Last Monday about mid-morning, my facebook page started popping up with a bunch of my friends changing their profile pictures to a red square with an big white block equal sign (=) in it. These friends were expressing their support for “equal rights” (which is really code for gay marriage) in light of the Supreme Court hearing on California’s Prop 8.
Without going into my view of same-sex marriage, Prop 8, etc., this got me thinking again about rights. More specifically, what are our rights? How does our view of rights agree with and contradict the Constitution? How do we understand Constitutional rights and is the Bill of Rights all inclusive?
It has taken me several weeks to accurately draft a response to these questions, so if this post seems stale it’s because I have been working carefully to put the right words in place. Sometimes haste is not our friend.
This train of thought is really a continuation of a discussion I had in some depth with my cousin over guns. His argument is that while I might have a right to keep and bare Arms, the government has a right to regulate and limit what I can and can’t keep. “Uninhibited gun ownership is not a god-given right.” Read the rest of this entry »
Rights and Reason 