Showing posts with label constitution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label constitution. Show all posts

The right to rights

Posted by Unknown | Posted in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Posted on Sunday, June 03, 2012

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In early May, president Obama publicly voiced his support of gay marriage and the rights of gay Americans. This has obviously been met with backlash from the (religious) Right and supporters of the Defense of Marriage Act, which attempts to define marriage as that between a man and a woman and deny rights to gay couples under the guise of preserving the "sanctity of marriage".


When you boil it down, DOMA is nothing more than an unconstitutional law conjured into existence to pacify the Right and, more specifically, the religious Right. DOMA is, for all intensive purposes, no different and no less discriminatory than Jim Crow laws [sic] of yesteryear. 

The unconstitutionality of DOMA has finally been recognized by a three judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Whether the decision was made easier by the president's public support of gay rights and his refusal to enforce DOMA or not, this is a step in the right direction.

The court's ruling will undoubtedly head to the Supreme Court. My question is, simply, why?  Why are gay rights even a question in this country? We've been through this argument of discrimination and equal rights far too many times. To deny any American their rights is a step in the wrong direction. This is why the 14th amendment was drafted and passed. In case you're a bit rusty on your Constitutional knowledge, Section 1 of the 14th amendment states:

...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.

Rest assured there will be those who point fingers and scream about the president and any politician who support gay rights and marriage trampling on the Constitution without actually acknowledging what is written within the document. (Hint: The constitution does not define "marriage" as between a man and a woman.)

Most of those fingers will be pointed from behind the pulpit and screamed between recitations of Leviticus 20:13 and various other Bible verses. This is not an attack on the religious but, I challenge you to prove me wrong, what other reasons are there to deny gay rights and marriage besides those of the religious Right? There are no reasons based in law or constitutionality that should prohibit this country from providing equal rights to the GLTB community.

Every argument spewed forth by supporters of DOMA and "traditional" marriage has been nothing but bunk and hysteria. From Bristol Palin's ironic assertion that "we know that in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home. Ideally, fathers help shape their kids’ worldview," (source) to the incredibly moronic and baseless argument that interspecies marriages would result from granting gays the right to marry.



There is no logical reason to continue to deny a portion of our citizens their rights. The suppression of gay rights and marriage is nothing more than blatant, unconstitutional discrimination perpetuated by the religious lobby, alarmists, and extremists.

It's time the "pick and choose" view of right and wrong be exposed for what it really is. If the Right wants to point toward the constitution to uphold their rights to bear arms, then they must also point to the 14th amendment to guarantee the rights of all citizens. And, if the religious portion of this nation wants to point toward Leviticus to deny gay citizens their rights, then they must also point to Mark 10:9, Matthew 19:9, and any other verses pertaining to divorce and the "sanctity" of marriage.

If we are to truly honor the Constitution and what the founders of this nation set forth to grant its peoples, we mustn't deny any rights to any citizen. We cannot allow our laws to be filtered through a biblical sieve. We must remember the Declaration of Independence and its resounding call for the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That statement has, and will continue to be, the basis of this country's true greatness. However some may try to mar and tarnish it, we must continue to uphold that one perfect and pure idea.

We are all human. And as such, we are all entitled to happiness, love, and life. To deny anyone these rights is, truly, un-American. Who's really trampling the Constitution, then?

I'll leave you with an incredible performance from Andrea Gibson, poet and activist:

Constitution Becomes Harrisburg's Doormat

Posted by Unknown | Posted in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Posted on Monday, January 30, 2012

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"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." 
~Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814


Originally, I had thoughts of composing a post concerning the issue heating up in Rhode Island over atheist Jessica Ahlquist and the removal of a "school prayer" from Cranston High School West's auditorium. I'd read the stories and the judicially dry, but incredibly well-written, 40-page document outlining the court's ruling. Visited Ms. Ahlquist's blog. Read the rude, often hate-filled comments hurled at the young woman in the name of Christianity. 

This is what I was going to write about until I began researching more stories on infractions of the separation of Church and State. There were more stories of religion, making its way into public classroom. Indiana state Senate passed a bill which would grant permission to teach Creationism in its schools. As my gears turned, forming the words I'd write within my head, I was alerted of a new story. One in my own state of Pennsylvania.


That is the headline which leaped from my laptop screen and smacked me in the face. Surely, this was some hoax. An Onion headline of sorts. With a few keystrokes, a click of the "Enter" button, and a split-second later, my hopes for hilarity were dashed. This was not a spoof. This, my friends, is real. The General Assembly of Pennsylvania "unanimously" passed House Resolution No. 535 (text here) declaring 2012 as the "Year of the Bible" in Pennsylvania.

The shear fact that my tax dollars, and the tax dollars of every other Pennsylvanian regardless of religious denomination or absolute lack of belief, went into paying for the time to draft and consider this resolution is an insult in and of itself. 

During a time when the burdens of their constituents and lack of jobs in the state should be at the front of the docket, this is what they're doing in Harrisburg. The educational system is being reduced to shambles. While a multi-billion dollar industry is spilling over our hills and clogging our roads, transforming the landscape, and life as we know it here in Pennsylvania, with little oversight, possible environmental impact, and health issues, our legislature is spending time naming the year on our dime. And this is simply the tip of the iceberg when it comes to House Resolution No. 535.

It is a blatant disregard to the separation of church and state as outlined in the U.S. Constitution. Many representatives, not only in Pennsylvania but across the nation, have been touting their love, adoration, and undying allegiance to this document with renewed gusto over the past few years as evident by movements like the Tea Party. 

However, in the same breath, the Constitution and the original framework of the founding fathers has been trampled and spit upon. They invoke the Constitution, but only in name. They use it to justify an agenda which completely opposes that of the Constitution. 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...

Nuts to that, apparently.

No, the resolution is not law. However, the resolution does promote a singular religion. It stands for the progression of Christianity and, in the same light, denounces all other religions that may be represented within the state by way of alienation. The "Year of the Bible"? Without even asking which version of the Bible they're speaking of, what about the Tanakh or the Bhagavad Gita? What of the Qur'an or, for the sake of diversity, Dianetics? 

The promotion of any singular religion by any level of government is unconstitutional. Period. The Forefathers had the knowledge of history and the foresight to lay out the separation of the state from the church to avoid imposing upon the rights of individuals regardless of religion. In the seminal case of Engel v. Vitale in 1962, which outlawed prayer in schools, the court had this to say of the Forefathers' beliefs:

By the time of the adoption of the Constitution, our history shows that there was widespread awareness among many Americans of the dangers of a union of Church and State. These people knew, some of them from bitter personal experience, that one of the greatest dangers to the freedom of the individual to worship in his own way lay in the Government’s placing its official stamp of approval upon one particular kind of prayer or one particular form of religious services... The Constitution was intended to avert a part of this danger by leaving the government of this country in the hands of the people rather than in the hands of any monarch. But this safeguard was not enough. Our Founders were no more willing to let the content of their prayers and their privilege of praying whenever they pleased be influenced by the ballot box than they were to let these vital matters of personal conscience depend upon the succession of monarchs. (source)

We are not, as many seem to believe with searing intensity, a "Christian" nation. Even if the Forefathers were Christian themselves (This is hotly debated. Many were believed to be, at best, Deists. Much of the evidence in their writing and lives suggests this.), it would not make this nation a "Christian" nation anymore than a meal prepared by Richard Dawkins would be an Atheistic dinner.

We are a nation of many beliefs or lack there of. And we all are granted the right, by our Constitution, to practice whichever beliefs we hold free of persecution. It's one of the main reasons we came to this hunk of land in the first place.

The representatives in Harrisburg have crossed a line. They have committed a crime against the U.S. Constitution and against their constituents. There is no reason for this to be taken lightly. Regardless of your religious beliefs, the Constitution and all of the rights it guarantees to the citizens of this country must be upheld. House Resolution No. 535 is a slippery and sickening glimpse into the thought process of those in Harrisburg and it should not go unnoticed.

Religion is a personal choice and an individual's concern alone. And when government dips their pens into the inkwell of faith and personal belief, they breach a wall constructed to keep them out of it for their own good and for our own personal safety. This is not the "Year of the Bible". And this is not the time for any of you sitting in Harrisburg or in Washington to be concerning yourselves with topics that, constitutionally, do not concern you.

The U.S. is hungry. We want to work. We want proper educational systems for our children. We want safety. And we want to know that you're doing everything possible to provide these things for this country using our tax dollars that we fork over every paycheck. The Church does not pay your salary, we do.

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Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to 
Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802


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The Wolves are Feeding the Sheep: My rant on SOPA

Posted by Unknown | Posted in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Posted on Thursday, December 08, 2011

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digitaltrends.com
Since the election of Barack Obama, the words socialism, communism, fascism and various other terms have been thrown around by fear-mongers and the Right to frighten the populace into believing that we are one step away from concentration camps and Riefenstahl films.

Although this is hardly the case, an alarming amount of citizens believe it to be true whether they understand what socialism or communism is or not. It's an incredible feat of trickery, then, when those who scream communism and socialism, in an effort to preserve our American ways, come to support dangerous legislation that could and would bring the United States closer to the realization of such government.

One bill, H.R. 3261 - Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), being pushed by both Republican and Democratic members as well as media giants like NBC and affiliates, Rupert Murdoch behemoth News Corporation (which includes FOX News and 21st Century Fox), and virtually any company tied to Hollywood and the like, threatens to strangle the internet in censorship much like communist-controlled China where what you see online is strictly controlled by government.

SOPA supporters say that the bill will allow law enforcement to better combat "rogue sites" engaging in Intellectual Property Theft, which they claim costs the U.S. between $100 billion, by conservative reports, and $200 billion a year. The bill would allow sites to be blacklisted and blocked using practices such as DNS blocking if they were found in violation of the law.

Stopping illegal copyright infringement and the sale of counterfeit goods from "rogue" sites may be the overall intentions of the bill, introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith  (R-Tex.), but H.R. 3261 is written so broadly that negative repercussions, internet censorship and Free Speech infringements are inevitable. 

Even now, media corporations are pressuring affiliates and anyone associated with them to stay away from the discussion and support the measure. Television outlets are barely mentioning the bill or any of its problems. You can rest assured you wont find any negative commentary, if any, about the bill coming from FOX news and their "fair and balanced" [sic] reporting, but you wont find much on MSNBC, CNN or anywhere else, either.

Assück's "Blind Spot" cover.
What does this all mean for the average internet user? It means that the possibility of sites like YouTube and Facebook facing private legal action and, in accordance with the bill, being blocked through your ISP or nationally is very real. And those two are media giants in the online world. Smaller sites, blogs and personal sites could also face censorship or be blacked out completely. 

Imagine being fined for embedding a YouTube video on your blog. Or maybe something like the Occupy movement would have never happened, a movement largely organized and orchestrated using the internet. 

Smith claims that this will not be the case, however. That his bill is solely aimed at combating and eliminating internet piracy. He even goes so far as to compare internet piracy to child pornography in the National Review, another great shock-inducing tactic perpetrated as a means to scare up support for the bill.

The fact remains that this bill is dangerously written. That the possibility of a communist-like internet is very real if H.R. 3261 were to be passed. It is broad, held up by shaky arguments, and an actual threat to Constitutional rights. While pundits and members of government are trying to frighten you into the belief that you're living in a communist-led, socialistic, Marxist society, they're marching in secrecy to try and push laws through that will actually lead us there. 

They're playing you for fools. And some of you aren't seeing it.

A new bill, called the OPEN Act, will be introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Darrell Issa to combat the dangerous aspects of SOPA. The OPEN Act is described as targeting financial flow to piracy outlets rather than targeting and censoring any portions of the internet. SOPA is an "overreaching approach to policing the Internet when a more balanced and targeted approach would be more effective," said Wyden. 

Whether or not the OPEN Act will be a much more reasonable and Constitutional alternative to SOPA remains to be seen, but at least the opposition towards SOPA is growing.

Keep an eye on all of this and contact your representatives to say NO to SOPA. There are a myriad of sites which help you contact your reps if you are too busy to find their email or telephone information.


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