Jarlaxle

And where do these “certain rights” come from?

The Declaration of Independence:

I suppose that not only is the Declaration of Independence “unconstitutional,” but the freakin Constitution is itself UNCONSTITUTIONAL!

[ June 28, 2002: Message edited by: Jarlaxle ]</p>

Mageth

And where do these “certain rights” come from?

Like the document says, they were enumerated in the Constitution.

Further, the Declaration of Independence was a delclaration to the King of England (and the world) that the colonies considered themselves no longer a part of the Empire. It is not part of the Constitutional documents that formed our government. You could say it has no "legal" standing, we get no rights or laws from it, and it cannot be declared unconstitutional.

And I was "created" by my mother and father.

Jarlaxle

The writers of the Constitution understood that our rights come from our creator.

Toto

A very elaborate and falacious argument to get around the fact that the Constitution is completely Godless. Our rights derive from the written word, which is part of a social compact - "We the people" agree on these rights.

ashibaka

Hello looney! Please provide evidence in the Constitution that the writers thought our rights came from our "Creator".

Mageth

The writers of the Constitution understood that our rights come from our creator.

The preamble to the Constitution in its entirity:

The Constitution never mentions a creator or god.

The essential principle of the document is that government must be confined to the rule of law.

Stephen Maturin

Nonsense. The drafters of the Constitution took great pains to leave all God/creator references out of the document. They succeeded. The Ninth Amendment is simply an acknowledgement that the Bill of Rights isn't the be-all and end-all of the citizenry's legal protections.

Jarlaxle

If you had to guess, which would you guess? Did they think our rights come from God or not?

Mageth

I don't have to guess. Our rights don't come from a god.

Godless Sodomite

Even if they thought that, what possible difference would it make?

This whole phenomenon of superstitious reverence for the founding fathers has always baffled me. We can't have gay equality, we can't provide health care for our citizens, we can't work for peace instead of promoting war, etc., etc., etc., because, we're told, it goes against everything the founding fathers stood for. Never mind the fact that most Americans don't actually know anything about the founders, but even if it were true that, say, Henry Lightfoot Lee might have been shocked by the prospect of gay marriage or whatever---so what? I'm sure this kind of constitutional fundamentalism is a product of the same infantile mindset that makes religious fundamentalism so common here. The Christers have won that battle; most Americans do genuinely believe this was founded to be a Christian nation, and I suspect that any kind of meaningful gay equality is a dead issue (which is another issue, but not, to my mind, unrelated).

I have never, not even once, come across a political discussion in another country where this kind of idiocy crops up. People discuss issues on their merits for contemporary society (not always wisely or thoughtfully, of course) and not on the basis of what Edward III or the Han emperors would have thought--especially since there's no way to know. "Mon dieu! Ve could never legalize ze homos--what would Louis XII think!" Gross Gott! Ve must not provide good health care for the German proletariat. It goes against everything Frederick the Great stood for!"

And this new ruling, of course, goes against both kinds of fundamentalist superstition, both against imaginary god and against the imaginary founding fathers. I think this is the most embarrassingly benighted country in the world, and there's no doubt in my mind why most people in other countries find us laughable. There are peasants working Vietnamese rice paddies who are more genuinely thoughtful and insightful than most of our countrymen.

Jerry