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Obama administration will no longer defend DOMA

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Dick Whitman, Feb 23, 2011.

  1. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    "Teachers are not against merit pay because they care about how it would negatively impact education. They just don't want to be held accountable."

    See how easy that is?

    At some point, you have to forget about ferreting out pretext and address the argument on its own merits. Is that a rational basis for restricting marriage or not? The motive stuff is just a distraction.
     
  2. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    As far as your last paragraph goes, there are hundreds of millions of people in this country, and you can't draft individualized legislation for every one of them. Nor expect bureaucrats to examine every marriage ahead of time to see if it will foster a healthy environment for child-rearing. That's inefficient. So you use proxies. And one of the proxies is restricting marriage to one man and one woman.

    Besides, marriage has been defined as a "fundamental right." As has abortion and most things related to child bearing. So you can't really legislate much in that arena. So you can't, for example, write a law that convicted felons can't get married. Or that people have to have a combined salary to get a marriage license.
     
  3. Agreed.

    Just because an idea is popular or a majority of people support it does not make it right.
     
  4. J Staley

    J Staley Member

    I'm not saying there should be laws like this.

    I just don't get how a "fundamental right" can apply to everybody but gays -- a minority subject to irrational rebuke by some people, many religious -- then have people claim it's not rooted in religion.
     
  5. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Because they can present social science that says that children are best reared by two opposite-gender parents.

    And the "fundamental right" does not necessarily apply to gays because, by definition, opponents would argue that "marriage" doesn't involve two same-sex partners any more than a dog is a cat.
     
  6. old_tony

    old_tony Well-Known Member

    A scenario for those who like the idea of the Administration deciding whether laws are Constitutional rather than the Supreme Court.

    http://spectator.org/blog/2011/02/24/attorney-general-mark-levin-wo
     
  7. Piotr Rasputin

    Piotr Rasputin New Member

    Clearly these should be taken on a case-by-case basis.

    If it's a law I personally disagree with, then I would hope the government does what I deem to be the Right Thing.

    If it's a law I like, then I would hope the government does what I deem to be the Right Thing.
     
  8. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    I called my wife on this last night.

    She was commending the legislators in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana for fleeing the state.

    I asked her why she would commend them when she spent so much time complaining about filibuster threats by the GOP faction in the Senate.

    She got kind of (playfully) testy and said she wasn't that "evolved" in her thinking about it, and wasn't going to start tonight. She was just being results-oriented.
     
  9. Crash

    Crash Active Member

    If the phrase "Attorney General Mark Levin" is ever uttered in America, I'll have already hopped across the pond.
     
  10. Piotr Rasputin

    Piotr Rasputin New Member

    Strangely, the United States did not suffer from promised mass exoduses after the 2000, 2004 and 2008 presidential elections.
     
  11. three_bags_full

    three_bags_full Well-Known Member

    Fixed
     
  12. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    Americans often don't realize how hard it is to move to another country. You generally have to prove that you'd be useful to that country, and merely being American doesn't get you as far as you'd think.
     
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