9th Circuit - Gay-marriage ban unconstitutional, court rules

kevjames3 · 2012-02-08T06:45:06.416643+00:00

Not necessarily. It depends on the initiative in question, and what effects it would have. It would apply if the effects of the change were limited exactly to disallowing "marriage" for same sex couples but not changing anything else, and if there were no other legal side-effects of disallowing marriage. For example, if civil unions are merely legislation but the ban on same sex marriage were a constitutional amendment, then that amendment would hold even if the civil union legislation were repealed, so it might be sufficiently different. (California's Prop 8 codified civil unions in the same constitutional amendment that banned marriage).

kevjames3 · 2012-02-08T01:56:52.000698+00:00

Well, it would apply anywhere in the 9th circuit where a law or amendment tries to prevent same sex couples from getting "married" but very clearly changes nothing else whatsoever - all other legal rights are unaffected. Because that's what this ruling used as the basis for arguing that Prop 8 can't possibly have any purpose other than animus / moral disapproval - because it does nothing of any legal substance, except for preventing same sex relationships from having the title "marriage".

If that same situation came up in another state in the 9th circuit, then this ruling would apply, I think.

cos · 1 day

Based on the architects I know and what I hear of the work they do, that is false.

maxwellhill · 2 days

Perhaps that's because there aren't a lot of deaths caused by bows and swords? I don't know, that'd seem to be the most obvious reason.

Whatever the reason is, however, you might notice that I said I wasn't arguing in favor of making gun manufacturers responsible. Because I really wasn't arguing in favor of making gun manufacturers responsible. Really. Yes, really, I did mean that. Really.

I was pointing out that some people may feel differently about guns vs. the knife analogy, and whatever their reasons may be, it is not inherently a logically inconsistent position. That's my point: knives and guns are not a good parallel in this context. For all you know, maybe those people also feel that bow manufacturers should be responsible if a lot of bow-related deaths start cropping up. But that's beside the point.

maxwellhill · 2 days

They sit waiting on the off chance someone will need to use them for self defense

In other words, you're agreeing that they are there for reasons related to the fact that their purpose is violence. Against humans, in this case.

maxwellhill · 2 days

I wrote:

their primary uses are all related to death, injury, or violence (though not necessarily to humans); the vast majority of guns sold are sold for reasons related to this.

You responded:

The vast majority of these are never used for death, injury and violence. People often have guns as collectables, for hunting or for use in a shooting range which are all completely justifiable uses.

Nice way you have there of completely deflecting everything by pretending it means something else. You should've worked for the George W Bush administration.

Where did I say anything about "justifiable" or "unjustifiable" uses? How does that even reflect on the point I was making? Do you even have a clue what that point was?

You seem to understand, later in your comment, that hunting is violence, yet you present hunting as a counterpoint to my bringing up violence. What you don't seem to understand at all is that "reasons related to this" is not identical to simply "this".

Yes, you think violence to animals doesn't count. That's not the point. This isn't about your opinion, this is about whether it's possible for reasonable people to disagree with the commenter above without committing a logical fallacy. Those people may simply not agree with you.

You would argue about self defense, but that again is not the point. That's just another example of guns being sold for "reasons related to" their purpose of being used for violence. You want to argue that it's "good" violence. Fine, argue that - argue it with someone who's taking the opposing position. But for you to think that because you hold that opinion means that people who don't think guns and knives make a good parallel are logically inconsistent, just shows the point when whoosh over your head in your desire to defend guns against every perceived slight.

Sadly, it looks like the majority of people participating in these comments are the sort who can only see "guns good!" and "guns bad!" and react with the jerk of a thoughtless knee.

maxwellhill · 2 days

Man uses a bazooka to blow up a church. You holding the bazooka maker responsible? By your very logic, you would.

*sigh* Even though I stated very directly more than once in my comment that I was NOT arguing for holding gun owners responsible for damage caused by guns, I knew knee-jerk commenters would pretend I was because they got hit in some emotional chip on their shoulder about guns and feel personally attacked. Please think before you comment.

maxwellhill · 2 days

Sounds like you're agreeing with my comment. Your certainly agree that most people don't own guns, since you claim that even most households don't own guns. And while I said "not necessarily humans" and you seemed to pretend that I said "and I mean specifically humans", what you're saying seems to line up with what I said, since hunting is indeed about death and violence.

praseodymium · 2 days

And yet, the Arab lands are on the whole even worse off economically than middle-of-the-road African countries. I think this is what they have in common.

scientologist2 · 2 days

I see a lot of repetition from Patrick5555 but not from Levy_Wilson.

scientologist2 · 2 days

You're almost right.

This is similar to an article making a really big deal about some politician having a same sex relationship, without mentioning that same politician has been active in pushing anti-gay legislation. Understandably many readers would react with "so what if he's gay?"

It's the juxtaposition between this, and the voter suppression drive that he and other Republican secretaries of state have been pushing in recent years, focusing especially on strict voter ID laws, that makes this story relevant. The linked article doesn't talk about that, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's the reason many redditors are interested.

praseodymium · 2 days

Here's the really simple answer that I'm convinced sums it up, based on many years of being interested in the subject, many books, myself and friends and family having lived in or worked in Africa, etc.

Colonialism upends natively developed systems and cultures - and with them all of the "natural" avenues for sustainable economies - and replaces those with systems imported from the colonial power. This process can be successful but it takes at least a couple of generations, preferably more.

China was never really colonized. A couple of other places (Thailand and Iran) were never colonized at all. Plenty of other places (The Americas, the subcontinent aka India, etc.) were colonized either so completely that the native population was displaced, or colonized for long enough that imported economic and cultural systems were effectively established. That latter caused some problems, but not nearly as much as...

... the two regions of the world where, nearly across the board, colonialism took hold very late, and the colonial empires collapsed within one or two generations of taking power. Those would be Africa and the Middle East. These places were suddenly left with political and legal systems imposed on them by foreign powers, but not rooted in local culture, with no locally-managed economic systems that had been tried or effectively adapted.

That is why the Middle East and Africa entered the mid 20th century era of independence in the worst possible position.

maxwellhill · 2 days

If original journalism written by employees of multiple well-established news organizations, and quoting government officials, is all just "hearsay" to you, then you might as well ignore the news altogether and assume you know nothing about anything that you didn't personally observe. All news about the rest of the world is just hearsay.

maxwellhill · 2 days

While I'm not taking a position on this issue, it does seem to me a bit disingenuous to pretend these are equivalent.

Knives are standard tools everyone has, with a wide variety of uses that have nothing to do with death, injury, or violence, and the vast majority of knives sold or possessed are never intended to even once be used for anything related to death, injury, or violence. Guns are things most people in this country do not own and have never owned, and their primary uses are all related to death, injury, or violence (though not necessarily to humans); the vast majority of guns sold are sold for reasons related to this.

Both practically and culturally (and culture does matter), guns and knives, to the extent that they do have some overlap, fall on extremely different parts of these continuums. Whatever your opinion on gun manufacturers' responsibility (and I'm not trying to argue for or against here), it is not fair or logical to imply that logical consistency requires anyone who finds tallfellow's knife example funny or ridiculous to also feel the same about guns. Reasonable people can hold both opinions (that tallfellow's knife example is ridiculous and funny, and that gun manufacturers bear some responsibility for gun violence).

Bripocalypse · 2 days

I can't think of any timing since the crash that couldn't have been linked to some current event(s) and been considered "coincidental", so it's not much of a coincidence. It would probably also seem like coincidental timing if they did it this summer, or fall, or early next year, or really anytime in the near future.

Bripocalypse · 2 days

Because you're still looking at it as being about punishment and reward for individual companies, even after I explained that that's tangential to the real goal of this movement.

Bripocalypse · 2 days

I think you're actually conflating two things. Many people prefer credit unions specifically, over banks, because CUs are more focused on the customer and give much better customer service. What we're talking about here is a political movement to shift money out of megabanks and into smaller institutions, which include credit unions but also community banks and regional banks. Of course, no credit unions are international megabanks, so they match up well with this movement, but if you're thinking of people's preference specifically for credit unions rather than banks (even small banks) then it's probably the customer service / customer focus aspect.

Bripocalypse · 3 days

There's a movement to get money out of huge banks and into smaller banks for a very good reason, and it doesn't matter that much whether the huge bank in question was one of the most horrible ones or not. This isn't primarily an effort to "punish" bad banks for their behavior (although that's a great motivator too) - the problem this movement is trying to address is the concentration of banking in a few megabanks.

When we have the majority of our money tied up in a small number of giant megabanks,

They have far too much political power.
The banking system becomes more fragile due to their interdependence and size.
In combination, those things cause the megabanks to be "too big to fail", which means we're forced into protecting them from failure using public funds.
And that in turn insulates them from the greatest risks of failure, allowing them to blithely take on even greater risks, knowing the reward is theirs if they succeed, but even if their risks fail badly, they are highly unlikely to actually lose.

By moving our money into a much larger number of smaller banks, we get a much safer and more robust banking system, and less corruption.

bananana_hammock · 5 days

People use them a lot, they appear in print... eventually the dictionaries notice and add them. Dictionaries are a trailing indicator.

icaaryal · 5 days

I live in Cambridge, MA, so it'd be a bit too much effort to try to keep track of all the famous people living nearby :)

Wickedlong · 5 days

The best "your mother" ever, IMO, was in the US Senate a couple of years ago, in the debate on health care reform. Republican Senator Jon Kyl was arguing that the government shouldn't set standards for what kinds of things health insurance needs to cover. In Kyl's opinion, this would prevent private insurers from offering cheaper plans covering fewer things, to people who aren't interested in coverage for all the categories (which, IMO, defeats the point of insurance which is to pool your risk in the largest available pool). Requiring that his insurance include categories he doesn't need would make it more expensive, he argued, and as an example, said "I don't need maternity care".

Senator Debbie Stabenow interjected, "your mother probably did."

heylookitsmykel · 5 days

He's not American, but the style of music he pioneered came in part from the relatively short time he spent in the US, jamming and gigging and recording, and he took that music and incorporated into his. He's one of the most influential musicians ever in the history of music: Fela Kuti, Nigeria's most famous and most popular musician of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. He called his music "afrobeat" and it was one of the two lines that led into what came to be called Afro-Pop. He was a pioneer of the blending of African music with western music, and much of what we hear today comes out of that. Even if you haven't heard of him, you're probably familiar with a lot of musicians who have cited him as an influence. I think Fela's time in the US, and the influence of jazz on his musical style, fits into the theme of Black History Month.

arealmc · 5 days

My favorite comedy, ever.

AllUNeedisL0VE · 5 days

This post was "bumped" at the Washington Post, as they explain in the italicized paragraph at the top, due to the recent interest sparked by the Susan G Komen scandal. "So here it is again, lifted from April."

The article begins with "With Planned Parenthood being either the major obstacle to a budget deal or one of the major obstacles to a budget deal," so it appears to be the original article, reposted. They're referring to the budget fight about government funding for Planned Parenthood, in Congress. That was totally about abortion.

rottenpossum · 6 days

You could ask on /r/tampa or /r/StPetersburgFL rather than a default subreddit like this one where the vast majority of readers are unfamiliar with your area.

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