Have Our Natural Rights Been Infringed? - Comments

INFRINGED.
I believe that the pursuit of happiness is an unalienable right, given to every human being that walks this Earth.

LOVE is part of this right, so when homosexual couples are denied marriage licenses, how is that NOT infringing human rights?

To put what I said short, considering Mibba was being stupid and not letting me post my comment: This is a great article causing lots of discussion. We're also discussing civil rights in English, and there is a group for heterosexuals. Also, I may be Catholic (I'm not very serious though), but gay people do not bother me at all. I respect that they are just like you and me. Also, the government has many faults, but no government can be perfect. Here's my question: Is it really the government's fault, or is it also the people's fault?

Oh goood. GRETCHEN CHICK BELOW. Stop being everywhere I go... pleeease. Whenever I read your comments you exhaust me. So much responsibly on the shoulders of this generation. And not to mention how negative you are... it wears me down. I'm going to nap now...

And America is bomb, I love it here. But when we become a socialist nation I'm moving to Canada, furreal

I agree. If you don't feel comfortable with gay marriage, well then don't marry someone of the same sex. But people aren't just uncomfortable with gay marriage because of religion. That's generalizing.
But I do agree we shouldn't discriminate just because of who someone is. All I was stating is that the laws have been proposed and they didn't pass. Simple as that. You want to keep fighting for it? Good. Do it. Be the change you want to see happen. I'm not against that. Stand up for what you believe.

Interesting. That the only defense for banning gay marriage is "if you were born in another country". Well guess what? The writer IS an American and therefore has every right to voice his/her opinion.

The writer didn't say gay marriage was more important than Darfur. It never even got close to making that connection. That's the nice thing about America; we are SUPPOSED to be allowed equal rights. Some people are just still too close-minded to understand that love is love, and as long as it's not hindering or harming someone else then we should all just let it be. And don't give me that crap, "Then I should be able to marry a tree," or "I should be able to marry my dad". A marriage is for people, not inanimate objects. AND it is proven that marrying a family member can cause harm to the fetus, so you get nowhere with that one.

Gay people are NOT allowed the same rights as you and I and that's a FACT. Gay people have no medical rights over their partner. They can't get insurance together. They can't file their taxes together. Everyone else is allowed this privilege and it's about time we reach out and help the gay community. It's not contagious, you can't catch it, and YES their are GAY religious people.

The simple fact is, people feel uncomfortable with gay marriage because of religion, but last time I checked this is not a theocracy, it's a democracy. The reason we are in the US is because our ancestors got tired of the church and state being whole.

It's not natural you say? We'll neither is botox, dying your hair, or getting a boob job, but people do it every day, and it's perfectly legal.

Not to sound cliché, but if you don’t support gay marriage, don't have one.

There was a law segregating blacks and whites, but just because it is a law doesn't make it right and doesn't mean we should simply "Accept it" and move on.
Descrimination is discrimination.

I didn't say marriage itself was.
Maybe there are but honestly that doesn't matter because this is what I chose to write about. I feel strongly about it and I felt the need to state it. Therfor I did, no further explanation needed.

And I will restate what I said. The laws were proposed. And the people voted against it. Personally, I couldn't care less about who anyone wants to marry. That's their business.
And I agree with The Doctor. Marriage isn't a natural right, it's a luxury. And i also agree that there are much more serious issues that need to be addressed ahead of gay marriage.

and stop reffering to 'us'.

I'm a Scot where I believe that the fact that one in 4 children in my country is in poverty is a terrible disgrace compared to the fact that we let gay civil unions happen with equal rights. I think it's a misjudgement of what actually bloody matters in the world.

Frankenstein'sMorgue:

But the entire point is that marriage is a relative luxury. Being married isn't a natural right or anything.

i am personally more shocked by homelessness and poverty. Until those problems have been solved then I find such middle class concepts as gay marriage as relatively fatutous.

Restless Heart, once again I will restate myself.
It's not the fact that the citizens voted on it, the law has to be proposed before it can just be thrown out to be voted on. The fact is it is unconstitutional, and even proposing an unconstitutional law was just wrong altogether.

And honestly I don't care about how many Gay marriage articles you see, maybe there are several here but I haven't read those so I was unaware. Besides, I said it was just one point out of many in which are unjust, I decided to rant on this considering how strongly I feel about it.

And In-Love-And-Death is entirely correct there are so many other things such as that where they are entirely breaking into privacy to an extreme extent and half the time people are completely unaware.

I have to say that this was a very well composed article. You stated your opinions and backed them up with facts. This was very well written.
It is very true that the government has gotten out of hand and overstepped its boundaries concerning certain issues these days. However, denying gays the right to marriage doesn't seem to be the only affront to our constitution.

Many laws have been put in place that affect our daily lives, telephone conversations, emails, website visits, even what we buy is being monitored by the government. If that's not an invasion of privacy then I don't know what is. The bottom line here is, many people don't seem to get how big of an issue is.
But, I can agree with some of the people who have commented before me in that America is far better off than many other countries when it comes to rights.

Okay, first I'd like to say that when I saw this article I honestly thought that it was going to about something different. Not [i]another[/i] article about gay marriage.

Now, I have to let you in on something else. Our government was not who banned gay marriage. It was, in fact, the majority of U.S. citizens who voted against it. Get your facts straight before you go off ranting about how horrible America is. Be glad you live here and not some place like China where the government controls how many children you can have.

I'm so sick of people writing articles about America and terrible we are. You should feel lucky to have been born here. In other countries you wouldn't even be allowed to write this article.

Okay, well... marriage isn't exactly a [i]right[/i], first of all.

And I'm sick of people bashing on the government. Quite obviously, we're at an age and state where we all just have to tolerate whatever happens.

Like I keep saying, not everyone in the world is a mean idiot. People respect all sorts of religions and whatnot. It's just that, a lot of people find a real moral aesthetic to marriage between a man and a woman.

Ugh. Come on, now. This is simply life. Corruption is flipping everywhere; it's up to us to find peace with the world.

You defended your opinion very well, and I can respect that.

So I'm not going to say anymore on the subject.

I was too lazy to actually read all of it because it was so long(for someone like me), but I skimmed through it and WOW. That was very well-written. It had PLENTY of evidence that made sense. It can really open eyes.

The fact of the matter is I am not disreguarding other countries problems, I understand that there are countries who have it a million times worse. However, we don't have the power to change these things for them, clearly. Whenever the US becomes involved in international problems we tend to make them worse, like the current war. We've already done the task at hand yet we continue to stay there and gun people down daily with the excuse of "winning them their freedom". The man we set out to get is dead now and their lives could be getting better due to this is we would just leave. But we aren't we continue to loom meritlessly and for this reason suicide bombers are attacking near our stations, killing thousands of innocent people in the process. The fact is they want us gone for we have overstayed our welcome.

So as you can see, we need to avoid international affairs and continue to improve on problems here. Maybe if we had a more clever and fair government we actually could help these people one day.

I'm not being selfish and insisting our problems are worse, I'm not saying they aren't humans, the fact is we haven't been able to solve their problems of hunger, abuse, murder, and poverty and until we straighten ourselves out we will not be able to. It's not selfish to worry about our own country, because we live here, it's what we are supposed to do.

And people seem to assume that the problems in those places do not exist here, what an incorrect thing to assume. We have millions of people living their lives on streets struggling to survive without a penny to feed themselves with. Many suffer and die from it here as well, yes we could help them, and we have attempted to, there are orginizations, but we should be concerned with the lives of [i]our[/i] citizens as well.

You think people don't get murdered here for their sexuality? It happens all the time, just because you don't see it or hear about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I have friends that have been brutally murdered for such reasons. Genocide happens here every few seconds, it's not just a problem in places other than America.

We might have a high percentage of people who seem well off, but that doesn't mean that everyone here lives the life of luxury, as I said there are places where conditions do get as bad as those in foreign places.

For all you know the people you speak to don't have a food to put on their plates, they starve and have parents working the streets in desperate attempts to get a bit of money to keep their family thriving.

You can't lump the population into one giant catagory, because it's just not the way it works. Maybe there are people here who are wealthy, well set, and complain about the tiniest things, however for many that is not the case, not the case at all.

The fact is we have an established order that our government should be following and they aren't. Maybe the issues seem small and unimportant to some people but the others they mean the world and impact their lives forever. Each person has a different view of the problems and just because you don't see them so seriously it doesn't mean they aren't.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with fighting for our rights and just accepting it is nothing more than defeating yourself. For all you know we could be one push away for setting things a bit closer to right, and giving up could easily keep us from that.

AMERICANS ARE SPOILED.

It is so sad and pathetic that we think our lives are so bad.

Atleast you don't live in Iraq, were you are murdered or tortured just for being homosexual.

Atleast you don't live in Zimbabwe, where women are raped regardless of sexual orientation.

Atleast you don't live in Darfur, where there is a [i]genocide[/i] going on.

Atleast you even have the rights to write this article and voice your opinions and beliefs.

Atleast you have the right to even be happy. Most countries leave that out, since they are more focused on just feeding their families and getting by.

And you if you think oh well, I don't live there it is not my problem then that is sad. What if you were in their situation? There are just as human as you are. Why should they be ignored while the powerful and comfortable sit by, pretending they have real problems?

Be grateful that you have clothes on your back, food on your table, and the ability to even be happy.

America is not perfect. Far, far, from it. But we need to accept that and move on because the world does not revolve around us. We could spend a whole lot more time worrying more about other human beings than ourselves.

Be grateful for what you have.

And I'm sorry, this is not a specific attack on the author. I'm just fed up with America right now, and needed to get that out.

The Doctor: You fail to understand the meaning of this article. In writing this I was not saying that this was the only core reason in which our government is corrupt, because if you notice that in the beginning I state that [i]“In saying all this, it is now necessary for one to understand just [b]one[/b] of the many points in which laws have been established in which do not follow the guidelines of the Constitution and have made our government corrupt, unjust, and in need for the overthrowing and initiation of a new one”[/i].

I am aware that there are various laws which infringe our rights but if I were to write about all of them this article would stretch on for pages. So I decided to pick one of the points that I feel strongly about, although I feel strong about others as well, this is just the topic of my choice.

Yes, I understand that other countries have terrible rights or no government at all, and yes, that is terrible; however, I live here, not there and just because they have it worse does not mean that I am going to just sit back and drop all my points and say “Oh, okay, I just won’t worry about my rights then, clearly they aren’t important”. We live in this country and deserve full access to our rights and privileges, the reason changes are not made is because people do react like that and don’t take stand for their rights.

Also, it doesn’t matter if “the beef lies with the people, not the government” because even if we do get the chance to vote on the act it doesn’t stop the law itself from being unconstitutional, the point is laws like this are not supposed to be made [i]period[/i].

I couldn't agree with you any more. The government, in my opinion, is overstepping the boundaries established by the Constitution. The main argument against Gay marriage is based on religious differences, and we do not operate under a theocracy. Aside from the controversy of Gay marriage, I feel that there's a lot of intolerance against Muslims in this country also. Just because some Muslims are terrorists, or are against America, does not mean all are. Less seriously though, I disagree with the drinking age. If people are considered legal adults at the age of 18, able to make their own decisions and operate independently, then who is the government to say that someone who is recognized as an adult can't sit down and enjoy a drink? Obviously, there have been problems in the past with underage drinking, leading to the drinking age of 21, but I feel that the set drinking age is partly to blame for this. People aren't given a chance to experience it, so they just abuse it when it's granted to them, merely because it's something new.

Sorry if you disagree with me, but these are just some thought I have =). Excellent article, you said a lot of things that are needed to be said.