4 ms·
You don't need a constitutional amendment -- just pass a law. If they're so broadly accepted, it shouldn't be difficult. > the right to birth control You mean
by prottog 4y ago
You don't need a constitutional amendment -- just pass a law. If they're so broadly accepted, it shouldn't be difficult.
> the right to birth control
You mean the right to contraceptives paid for by the public, covered by insurance, or administered by people who may have sincerely-held religious beliefs against contraception? No state, Supreme Court judgments aside, forbids an adult from paying for birth control pills on their own prescribed by a doctor who sees it fit.
> the right to be gay
What? Obergefell requires states to grant and recognize marriages between two people of the same sex. That seems like a pretty narrow part of "being gay".
- ausbah 4y agoinalienable rights shouldn't be subject to the whims of what most people want. sure that kicks the fan down the road by having to define what is an "inalienable right", but "mob rulel, "tyranny of the majority" whatever you like to call it shouldn't be a basis to deprive certain peoples of basic rights
- prottog 4y agoI agree, inalienable rights shouldn't depend on what other people think or want. That's why basic rights should only be negative rights; in the classical formulation, your rights to be free from the government depriving you of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Increasingly, "basic rights" are being morphed into positive rights that require other people supporting (whether in though, speech, or action) said right. Right to birth control? Someone needs to make and administer those pills. Right to housing? Someone needs to build and maintain the houses. I'm afraid that such rights will always depend on the whims of those around you, and hence cannot be truly basic.
- jfengel 4y agoThomas didn't just single out Obergefell. He also mentioned Lawrence v Texas, which overturned sodomy laws. And Griswold, which lets you pay for birth control with your own money. It says nothing about the public paying for it.
- prottog 4y ago> Griswold You're right -- I was thinking of more recent cases that expanded upon Griswold. Thank you for reminding me. As I understand it, Justice Thomas's mentioning of Lawrence v. Texas and other laws "to be revisited", so to speak, were limited to the application of substantive due process in arriving at those judgments, and not necessarily to reverse the outcome of those judgments.
- jfengel 4y agoThat's right. He just wants to take those old cases out for a spin, give 'em a tune up, kick the tires a bit. No chance he'd take away some rights that George Washington didn't put explicitly in the Constitution.