Thank you, I was trying to get there and have a conversation here, at the same time, so I’m not as clear as you were.
No one is going to put you in jail for owning or driving a car based on what group you fall in. No one is going to arrest you for being in a certain school district. I’m not one who practices polygamy, but it’s none of my business between consenting adults: those not coerced or strong-armed into it.
Click on the time in the upper right-hand corner of a post and a box will pop-up containing a URL with the post number. You also see post numbers when you reply to someone (at the top of the reply-box I see “Replying to post 182”) or quote-reply to someone (so quoting you shows quote = “bwv812, post:182, topic 11575” within my reply-box).
You can also click the link icon at the bottom of every post for the same information
I guess my problem with believing in an active devil intent on confusion and misinformation is how can what you think you know actually be useful? What if beliefs that you base your entire life on are manipulations set into place decades ago? What if the bible is actually a collection of letters meant to help stimulate and create an organization obsessed with control and exclusion?
How do you know? What if everything you believe is lies all the way down? I mean, if the devil is capable, why isn’t he THAT capable?
Actually, providing the dance was a gavotte, and providing that the angel had a suitable partner (also able, for the sake of argument, both to gavotte, and to dance it on the head of a pin), the answer is a straightforward one.
To everyone trying to defend Scalia on this, I’ll just say that there is no way I would accept a juror who believed this, let alone a judge.
“In theory, an infinite number. In practice, as many as will fit.”
Really? If there’s one culture politicians, radio hate mongers, Tea Baggers, etc. get away with disrespecting it’s muslims. I guess you don’t keep up with hate crimes aimed at Muslims in the US including the torching of mosques. Making martyrs out of old, white , male christians isn’t only disingenuous, but they still freaking run the show.
That’s fine, though I’m not sure you have any choice – I don’t think that’s a question a juror is required to answer. And who knows, the person who believes in a literal god and devil might be more sympathetic than the one who doesn’t, so even if you could identify and refuse them it’s unclear that – in most legal cases – that would actually be to your advantage.
Beware of prejudice. Including prejudice against those you consider deluded. Even if you’re right, they may not go where you expect them to from that starting point… just as people who start from places you agree with may go in directions you don’t. approve of. Genetics interpreted unreasonably leads to eugenics, for example.
Maybe you missed the words “can get away”. People bend over backwards to avoid offending Muslims - the Mohammed South Park episode as an example. Though they never had any problem over the ridicule of Scientologists, Jews, Mormons, Catholics, Christains, etc etc. (To be fair these other groups generally don’t start attacking embassies or beheading people when they get mad.)
Just using this site as an example, there were people complaining about the portrayal of Taliban fighters in a recent Bansky video. I just saw a post where someone got bent out of shape for a person using male pronouns through out their argument. People are sooo sensitive to the feelings and respect of other cultures that I’ve seen people get bent all out of shape here and in other places over the slightest hint of racism, sexism, misogyny, etc. But ridiculing someone’s widely held religious belief and characterizing them as bat shit insane is ok as long as it’s not one of the protected groups, especially if they have different political views than you. Just looking for a little less hypocrisy.
Yes, but the argument was that since the 14th Amendment doesn’t enumerate specific protected classes, then all classes are protected. The 14th Amendment doesn’t say anything about immutable traits.
If gender reassignment becomes more popular, do we stop protecting against sex discrimination, since it is a choice? Does Chelsea, nee Bradley, Manning lose protection for any sex-discrimination claims that might arise? And why do we have different standards of scrutiny for race-based and sex-based discrimination, if both are immutable? Do we protect against discrimination based on immutable traits like eye or hair color, breast size or height? Do we protect against beauty? (Note that if we apply the same “discriminatory effect” or “disparate impact” tests for some of these characteristics that we currently apply against race-based discrimination under Civil Rights laws, it’s likely that we would find unsupportable discrimination.)
To be fair: she misunderstands both, pretty much equally.
What sex would the suitable partner be? Otherwise, there are a few states for which the answer would be zero, because it would be illegal for the angel couple to cavort together.
It actually isn’t a choice in terms of the transgendered, they already experience life through the eyes of the gender that they eventually have surgery to become. You should read up on it. It’s no more a choice than being gay, or you being whatever sex you are.
If people are being discriminated against for characteristics that you mention such as eye color, beauty, whatever, as a group, and that is a group that is treated differently under the law, than others, let’s say, those who may have brown eye color: ie All brown eyed people can have kinky sex, but blue eyed people can not and will go to jail, then of course they (the blue eyed) should be protected. The laws shouldn’t favor a particular group and criminalize and degrade others for the same things. There is a parallel to race related civil rights, if someone who is black can be arrested or degraded for drinking out of a white water fountain, but whites can do as they please with any fountain, it’s similar to consenting homosexual adults who are prohibited by law to practice specific sex acts, and by not being in the majority of heterosexuals, they are subject to different laws and criminalization, while their heterosexual counterparts are not.
Scalia was blaming other “morality”, when in fact, he was projecting his own into that decision. Further, he justified his stance by claiming that democracy would handle it and that the majority of citizens disagreed with the court’s decision, and if the majority is basing this decision, not on the 14th amendment and having everyone protected by the same laws, but on the dominance of Christian values, then he was, in essence, violating the 1st amendment.
And this is my last post on this.
I think you are misreading what he is saying. The first amendment has two separate clauses related to Freedom of Religion: the Establishment clause and the Free Exercise clause. Scalia is saying that if the State establishes a religion, but this establishment does not interfere with the Free Exercise of anyone’s religion, he doesn’t think that individuals should have standing to bring suit, because they have not been harmed. Here I think Scalia is attacking judge-made Establishment doctrine, as opposed to the Constitution’s Establishment clause. Now it’s true that Scalia’s interpretation would make it difficult to enforce the Establishment clause, but there are questions of standing (as well as the problem of inadequate remedies) that make it somewhat difficult to enforce other parts of the Constitution as well.
In neither of the VRA or ACA cases did Scalia write an opinion. In the VRA case (Shelby County v. Holder), which was decided 5-4, he joined four other Associate Justices in Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion. In the ACA case (National Federation v. Sebelius) there was a split 4-4-1 decision with Roberts casting the deciding vote and Scalia joining an unsigned opinion. Scalia was hardly out in left field on either case, as he was part of the majority in Shelby and joined three other Justices in Sebelius, and neither of these cases really say anything in particular about his jurisprudential approach since he didn’t write an opinion for either. If you want to attack Scalia based on the way he voted in these cases, you’ll also have to attack those who voted with him… and I don’t think anyone is accusing Kennedy of being some undemocratic religious nutcase.
But let’s look at the cases anyway.
The opinion on the VRA was predicated on the fact that the preclearance formula being used today was last modified almost 40 years ago in 1975. (Preclearance means that affected states must clear their voting regulations with the federal government before the voting regulations can be implemented.) The majority Roberts opinion said that the formula for determining what states are covered by the preclearance requirement must change to reflect changes in the level of discrimination, especially since the constitutional justification for the VRA was to remedy prior discrimination: if the Court was to judge the 1975 preclearance formula in the current context, it would be found unconstitutional. The idea of preclearance was not struck down, only the 40-year-old formula for determining what places are affected. The opinion makes it clear that not only is Congress free to draft a new preclearance formula, they are encouraged to do so. (Of course, it is extremely unlikely that the requisite bipartisan support for a new preclearance formula can be found, but what the Court is doing is essentially re-punting it to Congress to make a decision).
The unsigned joint dissent in the ACA case looks at the language of the ACA, which specifically says the ACA is not a tax, and concludes that the mandate should not be interpreted as a tax. If it is not a tax, then 5 Justices agree that it fails the Commerce Clause and would be unconstitutional. But the ACA was saved only because Roberts (writing in a separate opinion that no one else joined) said that even though Congress explicitly said it wasn’t a tax, it really was a tax, and was thus a constitutional exercise of the federal government’s taxing (and spending) powers under the 16th Amendment. So that means 5 judges would have rejected the law as an unconstitutional exercise of the Commerce Clause (because you cant use the Commerce Clause to force people to engage in commerce), while 4 justices (including Scalia) also say that because it isn’t a tax and doesn’t claim to be a tax, it cannot be saved under the 16th Amendment.
NB: under the federalist system enshrined in the Constitution’s 10th Amendment, the federal government can only make laws in the specific subject areas enumerated in the Constitution, with all other powers being reserved for the states. For example, only the states can have general police powers. For everything the federal government wants to do, there must be a constitutional hook. In the VRA law, the 14th amendment was the hook. In the ACA case, both the Commerce Clause (which has become incredibly broad in since the New Deal) and the 16th Amendment were possible hooks. Absent one of these Constitutional hooks, the federal government cannot enact laws.
Note that the two cases that Olson was talking about were dealing with race-based discrimination. The 14th Amendment was written to apply to race-based discrimination. Everyone knew, at the time it was written, that it was about racial discrimination and emancipation. On the other hand, nobody reading the 14th Amendment in 1868 thought it was extending rights to homosexuals. This is how Scalia would differentiate the two. Scalia thinks that if we now want to extend similar protections to gays, we should either legislate that protection or amend the Constitution to reflect this.
If you want to argue further, please cite to opinions that Scalia actually wrote.
I accept that not all people are cisgender, and that this is not due to any choice they have made. But it also seems true that those who decide to have sexual-reassignment surgery have made a choice, and that their sex has ceased to be immutable. Since their sex is no longer immutable, does this mean it does not deserve protection?
People are regularly discriminated upon in the workplace in terms of beauty and even height. It may not be conscious discrimination, but there’s no denying it has a disparate impact on those who are short v. tall, and conventionally attractive v. not. Should the 14th Amendment require that State employers control for discrimination on the basis of height or beauty? Shouldn’t this be a protected class?
I’m sorry, but it is not a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment clause for voters and their representatives to enact laws that are merely consistent with their views of religious morality.
Justice Scalia then went on to yell at some kids to get off his lawn, and while they were at it, get haircuts and turn down that rock music.
Again, Muslims on the streets of the US including NYC have been the victims of hate crimes and mosques have been burned down and hindered in building them. Don’t confuse television programs or movies with reality. And don’t change the subject by bringing up gender pronouns. Look into yourself for a little less hypocisy.
I guess you missed my point. My point is that when there is something like a Muslim hate crime, there is a mass of people condemning it, and reminding people that not all Muslims are terrorists. It’s not “ok”, they don’t “get away” with it. It isn’t socially acceptable.
I see the opposite some times, where a group of people will be condemned or lumped into one category, and no one bothers to bring some perspective to the issue or remind people to be respectful of the differences. Stereotyping, white washing, generalizing, ridicule, and other things are perfectly fine with one issue - but if you tried to do the same thing on another issue you would get strung up.
[quote=“wysinwyg, post:180, topic:11575”]Unless you assume up-front that the Matrix can’t be discovered from within, one’s best method of finding out that one is in the Matrix is application of the scientific method. SM is a means of testing assumptions, not an assumption in itself.
If you want to argue the point further I’ll make a new post for that discussion.[/quote]
Well, having been down this road many times, rehashing an argument that’s been pretty much settled (in my opinion, anyway) since the early 1600s, I’d rather agree to disagree. 
I believe you are claiming to be able to discern true objective reality based on the cogitation of a meat engine capable only of subjective experiences through use of the scientific method.
In contrast, I’m saying that in order for your claim to be a logically coherent argument, you need to state premises and steps leading to your conclusion; this is inherent in the scientific method itself. I further claim your base premises are known to you through faith, not through proof, because any proof of them must in turn rest on additional premises. The only thing you can prove without depending on inherently unprovable premises is ergo cogito sum (I can think, therefore I know that I personally exist). The existence of anything other than your own thoughts is based on unreasoned intuitive faith that the world you think you know (sanskrit maya) in some way represents non-illusory phenomena.
I’m perfectly willing to let you believe whatever you want, and you can find millions of pages of argument for and against my position very easily! So I’d rather not argue it, but I do thank you for offering the opportunity. The twin cores of the scientific method are skepticism and an open mind.
