Cecilie1200 we're arguing in freaking circles so I'll just try to start it over here.
Please read the whole thing before you respond though.
If you want to ban something give a good reason.
The fact that you personally think it's immoral and disgusting alone is not good enough. Not even if you and 99% of everyone else agreed.
::sigh:: What is the point of starting over if you're just going to keep parroting the same mindless talking points without even attempting to comprehend the answers?
We are not talking about "banning" anything, first of all. Homosexual "marriage" has never BEEN legally recognized in this country, so to say that opponents of the idea are trying to "ban" it is blatantly dishonest mischaracterization and emotional propaganda.
Second, no, I DON'T need to "give a good reason", and I am certainly not required to vet my reasons through you to make sure they come up to snuff. And yes, the fact that most of society doesn't like something IS a good enough. It might not be good enough FOR YOU, but like I said, no one is required to vet their reasons through you to get your approval.
Third, I have yet to say that my objection to homosexual "marriage" is because I think it is immoral and disgusting. YOU are the only one who keeps saying that, and I have been immensely patient with your incessant and increasingly offensive attempts to jam me into the box of what you have decided all opponents of homosexual "marriage" must be and what they think and to BY GOD stuff those words down my throat because you desperately want to argue against them so that you don't EVER have to actually listen to someone else's viewpoint, let alone think about it or consider the possibility that they MIGHT have a valid reason for disagreeing with you. I am now at the point where reading the words "because you think it's immoral and disgusting" is just flat-out offensive and I will now be taking it as a direct insult.
Maybe the reason it seems like we're talking in circles is because you're mostly talking to yourself. Perhaps you could try asking me what I think and believe as if you actually plan to hear the answer, instead of phrasing it so that it's clear that you're convinced you KNOW the answer, and really just want to know how I can be so stupid and primitive and not as enlightened as you are.
You said
"Did the People have the legal right to outlaw alcohol, regardless of whether or not it was a good idea or had any personal affect on them? Yes"
You're basically arguing tyranny of the majority to the letter.
There's no such thing as a tyranny of the majority. Tyranny, by definition, is oppression of the people, and the people cannot oppress themselves. You have three choices. You can either let the people choose their laws and their type of society for themselves, in which case most people will be happy and a small number will be disgruntled, or you can let a small group impose their "wisdom" on everyone else, which really IS a tyranny, or you can have absolutely no system or order whatsoever, in which case you will probably end up with a bunch of small tyrannies. But to say, "I didn't get my way, so I'm being oppressed and tyrannized!" is just so much childish whining. If you can't convince people to agree with you, you lose. That's life. Deal with it, and wage a better fight next time.
You're basically saying that whatever the majority decides the rest of the people have to go along with it, no ifs ands or buts about if (unless they can become the majority).
Yup. That's how it works in a nutshell, and it beats the hell out of the plan YOU are advocating, where a small group of people decides what everyone else has to go along with.
I can argue all day that those schmucks had no right to demand everyone follow their twisted morality of 'though shalt not drink' just because they had strength in numbers.
You can, but you would sound stupid, because they DID have the right. Doesn't mean it was a good idea, but that's both the strength and the weakness of a free society: you have the freedom to fail and screw up royally. And you need to learn the difference between "This is a bad idea" and "You don't have the right to do it".
Why bother even having a freaking bill of rights if you think the majority can decide everything? Although if you want to talk bill of rights how about the ninth amendment.
You have the Bill of Rights for a couple of reasons. First of all, the purpose of the Bill of Rights, despite what people seem to think, is NOT to protect the minority from the majority. It's to protect EVERYONE from a government that is temporarily out of touch with the will of the people. Or to look at it another way, it's to protect all of us from the government BECOMING out of touch with the will of the people. This crazy notion people have that the Bill of Rights sets up a blanket protection for minority groups from EVER having to live with any laws or strictures they don't like is just . . . well, crazy.
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Translated into modern English this means that the people have more rights than guaranteed in the constitution. This has been used amongst other thing to guarantee the right of privacy (and based off that the right to sodomy). Why shouldn't the right to marry whoever you want be one of them?
So your interpretation is what? That absolutely everything is a right, and no laws can EVER be passed limiting ANY behavior, because everyone has a right to do everything, in which case the Founding Fathers shouldn't even have wasted their time writing the Bill of Rights, since EVERYTHING is a protected, sovereign, inviolable right?
Get a grip and read the Tenth Amendment.
That's why I kept asking how it affects you, if it affected you a lot than that might be a good reason to ban something. But if it doesn't and can't affect you or a nonconsenting 3rd party in any way then you need to think of a good logical reason to ban it.
One more time. We aren't "banning" anything. THEY wanted to change the status quo, not us. THEY dragged their personal lives out into the public arena and demanded approval and sanction, and when THEY didn't get it, THEY started shouting that it's "none of our business". Well, they made it our business when they made it public, took it to court, and tried to make it a law. So don't ask for people's opinions if you're not prepared to hear them.
It affects me because it has become a public issue of what the law will be.
Oh, and by the way, "How does it affect you?" is another way of asking why I hold my position while simultaneously making it clear that you have no interest in really hearing the answer, because you're convinced that you KNOW the answer, and therefore your real question is, "How could you be so dumb and unenlightened as to not accept and agree with my wisdom on the subject?" That would be why you're not getting answers you find satisfactory. Try opening your mind and rephrasing your question.
Murder, bestiality, theft, child porn, inciting a riot, lying on taxes all have good logical reasons to make them crimes (under pretty much any definition). I've never heard of a good one to ban gay marriage. None of those cases you cited (save the MA ones) would've been affected by gay marriage. They are discrimination laws which is another story (honestly some of those cases didn't even happen in states that have gay marriage).
Wrong. There are definitions by which those things should not be crimes. Those definitions belong to the people who want to commit those acts. They are a minority, and they are disgruntled that the majority is "tyrannizing" them by not letting them do as they please. You start from the assumption that everyone holds the same moral views you do, and then pretend that they aren't moral views, but simply "objective reality". As I said, try having an objective debate with NAMBLA on the good, logical reasons that child porn and sex with minors should be crimes, and you'll find out EXACTLY how "objective and widespread" your definition of reality really is.
Also, every single one of those cases, and the more severe ones in other countries, came about because of an attitude in the government of those areas that said that homosexuality is officially the equivalent of heterosexuality and therefore it is proper to use the power of government to impose that attitude onto others. It is a situation that will only become worse if and when legalized homosexual "marriage" becomes widespread, precisely because the underlying purpose of the push for it IS to enable activists to use the power of government to bludgeon their opponents.
I hate to break this to you but you're not the government.
Go break it to Abraham Lincoln, pal. "Of the people, by the people, and for the people . . ." Ring any bells?
You're a citizen, you pay taxes, you follow the letter of the law (hopefully) etc. Just because you're a citizen doesn't mean that everything the government does means you are therefore are approving of it. The government exists to serve the people, and I see no reason why it shouldn't serve gay couples.
Individually, I am a private citizen, that is true. Collectively with all the other private citizens of this country, I am the government. Any and all power that the government wields, it receives from we the people and it wields with our tacit approval.
Yes, the government DOES serve the people, because that is the reason why we the people invest our power in it. And I see a very good reason why it shouldn't serve homosexual couples in this instance: because it is not proper for the government to serve a small group's special interests over and in opposition to the interests of the majority. Once again, that is the definition of "tyranny". Real tyranny, not the whiny spoiled child kind.
The government allows all sorts of things. Like flag burning for one. It doesn't matter if you or 99% of the people thought that it was disgusting and immoral we'd still have that right, because our country was founded on the notion that every citizen has rights that the majority can never take away.
Wrong. If 99% of the people thought it should be illegal, they would simply amend the US Constitution to exclude flag-burning from the First Amendment. What, you thought the Bill of Rights was unlike any other part of the Constitution, and was totally inviolate and could never, ever be changed? The only reason flag-burning, while distasteful to many and possibly most people, remains illegal: because the people themselves do not find allowing it as distasteful as they find the idea of making it illegal.
I could write a book full of the most sickening disgusting thoughts I could find, and if it doesn't cross into libel slander hate speech plagiarism, or the very loose definitions of obscenity (fun fact, if my book as a whole had literary value than it automatically is not obscenity) then it gets to published, and the government has to allow that, although you don't have to approve it. It's because this country wasn't founded on the idea of tyranny by the majority. It was founded on majority rules, minority rights.
The government has to allow that because the people want them to. Once again, the people have the power to make that behavior illegal if they decide it is necessary. You confuse "has not criminalized" with "cannot criminalize". The Bill of Rights, and the rest of the US Constitution, are printed on sheepskin, not carved in stone.
"I can't see a single reason why I shouldn't expect and demand that the effort be made [to make it as kid friendly as possible]."
How about the fact that children are the minority? How about the fact that people should have a right to behave in a kid-friendly manner? Just because you let people do adult things doesn't mean you have to "take my kids and live in the worst part of town with all the drug dealers and gangs, because all they really need for a good example is me."
Children may be a numerical minority. People who love and value children - not to mention people who would just like to live in a nicer society - are not.
And nice try and deliberate misunderstanding, but no soap. What your attitude really comes down to is "I want to be nice and liberal and let everyone do as they please, but NIMBY." You get the warm, fuzzy feeling of saying, "See what a good person I am, minding my own business and letting people live their lives just as they please", and you don't have to deal with the consequences of your attitudes, because YOU have taken YOUR family and moved away from those consequences. What do you care if it hurts the people who can't make that choice? It doesn't affect YOU, so you don't care.
You're argument is essentially 'the majority gets to force the minority to behave in manners the majority finds acceptable, with possibly the exception of the bill of rights' which I find sickening. Our country wasn't founded on life, limited liberty, and the pursuit of happiness so long as the majority finds it acceptable.
Your attitude is that a small, vocal minority should be allowed to run roughshod over everyone else and force their desires, attitudes, and beliefs on people against their will, and I not only find that sickening, I find it sickening that you DON'T find that sickening, or see how incredibly contrary to the founding principles of this country it is.
ALL liberty is limited. It's limited by the boundaries of the guy next to you and HIS liberties. And the pursuit of happiness is ALSO limited . . . by how good you are at pursuing it. What you don't seem to understand is that "pursuit of happiness" means you have to actually PURSUE it, not just throw a big, screaming, foot-stomping tantrum and demand that it be given to you. No one is stopping homosexuals from pursuing what will make them happy, but the pursuit in this case takes the form of convincing people to vote in the laws they want. Don't blame me if MY pursuit of happiness has been more successful than theirs.
I also find it laughably hypocritical that you're solemnly preaching the virtues of untrammeled liberty and the pursuit of happiness as an argument for limiting the liberties of most of the country, and flat-out denying them the right to pursue THEIR happiness at all.
Although let's have a little quiz. If the majority wanted to overturn the first amendment would you protest? Would you think that 'they have no right to do this'?
Yes, and yes. Opposing someone else's legal attempt to do something in no way invalidates the fact that it IS legal for them to attempt to do it. Unlike some people, I don't find it necessary to dismantle the entire system of a free society and impose a dictatorship merely because I don't always get my own way.
If the answer is no you're argument is truly tyranny by the majority and if we followed that than the bill of rights would not be worth jack. So much for a free country.
Once again, you might be better served by actually shutting your flapping gob long enough to FIND OUT what my answer is, rather than asking with the assumption already in your head that you KNOW. Why are you so afraid to let people express their own opinions instead of trying to be both sides of the debate at once?
If you're answer is yes than at what point do you decide that the freedom of majority to control society needs to be limited?
Well, obviously, YOU decide that the freedom of the masses should be limited at the point that you don't get your own way. Personally, I don't fear the open, free give-and-take of the American political system, nor do I fear my fellow citizens. I'm sorry that you do.