In the US, it's SCOTUS, and they already have multiple rulings on this matter.
LGBT and the US Conservative Movement
- Thread starter FriedCFour
- Start date
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
This basically sums up to 'If you believe in God, you're not allowed to be part of the political process.'
Do you not see a problem with this?
King Arts
Well-known member
No, Strunken was not making a legal statement I don't think but he said that public policies should not be offered if they don't have a secular reasoning. And the Supreme Court can only determine if something is unconstitutional to make it simple let's narrow it down to the 1st ammendment.
Now for example let's say by 2060 US is still going strong and has not collapsed though there was a population explosion over 75% of people are either Jewish or Muslim and they are observant, a political party in one state passes a law banning the sale of pork products. This law is obviously religiously motivated, but who decides on what "secular" means people can make an argument that oh pigs are disgusting animals just like we don't allow dogs to be cooked it's wrong to eat pork. But it's just an opinion. Anyway sadly the constitution does not give us a right to bacon.
The question is how can you argue for secular ethics? Like can you as a secularist give a honest answer that is not hypocritical on why some small weird religions like the voodoo Santeria people sometimes get arrested for animal sacrifice of chickens, but we allow factory chicken farming? Like if you say we can't use religious ethics to decide when something is good or bad, or when to pass a law or not, what should we use that is secular instead? I mean it's just arbitrary opinion at that point? And when we allow random oppinion to make the bedrock of our culture with our courts things will look silly.
Actually this is a lot simpler than you think; we don't do religious laws specifically because our Founders understood that if you let religious dogma guide your laws, you are far more likely to end up with one religion dominating and persecuting others or ending up with internal religious wars/violence.
Edit: All we have to do it look at the Utah/Mormon war/campaign just before the ACW for an example of why religiously based laws are not allowed in the US, and every law has to pass with secular reasoning.
King Arts
Well-known member
You are not answering the question though. Also mormons were mostly oppressed because everyone else was applying THEIR religious law of no polygamy to them. Also the constitution does not ban laws based off religion since without religion everything IS relative.
So 75% of the population things eating pigs is disgusting and a gateway to disease because pigs are disgusting animals that eat their own shit. So now they pass a law against pork products just like how we prevent people from eating non standard meat dog, cat, bat, other crazy Chinese stuff lol.
So show how this is not a secular argument?
That is false, and an assumption that only dogmatically religious people make.
strunkenwhite
Well-known member
It does not sum up to that if you can muster an argument based on reason and evidence and not faith for whatever you're advocating. If you cannot, why does your faith trump someone else's faith that opposes your proposal?
Fun fact, it was only in 2018 that a federal law concerning commercial slaughtering of cats and dogs for meat was passed, and it still makes an exception for Native American customs (basically, religion/culture/tradition exception). Prior to that it was legal in 44 states.
Banning of pig meat "because it's icky" would be hilariously easy to slap down in court without a scientific argument backing it up. However, I imagine they could pass a requirement for products including pork to have a big disclaimer on it warning that it's got pig meat in it.
As for voodoo sacrifice, I'm not sure what you're talking about since my first couple google results seemed to give the opposite result: SCOTUS slapping down anti-voodoo-sacrifice laws. Can you elaborate?
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
I believe in God because it is irrational to do otherwise. I can and have presented reasoned arguments for essentially every position I've ever held, but as FriedCFour encountered repeatedly over the course of this thread, people will attack you for being religious regardless.
I've addressed some of the various points and arguments earlier in this thread as well, and the response has generally been either 'I don't agree with you,' or in better cases 'here's other expert opinions and studies that contradict your expert opinions and studies.'
The idea that you can have reason or science without faith is an argument made from a position of ignorance anyways. Functioning in this world requires baseline levels of faith, otherwise you fall down the path of solipsism and madness.
King Arts
Well-known member
It's not though. How can you maintain that your beliefs on tolerance, race, homosexuality, freedom, etc. are the truth? If there is no appeal to God/heaven whether Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Muslim, or Pagan. I mean if you don't base your beliefs on religion then to me it is simply just your opinion, at that point the only thing you look is to see if something benefits you or not. And well if your policy will neither harm nor hurt me how can you convince me that I should take your oppinion over another?
Yes SCOTUS slaps that down sometimes but cops still come and violate those people's rights.
As for the pork thing it is 2021 now so what is the secular argument for banning eating cats and dogs, that can't be used to ban eating pork? People think eating cats and dogs is icky so they banned it, why can't Muslims and Jews do the same with pork? Because the culture of America is european/Christian derived? That just means that a judge from a diffrent background would rule diffrently. The constiution the words on paper the text is suppose to be the same no matter who reads it.
KilroywasNOTHere
"BEEP!"
I don't know about anyone else but I think this thread has LONG outlived it's usefulness.
yo know for as big as people on the left and the right talk, I wonder how big, bad and morally superior everyone will feel when REAL bullets start flying and we can no longer hide behind our little computer screens. Cause that's what will happen if people stsart whining on the internet as opposed to actually going out there and making a real difference as the old saying poop or get off the pot.
yo know for as big as people on the left and the right talk, I wonder how big, bad and morally superior everyone will feel when REAL bullets start flying and we can no longer hide behind our little computer screens. Cause that's what will happen if people stsart whining on the internet as opposed to actually going out there and making a real difference as the old saying poop or get off the pot.
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LordsFire
Internet Wizard
I tend to agree. I think a far more useful thread would be 'How do you discern the fundamental truths of reality?'
Because we're arguing at the level of the second floor of the structure, when the conflict is at the level of the foundation.
strunkenwhite
Well-known member
So essentially, where there is a lack of evidence-based consensus on religious questions, there is no justification for the state to pick winners and losers. If your religion was as (relatively) well-supported as you think then it would have won by now.
I certainly agree that we have no choice but to ignore the problem of hard solipsism, but that's not really a problem for these purposes because all these decisions are being made provisionally on the world existing roughly as we perceive it etc.
But I agree with your later post, definitely a topic for a different thread.
Native Americans specifically got exceptions to the cat and dog law. If 25% of Americans were used to yummy bacon, where would the state's "compelling interest" in denying it to them be? Why would they not get their own exception?
Judge from different background? I can assert with high confidence that the SCOTUS does not have any practitioners of voodoo, nor has it in the past.
Religious exemptions to laws are honestly a tricky issue, because there's not really a bright-line as to how far they can or should extend, especially when coupled with the precedent that a religion is pretty much whatever people say it is and that the state is generally not permitted to question the legitimacy of even "obviously" insincere claimed religious tenets.
Case and point: Jedi is an officially recognized religion in Australia, and there in nothing in US law that says a 'religion' has to come from one of the common holy books of the world.
Theoretically (assuming you do not run into copyright issues) you could make a 'religion' out of any piece of writing or cinema, as long as the devotees are serious enough in their desire.
So if Christians want to strip away the 'don't favor any religion' part of the Constitution, they best be prepared for the can of worms that will be unleashed when other religions want in on the action.
Cult of the God Emperor of Mankind, Sith churchs, worship of the number 42, Haruhism, and/or the Ferengi Rules of Accusition (among many, many examples) are all fair game for making laws if 'religious' reasoning and religious groups start to be able to self-justify enforcing their beliefs as laws in the US.
No, you can just look towards fully fleshed out ethical and ideological systems. There are such things that we call "first principles" and "universals" and so on that provide us a fine basis to build upon.
Which is probably why we should turn to first principles and then debate those.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
I agree. Something that I think has hurt this forum in the past is when discussions that start tracing the root of a thread's original surface-level topic, get shuffled over to the philosophy subforum, generally to wither away and die.
LindyAF
Well-known member
I mean, my point was that he'd be at odds with you, as you are a modern moderate, so it's a bit weird to appropriate him like this. Unless you think he agreed with you on this issue.
And tbh, I'm a bit annoyed with you lot right now so I apologize if this comes off as unduly harsh, but people who call themselves "classical liberals, you know, just like the founding fathers" and call everyone they don't like "regressive" have no business complaining about anyone else playing word games or appropriating names for themselves which they think make themselves look better.
Yeah, I'm aware. IIRC I think Trump also made comments defending Masterpiece cake shop?
Part of the issue is I think @Bacle sees Trump's base as generally more centrist than the traditional GOP on social issues or at least more moderate on this particular issue, whereas I think it's generally less centrist on social issues, particularly on immigration but also generally, and it's just that on this particular issue the Overton window has shifted so quickly that Trump's base's right-of-GOP-norm stance is to the left of the prior GOP-norm stance.
And another part of the issue is I think @Bacle is constructing a false idea of social conservativism as only the parts he disagrees with, in particular opposition to gay marriage, and a false idea that there's a category "religious conservatives" who only care about opposition to gay marriage and are distinct from the people who care about all the things he, I, and they agree on. Like despite his wish to decouple the lgb from the trans stuff, the no biological men in women's restrooms was still a socially conservative position, and Trump was delivering value there to religious and social conservatives. Defending Masterpiece and Arlene's Flowers was the socially conservative position, and the people who did it were delivering value to religious and social conservatives. And defending the unborn is a socially conservative position, and Trump was (and the Republican Party as whole right now is) delivering value there to religious and social conservatives.
For the people here who also want to protect the unborn but keep trying to pretend that morality being informed by religion is something unique to lgbt issues, solely the domain of crazy fundamentalist boogiemen that have no other impact on politics, (@Bacle @Lord Sovereign @Captain X)- have you ever been to a March for Life? Because they're kind of religious events. As in they start and end with a prayer, at least half the speakers will directly talk about religion and their religion, and a pretty big fraction of the people showing up are showing up with their Church.
Like, what do all of you who want to defend the unborn (repeal Roe v. Wade), stop the religious persecution lawfare against Masterpiece and Arlene's flowers, and stop the trans-in-women's-sports stuff dead in it's tracks but can brook no threats to Obergefell think all the socially conservative stuff we do agree on would look like? Because I'll tell you- it'd look like a more powerful Alliance Defending Freedom, it looks like a more powerful Family Research Council or American Family Association. Regular almost-all Christian political marches that start and end with a prayer. It would look like five hardcore original-meaning justices on the Supreme Court with a willingness to overturn decades old precedent, even if it would be unpopular to do so. And, of course, the political ascendency of the organizations that would back such Justices. Add to this two facts: 1) people with strong views are more active and more supportive of organizations that are winning victories for them, rather than losing and 2) people without strong views are inclined to join the winning team.
And if all that was happening- even if nobody was talking about Obergefell, would you still be doing the "classically liberal" or "south park conservative" bit, if your argument about "it's settled law now, it can't be overturned" started to ring hollow, because it could be?
Yes. I don't hate everyone who enables the other side.
Actually, that isn't quite fair. I quite like moderates who function as onramps, and I'm fully aware that in any movement there's going to be difference of opinion and differences of degree on certain issues.
What I dislike is those moderates who I think function as a natural fifth column (this isn't every moderate who enables the other side, to be clear, or even most moderates who do). This kind of goes back to what my biggest concern about lgbts in the conservative movement is, and why I'm skeptical we could be "all together against the SJWs." And that's that they're security risks. Like obviously, don't trust anyone you only know online, but if any of you knew a "conservative" like @Bacle IRL, would you trust them with anything sensitive? And I don't mean glowpost stuff here, I mean like if you were carpooling to a March for Life, or a March for our Rights, or a Stop the Steal rally, or just tossing hot takes and banter around in a private setting with some friends, can you do that with someone who has said he's only narrowly on our side, and would flip back around in a heartbeat if certain issues were at stake? I know after the post Jan 6th call for a "War on Extremism," against Middle America, I sure as shit wouldn't trust someone who I knew IRL who's proud to have called us "the American Taliban" to know that I was going to a rally that might get bad press that spooks him (e.g. a right wing one).
You cannot organize with people you cannot trust. They're not even useless, they're actually worse, because they destroy cohesion and the ability to organize and be politically active. Because you don't know what the line is, you don't know what you can and can't say around them. Therefore, there are people who cannot be an ally, even one of convenience, because they are a net negative, even on the issues we actually agree with them on.
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No, I doubt he would considering his views on women, which were seen as out of touch even in his own time. But I don't have to have agreed with him on everything to still think he had some good ideas, which is also the way I feel about the founding fathers, incidentally. Not sure what you think this has to do with anything, as the entire point was that the people who label themselves as "progressive" have nothing to do with the actual movement, and that it would probably really annoy them if I were to reform the Progressive Party, which was made up of reformist Republicans like TR.
Anyone I call regressive has earned that title through their actions, and the regressive left is certainly guilty of being regressive in terms of mainstreaming racism and sexism again. And they have indeed appropriated names for themselves in an attempt to sell themselves as something other than they are. They are not liberal, and they certainly aren't progressive. As for what you think of me referring to myself as either a classical liberal or a libertarian, I'm not terribly troubled by that, because frankly some of your declared views have made me lose any respect I might have had for you. This isn't really saying much as I honestly don't even recall you from when I first joined up and wasted more time on here before now, but some of the first things I saw you talking about in terms of what the leftists were doing kind of made me think you were more reasonable. I have since been cured of this, though I will say you are a lot more disciplined than most when it comes to debate.This is probably at least partly because there are plenty of posters on here who are basically putting this idea forward themselves as they play the "no true Scotsman" fallacy about what counts as being conservative, as well as labeling themselves as social conservatives. This does illustrate wonderfully how certain social conservatives are driving away potential allies, though, given that there is indeed some overlap there, but that some sticking points are acting as a wedge.
I'm actually pro-choice, incidentally. It's not that I'm really "pro-abortion" so much as the idea of someone essentially being turned into a brood-mare really disgusts me, and it outweighs the disgust I feel from horrible people celebrating it like it's some kind of twisted form of birth control. You are working on something of a fallacy though in that you assume that because a large portion of the pro-life movement is religious, that basically anyone who wants to be pro-life must therefore get on board with the religious stuff themselves, rejecting out of hand that the rationale might come from a different place. Frankly this is what really rubs me the wrong way with people like yourself, which is to say that it's almost like you keep insisting that if anyone happens to agree with you on some points that they have to agree with everything, and that just isn't how it works. I'm specifically thinking of an argument from not long after I first joined that basically amounted to the idea of all morality being derived from religion, therefore agnostics and atheists are not moral, and any morality they possessed was basically a sign that they should just admit that they were religious and go ahead and be Christian agree with them on everything. Just because I might agree with you on some points, it does not follow that I must agree with you on everything, anymore than I do with people I consider to be personal idols, like TR or Thomas Jefferson.
I suppose we only might annoy you, but there are certainly others who do.
I take a pretty dim view of being seen as some kind of fifth column for people I hate. I will no more understand the view that liberty-lovers like myself would be on the same side of authoritarians, whether they are fascists or communists, yet people keep making this claim. If it comes down to it, I will grab my rifle and do my best to live up to my ancestors - rebellion is my heritage. I'd rather it not come to that, though.I can't speak for Bacle, obviously, but from my own POV, if I refer to the American Taliban, I'm referring to a specific group of people, much as I am when I refer to the regressive left. Thus I am very much not painting with a broad brush. As far as I'm concerned, the American Taliban are the obsessive types who want to turn this country into a theocracy.
Frankly that's on you. I'm at a point where I don't even really care anymore. I still agree with the notion that we'd be a lot stronger by ganging up on the leftists together, so it's worth noting that this would be possible if only for a few sticking points that amount to driving potential allies away, but I'll still fight the fight without you. After seeing what I see here, I'm thinking it would be better to form a new party that would be specifically for us more moderate types, and basically just putting it all on people like yourself if you want to put some things aside to team up, or keep going your own way. Hell of it is, there's not even a guarantee that we'd win even if we do team up.
Y'know this is honestly a good question. Especially considering Christ made a point to encourage his followers to respect Roman law and to effect positive change through civil resistance and persuasion via rhetoric and deeds and not violent revolution. You'd think the Fedora tippers on the right and the moderate lefties would want more Christianityy around and not less.
You need to understand, I dislike it when people call modern democrats communists and Marxists., they may wear the trappings today but they are something older, they are the monstrous mother of that vile ideology. See modern democrats are Babeufists, Maratists, Robespierreists...They're deconstructivists
Now you can be a commie and a Decon..Pol Pot certainly was, Trotsky probably was given he adopted many of their concepts. But they're not the same thing. And while commies hate religion and worship the state they also kinda like the idea of having a state not embroiled in an endless revolution and they wish to replace Christ/Mohammed/Buddha/Ganesha/whatever with the state as the overgod.
Decon's want to replace Christ with absence, the secularists even burned church relics and idols and would replace them with statues of revolutionary leaders or an abacus or a book.
They drowned thousands of Catholic Children in "secular baptisms lawl" and committed what can only be called a genocide in the vende.
The irrational hatred of religion in American progressivism is its own animal and entirely independent and wholly its own evil from communism.
Ah because its about deconstruction your faith and then annihilating and purging you guys.
Some of the guys arguing against you don't want to compromise with you but bring you to heel.
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