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11/11/2008

Anti-gay, yet quite pro-recycling

by Jeremy Hooper

Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell is getting attention for a widely disseminated column in which denounces both affirmative action and marriage equality. We, however, have one primary reaction to the piece. We want to know: Why didn't the numerous outlets that printed Sowell's words just invest in a Xerox machine instead?

Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, 11/2008:

The argument that current marriage laws "discriminate" against homosexuals confuses discrimination against people with making distinctions among different kinds of behavior.



All laws distinguish among different kinds of behavior. What other purpose does law have?



While people may be treated the same, all their behaviors are not. Laws that forbid bicycles from being ridden on freeways obviously have a different effect on people who have bicycles but no cars.



But this is not discrimination against a person. The cyclist who gets into a car is just as free to drive on the freeway as anybody else.



Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, 8/2006:

The "equal protection of the laws" provided by the Constitution applies to people, not actions. Laws exist precisely in order to discriminate among different kinds of actions.



When the law permits automobiles to drive on highways but forbids bicycles from doing the same, that is not discrimination against people. A cyclist who gets off his bicycle and gets into a car can drive on the highway just like anyone else.

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Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, 3/2000:



Homosexuals were on their strongest ground when they argued that what happens between consenting adults is nobody else's business. Now they want to make it everybody's business by requiring others to acquiesce in their unions and treat them as they would other unions, both in law and in social practice.

Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, 3/2004:



Homosexuals were on their strongest ground when they said that what happens between "consenting adults" in private is none of the government's business. But now gay activists are taking the opposite view, that it is government's business — and that government has an obligation to give its approval.



Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, 8/2006:

Homosexuals were on their strongest ground when they said that the law had no business interfering with relations between consenting adults. Now they want the law to put a seal of approval on their behavior. But no one is entitled to anyone else's approval.

Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, 11/2008:

Gays were on their strongest ground when they said that what they did was nobody else's business. Now they are asserting a right to other people's approval, which is wholly different.



None of us has a right to other people's approval.

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Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, 1/2005:



Oliver Wendell Holmes said that the life of the law is not logic but experience. Marriage laws have evolved through centuries of experience with couples of opposite sexes — and the children that result from such unions. Society asserts its stake in the decisions made by restricting the couples' options.



Society has no such stake in the outcome of a union between two people of the same sex. Transferring all those laws to same-sex couples would make no more sense than transferring the rules of baseball to football.

Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, 8/2006:



Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said that the life of the law has not been logic but experience. Vast numbers of laws have accumulated and evolved over the centuries, based on experience with male-female unions.



There is no reason why all those laws should be transferred willy-nilly to a different union, one with no inherent tendency to produce children or the inherent asymmetries of relationships between people of different sexes.

Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, 11/2008:



Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that law has not been based on logic but on experience. To apply a mountain of laws based specifically on experience with relations between a man and a woman to a different relationship where sex differences are not involved would be like applying the rules of baseball to football.

****

Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, 1/2005:



The rhetoric of "equal rights" has become the road to special privilege for all sorts of groups, so perhaps it was inevitable that gay activists would take that road as well. It has worked

Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, 11/2008:

The politically clever way to get special privileges is to call them "rights"— especially "equal rights." Some local election campaigns in various states are using that tactic this year, trying to get special privileges through affirmative action quotas or through demands that the definition of marriage be changed to suit homosexuals.

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Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, 3/2004:

The last refuge of the gay marriage advocates is that this is an issue of equal rights. But marriage is not an individual right. Otherwise, why limit marriage to unions of two people instead of three or four or five? Why limit it to adult humans, if some want to be united with others of various ages, sexes and species?

Conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, 11/2008:

The real issue is whether marriage should be redefined— and, if for gays, why not for polygamists? Why not for pedophiles?

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Broken, both the record and the logic!

Your thoughts

Typical right wing straw man argument of trying to tell us what we want.

Posted by: a. mcewen | Nov 11, 2008 4:58:27 PM

"The real issue is whether marriage should be redefined— and, if for gays, why not for polygamists? Why not for pedophiles?" Oh fuck you're stupid. Have you ever looked into the highly lucrative career calling 'killing yourself'? I'm sure you'd be a wonderful candidate. And for the record, some polygamous/polyamorous would like to have bigamy laws repealed. But don't fucking compare gay/polyamorous couples to CHILD RAPE you fucking asshole! We're trying to live in a progressive society here, could you please at least help out by committing suicide if nothing else?

Posted by: aaa | Nov 11, 2008 6:12:30 PM

Once again they show their complete lack of originality. It is why they will inevitably lose.

Posted by: RainbowPhoenix | Nov 11, 2008 7:10:42 PM

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