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mojo84 wrote:He promised to fundamentally change our country. He has succeeded.

Yep.

mojo84 wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:Today, SCOTUS gives voting rights to non-citizens: http://www3.atr.rollcall.com/supreme-co ... ates/?dcz=.

No....... there's no agenda..... move along......

I/We have to have a license to get married, work, drive, carry a gun, buy a gun, buy liquor etc but no need to have a license to vote and choose the some of the most powerful leaders of the world. No, no agenda at work here. The judicial system and supreme court is pure as snow.

If they wanted to undermine the confidence of citizens in their government, they couldn't have picked a better method.

Today, SCOTUS gives voting rights to non-citizens: http://www3.atr.rollcall.com/supreme-co ... ates/?dcz=.

No....... there's no agenda..... move along......

Beiruty wrote:

Glockster wrote:

Beiruty wrote:How about when more of the population turn gay and the rate of kids per family is less than 1. Surely enough we would be like Canada, that means 10,000,000 new immigrants per year. I just hope they do arrive the legal way.

What??? Did you actually say, "turn gay" and believe that someone just "turns" gay? Seriously?

Have you heard about bisexuals? Selecting a partner is a choice.

Science has utterly failed to prove the existence of a "gay gene", so now the focus on is trying to prove a prenatal cause. The court is still out. My personal belief is that (and I am NOT speaking about transgender issues) gayness is a "nurture" rather than a "nature" thing.....until the evidence proves otherwise.

Beiruty wrote:Can the OP fix the cryptic subject line?

Beiruty, see my PM to you.

The libertarian in me says that gay people have rights, no less equal than my own, and they should be afforded all the same legal benefits that marriage affords me. The pragmatist in me says that this was totally doable without redefining anything.

In my opinion, the only thing that the state should have any control over is civil union, whether that be same-sex or hetero. Marriage, on the other hand, is and always was primarily a religious matter. Common Law has always recognized the union of two people as husband and wife, even without a ceremony, as having certain legal benefits not available to single people (joint tax returns and parental rights, for instance). Hetero couples have also always had the option of state sanctioned civil union. A marriage officiated by a JP is not a religious ceremony, and any church has the first amendment protected right to disregard the validity of that union in spiritual terms. The fact that churches DO tend to recognize them as valid is a mere courtesy. This ruling merely extends the same civil union rights to gays. That's is the only way I can rationalize it.

I DO NOT believe that Almighty God recognizes the validity of gay marriage, and I believe that at least nominally Christian churches that condone and celebrate gay unions have strayed very far from what scripture very clearly says, and that those congregants will have to face God some day for their stiff necks. Most especially, their leaders are going to face God's justice for having led their flocks (HIS flocks) astray. I believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and that it is not for God to make Himself smaller and more convenient whenever our sinful hearts are convicted by His Word. Rather, it is for us to try and live up to His expectations for us, and to seek His face in all things. When we fail at it.....and we will....we are to seek His grace and mercy, while we also seek His strength to overcome the things to which He has called us.

Justice Scalia said this in his dissent:

"This is a naked judicial claim to legislative—indeed, super-legislative—power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government. Except as limited by a constitutional prohibition agreed to by the People, the States are free to adopt whatever laws they like, even those that offend the esteemed Justices’ “reasoned judgment.” A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy. Judges are selected precisely for their skill as lawyers; whether they reflect the policy views of a particular constituency is not (or should not be) relevant. Not surprisingly then, the Federal Judiciary is hardly a cross section of America. Take, for example, this Court, which consists of only nine men and women, all of them successful lawyers18 who studied at Harvard or Yale Law School. Four of the nine are natives of New York City. Eight of them grew up in east- and west-coast States. Only one hails from the vast expanse in-between. Not a single South- westerner or even, to tell the truth, a genuine Westerner (California does not count). Not a single evangelical Christian (a group that comprises about one quarter of Americans19), or even a Protestant of any denomination. The strikingly unrepresentative character of the body voting on today’s social upheaval would be irrelevant if they were functioning as judges, answering the legal question whether the American people had ever ratified a constitutional provision that was understood to proscribe the traditional definition of marriage. But of course the Justices in today’s majority are not voting on that basis; they say they are not. And to allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation."

....and....

"So it is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me," Scalia wrote. "Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court."

These are not religious objections, but they ARE very sound Constitutional objections.

There was a better way to extend equal rights to gays, and the court did not take it. More importantly ....to me, anyway.... Is that the majority opinion did not balance its ruling by positively affirming a right to conscientious objection for religious institutions. In failing to do so, they have opened the door for actual invalidation of the first amendment.

The decisions handed down by the court this week have pushed the nation beyond a point of no return. Our Constitution requires virtuous people to uphold it, or it dies. We are no longer a people collectively concerned with virtue, and this WILL come home to roost. America, meet Rome.