Where does Obama stand on gay rights?

[Imran Siddiqui]

It's a factual statement in basic biology. Human life begins at conception.

No it isn't. Factually, you are incorrect.

And word for word what people said to justify slavery. Congrats, imran. Old arguments are definitely in vogue.

Which is fine. Or are you like Ozzy and think that children are fully legal persons and thus deserve all the rights of fully legal persons, like the right to drink alcohol (legally) and stuff?

Hardly. Reason presupposes axioms that are available to everyone and the existance of universal truth which is also available to everyone.

It does no such thing, otherwise everyone would get to the exact same point after reason is applied. And... they don't. Hence the phrase, "reasonable people can disagree".

People may differ in their core beliefs, but the application of reason leads to one and only one conclusion.

If you start from a different beginning, you aren't going to end at the same ending. You can try to persuade people that you should start at the same beginning, but that's hardly feasible.

I've changed as well. I don't have perfect information.

No one has perfect information and no one knows what the truth is or what a lie is. It is only their opinions on what those words are and mean.

Because I've bought your ice-cream but I've found one much more tastier. You don't consider it pertinent that I've believed what you do and found solid reasons to reject it?

Not at all, because the reasons you have rejected it are reasons I find loony and completely unpersuasive.

And, of course, in that same guise, I used to be pro-life and now am pro-choice. So reapply that statement in light of that.

We haven't reached the same end, have we?


Fairy dust me away, Mr Fun! For some reason I'm finding it necessary (for now) to educate the bigot!

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Can we just go back to talking about how Obama is a homophobe?

I'm pretty sure that not only is he a hater of homosexuals but the ones on the right especially so.

[Asher]

Mr. Fun seems to believe that rights are something that is created by society.

As opposed to God?

How can you champion people (nay, society) amending constitutions -- which grant rights -- and then deny that society creates those rights?

How do you think the Charter of Rights and Freedoms got created in Canada? Divine intervention?

Tool.

[molly bloom]

The only difference is that magic D which renders you immune from being a homophobe.

It's the same way Democrats who supported slavery are never called out for it.

Yeah, only us Europeans and the Canadians remember who the Dixiecrats were, or know anything about Woodrow Wilson's highly dubious views on race.

I'm sure no Americans know anything about them- or even mention them.


But perhaps you're referring to the plantation owning, mint julep sipping Kennedy Clan. Or that famous Southern Slaveocrat, Dianne Feinstein....

[Alinestra Covelia]

Fairy dust me away, Mr Fun! For some reason I'm finding it necessary (for now) to educate the bigot!

For some reason this comment reminds me of the South Park episode where Cartman wakes up to find he's ginger.

[molly bloom]

Molly has me off ignore.

If you're somehow implying I ever had you on ignore, or anyone else for that matter, stump up the proof. Otherwise your assumption is incorrect. Why ignore what gives me such enormous entertainment at no cost ?

Then they (rights) are alienable.

You may not have heard of the American Civil Rights Struggle, or any amendments (proposed or otherwise) relating to people with disabilities, women, gay men and lesbians, but there do seem to have been a fair few alterations to constitutions and Bills of Rights around the world and down the centuries.


So congrats on catching up with all that world history since, ooh, Magna Carta, the Putney Debates, the 1689 Declaration of Rights, the French Revolutionary Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights....

Mr. Fun can't whine then about gay people being denied marriage, because as you said, rights are created by society, and can be taken away from society.

Aw, freedom loving Ben shows his true colours. Do you consider a woman's testimony in court to have the same worth as a man's ?

And do you consider African Americans to be not quite whole human beings ?

If society creates rights, then you cannot say that any of these societies were wrong in depriving these rights from anyone.

Has that right been taken away from me ? Not lately.

I spoke out for Soviet Jews and marched against the National Front in the U.K. in the 1980s. The Soviets deprived Russian Jews of what I considered to be basic human rights- the right to choose to live somewhere else and have their own religion.

The National Front wanted to deprive British Asians of a home in this country, and to deny valid refugees safety here.

I don't think it's very Christian of you to think you shouldn't speak out against that Ben. So do this chap:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

So you wouldn't speak out through what ? Laziness ? Indifference ?

Oddly enough, it's an enlightenment argument.

The sound of grandmothers being taught to suck eggs.

I don't like much about [...] enlightenment

That's more accurate.

but this part of the reform movement was spot on. The reason why everyone has the right to vote is because we believe in natural law

So the reason why everyone didn't have the right to vote in the new United States was because the natural laws weren't working ? Or people didn't understand them ?

Abigail Adams certainly knew enough to criticise the lack of rights for women, and even the arch-Tory Dr. Johnson could spot the rampant hypocrisy from the other side of the Atlantic:

"How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"

from his 'Taxation No Tyranny'.

If, as you say, rights are created by society, then we should have no problem depriving people of the vote, because it is a right created by society in the first place.

I'm glad you show an understanding of basic English comprehension. Perhaps your legal, historical and philosophical knowledge will also improve.

That is true, but the same arguement which gave the colonists the right to vote, gave these other groups the same rights.

Oh, so if the 'rights' were 'natural' at the time, then what are you saying ? That some of the greatest minds of the 18th Century were too stupid to see that if a white male had inalienable natural rights, then it would be prefectly logical to deduce that white females should also have these rights- after all, a woman gave birth to both of them.

And that following this, that as in Revolutionary France, men and women of all races should be considered to have the same 'naturally' occurring rights in the United States.

Or are you suggesting that the white Protestant males of the U.S. in the 18th and 19th Centuries were in some way unnatural- incapable of understanding deductive reasoning ? Ben, how you must hate the United States....

Rights are inherent, that is the only way we keep the rights we have

Some extreme Libertarians think you do it with gated communities, guns and ammo. Some religious groups think that maintaining the rights of the privileged means depriving others of the same rights- or not acknowledging they have any rights at all.

I'm so glad you feel the inherent rights of African Americans are what prevented all those lynchings, church bombings, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers, the deaths of civil rights workers and prevented the need for any messy Civil Rights Struggle.

Just think how different the U.S. might have been if the inherent rights of African Americans had not been recognised from the 1780s onwards.

And as for a woman's right to vote- what would Theodora Roosevelt had done if she hadn't been President ?

You have no basis to complain when your rights are taken away from you

Err, shurely shome mishtake.