one such unsupported assumption is that sexual orientation is a genetic or biological thing, rather than an aquired taste. But that's irrelevant to the discussion, because the fact is that people are rather set in their sexual orientation, and no ethical psychologial treatment can change that.
It's up to this generation to decide.
Not quite. The law remains what it is until the current generation decides to change it. It's not an open question, but rather a loaded one that requires consensus and action to alter.
Making same-sex marriage illegal doesn't protect people from each other, but it does restrict one particular group of people's freedom, which by definition makes the law unconstitutional.
Wrong. I mean, gun-nut-revolutionary-milita wrong.
Our system of law is not a "clear victim-only" crime. All sorts of activities, such as drug use or firearms waiting periods or suicide, have no victims but are still crimes. "It doesn't hurt anyone" isn't nearly enough to get a law declared unconstitutional or have the courts recognize a new constitutional right.
You want to change the law. Great. I wish you all kinds of luck on it. Just don't legally call it "marriage".
I'm going to assume that you're gay. If you're not, well, I'll change my assumption. (I would apologize, except there's nothing to apologize for, as sexual orientation is neither a sin nor a mental illness nor a crime.)
And you have no "absolute right" to impose your beliefs regarding what is and isn't marriage on other individuals.
You're right. I don't. But I do have a right--and others don't have an absolute right to redefine what is and isn't marriage, either.
So you're saying that these examples were morally correct because the majority of Americans supported it? What about the burning of witches? The majority of puritans supported that... does that make it okay?
Were they OK in a relativistic political-science kind of way? Yes. On an absolute level? Hell no, and you know it. Of course, absolute-level morality is a religious thing...
The fact is, non-heteros are [discriminated] against purely because the majority disagrees with their lifestyle. Unfortunately, the majority agreed with slavery of the blacks, and I think we can agree that was wrong. So why is it that it's okay for the majority to impose their will on gays and lesbians?
I don't know where you're living, but my state (NY) just passed a law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation, and if the military ever got comfortable with the idea, it'd happen on a federal level as well.
I don't think it's discrimination to not allow marriage between same-gender couples. It'd be one thing if marriage laws required the couple to be sexually active, or forbade sex outside of marriage, or forbade giving spousal benefits to non-married couples for any reason. But even then it might not be unfair discrimination, as hererosexual couples all can, at least in theory, concieve and raise children. (please note the word "might." This is conjecutre, not my stance.)
While I'm in the far-right field of legal-political-moral conjecture, slavery was in itself OK. The absence of laws protecting the rights of slaves, and the presence of laws that unreasonably discriminated based on ancestry, were at the least bad ideas, and very certainly morally wrong.
I'm a troll because I believe in separation of church and state?
Apology extended. You replied in a harsh and reactionary way to my comment, to an extent that it seemed very probably that reasonable conversation could not commence: The very definiton of a troll.
Shall we continue the discussion? You're welcome to call me a reactionary bigot if it'd make you feel better.
Okay, so majority rules. Gotcha. So, if the majority decides that computer geeks deserve to be burned at the stake, I guess that's okay, right? It is, after all, the will of the people... well, most of them, anyway.
Actually, if you could find enough political support to amend the constitution to cause computer geeks to be burned at the stake, you'd wind up with only an extreme minority of very foolish computer geeks who hadn't fled the country or converted very, very quickly.
American-style Democracy works because of legal inertia. The law takes a long time and a lot of effort to change, and too-fast changes are subject to rapid reversal. The presence of a hard-to-change law helps curtail the worst parts of democracy, while allowing the best results to show through.
Because of this legal inertia, more than anything else, we have no lawfully-recognized state of union between homosexuals. Considering that just a hundred years ago homosexuality was (legally) a mental illness in most of modern civilization, a certain lack of acceptance is to be expected. (Especially given the natural sub-grouping of homosexuals for couple-matching purposes, and the unfortunately extreme behavior of some homosexuals that helped spread the AIDS disease.)
I don't give a damn what it's called as long as hetero and gay relationships are given the exact same standing under the law
You can only use "cultural" in that sense to mean "religion", because some religions allow a person to have multiple spouses
Christianity has, in the past, allowed multiple spouses.
I did not mean religion. I mean culture. Our European and Colonial forefathers did not approve of polyamory. It wasn't part of their culture, and it isn't part of the culture that they handed down to us. The beliefs of a subculture are not the beliefs of the mainstream culture, and the second one is, by and large, what controls the law.
Since your country claims to have freedom of religion, then having the government pass a law that makes the practices of several religions illegal, only on the grounds of maintaining the "cultural meaning" of a word is a violation of your country's constitution. Not to mention, an unnecessary restriction of freedoms.
So, we should allow human sacrafice, forced marriage, man-boy love, bestiality, cascade marriages, religious absolution of crimes, honor killings, and witch burning? They're all religous practices that have contradicted American common and criminal law, and the courts come down almost unanimously on the side of the law.
For what it's worth, I agree that the government should recognize and enforce the rights of each party in any romantic union. But we should do this because it is a good idea and protects our less fortunate citizens from the more agressive citizens--not because redefining terms to get your political end is a basic right.
That isn't a *right*, any more than the prohibitionists had the right to enforce their values on the rest of American society. Or supporters of slavery could enforce their values on blacks. Or the Catholic Church has the right to enforce their values regarding contraceptives on the rest of the American public.
All three of those are "rights." Not "absolute right", but "right." (Thought you phrased them in a poor fashcion, you didn't do enough damage to negate the meaning of the freedom.)
Prohibition was passed, and later repealed, by democratic process. Slavery was totally and perfectly legal until the states outlawed it. The Catholic Church, even today, is perfectly welcome to fund churches and deny contraceptives, or to attempt to convince just about anyone that contraceptives and abortion are wrong; they can't do more, because the right of someone to control their own reproductive process outweights the right of the Catholic Church to enforce their dogma.
The fact is, the government should not exist to impose the moral/religious values of one set of people (heteros who want to "preserve the institution of marriage") on another (gays and lesbians).
Wow, a gay troll.
I am NOT--I repeat, NOT--against the creation of a legal institution to recognize and enforce homosexual (or polyamorous!) romantic relationships. I just don't want this new legal institution called "marriage," just as I don't want a new religion that says there is no afterlife and Jesus Christ was just a myth to be called "Christianity."
The state does not exist in a vacum. It is a product of and by its citizens, and American citizen, by and large, are tolerant, heterosexual Christians. The state's role is carrying out the will of the people--and the current expressed will of the American people is that "marriage is between a man and a woman."
Care to convince me how not being able to call your Civil Union a "marriage" is an infringement on your basic rights?
No, that was the fing-longer-er.
He decided to invent the smelloscope, but then realized that he had already invented it (and submitted it to the Nobel prize club) the year before.
I'd take my mouse and keyboard over a joystick any day.
So would I--but after playing Halo enough to get used to the controls (about an hour), I must say that the X-box dual-stick controller is a better choice.
You misunderstand.
Government exists to restrict rights, soas to allow its citizens to prioritize their rights. This is very much in keeping with the legal theory embodied in Amendment X of my country's constitution.
I feel that my right to maintain the cultural meaning of "marriage" outweighs the right of others to call their nontraditional (homosexual or polamorous) romantic union a marriage.
Oh, and you have the ideology slightly wrong. It's "things that do harm to society or infringe on the rights of others." Legal theory doesn't put a barrier between you and your property--a $50,000 tort against one is the same as a $50,000 tort against the other.
I own an iPaq (3635 or something). It has been upgraded to PocketPC 2002 because the original version it shipped with just sucked. I have the CF card sleeve so that I can use CF cards (IBM 1GB microdrives (2 of them), and an AmbiCom Wireless CF wlan card).
The battery life absolutely SUCKS. Even if I leave it OFF in my bag while I am out Geocaching all day, by the time I get home it is warning me that my battery is near dead. Great.
So, you have an iPAQ, the battery life sucks, and it's too slow...
"Serves 'em right for grabbing that. Shoulda' got a palm."
Unless you can prove that having two or more spouses is harming someone
Actually, non-warlike polygamous socieites to tend to be unfair to poor men and second wifes.
And, as we don't live in an anarchy, I don't mind the concept of the government restricting freedoms--just as long as they're not basic freedoms* and the citizens have a right to attempt to modify the government.
(*: Now, I don't consider mating a basic right. A tresaured liberty, sure, but not a fundamental right that should not be denied anyone without extreme reason.)
That's the essence of social libertarianism, and that's also why the U.S. has forgotten what freedom means.
Actually, we haven't. At worst, we've reverted to what the founding fathers considered freedom to mean.
As for the larger issue--while I'm all for homosexuals being able to have a legally sanctioned relationship of some kind with benfits and duties comparable to marriage, I can't marry a second woman, or a cat, so why should I be able to marry a man?
Pardon me for being picky and off-topic, but this is a little peeve of mine...
Definition: Entropy
n 1: (thermodynamics) a measure of the amount of energy in a system that is available for doing work; entropy increases as matter and energy in the universe degrade to an ultimate state of inert uniformity [ant: ectropy]
That's backwards.
As time goes on, the avaliable energy goes down. If enthropy increases as time goes on, it must be a measure of the energy that is NOT avaliable for doing work.
And it's probably fair game to include elements of a system that force unnecessary expenditures of energy within "enthropy".
I use a web-based call tracking application in my IT job. Its slow, buggy, and not enterprise worthy by any standard.
Wait--you said you use it at your job.
But it's not enterprise worthy by any standard...
so you wouldn't use it at your job.
But you do......
AHH!!! logical paradox! Stop! You have to retract your statement before the entire universe implodes!
But pretty much anywhere I've been in Europe people don't reject you just because of your opinions.
I'm sure that they do--you just haven't got extreme enough opinions.
Or, I could be wrong. In which case, I don't want to live in Europe. I treasure my ability to pick and choose my companions on any stance that I want--be it hair color, skin color, or political alliance.
FWIW, I'm of the opinion that the natural growth of America's socially-concious capitalism is an elimination of minimum-wage and overtime laws, and the creation of a social "bottom line" to take over their function. We have robots and computers--we should stop employing people just to employ people.
(The key to this is to make the bottom line poor enough that those that want luxury have to find at least some income--and that the "great dole" reduces in a proportional manner for each dollar earned, but at a rate such that you never net less money by working.)