Not at all
Submitted by A.I. Watcher on September 10 2001 17:07:06
In reply to Re: I'm talking about civil rights submitted by John Doe on September 10 2001 10:26:15
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I oppose discrimination because it hurts people. I oppose discrimination against gays because it hurts people I love. That's my moral ground. And I promise you that has absolutely zilch to do with a god or gods. Rights have been penned into the Constitution (see the 14th Amendment as a major example) to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. That's a major principle of U.S. law. Again, there are no gods involved in that principle - just a sense of justice and compassion. For you to come up with a god in that context, you'd have to have a very active imagination. How can you say that a god, for example, grants the right to keep and bear arms or the right of the people to peaceably assemble? The framers of the U.S. Constitution included those rights among the first ten amendments. If you are interested as to why, you can read the Federalist Papers, major contributions to which, btw, were made by atheists, who made up a very large percentage of the people who worked on the Constition and the Bill of Rights and who later argued for ratification by the various states. But in any case, the majority of people in the U.S. (according to recent polls) believe that gay people ought to enjoy full civil rights. But powerful, well funded groups of Christians are fighting tooth and nail to PREVENT us from enjoying civil rights, following the same pattern that Christians have followed for centuries. Christians work non-stop, or so it seems, to enshrine their religious beliefs into law and they do it in ways that seriously hurt a lot of people who don't share their beliefs. If a god actually grants rights, then you must be able to explain the mechanism. What is it? I'd be interested in hearing the details. And don't even think about telling me some god whispered something into the ears of the people who penned the U.S. Bill of Rights. I'm not stupid enough to believe something so assinine as that. |
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