What on earth does that have to do with the right to religious liberty being infringed Lon.
Simply this: Many 'religious' ideals are yet enforced by common law. You don't see it yet, but you have expressed a dichotomy yourself, that you haven't reconciled. You are thinking there is a moral sentiment, but there is none apart from Christianity. There is no religion that has as high of moral standards. "IF" one eradicates Christianity or tries to 'separate' then they are attacking morals in principle, on the false basis that they are 'encouraging Christianity.' For a long long time, our country got this.
That's what being a democratic republic is all about, yes.
So you are okay when the majority want communism :doh: I guess it 'was' democratic....right up until the end.
lain:
The right to religious liberty is imo merely a certain form of the one inalienable right that we all possess as human beings. It's the right to life, the right to speak and write freely, the right to believe and practice however we want to religiously, and the right to self defense /bear arms. There are other formulations of it, but I see it as just one right.
No, they are intricately tied together or one or the other cannot stand. We 'were' apologetically Christian.' There can be no denying that. What MADE this country so free and so great, was that Christians didn't demand that others fall in line or convert. The problem is this: As the Christians lose representation, either by legislation or by lack of population, no other group holds to our same freedom of values nor do they insist on unharmful behavior by common law. In Muslim countries? Still legal to rape, to persecute, and indeed, sanctioned by EVERY Muslim controlled country: criminalize any religion but theirs.
Laws are made in any variety of ways, and in the US they are made by legislators who are elected in free and fair elections, and these laws are all amenable to legal challenge, and our highest court decides ultimately whether the laws are in accord with our constitution, which is the highest law in the land.
At present, yes. It used to be the Constitution and not reinterpretation of it, kept such from happening.
We are able to amend our constitution. But the interaction between laws and rights is what we're discussing here. We divide along basically religious lines, with our different opinions about LGBTQI+ conjugal behaviors, as to their morality, and as to their legality. There are some of us who take them to all be gravely immoral, but that we oughtn't make laws forbidding them, though it feels as if we are in the minority, and much more so on TOL.
It depends whether we believe God, whether the behavior is always damaging to self and others. I believe it is, from scripture. Such MUST be demonstrable to the rest of society (and I'm convinced it will all come to light, Luke 8:17
Largely it seems there are two prominent and noisy camps, they are the ones who take these behaviors to be fundamentally amoral (because it's really just about love, or some other canard), and so naturally they oppose outlawing them, and then there are those who take them to be very seriously sinful and wrong and reprehensible, and that they ought to be outlawed civilly as well.
I do agree with you, we have liberty with common law. Mostly, we need laws that protect 'from' rather imposing laws 'against,' but if it is shown our choices wound up hurting any particular group in the process of more freedom, we have to own collectively any harm done.
This latter group bases their political opinion on their religious belief. This contravenes our constitution.
I suppose there are also those who do not take LGBTQI+ conjugal behavior as immoral for whatever reason, but who insist they should be civilly outlawed anyway, based on measured deleterious effects upon the health of those who do such things, but I think they are an even tinier minority than those of us who take these behaviors to be gravely immoral, but who think that laws against them are not well founded laws /they are Unconstitutional.
And incidentally perhaps, laws forbidding adultery make spouses into slaves in a way. We would be under such laws barred from making our own choice in the matter, as slaves are barred by their masters from being free people. Part of the evolution of laws in the US over the centuries is about dismantling vestiges of slavery that existed when our nation was founded, even while it was multiple distinct colonies.
I don't believe it did that. First of all, the crime was not death and very little jail time, but it did carry consequences. On top of that, had a spouse held self-control, there was no penalty for divorce or separation. It allowed, rather, someone to carry a suit against the cheating spouse.
I believe current laws 'still' punish and adulterer, as deference is given to the grieving spouse in courts.
While laws forbidding adultery and LGBTQI+ conjugal relations were not categorized then as parallel to laws permitting human slavery and trafficking, it appears to have been a case of being overwhelmed by the institution of southern slavery that blinded them from all the other laws that resembled laws permitting slavery. Repealing /nullifying those laws are part of the dismantling of the institution of slavery. Many of our changing laws have been about repealing slavery completely.
When Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death," he expressed what I'm talking about. The freedom from being enslaved, from being murdered, from being raped, they are all different facets of the one right we all possess inalienably. The right to religious liberty is one of those facets too, and yes, that does mean the right to commit adultery, and to practice LGBTQI+ conjugal relations; but see my Mencken quote below before responding here.
The Enlightenment period is granted by historians to have given birth to the notion of rights. This notion arose through conflict with power, power and rights being offset by one another. Power is government, police, military, basically anyone who can force, coerce, compel, etc. people to do and not do things. The right to religious liberty /of the pursuit of happiness, stands against power. We want to believe in the right to religious liberty, but sometimes we have to hold our nose when making laws, in order to hold the right of religious liberty as sacred.
(It irks me whenever I hear an elected official talk about how their branch or bureau of government has a /the "right" to do such-and-such. Government is power, government power must be limited, government does not possess rights. I worry about people who think government has rights. It makes it sound like government is in any way victims of free people---the opposite is the only actual possibility; and it's a possibility that has been and still is all too frequently realized.)
Very much agree here. All government officials, without exception, are servants of the people. The problem? Judges started this by going against the democracy of the people, that is, we just didn't count any more when it came to policy. They literally took a bunch of things doing good for our country, and outlawed them WHILE making poor things no longer against the laws. This is incredibly hard on society and begins tearing down the moral fiber of a nation and literally giving nothing to put back in its place.
But it was really the Church who should be credited with discovering human rights imo, and my evidence there is because of a brief mention of rights in a letter written by Bishop Polycarp in the early 2nd century, the era immediately following the Apostolic era. Polycarp all the way back then counselled Christians to respect the rights of everybody. He was, afaik, the first person to ever recognize that people possess inalienable rights, that did then, have since, and always will, stand up to and against power.
Your argument then is against all war. Just because, due to how it turned out, the Civil War had "one American killing another American," the South had formally seceded from the US, and they were another nation. If the South had prevailed, then it wouldn't have been "one American killing another American." The outcome of the conflict determines that it was "one American killing another American," but if the outcome had been different, it wouldn't be the story.
My point was that there are times, and will be again when what we view as murder, will be condoned and encouraged. Granted it is 'sanctioned' by somebody at that point and that is what I'm saying: It can, will, does, happen again. If all we are are the sum of our parts, then these United States can be destroyed from within. We might well become the United Socialist Americas. Democracy 'can' allow that if that is the majority vote. That's a scary thing. I believe laws under Democracy must ALWAYS protect Democracy (Republics).
The Civil War was a war for the Constitution. The South seceded because it no longer recognized the Constitution. And President Lincoln waged the war because he believed that secession was illegal under the Constitution. Although he did suspend 'habeas corpus,' so . . . . :idunno:
I'm leery of this. Are you saying that police were aware of who the murderers were, and deliberately chose to not prosecute them? My suspicion is that murderers in such chaos were able to avoid detection, which is obviously a different thing from "many murders went unprosecuted" deliberately.
No, I don't think that far, but I'd think that some people are forced to be quiet because of it, that normally wouldn't be involved thus there is a complicity. It always happens when masses of people go against common law. The common law is suspended. I think your slavery topic speaks to this. We had to embrace Constitutional laws for everyone, barring their unconstitution behavior of course.
Try to take assurance then in the fact that Martin Luther was condemned to the death penalty for being excommunicated by the Catholic Church. Only a friend of his stood between his murder, for exercising his inalienable right to religious liberty, and him surviving to preside over one major limb of the Protestant Reformation. The laws permitting power to murder people for practicing their religious liberty, including the laws that permitted John Calvin to authorize the murder of Michael Servetus, for practicing his own religious liberty, in denying the Trinity, were all illegal under our constitution, and all violated the inalienable right to religious liberty.
Calvin, as best as I've read and understood history, was rather the 'whistle-blower.' He (again if I read correctly) wasn't an active member in government, by choice.
Voiding /repealing /nullifying such laws are a score for the good guys, for rights against power. And vanquishing laws against LGBTQI+ conjugal behaviors and against adultery are in the same category as eliminating laws that permitted the murders of Martin Luther and of Michael Servetus.
??? The former were laws against religious liberty, the latter concerning at-risk behaviors....I'm not following.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." Mencken
So he recognizes he is defending the scoundrel, in opposition to losing a freedom. It cannot apply to murder, by instance. He would have you and I 'free to kill' by such a sentiment, instead of saying murder is against the law. I know that's an absurd extreme, but it does illustrate the problem with his sentiment. He didn't think it through far enough, because it cannot be even a 'general rule.' It just doesn't work like that, we use discretion and are alway, rather, looking for the higher good. Democracy is to be defended and uplifted, but not to the expense of its people's welfare.
I find it good to keep in mind the above.
To me, still not a good rule of thumb, but I think TownH agrees with you. I disagree with you both on this principle. It just can be shown to not work on its extreme, thus is not a profitable rule of thumb in my assessment.
Those are literally examples of the right to religious liberty not being recognized, affirmed, or protected. The right to not be murdered equals the right to religious liberty (among others), which is just reiteration of my contention that we all possess just the one right, variously formulated /expressed as the right to not be murdered, the right to not be enslaved, the right to not be raped, the right to religious liberty, the right to bear arms, the right to self defense, the right to free speech and to free peaceful assembly, etc.
As I said above, 'if' Democracy enables the choice of nonDemocracy (communism, Sharia law, etc.), then Democracy allowed its own demise. Such doesn't ultimately make sense. I cannot remember who quoted it, but communism could only work, if God were in charge of it.
Anybody can validly argue that LGBTQI+ conjugal behaviors should be outlawed, so long as the grounds for such arguments are in no way religious or invoke God (basically the same thing). The main way I've seen, are the ones based on confirmed negative health effects of those who practice such things. And wrt common law, recall that English common law evolved from within a period when England was establishing the Church of England, which is specifically proscribed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. It was Unconstitutional to enforce such laws back then, which is only something that we all know now, because of the Supreme Court obeying the Constitution in condemning such laws as Unconstitutional.
Our Constitution mentions our Creator. I think the 'problem' is in the secularist mind, not by necessity any government official's mind, nor any other citizen's. We should not allow 'secularists' to secularize our government. Such is an atheistic state. Our Constitution didn't outright forbid that from taking place, but it IS taking place and against the sentiments of its wording (see sig). I'm not shocked, it is the mark of the end times, but I'm against it and will effect change if I can. The Power of our Constitution clearly rests on what is 'endowed by our Creator' thus makes our nation deist, at least, by demand of those virtues and rights appealed to for their substantiation.
