Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Gay rights aren't civil rights because gays apparently don't have rights

Well, this is a poorly-reasoned, vile screed attacking people who believe in equal rights. Let's take a look:
Homosexual marriage is not a civil right guaranteed by the Constitution - life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are.

Oooh, a bad start. She's confusing the Declaration of Independence with the Constitution.
In fact, traditional marriage isn't even a civil right.

At least she's trying to be consistent, but she's only succeeding in being consistently stupid. Just because marriage isn't addressed in the Constitution doesn't mean that it's not a civil right. The Supreme Court itself has many times said otherwise--marriage is a fundamental right. To say otherwise is to prove how grossly ignorant you are--or that you're just lying for the sake of discriminating against people. Either way, it doesn't make for a good argument.
In San Francisco, signs of protest read: "Marriage is for everyone." No, it is not. With that logic, we could marry off children (say 8 or 10 years old) or "kissing cousins."

Apparently this writer's ignorance of the issue is worse than I thought. For starters, cousins can marry in certain states. Also, gay marriage wouldn't allow children to marry, because--the sign's literal meaning aside--all we want is to allow two consenting adults to have the same rights that other consenting adults have. Children can't marry because they aren't capable of consenting to something like that; nor can animals. [Edit] I couldn't think of the word before--I was thinking of "informed consent." [/Edit]
Marriage, as clearly defined through the ages, is between one man and one woman. You don't need a constitutional amendment for that - it is inherently implied commonsense.

No, it's inherent nonsense. Marriage throughout the ages has mostly been polygamous, when there has been marriage at all. Calling it "one man and one woman" is itself redefining marriage.
Another protest sign read: "No on Hate." Disagreement does not equate to hate.

True, but discrimination against a group usually does imply hatred of that group.
Opposition to homosexual marriage has nothing to do with discrimination and activists need to stop mixing the two. Whether a person's rights are violated based on discrimination is a wholly separate issue and should be handled that way.

This doesn't even make sense. Taking away a person's rights has nothing to do with discrimination? Since when? Oh, right--since gay people wanted their rights. See above about hatred.
Black civil and religious leaders - rightfully - have expressed outrage at the gay community's co-opting "civil rights" to include gay sex.

Hoo boy, here we go.
Blacks were stoned, hung, and dragged for their constitutional right to "sit at the table." Whites - gay or not - already had a seat at that table. There is no comparison.

Um, what? It wasn't until recently that laws were passed in many states preventing people from being fired for being gay--in some states that's still okay. Gays aren't allowed to serve in the military; they're not allowed to get married; it wasn't until five years ago that they were allowed to have sex. This writer is basically just trying to justify discriminating against gays on the basis that they haven't been discriminated against.

And adding in that "blacks were stoned, hung, and dragged" to obtain their rights... well, what of it? It's not as though gays haven't been killed, either (perhaps I'm being too hasty--given Wall's ignorance of everything else, she might not know about those). But let's think about this: she (among others) is basically saying that if you're not getting killed, you don't deserve your rights. So obviously, taking away black people's rights would be just fine, as long as you don't hurt them in the process.
Activists argue that, like skin color, gays don't choose their lifestyle. Even if, for the sake of argument, that were so, homosexuals are still "choosing" to get married. To compare voters denying what is not a right to blacks dying for what is - is beyond the pale.

Just like blacks were "choosing" to get white jobs? Or go to white schools? Or live in white neighborhoods? The exercising of civil rights is always a choice, and the civil rights movements were fought precisely to give people that choice, you insipid twit.

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