Vigilante justice either from their victims or from other people who might do harm before a trial can be conducted.
We don't generally withhold information relevant to the identities of potential perpetrators of even the most notorious crimes for that reason, so, while I agree that they are entitled from protection from vigilante justice just as all people are, I don't find that this would even begin to be a legitimate reason to withhold the material being discussed.
While certainly OSS could introduce cost savings, frankly it is freaking rounding error compared with the current budget deficit.
Government isn't like a business; particularly, unlike a private business, externalized benefits (particular those that accrue to the governments constituents) are benefits to the government, whereas externalized benefits are usually irrelevant to private businesses (and actually costs, when they accrue to their competitors). Widespread government adoption of open source would not only produce direct software cost savings for government, but also for the governments trading partners (which, in many cases, end up savings for government), and private business and consumers by making more high-quality open source software available.
I do know they propose them. I'm talking about the rate at which they actually pass or make a difference in society.
There weren't any amendments ratified for 61 years after the 12th amendment was ratified, which was only 16 years after the Constitution itself was ratified. And that bunch 61 years later was a direct result of the Civil War; after those three, it was another 43 years till the next amendments were ratified.
Then you've got a cluster of 5 amendments in 7 years, a thirteen year gap, and two more, then an 18 year gap and one lonely amendment, a ten year gap and then four almost evenly spaced over 10 years, and then a 21 year gap and the most recent amendment 17 years ago.
Amendments aren't being ratified any less frequently than they were in the past, unless you are comparing to the 1788-1804 period immediately after the Constitution was ratified, they've been rare since the concerns identified immediately were with the first flurry of amendments.
So, even your recast argument doesn't make sense if you look at the facts.
It's also not just a hopelessly one-sided, where liberals are always noble and right.
Uh, you didn't actually watch The West Wing at all, did you? Liberals -- even the main characters that were also liberals -- weren't always "noble and right", nor, conversely, were conservatives always ignoble and wrong (indeed, one of the ways in which, on more than one occasion, main liberal characters failed to be "noble and right" is in assuming that particular Republicans/conservatives must be ignoble and wrong because they were political opponents.)
Well, actually, it is a corporation attempting to over turn a law that was lawfully enacted by a legitimate process already on the books well before the one law it takes issue with came about.
Whether or not it was "lawfully enacted by a legitimate process" is specifically the issue in dispute. If it was a constitutional revision, as Google and others challenging the law claim, then it was not "lawfully enacted" at all, and the process was not legitimate.
Sure, it was on the books, but for a different class of Constitutional changes.
(Sure, the fact that California has two different classes of Constitutional changes, with different required processes, with a boundary that is difficult to unequivocally resolve short of taking the issue to court is a problem, but its not a problem that is Google's fault.)
California constitution claims it need a higher vote of affirmation if the constitution is changed in specific ways that change the meaning of an existing provision.
No, it doesn't. A revision does not require a "higher vote of affirmation" than an amendment: both require a simple majority vote. A revision, however, must be proposed by the legislature or a Constitutional convention, while an amendment, which may be proposed by the means required for a revision, may also be proposed by a citizen initiative. Prop 8 was proposed as a citizen initiative, and therefore was only validly proposed if it is properly classes as an "amendment" and not a "revision". Further, the California Constitution does not specify what constitutes the difference between a revision and an amendment in the way you suggest. In fact, it does not explicitly specify the difference at all, the meaning of the terms "revision" and "amendment" have been elucidated through case law. You're not very far from the substance of the distinction though, which has been held to be an effect on the "underlying principles" of the Constitution (which is different than changing the meaning of an existing provision, but broadly similar.)
Prop 8 did not do that
Whether Prop 8 did that is specifically the question in dispute. It certainly is intended to alter the scope of the current equal protection clause of the state Constitution as effects what has been held for generations to be a fundamental right, that to marry, so there is at least a colorable argument that it is a revision applying either the actual "underlying principles" test or your proposed "change the meaning of an existing provision" test.
and whether you support prop 8 or not, you can't deny the fact that a corporation is attempting to squelch the spoken will of the people for it's own gain.
Since every person (including the owners of corporations acting through those corporations) has a right to see the government limited to acting in accordance to the Constitution, particularly when government action would affect them detrimentally, whether or not the action is popular, I see no reason to be concerned that Google or anyone else is suing to get the State to comply with the Constitution in the manner in which laws of any level, including changes to the Constitution, are enacted.
The point was unless the court is willing to selectively administrate justice, this challenge will fail.
You present no reason to believe that is the case; particularly, you present no reason to believe that the challenge by others which Google has supported with its filing does not characterize the legal situation correctly.
Have you noticed how no one even bothers mentioning Constitutional amendments anymore? They don't have to. No one cares on either side.
Uh, no. In fact, I seem to notice a big to do about one almost every year. Right now, the stink is being made about the introduction (again) of a proposal to repeal the 22nd Amendment (its being characterized by critics as an effort to make Obama President-for-Life, despite the fact that the Congressional author of the proposal has submitted identical proposals frequently in the past.)
Other recent controversies over federal Constitutional amendments that have been proposed include controversies over amendments to explicitly disclaim federal abortion rights via Constitutional amendment, to define marriage in the federal Constitution as between one man and one woman, to eliminate the requirement that the President is a natural-born citizen, to establish a line-item veto, and others. There are, typically, over 100 Constitutional amendments proposed in each two-year Congress, from every conceivable side. Contrary to your suggestion, people do, in fact, still care.
If you aren't hearing about them, and the public controversies surrounding a few of the most significant ones in each Congress, its because you aren't paying attention.
That too... my thought was that if you KNOW your closest rival will also be your closest workmate
The VP was rarely anything like the President's "closest workmate" in the early Republic; heck, that's rarely the case even now, where the President's "closest workmate" is far more likely to be the White House Chief of Staff.
Govt. wasteful spending is the biggest cause of inflation. That is what's wrong with the whole "stimulus" crapshoot.
Actually, when part of the point of stimulus is eliminating nascent deflation, it would be a mark in favor of government stimulus spending if government spending was a cause of inflation. Note that I am not agreeing with your premise, only pointing out that it doesn't lead to your conclusion, especially when one considers the context of the present economic situation.
The argument would be that, were it not used to wage war, U.S. industrial capacity would've been doing something else -- something more productive. The problem is, it wasn't being used for something more productive during the depression.
The Great Depression after the 1933 trough wasn't about poor output; GDP growth was strong from March of 1933 until the short (compared to 1929-1933) recession of 1937-1938 and again after it. It was about poor distribution of the economic gains due to growth (despite strong growth, unemployment remained over 10%, though nowhere near the 25% it had reached when FDR took office), which was addressed during the war by wage controls and other policies of the Administration that served to produce a substantial (and fairly long-lasting) compression in the distribution of economic gains.
So, yes, the war got us out of the depression -- by providing cover for policies that were far more "socialistic" than the early policies of FDR that opponents on the right still categorize as ineffective socialism.
And I'm wondering if this might not be a better system than the party-pairs we elect today. Any thoughts about that??
A "second place gets VP" system would be great if we had a ranked-ballot popular vote system using something like IRV + winner elimination, so that the first to a majority would be President and the second would be VP; parties would usually run two candidates, and most frequently the same party would probably get the Presidency and Vice Presidency, but voters would have more substantive choice in the general election.
The actual system in place in the early Republic which made the VP the second place electoral vote winner was pretty close to the worst system imaginable for electing a Vice President.
Virgin Mobile raised text and speech pay-as-you-go rates with the only warning being, get this, at text message which costs YOU to recieve. Where's my back-out date?
I think you are missing the point of "pay-as-you-go" service.
How does Washington to Adams even qualify as a "transition"? That's as much a transition as the "transition" from Reagan to Bush Sr. was, in every sense (Adams was Washington's vice president, for one).
Uh, no. They aren't really analogous at all. Do remember that for quite some time after the Constitution was established, the Vice President was the second place contender in the Presidential election, not someone who ran and was elected with the President. So Adams, as Washington's Vice President, had a very different relationship to Washington than Bush, as Reagan's VP, had to Reagan.
The first transition of power ever in the U.S. was in 1800, also known as "Revolution of 1800".
But, by your own argument about the 1797 transition, that should have been an easy transition, just like Reagan->Bush, simply because Jefferson was Adams' Vice President.
Of course, the "but he was his predecessors VP, so it doesn't count" argument doesn't apply to the 1801 transition for the same reason it doesn't apply to the 1797 transition.
So your saying Google, a large corporation is claiming that it is harmed by the way something was done because it amended the state's constitution through the very same existing laws that lead to the smoking ban in public restaurants and such.
No, I'm saying Google is claiming it was harmed by a provision which it claims was implemented contrary to the Constitution. The harm itself is not the whole of the claim. (And, as others have pointed out, Google is filing an amicus brief here, so standing isn't technically an issue, but the same factors that affect standing speak to the interest of the filer and thus the weight given to their claims.)
A company attempting to limit the established rights of a state that existed well before the company was thought of let alone materialized.
California has no "established rights" to implement Constitutional changes in a manner inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution governing changes, which is the basis on which Prop. 8 is being challenged.
Virtually any constitutional amendment passed by voter referendum would be invalid and unless the courts are willing to selectively administrate justice, they will fall on the first challenge from anyone who can claim standing.
Uh, no. Standing is what it takes to get into court to even present a claim that something was done unlawfully. A particularized harm is usually a requirement to have standing. Having standing doesn't mean you win, it just means you get to be heard.
Let them leave "marriages" to people who have traditionally administered it (priests, reverends, sea captains, and other positions of respect and honor).
Marriage has traditionally been a function of the civic authorities in Western society; religious involvement increased during the middle ages (and, of course, there was no modern separation of church and state, so the religious and civic regulation blended together) but even so was never a pre-eminently religious institution, merely one that was both civic and religious simultaneously, and even in the religious component in the West (at least, within Christianity) marriage, as a sacrament, was (and is still, at least in the Catholic Church) unique among sacraments in that it is administered by the two people who become married, not by a religious authority figure.
Government has as much claim to marriage as religion does; religion certainly has no superior claim on the term. Already, civic and religious marriage are separate institutions. Certainly, this is muddled by policy in which the state allows religious leaders to solemnize the marriage-under-the-law, and the fact that this is often done in coordination with their role in solemnize marriage-within-the-church, but the two are completely different things.
You are still focusing on the oddball leaf, instead of the tree-forget about the forest!
You clearly don't even know what "the forest" is. The post was a response to a very specific claim, and you aren't even disagreeing with waht I said.
*1. You are beating a dead horse=not productive, and social issues still drive politics.
For the first part of that, I don't know what "dead horse" you are referring to. For the second part, that's exactly what I said, in both GP and GGGP, so clearly you either aren't reading the posts you are responding to, or you are deliberately misrepresenting what you are responding to in order to present the exact same position as if it was a disagreement.
2. You miss the point that Society drives/forces/enables politics! WTF??!!??
You are repeating what you said at the end of #1; again, since I specifically said that views social issues drive views on political isssues, you are either not reading what you are responding to or misrepresenting it deliberately just to argue.
In GP, I said:
Whether the relationships should occur is a social (or moral) issue.
Whether they should be recognized by the state is a political issue.
Again, views of the former certainly color views of the latter.
So, I didn't "miss" the fact that political views are driven by social views, I stated it explicitly. Earlier, in GGGP, I said (and this is the whole post) in response to the claim "The problem is, this isn't really a political issue, it is a social issue.":
Whether same-sex relationships should occur is a social issue, without being a political issue.
Whether same-sex couples are given the same treatment under the law, without unequal or supposedly "separate but equal" treatment under the law, is a political issue.
Prop. 8 relates to the second, not the first, and is therefore political. Of course one's view on the social issue is likely to color one's view on the political issue, but that doesn't stop the political issue from being a political issue.
So, even from the beginning, I explicitly noted that views of social issues drive views of political issues. The whole point I was making, and which missed, was responding to the claim that the issue involved in the law at issue here is not a political issue. I was at no point denying (indeed, consistently I have explicitly stated) that the views on the political issue here are driven by social views, I was merely responding to the claim that the issue is purely a social issue and not at all a political one.
You should not talk about anyone else missing the forest.
I have the parent, Gparent, the GGParent posts open here while replying.
Then you either had them open without reading them, lack the ability to comprehend basic English, or are deliberately misrepresenting them.
40+ states having laws that specifically forbid sanction of same-sex relationships kind of argues against you.
No, it isn't.
Whether the relationships should occur is a social (or moral) issue.
Whether they should be recognized by the state is a political issue.
Again, views of the former certainly color views of the latter. Note that I was responding to a post claiming that the state recognition issue was a social, not a political issue.
You are just arguing semantics at this point.
No, I'm not. I suspect that you just took made a kneejerk reaction to the first sentence of my post (the GP) without reading the next sentence (the first two sentences are the same social/political division as in the beginning of this post) or the post it was responding to (which characterized the state recognition issue as social.)
Either that, or you read the post, and missed the whole point.
A court can rule that a law is unconstitutional if the law contradicts protections and definitions in the constitution. Once an ammendment is passed, it is treated with the same weight and force as the constitution (by definition, the ammendment adds to the original constitution).
If validly passed, a constitutional amendment (one "n") or revision (the two are different things in California) does become part of the Constitution. However, the question here is whether Proposition 8 was validly passed -- it was passed as an amendment, the more minor form of Constitutional change under the CA Constitution, and the challenge that Google (and others) are making is that it is the kind of change that can only be passed as a revision because it affects the "underlying principles" of the Constitution. Since Proposition 8 was submitted as a citizen initiative, which is valid for an amendment, but not for a revision (which must be submitted either by the legislature or a constitutional convention), if it is the kind of change that requires a revision, it is invalid and has no force at all.
Determining whether it is a valid amendment is a legal question within the well-established authority of the State Supreme Court.
If the people of California do not like their constitution (as ammended), then they should take steps to repeal that ammendment (re-ammending the constitution).
The Constitution of the State of California restricts how that Constitution can be amended or revised. If you do not like the way it does so, and that it sets up two different kinds of changes with different rules, you should take steps to change that Constitution.
As a society, we have agreed upon this constitutional form of government.
Yes, we have. The issue is whether Proposition 8 was validly approved given the terms of the State Constitution. Part of the whole Constitutional form of government is that the Constitution itself limits how it can be changed.
Countries on every continent? Do you have a source for that?
No. Which is why I didn't say that.
I said every continent except South America and Australia, and I really meant to include Antarctica, which doesn't have any countries. And, I'll admit, given the preliminary status that Nepal is in (order of the highest court that has not yet been implemented), it is arguably still a slight exaggeration.
Still, there are several European countries, Canada, South Africa, and a couple US states. Its hardly as if talented people with means who want to be in a place where same-sex marriage is recognized don't have places they could go, making Prop. 8 a barrier to Google seeking to attract those people to work in California.
Prop 8 was introduced as an amendment: it added language to the California state constitution. Amendments require only a simple majority vote to pass.
The other type of constitutional change is a revision: striking language or significantly changing the language in the state constitution. A revision requires a 2/3 majority vote to pass.
This is wrong in two ways -- it gets wrong what the difference between an amendment and a revision is, and gets wrong what it takes to pass each: (1) The difference between an amendment and a revision is not whether they add, strike, or significantly change language in the Constitution, its whether the change would affect the "underlying principles" of the Constitution, (2) Both an amendment and a revision require only a simple majority to approve, but only an amendment can be valid if initiated by citizen initiative. A revision requires either a legislative submission to the voters or a constitutional convention, followed by approval of the voters.
The court case is going over which type of amendment prop-8 was and thus was the method used to pass it valid.
Then why is google's argument that it harms their ability to hire people being offered?
Because to have standing to sue, in general, there must not merely be an alleged violation of the law, but the person bringing the case has to must have experienced some harm attributable to the alleged violation of the law. If they didn't allege a harm resulting from Prop. 8, they couldn't challenge it even if they presented an airtight, unassailable case that the proposition itself was unquestionably invalid.
By definition, a constitutional amendment is indeed legal.
Uh, the issue of legality in the GP is that of gay marriage in locations other than California, not the issue of the legality of Prop. 8.
OTOH, a constitutional amendment is not, in California, "by definition...legal". In fact, there are different legal procedures required for Constitutional amendments and revisions in California, and if something passed as (and with the procedures of) an initiative constitutional amendment makes changes that can only be made by a legislative constitutional revision, it is not legal. (There are, additionally, other explicit limits on what Constitutional amendments can do in California.) That's the principal ground on which Prop. 8 is being challenged, BTW, so in addition to completely missing the point of the post you were responding to, you are also completely wrong insofar as your post applies to the subject of the thread.
(There is actually at least one still-applicable limit on federal Constitutional amendments, too, so even if you missed the topic of the thread, you'd still be wrong, unless you were talking about some other constitution.)
So, exactly how many places are there that recognize "marriages" between two people of the same sex?
Countries on every continent except, IIRC, Australia and South America, and two US states (Massachussetts and Connecticut), and ISTR seeing New York recently adopt a policy of recognizing out-of-state marriages of that type though it doesn't perform them.
Question: If Google is really concerned about this, why don't they close down their California offices and move to Massachusetts where gay marriage is a recognized as legal and valid?
Answer: They're just grandstanding.
I think you have failed to think things through.
Possible Answer (1): Because that would have substantial costs (including in retaining key staff that prefer the current location), which would outweigh the benefits.
Possible Answer (2): It takes time to plan and execute such a move. Who says they aren't doing the planning for that (or a move to somewhere else) in parallel with challenging the Prop 8?
Slashdot Mirror
Vigilante justice either from their victims or from other people who might do harm before a trial can be conducted.
We don't generally withhold information relevant to the identities of potential perpetrators of even the most notorious crimes for that reason, so, while I agree that they are entitled from protection from vigilante justice just as all people are, I don't find that this would even begin to be a legitimate reason to withhold the material being discussed.
Government isn't like a business; particularly, unlike a private business, externalized benefits (particular those that accrue to the governments constituents) are benefits to the government, whereas externalized benefits are usually irrelevant to private businesses (and actually costs, when they accrue to their competitors). Widespread government adoption of open source would not only produce direct software cost savings for government, but also for the governments trading partners (which, in many cases, end up savings for government), and private business and consumers by making more high-quality open source software available.
There weren't any amendments ratified for 61 years after the 12th amendment was ratified, which was only 16 years after the Constitution itself was ratified. And that bunch 61 years later was a direct result of the Civil War; after those three, it was another 43 years till the next amendments were ratified.
Then you've got a cluster of 5 amendments in 7 years, a thirteen year gap, and two more, then an 18 year gap and one lonely amendment, a ten year gap and then four almost evenly spaced over 10 years, and then a 21 year gap and the most recent amendment 17 years ago.
Amendments aren't being ratified any less frequently than they were in the past, unless you are comparing to the 1788-1804 period immediately after the Constitution was ratified, they've been rare since the concerns identified immediately were with the first flurry of amendments.
So, even your recast argument doesn't make sense if you look at the facts.
Uh, you didn't actually watch The West Wing at all, did you? Liberals -- even the main characters that were also liberals -- weren't always "noble and right", nor, conversely, were conservatives always ignoble and wrong (indeed, one of the ways in which, on more than one occasion, main liberal characters failed to be "noble and right" is in assuming that particular Republicans/conservatives must be ignoble and wrong because they were political opponents.)
Whether or not it was "lawfully enacted by a legitimate process" is specifically the issue in dispute. If it was a constitutional revision, as Google and others challenging the law claim, then it was not "lawfully enacted" at all, and the process was not legitimate.
Sure, it was on the books, but for a different class of Constitutional changes.
(Sure, the fact that California has two different classes of Constitutional changes, with different required processes, with a boundary that is difficult to unequivocally resolve short of taking the issue to court is a problem, but its not a problem that is Google's fault.)
No, it doesn't. A revision does not require a "higher vote of affirmation" than an amendment: both require a simple majority vote. A revision, however, must be proposed by the legislature or a Constitutional convention, while an amendment, which may be proposed by the means required for a revision, may also be proposed by a citizen initiative. Prop 8 was proposed as a citizen initiative, and therefore was only validly proposed if it is properly classes as an "amendment" and not a "revision". Further, the California Constitution does not specify what constitutes the difference between a revision and an amendment in the way you suggest. In fact, it does not explicitly specify the difference at all, the meaning of the terms "revision" and "amendment" have been elucidated through case law. You're not very far from the substance of the distinction though, which has been held to be an effect on the "underlying principles" of the Constitution (which is different than changing the meaning of an existing provision, but broadly similar.)
Whether Prop 8 did that is specifically the question in dispute. It certainly is intended to alter the scope of the current equal protection clause of the state Constitution as effects what has been held for generations to be a fundamental right, that to marry, so there is at least a colorable argument that it is a revision applying either the actual "underlying principles" test or your proposed "change the meaning of an existing provision" test.
Since every person (including the owners of corporations acting through those corporations) has a right to see the government limited to acting in accordance to the Constitution, particularly when government action would affect them detrimentally, whether or not the action is popular, I see no reason to be concerned that Google or anyone else is suing to get the State to comply with the Constitution in the manner in which laws of any level, including changes to the Constitution, are enacted.
You present no reason to believe that is the case; particularly, you present no reason to believe that the challenge by others which Google has supported with its filing does not characterize the legal situation correctly.
Uh, no. In fact, I seem to notice a big to do about one almost every year. Right now, the stink is being made about the introduction (again) of a proposal to repeal the 22nd Amendment (its being characterized by critics as an effort to make Obama President-for-Life, despite the fact that the Congressional author of the proposal has submitted identical proposals frequently in the past.)
Other recent controversies over federal Constitutional amendments that have been proposed include controversies over amendments to explicitly disclaim federal abortion rights via Constitutional amendment, to define marriage in the federal Constitution as between one man and one woman, to eliminate the requirement that the President is a natural-born citizen, to establish a line-item veto, and others. There are, typically, over 100 Constitutional amendments proposed in each two-year Congress, from every conceivable side. Contrary to your suggestion, people do, in fact, still care.
If you aren't hearing about them, and the public controversies surrounding a few of the most significant ones in each Congress, its because you aren't paying attention.
The VP was rarely anything like the President's "closest workmate" in the early Republic; heck, that's rarely the case even now, where the President's "closest workmate" is far more likely to be the White House Chief of Staff.
Actually, when part of the point of stimulus is eliminating nascent deflation, it would be a mark in favor of government stimulus spending if government spending was a cause of inflation. Note that I am not agreeing with your premise, only pointing out that it doesn't lead to your conclusion, especially when one considers the context of the present economic situation.
The Great Depression after the 1933 trough wasn't about poor output; GDP growth was strong from March of 1933 until the short (compared to 1929-1933) recession of 1937-1938 and again after it. It was about poor distribution of the economic gains due to growth (despite strong growth, unemployment remained over 10%, though nowhere near the 25% it had reached when FDR took office), which was addressed during the war by wage controls and other policies of the Administration that served to produce a substantial (and fairly long-lasting) compression in the distribution of economic gains.
So, yes, the war got us out of the depression -- by providing cover for policies that were far more "socialistic" than the early policies of FDR that opponents on the right still categorize as ineffective socialism.
A "second place gets VP" system would be great if we had a ranked-ballot popular vote system using something like IRV + winner elimination, so that the first to a majority would be President and the second would be VP; parties would usually run two candidates, and most frequently the same party would probably get the Presidency and Vice Presidency, but voters would have more substantive choice in the general election.
The actual system in place in the early Republic which made the VP the second place electoral vote winner was pretty close to the worst system imaginable for electing a Vice President.
None of the different-but-similar abbreviations, discussed in your post are acronyms, so this would seem to be a non-sequitur.
I think you are missing the point of "pay-as-you-go" service.
Uh, no. They aren't really analogous at all. Do remember that for quite some time after the Constitution was established, the Vice President was the second place contender in the Presidential election, not someone who ran and was elected with the President. So Adams, as Washington's Vice President, had a very different relationship to Washington than Bush, as Reagan's VP, had to Reagan.
But, by your own argument about the 1797 transition, that should have been an easy transition, just like Reagan->Bush, simply because Jefferson was Adams' Vice President.
Of course, the "but he was his predecessors VP, so it doesn't count" argument doesn't apply to the 1801 transition for the same reason it doesn't apply to the 1797 transition.
No, I'm saying Google is claiming it was harmed by a provision which it claims was implemented contrary to the Constitution. The harm itself is not the whole of the claim. (And, as others have pointed out, Google is filing an amicus brief here, so standing isn't technically an issue, but the same factors that affect standing speak to the interest of the filer and thus the weight given to their claims.)
California has no "established rights" to implement Constitutional changes in a manner inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution governing changes, which is the basis on which Prop. 8 is being challenged.
Uh, no. Standing is what it takes to get into court to even present a claim that something was done unlawfully. A particularized harm is usually a requirement to have standing. Having standing doesn't mean you win, it just means you get to be heard.
Marriage has traditionally been a function of the civic authorities in Western society; religious involvement increased during the middle ages (and, of course, there was no modern separation of church and state, so the religious and civic regulation blended together) but even so was never a pre-eminently religious institution, merely one that was both civic and religious simultaneously, and even in the religious component in the West (at least, within Christianity) marriage, as a sacrament, was (and is still, at least in the Catholic Church) unique among sacraments in that it is administered by the two people who become married, not by a religious authority figure.
Government has as much claim to marriage as religion does; religion certainly has no superior claim on the term. Already, civic and religious marriage are separate institutions. Certainly, this is muddled by policy in which the state allows religious leaders to solemnize the marriage-under-the-law, and the fact that this is often done in coordination with their role in solemnize marriage-within-the-church, but the two are completely different things.
You clearly don't even know what "the forest" is. The post was a response to a very specific claim, and you aren't even disagreeing with waht I said.
For the first part of that, I don't know what "dead horse" you are referring to. For the second part, that's exactly what I said, in both GP and GGGP, so clearly you either aren't reading the posts you are responding to, or you are deliberately misrepresenting what you are responding to in order to present the exact same position as if it was a disagreement.
You are repeating what you said at the end of #1; again, since I specifically said that views social issues drive views on political isssues, you are either not reading what you are responding to or misrepresenting it deliberately just to argue.
In GP, I said:
So, I didn't "miss" the fact that political views are driven by social views, I stated it explicitly. Earlier, in GGGP, I said (and this is the whole post) in response to the claim "The problem is, this isn't really a political issue, it is a social issue.":
So, even from the beginning, I explicitly noted that views of social issues drive views of political issues. The whole point I was making, and which missed, was responding to the claim that the issue involved in the law at issue here is not a political issue. I was at no point denying (indeed, consistently I have explicitly stated) that the views on the political issue here are driven by social views, I was merely responding to the claim that the issue is purely a social issue and not at all a political one.
You should not talk about anyone else missing the forest.
Then you either had them open without reading them, lack the ability to comprehend basic English, or are deliberately misrepresenting them.
No, it isn't.
Whether the relationships should occur is a social (or moral) issue.
Whether they should be recognized by the state is a political issue.
Again, views of the former certainly color views of the latter. Note that I was responding to a post claiming that the state recognition issue was a social, not a political issue.
No, I'm not. I suspect that you just took made a kneejerk reaction to the first sentence of my post (the GP) without reading the next sentence (the first two sentences are the same social/political division as in the beginning of this post) or the post it was responding to (which characterized the state recognition issue as social.)
Either that, or you read the post, and missed the whole point.
If validly passed, a constitutional amendment (one "n") or revision (the two are different things in California) does become part of the Constitution. However, the question here is whether Proposition 8 was validly passed -- it was passed as an amendment, the more minor form of Constitutional change under the CA Constitution, and the challenge that Google (and others) are making is that it is the kind of change that can only be passed as a revision because it affects the "underlying principles" of the Constitution. Since Proposition 8 was submitted as a citizen initiative, which is valid for an amendment, but not for a revision (which must be submitted either by the legislature or a constitutional convention), if it is the kind of change that requires a revision, it is invalid and has no force at all.
Determining whether it is a valid amendment is a legal question within the well-established authority of the State Supreme Court.
The Constitution of the State of California restricts how that Constitution can be amended or revised. If you do not like the way it does so, and that it sets up two different kinds of changes with different rules, you should take steps to change that Constitution.
Yes, we have. The issue is whether Proposition 8 was validly approved given the terms of the State Constitution. Part of the whole Constitutional form of government is that the Constitution itself limits how it can be changed.
No. Which is why I didn't say that.
I said every continent except South America and Australia, and I really meant to include Antarctica, which doesn't have any countries. And, I'll admit, given the preliminary status that Nepal is in (order of the highest court that has not yet been implemented), it is arguably still a slight exaggeration.
Still, there are several European countries, Canada, South Africa, and a couple US states. Its hardly as if talented people with means who want to be in a place where same-sex marriage is recognized don't have places they could go, making Prop. 8 a barrier to Google seeking to attract those people to work in California.
This is wrong in two ways -- it gets wrong what the difference between an amendment and a revision is, and gets wrong what it takes to pass each:
(1) The difference between an amendment and a revision is not whether they add, strike, or significantly change language in the Constitution, its whether the change would affect the "underlying principles" of the Constitution,
(2) Both an amendment and a revision require only a simple majority to approve, but only an amendment can be valid if initiated by citizen initiative. A revision requires either a legislative submission to the voters or a constitutional convention, followed by approval of the voters.
Because to have standing to sue, in general, there must not merely be an alleged violation of the law, but the person bringing the case has to must have experienced some harm attributable to the alleged violation of the law. If they didn't allege a harm resulting from Prop. 8, they couldn't challenge it even if they presented an airtight, unassailable case that the proposition itself was unquestionably invalid.
Uh, the issue of legality in the GP is that of gay marriage in locations other than California, not the issue of the legality of Prop. 8.
OTOH, a constitutional amendment is not, in California, "by definition...legal". In fact, there are different legal procedures required for Constitutional amendments and revisions in California, and if something passed as (and with the procedures of) an initiative constitutional amendment makes changes that can only be made by a legislative constitutional revision, it is not legal. (There are, additionally, other explicit limits on what Constitutional amendments can do in California.) That's the principal ground on which Prop. 8 is being challenged, BTW, so in addition to completely missing the point of the post you were responding to, you are also completely wrong insofar as your post applies to the subject of the thread.
(There is actually at least one still-applicable limit on federal Constitutional amendments, too, so even if you missed the topic of the thread, you'd still be wrong, unless you were talking about some other constitution.)
Visible light doesn't, probably. But "light" is a term that can be used to refer to the whole of the EM spectrum.
Countries on every continent except, IIRC, Australia and South America, and two US states (Massachussetts and Connecticut), and ISTR seeing New York recently adopt a policy of recognizing out-of-state marriages of that type though it doesn't perform them.
I think you have failed to think things through.
Possible Answer (1): Because that would have substantial costs (including in retaining key staff that prefer the current location), which would outweigh the benefits.
Possible Answer (2): It takes time to plan and execute such a move. Who says they aren't doing the planning for that (or a move to somewhere else) in parallel with challenging the Prop 8?