The Unconstitutional Constitution, or Why Some People Shouldn’t Use Logic

This post relates to a single tweet: https://twitter.com/#!/michellemalkin/status/166948277076508673

RT @arizonashane: @michellemalkin Given the opportunity, the 9th Circus would strike down the Constitution as unconstitutional.

I came across it after seeing the amazingly bigoted tweet from Rick Santorum

7M Californians had their rights stripped away today by activist 9th Circuit judges. As president I will work to protect marriage.

So first off, the whole “giving people rights” thing does not actually take away the rights of anyone else. If Santorum was a member of the KKK arguing against Black Rights, or was arguing against Womens Rights and used the exact same argument he’d be committing political suicide. But no, it’s ok to say that  about homosexual couples and their right (or prevention thereof) to marry. Someone down the road getting a BMW does not prevent me from getting one either, so I fail to see how the “rights” of anyone has been “stripped away”.

Of course, if he’s arguing for the “sanctity of marriage”, why don’t they kick off a “ban divorce” campaign, or a “criminalise adultery” one? These things do more to “harm” marriage than anything else I’ve seen, so this defence is like saying you can’t light a candle because it might start a fire, but your house is already burning down.

Anyway, back to the Logic. The Constitution is what defines America, or at least is the document that it’s founded on. To say that the 9th Circuit Court would call the Constitution unconstitutional is like the old logic joke “This statement is false”. If the statement is false, it must be true, but if it’s true then the statement is false. Likewise, if the Constitution is unconstitutional then how can you define what is unconstitutional? Is everything not in the Constitution suddenly not unconstitutional when the Constitution becomes unconstitutional?

This is why people shouldn’t treat Logic like a play toy. They sometimes screw it up.

Reasons I Don’t Want To Live In The USA: The Anti-Choice/Anti-Gay Campaigns

I’m going to re-purpose this blog as a space for me to write opinion pieces on the World At Large.

As many of you may know, I currently live in Christchurch, New Zealand. We’ve had approximately ten thousand earthquakes since the 4th of September 2010. Most of the central business district has been levelled, with sections still closed off a year after the lethal Feb 22nd quake. The lives of everyone here have been impacted, and many people ask me why I haven’t moved away yet. I’ll be honest and say I’m tempted, but I will never ever leave this damaged city to live in the States. I am 30 years old, male, white, straight, and non-religious (by that I mean I don’t really care about religion as long as it’s not being forced on anyone else). I am a red head though, so I did grow up with the usual school yard harassment that goes along with it.

The first reason I don’t want to go to the States is the extremely polarised nature of American politics and religion. The prime example of this is the dual campaigns against Abortion and Homosexuality. I find both of these to be running counter to the other, to Christianity as a whole, and to the aims of the Republican party whose members seem to be at the fore-front of news stories about these two issues.

Working forwards, the way the Anti campaigns work against each other (and themselves) is the way they value Human Life. All of the Anti-Abortion campaigners say that life begins at conception and that abortion is murder (and that miscarriage is murder too, but that’s a completely different subject), yet the death threats directed at abortion practitioners or anyone associated with abortions, or the flagrant disregard for the lives of women runs contrary to this. Even the Anti-Gay hate/bullying and the resultant suicides lends weight to the idea that the conservative Christian element thinks potential life is more important than the lives of those who are different, or disagree with their views.

There have been recent articles in American news about small towns and their war on gay teens or the state of womens health services before abortion was legalised, which make me glad that I’m not affected by any of this personally, but I also feel kinda guilty for thinking that as there are those who are there and are experiencing these things.

Now, the issues I have with the Anti-Abortion campaign are three-fold:

1. Republican Politicians are famous for wanting less regulation and government interference, yet want to dictate what can & can’t be done with a woman’s choice to have a child or not.
2. The claims of valuing life when so much is being done to cause harm in the name of Preventing Abortions.
3. The fact that outlawing and “defunding” Abortion will cause massive issues for Women’s Health in America

Point 1 is my favourite hypocritical point of this entire post. I don’t see how these two viewpoints can work together. They’re in favour of economic de-regulation (which, incidentally, will do nothing to prevent another economic meltdown like we’ve seen in the last four years, or worse it will even help it) but want to dictate what you can do in your own homes, or with your body. Incidentally, anyone supporting the Anti-Abortion movement yet argues against any of the ways women are treated in conservative Islamic countries can also be labelled a hypocrite for exactly the same reasons. Why is applying Christian values about controlling women in one country any different from applying Islamic/Muslim values in another?

The overlap of the Anti-Abortion/Gay campaigns comes in the attitude towards life. On one hand we have the viewpoint that conception begins at birth, and that every life is valuable. On the other there are the protesters outside any abortion clinic spewing hate speech and death threats, or standing back while kids are bullied and harassed to the point where they commit suicide. How can anyone like Michele Bachmann claim to value life, when there is so much death generated by their actions/inactions (this is where you go read the War On Gay Teens article I linked earlier). I guess they just want to enforce their views, even though it may destroy someones life in the process.

The last point is where we can draw parallels to Prohibition way back in the 1920′s. You may outlaw something, but it’s still going to happen, just in more dangerous ways. Simply outlawing abortion will result in the sort of back-alley clinics with unsanitary conditions that could actually kill women wanting abortions, while also charging/extorting large sums of money from them. At the very least, de-funding organisations like Planned Parenthood will result in many women missing out on cancer screening, STD checks, and contraceptive help (which incidentally would do more to reduce abortions than any sort of ban or funding cut would).

On the Gay front, things are similar, but for different reasons. The main “argument” against homosexuality by religious conservatives is that it’s “evil” or “against God” or some other equally vague reason.  In the War on Gay Teens article, various people are quoted as saying that homosexuality is a form of “sexual dysfunction” that amounts to “personal slavery”, or that somehow “a 15 year old could be seduced into homosexual behavior and then contract AIDS?”. I’d say there’s a bigger chance of getting AIDs if you don’t educate teens on safe sex, but we could make rebuttal analogies like “what if America’s gun culture seduced a teen into liking guns, and they went on a shooting rampage?” (but that’s a subject for another blog entry). Using “what if” statements to justify something via hypothetical and absurd situations is alarmist, but all too common in justifications of people “defending themselves” against the LGBT/Athiest “agenda”.

As it is often said “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”, and intentionally restricting teachers and schools from protecting students from bullying when sexuality is involved is just as abhorrent as those who actively partake in those activities. The really sad part is that while America is intolerant of  racism, it seems blind or just ignorant against the exact same treatment of anyone that deviates from the “accepted norm” of being completely heterosexual. There is no equal and fair treatment of all, just varying shades of grey where the same sentiment/behaviour gets different reactions depending on the target.

Even attempts to introduce laws against bullying get watered down, as happened with the “Matt’s Safe School Law” in Michigan, where an amendment allows bullying based on “sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction”, which pretty much means that if you believe being gay is against God’s Will, you can bully away to your hearts content.

It just sickens me. These earthquakes have to be the scariest and most stressful thing I’ve ever experienced, but in comparison to how LGBT kids are treated in America, I feel like what I’ve experienced is nothing like what they’re living through. After all, I just have to worry about the earth moving and buildings falling. They have to worry about almost everyone around them.