[PLUG-TALK] [PLUG] Alternatives to Firefox & Thunderbird
Paul Heinlein
heinlein at madboa.com
Fri Apr 4 19:10:30 UTC 2014
On Fri, 4 Apr 2014, Rich Shepard wrote:
> I do not care where you are located on the political compass
> (liberal-conservative; libertarian-authoritarian), nor what
> religious beliefs you have, or whether you have any. Not allowing
> anyone to hold those beliefs, or even act on them, diminishes all of
> us.
The existence of the Constitution suggests that the issue is more
subtle than that. People can hold pro-monarchy political ideology, but
they cannot put them into practice in the US. People can hold racist
social beliefs, but they too are subject to similar limitations on
their actions.
In other words, the US has always proscribed some ideologically driven
behaviors (hereditary political office holders) and has for a time
proscribed others (racial discrimination, forbidding women to vote).
The question at the heart of the current controversy is unsettled: can
you legally and/or politically act on the belief that marriage is
properly only between a man and woman, and that homosexual marriages
should be forbidden?
The question extends beyond the narrow legal question of the legality
of gay marriage in any one place. E.g., should churches, with hundreds
or even thousands of years of anti-homosexual tradition, be legally
bound to hire without regard to sexual identification?
Some see the answer as analogous to the question of racial
discrimination (all people are equal under the law), while others see
it as a matter of violating core human morality.
It's similar to the debate of the morality/legality of abortion, but
in that case, people can generally hold to anti-abortion actions
without impacting others.
--
Paul Heinlein
heinlein at madboa.com
45°38' N, 122°6' W
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