[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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