Tag Archive for 'law'

A rose by any other name

Published
by
Cody
on November 25, 2008
in Rant
. 0 Comments

It’s the perennial debate. Should people be allowed to marry a member of their own sex? Should marriage be redefined to include male-male and female-female couplings? No one can seem to agree. In California, the passage of Proposition 8 struck down the California Supreme Court’s decision that banning gay marriage was unconstitutional and on par with discriminating against people based on gender or race. On the other side of things, Connecticut legalized gay marriage, making it only the second state in the union to allow same-sex couples to marry. To be fair, other states allow civil unions with varying degrees of benefits, however, the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 means that states without gay marriage are not obliged to recognize same-sex marriages from states that do allow them. So, it’s obvious the debate has a long way to go.

My opinion on the issue is mixed. I see no reason same-sex couples shouldn’t get the same benefits as heterosexual couples. I also don’t have anything against calling it marriage. Language is fluid. Definitions change as society changes. However, I am not willing to push to change that definition prematurely. People naturally resist sudden change. Subtle changes over a long period of time, however, usually go unnoticed. For that reason, I advocate civil unions with the same rights and benefits as marriage but under a different name.

Continue reading ‘A rose by any other name’

Sphere: Related Content

It’s not just guns

Published
by
Cody
on May 24, 2008
in Rant
. 2 Comments

While browsing through Reddit today, I came across a news story about an 18-year-old actor in the upcoming Harry Potter movie who was fatally stabbed. Sad stuff, really. He was protecting his younger brother from some maniac with a knife who was stabbing a lot of people outside a bar. The article then went on about knife attack statistics and how much of a problem stabbing is in Britain.

That got me thinking. In modern times, Britain has restricted use of firearms since 1903, banned automatic weapons since the 1930s, and finally went all-out and banned handguns in 1997 after a brutal massacre the year before. As a result, shooting deaths have stayed fairly low. After all, if you make it impossible to get firearms legally, only people willing to break the law will be able to get them. That’s a reasonably small amount of the population (7% of the homicides committed in 2005 and 2006 involved guns). Even so, I am against gun control that gets too strict. To quote the overquoted: guns don’t kill, crazy people with guns do.

At any rate, the British don’t much have to worry about people getting shot by their neighbor. What they do have to worry about, though, is getting stabbed by their neighbor. Guns are far from being the only lethal objects around. The average person has access to plenty of dangerous things without having to get a gun. Steak knife? Check. Blowtorch? Check. Automobile? Double check.

It seems to me that banning guns doesn’t solve the underlying problem, which is, of course, people getting killed by other people. Banning knives wouldn’t help, either, since a person could use a sharpened screwdriver. Banning screwdrivers wouldn’t help because there’s always the last resort of bare hands. Problem: you has it.

Since I’m not a psychologist (even though I did take that animal psychology class in college), I won’t go into great detail, but from a layman’s point of view, it looks like it would be more productive to address the why of homicide, instead of the how. In other words, figure out and eliminate the cause of violent crime. It doesn’t really matter what people use to kill each other with. It matters that they kill each other in the first place. Of course, it’s a much larger undertaking to fix society than it is to take away society’s toys. But it can be done. After all, utopia is a realistic possibility, right? Right? Or am I preaching to the anarchist choir?

Sphere: Related Content

Painless executions

Published
by
Cody
on January 7, 2008
in Rant
. 0 Comments

There’s a debate going on right now regarding the lethal injections most states use to administer executions. The Supreme Court is hearing a case brought by two men on death row claiming that the methods used are cruel and unusual and therefore prohibited by the 8th Amendment to the United States Constitution. In other words, this case will decide how much pain is acceptable during an execution. Current lethal injection methods, if administered properly, cause little, if any, pain. Administered poorly, however, and there is a risk of severe pain.

At the risk of sounding incredibly callous, I fail to see what’s wrong with pain during an execution, especially when it comes to cold-blooded murderers, such as the very men bringing this case to the Supreme Court. One shot and killed a sheriff and wounded his deputy while they were trying to arrest him. Then, as the deputy lay face down and wounded, the man shot him point-blank in the back of the head. The other man murdered a couple and wounded their infant child in front of the laundry business they ran. No apparent motive has been determined.

Do such monsters really deserve painless executions? Hell, do they even deserve a say in how they die? I know my thoughts on prison and capital punishment are quite unorthodox, so I’m not expecting anyone to agree with me. But friendly debate is encouraged.

You can read about the case at MSNBC. If you’re a conservative, you may prefer Fox News. That is, if you can even find the story there. They seem to be focusing on more important things, like Roger Clemens and Mike Huckabee’s non-existent shot at the GOP presidential nomination.

Sphere: Related Content

Take that!

Published
by
Cody
on November 1, 2007
in Random
. 1 Comment

I’m sure you’ve heard of the Westboro Baptist Church. Heck, I’ve even ranted about them before. Great folks, aren’t they? Got a habit of picketing the funerals of dead servicemen and servicewomen, claiming their deaths are a result of our tolerance of gays. That part is ironic enough. Clearly, they’ve never been to the South.

Anyways, someone finally up and sued them. A father of a fallen Marine sued the church for an unspecified amount of money for their invasion of the family’s privacy and “emotional distress” caused by the church picketing the Marine’s funeral. Normally I don’t like emotional distress suits (”You hurt my feelings, now give me money!”), but I think I can make an exception for this. As it is, punitive damages are doled out to prevent something from happening, and I think the amount awarded ($11 million) should discourage WBC and their “circus of hate” from ever going to Maryland again.

It should be noted that Westboro has nowhere near that amount of money. Shirley Phelps, the pastor’s daughter, had only $306 in her bank account, according to (questionable) financial papers. I wonder where they get the money for all the travel they do…

Sphere: Related Content

Bus stop

Published
by
Cody
on January 14, 2006
in Personal and Rant
. 2 Comments

You have no idea how close I came to getting a major fine today. A couple of days ago, I gave a friend a ride home from school. On the way back, I passed by a bus just beginning to stop on the other side of the road. Right as I passed, the bus put out it’s stop flaps. And apparently, the bus driver cited me for passing a bus with it’s stop flaps out. I couldn’t have stopped in time. There was no way I could have foretold the future, and been able to stop before she put her flaps out. The whole situation was like a traffic light turning yellow when you’re fifty feet away and going thirty-five miles an hour. You can’t stop that quickly. Or at least I can’t.

Luckily, I got off with a warning, and I have to apologize to the bus driver in question on Tuesday.

For not magically bringing my car to a full stop in a few feet.

Oy.

Sphere: Related Content

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States