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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (112152)	5/29/2009 11:18:32 AM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541616

<<<The point for me is unequal treatment, not hurt. >>> If you could get rid of all the nut jobs off the SC, at best, you would probably get agreement 95% of time. That is why we still have a SC. Otherwise, you could replace the SC with a computer. Your view of equal treatment, like everyone else's, comes out of your life experiences. Most people, you, me, and I suspect, nearly everyone on this thread has life experience that is relatively narrow. We were born into a social class and more or less stayed within those narrows boundaries. Sonia Sotamayor has gone from living in an inner city housing project with a single mother to the halls of Ivy and way beyond. I think her life experiences are far richer than ours. I think her judgement, everything else being equal (which they aren't) have far more validity.

To: Lane3 who wrote (112152)	5/29/2009 11:42:55 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 541616

Both? Both whats? Both homosexuals and heterosexuals. But it doesn't. Some people get to marry whomever they love and want to spend their lives with and some people don't. Please tell me how that's equal. The law doesn't concern itself with love, or with sexual orientation. With exceptions (like incestuous situations, and people who are already married), and man can marry any woman. The law isn't different for the homosexual. Its equal because its identical. X=X. It might not be fair, some would also consider it unreasonable, but its not just vaguely equal its exactly equal. Even the vast majority of supporters of gay marriage don't, in other situations, usually think that equal treatment under the law requires treating different actions, inclinations, and desires equally. Most don't think you should be able to marry people who are already married (or if they do they don't think its an equal treatment under the law issue). Alcohol is legal, but marijuana is not. That doesn't mean that marijuana users are denied equal treatment under the law. This is a good example for me, because it doesn't rely on the prohibited thing being something I'm sure I want illegal. (In fact I would want marijuana to be legal, even though I've never used it and probably never will.) Its not a matter of animus against marijuana, or homosexuals, its just that outlawing things that some people want to do (or not giving them recognition and benefits, which is the case with gay marriage), and allowing (or granting recognition and benefits to other things), isn't disequal treatment under the law. Equal treatment only requires that you make the law the same for both people (or at least competent adults), not that the law accommodates the needs and desires of different people equally. Of course equal treatment is far from enough to determine that a policy is just or beneficial, so this point, even if it was accepted by everyone, would hardly settle the issue.