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What Has the 'Pro-Life' Movement Won?

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Boydstun

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The limitations of Section 10 apply only to the States, not to the federal government. The section does not require that the federal government issue only gold and silver coin as legal tender, to the chagrin of many a modern libertarian. 

Edited by Boydstun
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On 5/5/2022 at 5:44 PM, Eiuol said:

But in this case - regarding both adoption as you mentioned and abortion - the motivation seems to be for the sake of the "family", meaning that the motivation is morally wrong. Maybe you can imagine a potentially rational case, but the people we are talking about in the concrete are not motivated by anything that would resemble a rational case. 

I disagree.  The concern with the welfare of adopted children and fetuses comes from the same source, and they announce it over and over.  Human life is a value to them.  They count children and fetuses as humans.  Protecting human lives and human rights is not an irrational or ignoble pursuit, even if we here disagree with them on when a fetus should be counted as human.  

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53 minutes ago, Grames said:

even if we here disagree with them on when a fetus should be counted as human.  

But this is a massive disagreement. By disagreement about what a human life even is, there is huge disagreement about what rights are. A twisted form of human "life" is what they value in the first place, so they will have a twisted form of rights. 

Rand stated pretty well why antiabortion is monstrous:

 

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On 5/6/2022 at 8:14 PM, Eiuol said:

But this is a massive disagreement.

The disagreement is not massive, but the result (fully banning abortion or not) is.  The position of the full abortion ban proponent is merely the fallacious "argument of the beard" applied to the case of the incremental growth of the fetus.  The portion of all Americans in favor of a full abortion ban is less than 20%, so when they cannot be brought to moderate their position by reason they can be safely disregarded.  Most people that favor abortion restrictions are concerned with the second or third trimester, and even Rand allowed that arguments over the last trimester were to be taken seriously rather than dismissed out of hand.

What cannot be taken seriously is Rand's performance here while seemingly standing on one foot during a question and answer session.  

Rand first attacks William F. Buckley Jr. because he would "deny the right to abortion" without first establishing that abortion is a right.  Then she attacks the "gratuitous" nature of Buckley's denial, but an attack on the motive of an opponent is the ad hominem fallacy which has no bearing on the validity of the structure of an argument or the ultimate truth of the conclusion.  Then she constructs a theory of the motive of the anti-abortion Buckley and his ilk, that he "obviously" wants to enslave people like farm animals, which is the strawman fallacy.  Then she makes a rhetorical  pathos appeal to those poor Romeos and Juliets out there having sex and getting pregnant involuntarily as if they had no volitional control over themselves.  Then she makes the over generalization that in all such cases the pregnancy is a burden that prevents a budding career by the parents, as if the infant would have no value to the parents and would remain so (and with no budding career of its own in time).  It all adds up to nothing of philosophical significance, but it seems to have personal significance to her based on her vehemence.  It is nothing more than Rand's personal opinion and is not persuasive.

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3 minutes ago, Grames said:

What cannot be taken seriously is Rand's performance here while seemingly standing on one foot during a question and answer session.  

I didn't post that link because I was treating it as an argument, but because the rhetorical flair captures how I feel about the matter. Clearly it wasn't meant to be persuasive, so I was posting it to show anyone who might be interested in rhetoric not necessarily aimed at persuading.

10 minutes ago, Grames said:

Most people that favor abortion restrictions are concerned with the second or third trimester, and even Rand allowed that arguments over the last trimester were to be taken seriously rather than dismissed out of hand.

Great, if that's what we are talking about, I think that's worth discussion. But the subject here is a right to choose to have an abortion even in the first trimester, not abortion restrictions. That's the kind of antiabortion that I'm describing as monstrous and a twisted definition of life. 

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8 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

But the subject here is a right to choose to have an abortion even in the first trimester, ...

I think a more precise identification of the subject is "what has the pro-life movement gained as a consequence of finally getting Roe and Casey overturned?"  What they have gained is the ability to fight fifty more legal and legislative battles to have their way.  The pro-abortion movement gains the same.  Nothing has been settled, nor should pro-abortion side have ever pretended the abortion dispute ever was or could be settled by an arbitrary Supreme Court decision. 

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The root post of this thread and its title was from an opinion writer at NYT on 2 April 2022, a good way before the leak over the vote of the Justices to overturn Roe. He begins:

"The pro-life movement’s multi-decade strategy, up to and including its fraught bargain with Donald Trump, appears to have succeeded. Thanks to the Trump White House and Mitch McConnell’s Senate, there is now a 6-to-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, vetted by conservative legal activists and committed to principles of constitutional interpretation that seem to require sweeping Roe v. Wade away, or at least modifying it into obsolescence.

"Yet instead of preparing to claim victory, in the last two weeks part of the anti-abortion movement has fallen into an acrimonious debate over a radical proposal — from the Australian philosopher and Notre Dame professor John Finnis, in the journal First Things, arguing that unborn human beings deserve protections under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

"The political implication of Finnis’s argument is that the pro-life movement’s longtime legal goal, overturning Roe and letting states legislate against abortion, is woefully insufficient, and in fact pro-life activists should be demanding that the Supreme Court declare a fetal right to life."

More recently, that same opinion writer Ross Douthat penned a peice in which he compiled reasons for thinking the leak has come from a right-wing motivation and for thinking the leak has come from left-wing motivation. I assumed that already with the 5-4 Republican Court, Roe was a goner, that the Republicans would like to get a woman on the Court to read out the decision, and that the majority reasoning would be that Roe was wrongly decided because it is rightly crimianal law belonging to jurisdiction if the States, and of course, that no federal Constitutional rights were being violated by the previous statutes of the States.

It looks like that's about how it will come down. Although, I doubt Barrett will allow her gender to be used for Repuplican political-appearance purposes. I would have voted for her confirmation by the Senate; she seemed highly quialified and should not be blocked merely because she disagreed wih my stance on this very important legal issue.

 

 

 

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On 5/8/2022 at 2:59 PM, Eiuol said:

I didn't post that link because I was treating it as an argument, but because the rhetorical flair captures how I feel about the matter. Clearly it wasn't meant to be persuasive, so I was posting it to show anyone who might be interested in rhetoric not necessarily aimed at persuading.

But rhetoric is essentially about persuading.

 

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I thought about that point later on after I said it. Reflecting back on it, I should have said that the rhetoric in that case wasn't intended to persuade people who were antiabortion to become pro-abortion, but it was persuasion towards a particular type of emotional reaction in line with those who are pro-abortion. 

I don't see what point you're trying to make with the quote there though. I'm not even saying that some anti-abortion people are disagreeing for dishonest reasons, I'm saying that some of those people are pathetically stupid and aren't worth the time, but they are worth disdain when they are politically active. I'm saying this in terms of the politics of abortion, not about disagreements in general. 

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  • 1 month later...

So now abortion is up to the States.

 

If I remember correctly, Rand's positions were:

 

An absolute right to life after birth.

Violating a doctor's freedom to act for anyone (without harm to anyone) is a violation of the doctor's rights.

No special positive "rights" for anyone to get any medical procedure or any funding for anything health related.

 

I cannot recall any specific position on people who are in a coma, or on life support, at varying levels of cognitive function, and whether the level of brain activity is operative in extinguishing rights to life or in defining when a person ceases to be a person for the purposes of determining rights e.g. to life. I would assume Rand would have accepted the concept of "brain dead", specifically in the medical sense.

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On 5/19/2021 at 5:49 AM, Boydstun said:

 

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

US Supreme Court decision likely in summer of 2022.

“and at 12 weeks the ‘unborn human being’ has ‘taken on “the human form” in all relevant respects”.” —Justice Alito, Dobbs v. Jackson

Hardly.

At 12 weeks, the brain of the fetus has the form of a mammalian brain, but not yet the form of a primate brain, let alone a human brain.

The serious consistency of today’s overturn of Roe v. Wade is with its past upholdings of the right of government in the US to conscript citizens into military service. Forced labor of still-warm bodies of young men. Forced labor of pregnant bodies of women conscripted into service of reinforcing other citizens' mass psychosis and confusedness.

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5 minutes ago, Boydstun said:

“and at 12 weeks the ‘unborn human being’ has ‘taken on “the human form” in all relevant respects”.” —Justice Alito, Dobbs v. Jackson

Hardly.

At 12 weeks, the brain of the fetus has the form of a mammalian brain, but not yet the form of a primate brain, let alone a human brain.

The serious consistency of today’s overturn of Roe v. Wade is with its past upholdings of the right of government in the US to conscript citizens into military service. Forced labor. Still-warm bodies of young men. Pregnant bodies of women.

For the sake of argument:

Assume we do not know when a fetus does becomes a human and although not knowledgeable, is as conscious of sensations and sounds and the environment as a new born, but without the benefit of a clear unobstructed interaction with the environment.  Here I do not mean a potential to become a human, but one which we are only in ignorance of its existence.

Is one's approach to the rights to life of that entity not complicated and a nonetheless serious matter for consideration and investigation?

I have no answer, but I posit this is not a simple issue one can determine without further scientific study. 

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SL, the study has gone on and does go on, apart from any implications for the morality or legal prohibition of abortion. One serious reference is chapter 4 of the fourth edition of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience by Mark H. Johnson and Michelle de Haan (2015).

About a third of our fellow citizens believe that a fetus becomes a human at conception, when a unique DNA is formed. That DNA is now the surrogate of the soul which endows the body with the human spark or image of God.

Hopefully, the other two-thirds of the citizens will now get fighting mad and give candidates who run in part on this cultural issue and are anti-abortionist (in law) loss at the polls. Then the US Congress and Executive might be able to get a law protecting the right to procure an abortion across the land. I doubt that result is attainable because of the Senate super-majority situation. More attainable would be election to State offices, especially Governor, candidates who favor the right to abortion in law of the State.

Apparently, Mike Pence thinks he can advance himself in the next Republican Presidential Primary by calling for prohibition of abortion in all States. The two most recent Republican Presidents made prohibition of abortions a component of their campaign agendas, and they won the general elections even though most of the voters favor legality of abortions.

Most of my libertarian or Objectivist acquaintances never put the priority on legality of abortion that I did over these decades; I always voted against and encouraged voting against candidates who were anti-abortionist. They would reply to me: "Oh, it will never happen." I don't blame them for what has happened, because we are few, but what a betrayal, what a wrong prioritization, what a wrong gauge of depth among principles at stake—forced labor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PS – Contrary to popular assumption, the significance of the stage at which viablity outside the womb (in the judgment of the attending physician) is reached has never been posed as mark of being human or of human personhood. It is simply the point at which adults not the mother can take on the project of supporting the continued life of the fetus/infant without impressing the mother into the service of their project. After delivery too, the rights practically, concerning the infant are rights between adults over support of the infant, rights against theft of your infant or injury to your infant, rights over what is right nutrition, how the child is raised, what is right education, when are the parents no longer responsible for higher-education financial support, and so forth.

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24 minutes ago, Boydstun said:

SL, the study has gone on and does go on, apart from any implications for the morality or legal prohibition of abortion. One serious reference is chapter 4 of the fourth edition of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience by Mark H. Johnson and Michelle de Haan (2015).

About a third of our fellow citizens believe that a fetus becomes a human at conception, when a unique DNA is formed. That DNA is now the surrogate of the soul which endows the body with the human spark or image of God.

Hopefully, the other two-thirds of the citizens will now get fighting mad and give candidates who run in part on this cultural issue and are anti-abortionist (in law) loss at the polls. Then the US Congress and Executive might be able to get a law protecting the right to procure an abortion across the land. I doubt that result is attainable because of the Senate super-majority situation. More attainable would be election to State offices, especially Governor, candidates who favor the right to abortion in law of the State.

Apparently, Mike Pence thinks he can advance himself in the next Republican Presidential Primary by calling for prohibition of abortion in all States. The two most recent Republican Presidents made prohibition of abortions a component of their campaign agendas, and they won the general elections even though most of the voters favor legality of abortions.

Most of my libertarian or Objectivist acquaintances never put the priority on legality of abortion that I did over these decades; I always voted against and encouraged voting against candidates who were anti-abortionist. They would reply to me: "Oh, it will never happen." I don't blame them for what has happened, because we are few, but what a betrayal, what a wrong prioritization, what a wrong gauge of depth among principles at stake—forced labor.

So quickly a discussion of politics loses all sense of principle.

 

Getting it wrong on either end violates rights of one or more humans, and the most important rights. 

Getting it right for those persons is more important than any amount of personal political posturing of any kind.

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1 hour ago, Boydstun said:

Most of my libertarian or Objectivist acquaintances never put the priority on legality of abortion that I did over these decades; I always voted against and encouraged voting against candidates who were anti-abortionist. They would reply to me: "Oh, it will never happen." I don't blame them for what has happened, because we are few, but what a betrayal, what a wrong prioritization, what a wrong gauge of depth among principles at stake—forced labor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PS – Contrary to popular assumption, the significance of the stage at which viablity outside the womb (in the judgment of the attending physician) is reached has never been posed as mark of being human or of human personhood. It is simply the point at which adults not the mother can take on the project of supporting the continued life of the fetus/infant without impressing the mother into the service of their project. After delivery too, the rights practically, concerning the infant are rights between adults over support of the infant, rights against theft of your infant or injury to your infant, rights over what is right nutrition, how the child is raised, what is right education, when are the parents no longer responsible for higher-education financial support, and so forth.

To distill it to the act of creating forced labor, sometimes on the part of the mother, sometimes on due to forced taxation on others, makes sense to the anti-altruistic position that we have. But a question comes to mind related to viability: when someone (other than the mother) has volunteered to take care of child that is in utero, does that make the unborn child "viable"? Would that be a case where the mother does not have a right to abort since it is now "a viable life"?

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31 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:

To distill it to the act of creating forced labor, sometimes on the part of the mother, sometimes on due to forced taxation on others, makes sense to the anti-altruistic position that we have. But a question comes to mind related to viability: when someone (other than the mother) has volunteered to take care of child that is in utero, does that make the unborn child "viable"? Would that be a case where the mother does not have a right to abort since it is now "a viable life"?

The volunteering does not change the "viability" of any child whether outside or defined as such in utero.

Someone volunteering to help care/pay for/feed a child after it had been born does not change its viability nor define any related term.  All children under a certain age will die if their parents refuse any care whatever e.g. denied food water and shelter, unless they somehow escape (perhaps to be raised by wolves or strangers).

Children are simply not capable of providing for themselves.

 

Do you hold that neither parents nor relatives nor society have any moral obligation to their children?  IF there are obligations what is the order in greatest to least obligation?

 

But responsibility for care is a separate issue from the bare right to life (not be killed).

 

The question is not viability but when do rights attach... i.e. when begins personhood?

Edited by StrictlyLogical
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3 hours ago, Boydstun said:

“and at 12 weeks the ‘unborn human being’ has ‘taken on “the human form” in all relevant respects”.” —Justice Alito, Dobbs v. Jackson

Hardly.

At 12 weeks, the brain of the fetus has the form of a mammalian brain, but not yet the form of a primate brain, let alone a human brain.

The serious consistency of today’s overturn of Roe v. Wade is with its past upholdings of the right of government in the US to conscript citizens into military service. Forced labor of still-warm bodies of young men. Forced labor of pregnant bodies of women conscripted into service of reinforcing other citizens' mass psychosis and confusedness.

In an opinion concurring with the Court majority, Justice Thomas writes that "The same rationale that the Supreme Court used to declare there was no right to abortion . . . should also be used to overturn cases establishing rights to contraception, same-sex consensual relations and same-sex marriage." —Well, that's honest.

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49 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:

The question is not viability but when do rights attach... i.e. when begins personhood?

Then we must make the case that personhoods starts at X point, objectively speaking. I don't think we will be able to. I think the only clear delineation point is when the egg accepts the sperm. Before that there was no potential, when the egg has no sperm or the sperm was not in the egg. But we would argue that we don't have a "person" at this point.

The initial question that has to be answered is: Is it ever okay to NOT care for a child. Implication being "to kill" the child. In the case of an abortion it is removing the support system of the potential child.

The viability issue has to have some bearing. If let us say, there is a tribe on an island with limited resources and a child  (i.e. a person that needs caring to survive) that cannot take care of itself exists that NO one wants the child for some reason. What is the responsibility of the people involved? I know that this is heinous example but it has to be brought up as a thought experiment.

It is disgusting to think of a parent that throws a baby away, but I met one person who was tortured by the fact that she did that when she was 15. Meaning, it happens. She put the baby in the trash can. But doing that or arguing against it seems to be purely emotional. What is the non emotional objective argument for the moral obligation you speak of?

It is an overall "survival of the species" argument?

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1 hour ago, Boydstun said:

In an opinion concurring with the Court majority, Justice Thomas writes that "The same rationale that the Supreme Court used to declare there was no right to abortion . . . should also be used to overturn cases establishing rights to contraception, same-sex consensual relations and same-sex marriage." —Well, that's honest.

what the heck is a right "to" contraception or the right of ANYONE "to" marriage for that matter?

 

The whole modern concept of so called special "rights" is doubly dangerous,

1 because it sets up an obligation on the State and then by extension by others to positively provide somethings for someone, rather than to refrain from interfering with the freedom of the the person(s) with respect to that that thing, which paradoxically 

2 emboldens the state to think since it had authority to "grant" or "permit" such perks as rights, they can take them away, and end up actually inhibiting freedom associated with such things.

 

Rights as "perks" become "permissions" and then the opposite of rights.

 

Pharma and medical practitioners and their dealings with me are (or would be) covered by our natural freedoms as would be my natural freedoms to live with whomever I wish according to and celebrated by whatever religion or cultural equivalent there is.  But not having a specific right to deal with pharma or live according to a certain culture does not mean the State can properly violate the freedoms associated therewith.

 

Overturning the establishment of false rights would be fine if the State had not perverted them into things which could be used to take away freedoms... I am not so sure we are safe from that.

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10 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:

what the heck is a right "to" contraception . . .?

It is rights to manufacture and sale, and purchase by consumers, of the Pill. The States had laws against said birth-control pills. The 1965 the Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut struck down those State prohibitions.

"God bless the inventor of the Pill!" –Ayn Rand

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16 hours ago, Boydstun said:

The States had laws against said birth-control pills. The 1965 the Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut struck down those State prohibitions.

If the means to the ends were not proper, they are not justified.  

Such bad laws should only ever be properly struck down because they infringe basic natural rights to make things, sell things, put things in one’s own body… basic sovereignty of the individuals involved … not struck down improperly because of a purported special positive right to prevent a specific occurrence happening in one’s own body.

Had osteoporosis medication been outlawed on some purported basis (in reality perhaps done as a favour to an Aluminum Walker Manufacturer) the decision to pronounce such an abomination as unconstitutional should be based on broad fundamental freedoms… and the negative right to prevent Government from interference therewith….

not some special interest group lobby positive perk/right/privilege that purported everyone should have ("universal access to" in the post-modern parlance) good bones.

 

All special perks parading as rights should be overturned, AND broader fundamental freedoms should be ABSOLUTELY upheld to prevent government interference.  

I do not know if that would be the case if SCOTUS decided to act in the future on such issues as government interference in contraception or government interference in religious or cultural familial arrangements, but I sure hope it would.

Edited by StrictlyLogical
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There is a package deal both the far left and the far right are perpetrating here, it involves the following dogmatic assumptions by both camps:

1.  The status and nature of a 10 celled human embryo IS equivalent in the ways that matter to an about to be born within minutes human fetus at 9 months

2.  Abortion as conceived as the ceasing the functioning of that human embryo or human fetus is thus ONE  KIND of THING

3.  You are WITH US or AGAINST US as regards the SINGULAR concept of the  "privilege", "perk" or "right" which are commonly known as "abortion rights"

 

Objectively the two things in 1. ARE different kinds of things and require considered rational thought and separate analyses, and so called "aborting" each of the two is NOT doing the same kind of thing, as the doing is as different as the entities involved. 

Edited by StrictlyLogical
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5 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

If the means to the ends were not proper, they are not justified.  

Such bad laws should only ever be properly struck down because they infringe basic natural rights to make things, sell things, put things in one’s own body… basic sovereignty of the individuals involved … not struck down improperly because of a purported special positive right to prevent a specific occurrence happening in one’s own body.

Had osteoporosis medication been outlawed on some purported basis (in reality perhaps done as a favour to an Aluminum Walker Manufacturer) the decision to pronounce such an abomination as unconstitutional should be based on broad fundamental freedoms… and the negative right to prevent Government from interference therewith….

not some special interest group lobby positive perk/right/privilege that purported everyone should have ("universal access to" in the post-modern parlance) good bones.

 

All special perks parading as rights should be overturned, AND broader fundamental freedoms should be ABSOLUTELY upheld to prevent government interference.  

I do not know if that would be the case if SCOTUS decided to act in the future on such issues as government interference in contraception or government interference in religious or cultural familial arrangements, but I sure hope it would.

Griswold v. Connecticut 

SL, as you see in this link, the Justices holding for the majority decision did so for different reason. And the dissenters did so for different reasons. As I recall, this was the case that began the notion that in an unenumerated way, the US Constitution has within its scope protection of an individual personal right of privacy, which we can think of as an autonomy over the intimacies of personal identity. Under the subsequent Nixon appointments of Burger and Rehnquist, there was a shift to try to reformulate any Constitutionally protected right of privacy from an individual right to a collective right of the family (as would turn on the religious, subjective presumptions of most folk, prissing around as objective, by saying the God told me so.) In 1986, when gay persons came before the Court trying to get the prohibition against sodomy in their State overturned by the Court, the door was slammed shut, and a right to privacy under the Constitution was effectively smashed. In 2003 again a gay couple came before the Court trying to get the Court to overturn the prohibition of sodomy in their State. (These laws were the descendants of the old English capital-punishment laws against homosexuality that were in effect in the colonies joining the American Union and a good while thereafter. They have a religious tradition, with death by fire being the preferred method of execution, but there was and is plenty of hatred of gays and wanting them rubbed out even among those who deserted supernaturalism and the church.) This time the Court ruled the State prohibition unconstitutional based on an individual "right of liberty" rather than the old "right of privacy". A rose is a rose under any other name. And Thomas is still a reactionary bigoted sourpuss under any other name. After the 2003 decision making gay and lesbian sex legal throughout the land, he asked "What's changed?" —meaning since the 1986 case. Well, Sweetie, a cultural revolution that you could not control happened, a humanist revolution that will continue to roll over you vicious bigots and set you down in the dustbin of history for what you were.

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14 minutes ago, Boydstun said:

Griswold v. Connecticut 

SL, as you see in this link, the Justices holding for the majority decision did so for different reason. And the dissenters did so for different reasons. As I recall, this was the case that began the notion that in an unenumerated way, the US Constitution has within its scope protection of an individual personal right of privacy, which we can think of as an autonomy over the intimacies of personal identity. Under the subsequent Nixon appointments of Burger and Rehnquist, there was a shift to try to reformulate any Constitutionally protected right of privacy from an individual right to a collective right of the family (as would turn on the religious, subjective presumptions of most folk, prissing around as objective, by saying the God told me so.) In 1986, when gay persons came before the Court trying to get the prohibition against sodomy in their State overturned by the Court, the door was slammed shut, and a right to privacy under the Constitution was smashed. In 2003 again a gay couple came before the Court trying to get the Court to overturn the prohibition of sodomy in their State. (These laws were the descendants of the old English capital-punishment laws against homosexuality that were in effect in the colonies joining the American Union and a good while thereafter. They have a religious tradition, with death by fire being the preferred method of execution, but there was and is plenty of hatred of gays and wanting them rubbed out even among those who deserted supernaturalism and the church—this recurrent vehement hatred may have some springs in the subconscious, where psychosexual development and proclivities dwell.) This time the Court ruled the State prohibition unconstitutional based on an individual "right of liberty" rather than the old "right of privacy". A rose is a rose under any other name. And Thomas is still a reactionary bigoted sourpuss under any other name. After the 2003 decision making gay and lesbian sex legal throughout the land, he asked "What's changed?" —meaning since the 1986 case. Well, Sweetie, a cultural revolution that you could not control happened, a humanist revolution that will continue to roll over you vicious bigots and set you down in the dustbin of history for what you were.

So we need some sort of Objective (rather than historical) Constitutionalist who actually believes in individual rights as against the mob or the State (not a leftist) and as against dogmatic religion (not a conservative)… from where could such persons arise in the political landscape?

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