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Originally posted by greyrat:
Yes, making the rant tag work was a pain.

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The kid is already in a bad situation. His alcoholic dad beats him and his mom. His mom has a series of affairs simply to know that she matters to somebody (please leave the moral issues of the affairs aside for just a moment). The kid is regularly sodomized by his older brother because the brother learned that was the way to dominate underlings at school (another discussion to leave aside for a moment). The kid is on drugs most of the time to stay numbed out of the situation.

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You'd ask me to defend this?

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Should we keep this family together?

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And as an aside, what if I tell you that, broken home or not, the kid grows up to be a talented, capable, well adjusted member of the planet; with a loving spouse, happy kids, a love of life and the desire to make the world a better place for as many people as he can?

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Danger. This tread no longer appears to be behaving. Or maybe it just my crappy typing (and OS)

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Originally posted by Saintonge:
Now that you've got that off your chest, you might look again, and notice I'm not talking about what you think I'm talking about.

Have a nice day, greyrat.

Originally posted by greyrat:
So sorry, but I believe if that were true, I would have gotten at least five paragraphs back.

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Your belief is mistaken. I didn't see any point in commenting further when you didn't see what my subject was in the first place.

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Originally posted by Tau Zero:
Just because something is on the books as a crime doesn't mean there is a victim involved. Look at the laws regarding drugs, or the aforementioned laws prohibiting "unnatural acts".

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You confuse your philosophy of law with that of the legislators. The kind of person who makes heroin illegal is the kind of person who believes that the heroin user is a victim -- of themself.

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Tau:
I've been watching the arguments around this for almost as long as it has been an issue, and the claim that a fetus is a person was relatively uncommon until recently.

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I lack data, and I'm to busy to look the arguments of those who made abortion illegal in the first place.

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Tau:
People can believe whatever they want to. But this puts things into the realm of faith/religion, and such matters cannot be dictated by law. The First Amendment is the supreme law of the land, and it says otherwise.

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As a matter of fact, it doesn't. It says that Congress can not prohibit the free exercise of religion, or establish an official church. It says nothing about whether states can do that, and in fact seven of the original thirteen states had some form of official church.

The argument you make about the First Amendment is, imao, an example of everything that's wrong with modern "Constitutional Law." People didn't want there to be govt. support of religion of any kind. They could have worked for a Constitutional Amendment to forbid it, but they thought they'd lose, or something, so they lied and said the Constitution already forbade it.

Down this road lies dictatorship.

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greyrat:
The kid is already in a bad situation. His alcoholic dad beats him and his mom. His mom has a series of affairs simply to know that she matters to somebody (please leave the moral issues of the affairs aside for just a moment). The kid is regularly sodomized by his older brother because the brother learned that was the way to dominate underlings at school (another discussion to leave aside for a moment). The kid is on drugs most of the time to stay numbed out of the situation.

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Sorry, but this is just ridiculous. It has no relationship to the situation in the vast majority of divorces. It's like arguing about the life of the average person with examples drawn from a maximum security prison.

The data is, overwhelmingly, that the typical child of a divorced couple is messed up by the experience of their parent's divorce, and would have turned out better if the parents had stayed together.

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Saintonge

My God, can't somebody shut him up!

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Originally posted by Saintonge:

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Tau:
People can believe whatever they want to. But this puts things into the realm of faith/religion, and such matters cannot be dictated by law. The First Amendment is the supreme law of the land, and it says otherwise.

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As a matter of fact, it doesn't. It says that Congress can not prohibit the free exercise of religion, or establish an official church. It says nothing about whether states can do that, and in fact seven of the original thirteen states had some form of official church.

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The argument you make about the First Amendment is, imao, an example of everything that's wrong with modern "Constitutional Law." People didn't want there to be govt. support of religion of any kind. They could have worked for a Constitutional Amendment to forbid it, but they thought they'd lose, or something, so they lied and said the Constitution already forbade it.

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Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.� [i](emphasis added)

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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

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NOSE, n.

The extreme outpost of the face.� From the circumstance that great conquerors have great noses, Getius, whose writings antedate the age of humor, calls the nose the organ of quell.� It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when thrust into the affairs of others, from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.

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Originally posted by Tau Zero:The State churches were disestablished long before the US Civil War, but even if public sentiment hadn't broken the link between Church and State the Fourteenth Amendment would have.� Here's the relevant language of the Fourteenth Amendment:

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Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce [b]any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.� (emphasis added)

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The Fourteenth carries all Federal prohibitions down to the states, including all restrictions in Amendment I:

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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

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Clearly, any state which endorses a church as its official religion is establishing that religion, and believers in other religions are no longer equal before the law.� This is the kind of thing which leads to religious wars, as the various faiths try to get hold of the machinery of government if only to keep it from being used against them.� It's far better and safer to have a prohibition on any of them using it, because then there is no need to be top dog just to survive.� With the First Amendment applied to the states, we really [i]can "just get along" (at least as long as people are willing to mind their own business).

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Nonsense! The legal theory of USAmerican govt. provides for taxation, by which the majority may compel the minority to pay for something they disagree with.

The fact that X, a member of the Pilkmist Church, is forced to support the state established Greelund church does not make X unequal before the law in any sense in which 'equality before the law' was used in 1865 or prior.

Would you care to argue that compelling anyone who votes against the winners of an election to obey the laws passed by the winners a second class citizen, and therefore the 14th Amendment makes govt. unconstitutional?

And remember, this all started with:

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Originally posted by cras:
Where's all the chicks?

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Keep on truckin' guys!

That that is is that that is not is not.