So, who will stop using Firefox?

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TWD

Cute and Cuddly
Aug 2, 2000
7,445
15
38
38
Salt Lake City UT
members.lycos.co.uk
Classic use of trolling. That's funny. Just because you don't agree, doesn't mean it's trolling.

Stop trying to bring about the end of the world and be a better person to your fellow human being. It's what Jesus would do.

I'm not being a troll here or the previous post... you really think they're out to take away your faith and damn you to hell by making you believe being gay is a-ok, right? Don't worry. If what you believe is correct, God won't let them into heaven anyway, so you can sleep better at night.

Now you're just making up things based on what you want to hear. I'm not changing my beliefs. But clearly some think it's ok to chase me out of the public square and prominent positions because of those beliefs. That's not ok. That's not good for American society.
 
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cryptophreak

unbalanced
Jul 2, 2011
1,011
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Much has happened since I last checked in. Let me summarize my reaction.

As I said a few pages ago, banning interracial marriage was found to be flawed over time as anti-segregation arguments developed (were accepted as more reasonable) and scientific studies of the impact of interracial marriage found no actual difference in marriage satisfaction, quality of child raising, economic benefits, or marriage's credibility as an institution (better or worse, for all of those).

In the past 20 years, the same has occurred with gay marriage. New arguments have been made that resonate with the public, and scientific studies have again found no damage done or any significant disparity (better or worse) to any aspect of marriage.

In a way, this is a backward way of looking at the problem. We now have the benefit of hindsight, and it seems evident that not only should interracial marriage be permitted now, but it was a mistake to outlaw it in the past.

We have a repeat problem of banning things for no reason and later overturning those bans when we realize they were damaging and useless. Can’t we learn something from that? Why do we still insist on banning everything by default?

It seems to me that everything ought to be legal until it is definitively proven to be harmful to others.
 

N1ghtmare

Sweet Dreams
Jul 17, 2005
2,411
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Where least expected
I suspect when they wrote the laws in they needed some boundary requirements. It probably depends on how they wrote it. If they had no concept of being gay, then they probably wrote it as "one man and one woman required" without much more thought, or even realizing the possibility that people can be gay. If they were equipped with modern biology and knew that gay people are born that way, and that they constitute 5-10% of the population, things may have turned out different.

On the other hand, interracial marriage probably was not even a concept 200 years ago because-despite the existence of black non-slaves-the very idea that all people are equal was still barely a social norm. Even most abolitionists did not think that Black people were equal, just that we should not have slavery.

I agree that most things should be legal unless proven otherwise, but there are some things we cannot predict about what standards should apply in the future. As an example, in the future if lowering the age of legal adulthood occurred and is considered obvious and just, then marriage laws would have to be rewritten to accommodate. It isn't necessarily our fault for not being able to foresee this.

This all leads up to what I believe is the greatest strength of our legal system and constitution (or any constitution), is its ability to change and be flexible. Passing amendments (however unlikely in our current polarized political arena), courts striking down laws, etc. The ability to rectify the situation based on new-found experience. The guys who wrote it knew we would encounter problems and situations of which they would have no clue about, and changes would have to be made.

One one hand there exists dumbfuckery, and on the other there exists the fact that we do not know what will or will not be socially acceptable in the future. There are some things banned right now that I think are dumb, because I have put lots of thought and argument into those issues and seen evidence that supports my conclusions. There are probably also plenty of things that I cannot even fathom to be unjust that may only become obvious over time as social constructs change and technology progresses.
 
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