CA Supreme Court agrees to review Prop. 8 ....

[_Jason Bourne]

Here and on other threads Rollo insists prop 8 took away a fundamental right and he argues that such a thing has never happened. I noted the the 16th amendment did just that, took away a fundamental right to enjoy ones income.

Never been recognized as a constitutional fundamental right (nor has the ability to drink liquor).

The flaw in your theory is that you say the court has to decide what is a fundamental right. I think this is incorrect. The only time the court gets involved is when there is a dispute about what is and is not. The constitution spells out rights already. Additionally historically an income tax was unconstitutional. If I recall at times when the government attempted to impose one it was overturned. Sure there were taxes to run the country, just not income taxes. I will look later to see if I can find some court law on this.

To Trevor, your logic on this is flawed. Even if I have income left if the government takes some I lose the right to enjoy THAT income. If you have 50 acres of land but the government seizes 25 acres of that land you now have 25 less acres to enjoy something you had a right to. The same is true of your income.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

The flaw in your theory is that you say the court has to decide what is a fundamental right. I think this is incorrect. The only time the court gets involved is when there is a dispute about what is and is not. The constitution spells out rights already.

But I don't think the constitution states anywhere that income taxes are forbidden.

Additionally historically an income tax was unconstitutional.

I don't recall any such Supreme Court case.

If I recall at times when the government attempted to impose one it was overturned. Sure there were taxes to run the country, just not income taxes. I will look later to see if I can find some court law on this.

I don't know of any, but please share if you find it (I admit that I really haven't followed the constitutional evolution of income taxes, so I'd be happy to be educated). Just in terms of taking money or other property, I agree we have have the express fundamental right to due process of law, but beyond that I just don't know of a fundamental right that's involved.

[_rcrocket]

Additionally historically an income tax was unconstitutional.

I don't recall any such Supreme Court case.

Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Company, 157 U.S. 429, aff'd on reh'g, 158 U.S. 601 (1895) declared an income tax a violation of civil rights and unconstitutional. It was overruled by the 16th amendment.

It is silly to continue to adhere to the argument that constitutional amendments are designed to expand, not take away, rights. There just isn't any legal precedent for that in any court decision, and constitutional amendments are passed frequently to limit somebody's rights. Re-institution of the death penalty in California is a good example. Restriction of access to government services by illegal immigrants in several states is another.

California just passed Proposition 2 that required farmers to vastly expand the size of the pens required to hold chickens and pigs, so that they can roam around rather than be penned into one place. Animals don't have civil rights, but the farmers cannot likely compete with Arizona and Baja farmers. Seems the farmer's civil rights have been trammeled upon.

Also, I hold my sides in laughter and your continued name-calling; mocking and making fun of my profession and calling me a bigot just because I supported Prop 8. [That is really the best you can do against me? Name call? Mock my personal attributes? I would tell you that I grin in victory but I deplore the typical chest-beating Mr. Scratch employs all the time.] I support Prop 8 because I oppose gay marriage for the reasons articulated in the Witherspoon report and not because I was compelled to do so. Prop 8 passed with a significant margin (notwithstanding the press calling it "narrow or slim").

[_Trevor]

To Trevor, your logic on this is flawed. Even if I have income left if the government takes some I lose the right to enjoy THAT income. If you have 50 acres of land but the government seizes 25 acres of that land you now have 25 less acres to enjoy something you had a right to. The same is true of your income.

I see what you are saying, Jason, but my beef is not that rights are limited in various ways, because they obviously are. I am simply tired of the rhetoric that comes out of the anti-tax looney bin.

Why do you keep arguing as though we get nothing in return in compensation for what we pay into the system? We obviously do. If you want to talk about taking property, the better issue, in any case, is eminent domain (and it just might be one that we are more likely to agree on). Otherwise, the analogy is poor. If you had said that the government was taking half the produce of a farm, OK. Still, people benefit from the taxes they pay in myriad ways, both obvious and often overlooked. Even if you were right about the issue of constitutionality (and you are most decidedly not), it would be astonishingly stupid to try a world without taxes. It would only be slightly less stupid to imagine a world under a flat tax, otherwise known as the regressive tax system.

[_Trevor]

It was overruled by the 16th amendment.

Woohoo! Go 16th. Rock on! ;)

Also, I hold my sides in laughter and your continued name-calling; mocking and making fun of my profession and calling me a bigot just because I supported Prop 8.

Er, what?

I would tell you that I grin in victory but I deplore the typical chest-beating Mr. Scratch employs all the time.

Chest-beating accomplished. Oldest rhetorical trick in the book.

I support Prop 8 because I oppose gay marriage for the reasons articulated in the Witherspoon report and not because I was compelled to do so.

False dilemma. Just because you have convinced yourself, does not mean you have convinced, or will convince, us.

[_rcrocket]

I would tell[ you that I grin in victory but I deplore the typical chest-beating Mr. Scratch employs all the time.

Chest-beating accomplished. Oldest rhetorical trick in the book.

I support Prop 8 because I oppose gay marriage for the reasons articulated in the Witherspoon report and not because I was compelled to do so.

False dilemma. Just because you have convinced yourself, does not mean you have convinced, or will convince, us.

I admit to the rhetorical trickery.

I don't expect to convince any Mormon-hater here (therein lies the true bigotry, doesn't it? hating, mocking, and name-calling somebody because of his faith in Jesus Christ and His Prophet? otherwise, why spend your time and energy on a website such as this?), least of all you or Rollo.

There are others, though, I expect to convince, and invite them to read the Witherspoon report at http://www.princetonprinciples.org/, particularly page 27 and perhaps counter with sociological reports of their own.

And, I don't know the meaning of the term "false dilemma" in this context. I don't go for technical jargon about rhetoric.

[_Jason Bourne]

Why do you keep arguing as though we get nothing in return in compensation for what we pay into the system? We obviously do. If you want to talk about taking property, the better issue, in any case, is eminent domain (and it just might be one that we are more likely to agree on). Otherwise, the analogy is poor. If you had said that the government was taking half the produce of a farm, OK. Still, people benefit from the taxes they pay in myriad ways, both obvious and often overlooked. Even if you were right about the issue of constitutionality (and you are most decidedly not), it would be astonishingly stupid to try a world without taxes. It would only be slightly less stupid to imagine a world under a flat tax, otherwise known as the regressive tax system.

I am not opposed to the income tax other than I don't like paying it much like most of Americans. My only and sole point here is a loss of rights issues. I am not sure why you think I am arguing otherwise. Of course there needs to be some tax to run a government. How and what taxes can be debated. But it is pretty clear that up till 1916 when the 16th amendment was added there was NO income tax. There were other taxes but not income. For 140 years the USA operated without such. And if you think I am wrong that an income tax was unconstitutional then why pray tell did it take an amendment to the constitution to make it legal?

[_Trevor]

And if you think I am wrong that an income tax was unconstitutional then why pray tell did it take an amendment to the constitution to make it legal?

The all important past tense making all of the difference.

Yes, to argue that the Constitution is about ever-expanding rights does not work. You just hit my residual election-time button with the tax analogy.

[_Trevor]

I don't expect to convince any Mormon-hater here (therein lies the true bigotry, doesn't it? hating, mocking, and name-calling somebody because of his faith in Jesus Christ and His Prophet? otherwise, why spend your time and energy on a website such as this?), least of all you or Rollo.

And the rhetorical trickery continues. Suddenly I am a Mormon-hater. Interesting.

There are others, though, I expect to convince, and invite them to read the Witherspoon report at http://www.princetonprinciples.org/, particularly page 27 and perhaps counter with sociological reports of their own.

I will happily read the report. But the report is the persuader in that case, not you.

And, I don't know the meaning of the term "false dilemma" in this context. I don't go for technical jargon about rhetoric.

The jargon is simply a time-saving device for me. Nothing more.

[_Trevor]

Here is what the "Witherspoon Report" has to say on same-sex marriage:

Although the social scientific research on same-sex marriage is in its infancy, there are a number of reasons to be concerned about the consequences of redefining marriage to include same-sex relationships. First, no one can definitively say at this point how children are affected by being reared by same-sex couples. The current research on children reared by same-sex couples is inconclusive and underdeveloped—we do not yet have any large, long-term, longitudinal studies that can tell us much about how children are affected by being raised in a same-sex household.94 Yet the larger empirical literature on child well-being suggests that the two sexes bring different talents to the parenting enterprise, and that children benefit from growing up with both their biological parents. This strongly suggests that children reared by same-sex parents will experience greater difficulties with their identity, sexuality, attachments to kin, and marital prospects as adults, among other things. But until more research is available, the jury is still out.

Yet there remain even deeper concerns about the institutional consequences of same-sex marriage for marriage itself. Same-sex marriage would further undercut the idea that procreation is intrinsically connected to marriage. It would undermine the idea that children need both a mother and a father, further weakening the societal norm that men should take responsibility for the children they beget. Finally, same-sex marriage would likely corrode marital norms of sexual fidelity, since gay marriage advocates and gay couples tend to downplay the importance of sexual fidelity in their definition of marriage. Surveys of men entering same-sex civil unions in Vermont indicate that 50 percent of them do not value sexual fidelity, and rates of sexual promiscuity are high among gay men.95 For instance, Judith Stacey, professor of sociology at New York University and a leading advocate of gay marriage, hopes that same-sex marriage will promote a “pluralist expansion of the meaning, practice, and politics of family life in the United States” where “perhaps some might dare to question the dyadic limitations of Western marriage and seek some of the benefits of extended family life through small group marriages…”96

Our concerns are only reinforced by the legalization of same-sex marriage in Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, and Spain—and its legalization in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Same-sex marriage has taken hold in societies or regions with low rates of marriage and/or fertility.97 For instance, Belgium, Canada, Massachusetts, the Netherlands, and Spain all have fertility rates well below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman.98 These are societies in which child-centered marriage has ceased to be the organizing principle of adult life. Seen in this light, same-sex marriage is both a consequence of and further stimulus to the abolition of marriage as the preferred vehicle for ordering sex, procreation, and childrearing in the West. While there are surely many unknowns, what we do know suggests that embracing same-sex marriage would further weaken marriage itself at the very moment when it needs to be most strengthened.

Frankly, this is pretty thin gruel upon which to base an argument for Prop 8.