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

To: Lane3 who wrote (112194)	5/29/2009 4:01:55 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541679

Marijuana users aren't a class of citizens, an identity group. Marijuana users are a set of people who want a particular thing, so are homo and hetero-sexuals. There's no equal protection for playing chess. Which is sort of my point. The law concerns itself with a contract, specifically the marriage partnership between consenting adults. And it allows homo and hetero-sexuals to have the same contract terms. Equal treatment. Unfair treatment? Perhaps, but still equal, even identical treatment. You seem to be trying to avoid the essential difference between homosexual and a heterosexual. Homosexuals have no interest in partnering with someone of the opposite sex. Duh! Just as non-marijuna users may have no interest in smoking marijuna. The "equal" ability to do so is of no value to them. Probably. But equal treatment doesn't imply equal, or even any use. It doesn't imply that all groups get their preference or that the ability to choose among your preference is equal, only that the conditions laid down by the law are equal. Having the equal option be useless to you may make the situation unfair, but it doesn't make it unequal. In this case the treatment is identical. You can't get more equal than that. As Anatole France said* "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." The rich may have no interest in sleeping under bridges or begging in the streets. The idea of doing such things may be of no value to them, but neither forbidding nor allowing such activity would be against the idea of equal treatment under the law. Forbidding poor people from begging in the streets while allowing rich people to do so (or vice versa) would be, because the law is applying different restrictions on different people. (I think France may have been somewhat sarcastic with that comment, but it doesn't effect the relevance of the example to the current discussion)