patrickaa317 wrote:Frigidus wrote:patrickaa317 wrote:Frigidus wrote:Night Strike wrote:Anyone who has actually read the Constitution knows that this statement isn't true. If it were, they wouldn't have included a specific process for amending the Constitution.
Whoa, your'e right. But wait...but if the Constitution can be changed...then doesn't saying that the Constitution doesn't
currently consider something to be a right be irrelevant to an argument over whether or not something
should be a right?
Whether something "is" or "should be" is where you are getting stuck. The "is" is a factual statement and can be proven. The "should be" is an opinion that the holder has derived.
I can say that my wife IS sleeping and be able to prove it. If I say my wife SHOULD BE sleeping, that is my opinion and I have no way to stand behind it.
Sure. My point is that whenever people say that banning gay marriage is denying a right to gays, Night Strike mentions that marriage isn't a right (he's wrong when he says that, but whatever). My point is that you can't say that something isn't (currently) a right and just end the conversation there. It doesn't get into the more important "why" of the matter. That's where the meat of the argument is, not in what the current status quo might be.
Wouldn't it be your responsibility to prove how it is a right; or if you agree that it is not a right, why it should be one? I'm pretty sure the onus is on the person trying to prove why a change should be implemented. I will show you where rights such as free speech or freedom of religion are outlined. Can you show me where the right to marriage is outlined? That will be a good place to start.
Outlined? In what, the Constitution? Who cares what the Constitution says, I'm not arguing the current legality of gay marriage in the particular part of the world I live in, I'm arguing whether it is morally acceptable to outlaw it.
But, you know what, fine. We'll talk about the Constitution. Now, I'm not a Constitutional lawyer or anything, so I apologize that I'm just going to cite (again) what the Supreme Court has said on marriage in the past:
The United States Supreme Court wrote:Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
That was in regards to banning interracial marriage, but it still recognizes marriage as a right.