What Non-Liberals Dislike About Liberalism (restored)

I mean, shit, we have an honest to god, actual fucking Nazi running for Congress on the GOP ticket in the district I live in Illinois. And the Republican governor can’t even say ‘don’t vote for him’. His statement boils down to ‘I condemned the guy and asked him to step aside, but what can you do?’.

I don’t know Bruce. Maybe not vote for the Nazi? Maybe vote for the incumbent Dem Lipinski, who is as conservative as a Dem house member as you get. Shit, the guy is basically a republican in many ways, and I’d be glad to see him gone.

But not to a fucking Nazi you nob.

I most certainly have, I’ve even quoted at times. There is no SCOTUS case that makes sexual orientation a protected class, deserving special treatment under the 14th amendment, equal protection clause. Obergefell v. Hodges applies only to marriage, not to being able to force others to bake cake for you.

I suppose, I probably should have said 9th and 10th Amendment, since collective they give the non-enumerated power of the Federal government to the states and the people.

Why isn’t sexual orientation covered under the equal protection clause? (Aside that is from not being adjudicated by SCOTUS.) What is the legal argument against it? Women, people of color, even religion are all covered, but not that? The only reason I can phantom is that homosexuality offends religious people, and if we assume that is the case, what right do they have to impose their voluntarily chosen belief system on anyone else? How does that square with the spirit of the constitution (i.e. “We hold these truths to be self-evident …”) The 9th and/or the 10th amendment do not collectively say “states can infringe of the rights of others if those rights are not specifically enumerated in the Constitution.”

Clearly and by any measure, denying equal protection based on sexual orientation is discriminatory. I mean (apologies in advance for the crude example) but if Helen and Jill are going at it in Birmingham how does that in any way impose a burden on Bob the Evangelical? Bob thinks it should be legal to fire Helen and Jill or deny them service because of what Helen and Jill do in the privacy of their own home? And we say yeah, sure because Bob’s religion demands it?

You’re probably not going to hear an argument other than the “lack of SCOTUS decision” from anyone on this forum. Certainly not from me. Elsewhere you might get a lot of “because it’s corrupting the children” or “undermining the family unit” but there’s no factual basis for that, just fear of the other.

There’s no evidence you understand the words. If your notion of a good idea is that we allow states to ‘experiment’ on discriminating against classes of people to see what happens - as if we don’t already fucking know what happens - then you’re either a fool or spectacularly cruel. I’m open to either explanation. I’m even open to contradictory or mitigating evidence, if you’d care to offer it. Who knows, maybe you were drunk when you wrote that crap.

Indeed, and in fact the idea that the 14th amendment only covers protected classes of people is tendentious nonsense. Here is the text of the amendment:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Now, can someone point out to me where it mentions classes of people at all, or limits its protection in any way? Maybe @Strollen?

I mean, you can pretend that the law is something other than what it is, but that isn’t how law works.

The 1st Amendment says you can’t prohibit or abridged it. Now call in a death threat to a Senator and see how well that holds up.

It should be obvious that I don’t have much respect for what the Heritage Foundation has to say on the matter. Where’s your strict originalist textism now?

Kind of a dumb question, but are there classes of people that should not be protected?

My third grade class kinda sucked. I mean, I can’t say EVERYONE in that class shouldn’t be protected, but probably the majority deserve some scorn and derision.

White guys in general.
Old white ladies.
Middle managers.
PT Cruiser drivers.
Cyclists.

I should create a GIF containing all these categories.

I mean it’s obvious you don’t respect anyone who disagrees with you on anything, but yet I tried anyway.

Obviously you don’t know how to use Google either so I’m not going to do it for you or you’d run across 500 similar things saying the same thing.

Probably? I mean if you’re a pedophile, I don’t think we’re much obliged to protect your “rights” to have sex with kids, even “willing” ones. Generally speaking most people end up covered in some way to some extent.

If it weren’t for 9/11, maybe they (e.g. Gore) would have had a better shot in 2004? I can’t imagine that happening in the post 9/11 culture, however.

My disrespect is for the Heritage Foundation’s contradictory positions, first that we must respect the plain text of the Constitution, and second that we’re free to imagine text in the Constitution that doesn’t exist if it suits our prejudices.

I’ll also admit disrespect for people who seriously propose an uneven regime of Constitutional protection across the various states under the premise that such a regime would be good. Anyone who understands history knows it would not be good, and anyone who doesn’t understand history should probably stop making proposals. Certainly they have a right to make them, but no one is under any obligation to treat them with respect for so doing.

Sure, but no serious person argues that pedophiles have such a ‘right’. On the other hand, the Constitution does protect a pedophile’s right to due process and equal protection under the law with respect to unlawful search and seizure, fair trial, etc. There are no ‘classes’ of people for whom the 14th Amendment does not apply, which is obvious from the plain language of the text. The question is rather what is and what isn’t a right.

no serious person argues that pedophiles have such a ‘right’.

Not since 1865. Prior to that they were called “property owners,” not “pedophiles.”

Actually it looks like they are applying the originalist approach in both cases - with their argument being that the original intent of the 14th amendment was to address issues related to oppression of black people and so it’s application should be interpreted on that basis and not necessarily include every possible grouping of people.

They don’t need to be self-contradictory to be unworthy of respect – even internally-consistent bigots deserve ridicule.

I think typically groups that are formed ad hoc are not protected- it needs to be a significant part of your identity and thus have a stable history (and presumably apply to more people than just you).

No, not really. If we consider the original intent of the framers with respect to the 2A, then at most people have a right to muskets and flintlock pistols, swords and hatchets, knives. If we grant a right to more than that, we’re substituting our own knowledge of progress to augment what they wrote. If we can do that, why can’t we substitute our own knowledge of progress with respect to the 14th amendment? Of course the answer is the HF likes one result but not the other.

Besides, the plain text of the amendment is easy to understand, and it is hardly necessary to refer to the alleged motivations of the drafters. That’s a notoriously unreliable method anyway.

The 14th amendment contains not a single word about groups. The text quite clearly extends its protection to every single individual. The whole idea of groups was invented by some justices in past decisions to limit the effective extent of the text to only those issues of official prejucidice that the justices had the stomach to address.

The argument is that the intent is to allow people to maintain militias that can keep the Federal (and perhaps State) government in check. That obviously wouldn’t be possible without modern weapons. I think you’re correct that modern weaponry created problems with the amendment that the Framers couldn’t foresee, but they also gave us a mechanism to fix that, so it’s not a clear-cut argument to say that obviously modern weapons should be excluded from the protection. I mean, search and seizure didn’t refer to computers, depriving someone of property didn’t include their television, and so on - technology changes don’t invalidate the amendments.

The Civil Rights Act does though. It says, “All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.”

So it sets up some groups. Interestingly, it also seems like internet entertainment sites should fall under its definition of places of public accommodation, though obviously that kind of virtual “commerce” didn’t exist in 1964.

The problem with “equal protection” is that allowing every man to marry to a woman and every woman to marry a man can be interpreted as unequal (why do only women get to marry men?) or as equal (everyone gets the same right to marry someone of the opposite sex). Same thing with bathrooms - separate bathrooms for biological males and biological females should pretty clearly violate the idea of equal protection if “separate but equal” is not acceptable. These things seem like logical extensions of the intent of the 14th amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but not every possible group does. If I ask everyone to speak English at the poker table am I illegally discriminating against non-english speakers? If I require people to take off their shoes to walk in certain areas, am I segregating the people who don’t like walking around without shoes on?

Not according the the HF. Like a lot of gun rights advocates, their view seems to be that the 2A articulates an individual right not limited to the needs of any militia. Pistols are not effective military weapons; the only people who carry them do so because they carry another primary weapon. Concealed carry permits have nothing to do with the needs of a militia.

Sure, but that’s irrelevant to the meaning of the 14th amendment. The 14th amendment should guarantee equal protection under the law even if the Civil Rights Act didn’t exist.

That’s just an exercise in framing the question so as to get the result you want. Consider Loving, which overturned bans on interracial marriage. If you ask the question this way: Does every man and woman currently enjoy the same right to marry someone of the opposite sex but from the same race? then of course the answer was ‘yes’, but the posing the question that way assumes the judgement you’re trying to rule on, that race is a good reason to restrict marriage rights. Of course it isn’t. Similarly, the question in Obergefell was whether the gender of the proposed partner was a valid reason to deny the right to marry, or whether that violated the fundamental right to marry. If you assume that same gender is a valid prohibition, then you’re going to conclude it is a valid prohibition. If you don’t assume the outcome you want, then not surprisingly you’re not nearly as likely to arrive at that outcome.

This is why the dissent in Obergefell is so empty. Roberts acknowledges that there is a fundamental right to marry, and he acknowledges that the Court has previously overturned restrictive marriage laws before, but he says that this time it is different, without making any compelling argument about why (he waves his hand at ‘redefining marriage’, but that’s semantics, because Loving redefined marriage, too, and he’s OK with Loving), and then he makes a consequentialist argument about polygamy, an argument which has no basis whatsoever in the text of the Constitution.

If you assume (as all justices granted) that the Constitution guarantees the right to marry, then the question in Obergefell is this: Does denying same-sex couples marriage infringe their right, and is there a compelling interest in so restricting their right? The question more or less answers itself.