The anti-gay Wrong (I'm never going to refer to them as the Right again) often argues that allowing same sex marriage will inevitably lead to bestiality. They have used horses, dogs, and a box turtle (Sen. McConnell?) as examples. Once, Pat Robertson apparently said it would lead to sex with ducks, inspiring the following song:
http://www.youtube.com/...
I like the song, and I think the performers are cute, so I am happy to have an excuse to link it here. This week it also seems timely. In recent weeks, courts in New Mexico and Utah have upheld the legitimacy of same-sex marriage, while the patriarch of a Duck Dynasty is under fire for expressing anti-gay sentiments in an interview.
The people on the Wrong are defending the anti-gay statements as a Constitutional right to freedom of speech. What they refuse to acknowledge is the Constitutional rights of those would speak out against those sentiments. The Wrong has a fundamental misunderstanding of rights as evidenced by their constant carping against people using the phrase "Happy Holidays" at the same time they are taping promos saying the exact same thing.
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The Wrong often like to cite our Constitutional Rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. These rights appear nowhere in the Constitution. They just like to say "Constitution" and "Right to Life" in the same sentence to bolster their anti-abortion argument.
There are different levels of rights which we possess. What distinguishes these rights is how they are conferred on us, where ownership of a right lies. Before our nation was founded, King George III of England was given the right to govern us by God, or so he claimed. Our founders argued that the right to govern came from the consent of those being governed. God-given rights, unalienable, are the providence of the individual citizens, and Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are but three among many others.
I posit that the overriding principle guiding the Constitutional Convention and the document it produced was to create a government that protects those unalienable rights as its top priority. Any question of rights, state's rights, Constitutional Rights, Civil Rights, voting rights, et al, must be viewed first and foremost through the prism of the unalienable rights of all citizens. In that context, the State's right to allow slavery falls kind of flat.
The Wrong parses the debate over marriage equality as government creating a new right- the right to marry someone of the same sex as oneself. It is not ironic that the judge in Utah cited Justice Scalia in his decision. Scalia, as a self described Original Constructionist of the Constitution, knew that striking down anti-sodomy laws would lead to marriage equality, and during DOMA arguments this year asked when same-sex marriage became a right.
I return to the Declaration of Independence where we acknowledged the existence of unalienable rights. Jefferson, while naming only three, stipulated to many by the phrase "among these." We don't know what the other unalienable rights are until we put the question to specifics. Where in law had anyone thought to specifically prevent a same sex-union at a time when laws were based on a religion that the Constitution declared us free from?
If you hold anti-gay views, knock yourself out. It is your right to do so. It is not your right to have a corporation back you. If you believe that contraception is immoral, don't use it. However, you do not have a right to impose that morality on your employees.
In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy sex with ducks- at least so far as watching the video is concerned.