I don’t believe that the 1st Amendment will protect the churches on this. As said laws change. With the current Liberal government we have, I would not be too surpirsed if the new hate laws were to outlaw such “discriminatory” practices from the churches. The DC Gun Ban barely squeaked by the Supreme Court, there are multiple gun bans in other cities in the country. If they can pick and choose the 2nd Amendment, what can stop them from picking and choosing the 1st Amendment?

seriously, i’d love to see what happens when you attempt to express yourself in multiple complex sentences bereft of inflammatory epithets.

but wait! there’s that pesky word, “human”.

the truth is that no judge, DA, expert witness, or jury member can ever be perfectly free of bias or prejudice. my stance is that i prefer a justice who openly acknowledges her own shortcomings with regard to impartiality, and is thus better disposed to compensate, than a justice who claims no prejudice. it’s got to be there, whatever the nature and however “inconsequential”, so why not admit it, talk about it, and discuss how it affects your decisions and how you can prevent it from skewing those decisions away from the faithful application of law?

am i at least making some sense here?

From factcheck.org [LINK]: “The right to federal benefits. States that allow some type of same-sex union are able to grant only state rights. The Defense of Marriage Act passed in 1996 prohibits same-sex couples from receiving federal marriage rights and benefits.
Portability. Because civil unions are not recognized by all states, such agreements are not always valid when couples cross state lines.”

Also, churches can never be forced to perform gay marriages. They are not federally/state funded; nor are they required to adhere to the same non-discrimination laws that apply to places of employment. Like I said, churches are able to refuse services to anyone, even straight people. I wholeheartedly agree that no church should be “forced” to perform wedding services to anyone, ever.

The word marriage is just a word that symbolizes something (much like the rest of the language). It is not owned by religion. Meanings of words change over time and I think it’s time to let the meaning of marriage include the gays.

Whether it be Sotomayor or Roberts, a Supreme Court Justice will have to put opinions on the line when deciding the constitutionality of a case. If that weren’t true, how come there are 9 justices? They are not all going to agree with each other, so there is an odd number of them so the majority will determine the outcome. Cases like Plessy v. Ferguson, which made segregation legal, was left alone by the Supreme Court for a long time until the times changed and the Justices overturned the decision. You cannot say that their experiences during that time did not come into context when making that decision, can you?

2. ?????

3. So then teh Supreme Court ruled on only 10% of the law. I know about the case, I actually read the court papers. New Haven was in a sticky positon, be labeled racist no matter what. Either grant the promotions and open themselves up to the NAACP and Jesse Jackson/ Al Sharpton, OR disregard the test scores and get nailed from the White (1 Hispanic) firefighters. The true Catch 22. What would have been your opinion if they had opted to grant the promotions? The problem I have is that the standard was set, ALL PARTICIPANTS knew what was on the line for the test. You do realize that people spent money for tudors and such to pass this test. Only one black firefighter came out and said the test wasn’t revelant to firefighting, and that was after the results. Prior to the results a professional group radified the test as unbiased and completely on topic. Once the test was done, b/c the results were not to their liking they changed their mind. What if the results were reversed, would you have agreed with New Haven?

4. I want a candidate without ANY BIAS!! Why is that hard to understand. I don’t care if they are conservative or liberal. I wasnt someone who’s constituant is the law, not the democrats or republicans. I love how I’m getting villified for standing up for the liberal principle of color blindness. It makes me wonder if you truly stand by your word, or only want it when it suits your ideals.

Do I have that straight? You villiying me for wanting an unracist person to determine the law. Since there’s only 5 of them, it’s a lot harder to weed out unlike congress where there’s 100 senators and 435 representatives.

And what has you contribution been to society today? I’m thinking nothing… so whom is worhtless?

You did not address the substance of my argument at all, choosing instead to dwell on the 1% of the post that mentioned cable news (you made the assumption which). Is your silence because you realize I’m right about how the appellate process works? For your sake I hope so, because to anyone with any legal background it’s painfully clear that you are (say it with me now) bullshite wrong.

And you’re already looking pretty trollish to me, so your threats are meaningless.

Worthless.

And courts cannot force churces to marry gays. The church has the right to refuse to marry any couple, even if they are straight. Legalizing gay marriage does not force anyone religious to accept gay marriage as being right, it stops discrimination which is what law is supposed to do. Law is supposed to be non discriminatory.

Marriage grants certain rights to married people. Telling gays that they don’t deserve those same rights because they are gay is discrimination, no matter what word you use be it marriage, civil union, domestic partnership etc.

I understand it was voted on, I’m not disputing that point. But it got there because some gay person was like “Hey I want to get married” and some other people said “That’s not right marriage is between a man and woman and we are going to make a law that says so”.

My response was sarcastic, that us liberals are going to get together and propose that white conservative rich people shouldn’t be allowed to get married because Semper’s response to Steve’s is completely irrelevant.

Enough people voted on it. But a majority vote doesn’t make it right to discriminate against people. It just makes it legal.

1. pointing out the inherent camouflage of white-male bias in a system built by white-males constitues white-male-bashing.

2. . (sic)

3. slan obviously was not using quotation marks as a means of applying sarcastic emphasis to the words contained therein; he obviously WAS failing to quote you directly, thus deserving trollishness on your part. additionally, if the test results had advanced only black (or any other non-caucasian racial affiliation) candidates, the city of new haven would have cheerfully embraced the obviously (if not inherently) race-preferential exam and its results. furthermore, dramatically altering the manner in which the law is applied is IN NO WAY THE SAME AS changing the law.

3.A. “no moderate would have disregarded 50% of the law,” but it’s okay if you disregard the 90% of relevant law in this case by not sparing a single word for its true substance at the level that ms. sotomayor was initially involved in: “[New Haven] threw out the test results because they exposed them, under laws and decisions that have been settled for about 30 years, to the risk of litigation based on a discriminatory outcome. New Haven reasonably believed they could be sued, and lose, because the test excluded blacks from promotion and proving there was no bias in the process would be hard and expensive.” (thank you, slan, for the pithy synopsis.)

4. you want a candidate with an HIDDEN bias, vs. an ADMITTED one, therefore having a justice who is blind to his/her own prejudices. (please tell me you don’t actually believe there is any justice at any bench anywhere, or has been at any time in history, who is/was perfectly free from bias or prejudice of any kind and whose decisions are/were in no way affected by his/her personal life experiences!)

did i get all that straight?

It is not an issue of being a “simple person” with “testicles.” Neither of which, might I add, are factors I would look for in a Supreme Court Justice.

Never call a fat woman pregnant.

As for me, I am extremely proud that we’ve progressed enough as a society to elect Americans of color to office after hundreds of years of white leadership in government and politics. I voted for Barack Obama because I thought he was the best candidate, but I am delighted that he happens to be black (or at least half black) because it’s a defining event in our nation’s history. I’m a fan of progress.

Sotomayor has a lot of support from both sides of the aisle. I haven’t heard any strong arguments that she doesn’t have the necessary experience or judgement to hold a seat in the Supreme Court. She is certainly not a liberal. By all accounts, the expectation seems to be that she will be similar in her judgements to Souter, so not much will change with regard to balance if she is confirmed.

your assertion that sotomayor herself is guilty of racially discriminating against the firefighters by making that decision only serves to illuminate your own ignorance regarding the real substance of her decision. one might as well observe a submarine dive under the surface and then claim it had sunk, therefore its design is obviously and inherently dangerous.

Sotomayor served six years on the district court level and 11 years on the appellate level for a grand total of 17 years. Contrast this with Samuel Alito, who sat on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for 16 years, or Stephen Breyer, who sat on the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals for 14 years, with four of those as the chief judge. If you consider Sotomayor more experienced than these justices, it’s only by a margin of a year or two. And constitutional lawyers (or the judges’ moms) might argue that Alito and Breyer’s additional appellate experience is more relevant than experience at the district court level.”
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So Sotomayor has one year MORE than the others. Not one year total.