rickyp wrote:fate

You think same-sex marriage is a boulder running down a slope. Maybe it is, but maybe it's not. Pendulums tend to swing. When you look at it at a given moment and conclude that's where it always will be, you err.

I agree with you that things change constantly. In fact I've always argued that ... Therefore I do not err....
And I also know that the SCOTUS has changed the way it views the Constitution.
The change in interpretation regarding seperate but equal treatment under the law, allowed as Constittuional in 1898, but deemed unconstittuional in 1954 .... demonstrates that even the way the Constitution is interpreted and applied changes...
I think that once a society accepts and tolerates new liberties for larger groups of people ... those liberties tend to be protected and grow ever more..
Trying to take away a liberty enjoyed (say access to alcohol) rarely survives the backlash.
The notion that there will be a backlash and that gays will suddenly find the courts and public opinion taking their protection to equal access under the law away ... is delusional..
You can't unring the bell of freedom!!!!

How about when the right to own a firearm is taken away...

rickyp wrote:bbauska

How about when the right to own a firearm is taken away...

Really, is that happening?

The 1998 legislation did cut down, quite sharply, on the legal use of guns in Massachusetts. Within four years, the number of active gun licenses in the state had plummeted. “There were nearly 1.5 million active gun licenses in Massachusetts in 1998,” the AP reported. “In June [2002], that number was down to just 200,000.” The author of the law, state Senator Cheryl Jacques, was pleased that the Bay State’s stiff new restrictions had made it possible to “weed out the clutter.”

But the law that was so tough on law-abiding gun owners had quite a different impact on criminals.

Since 1998, gun crime in Massachusetts has gotten worse, not better. In 2011, Massachusetts recorded 122 murders committed with firearms, the Globe reported this month — “a striking increase from the 65 in 1998.” Other crimes rose too. Between 1998 and 2011, robbery with firearms climbed 20.7 percent. Aggravated assaults jumped 26.7 percent.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for gun-control activists to admit they were wrong. The treatment they prescribed may have yielded the opposite of the results they promised, but they’re quite sure the prescription wasn’t to blame. Crime didn’t rise in Massachusetts because the state made it harder for honest citizens to lawfully carry a gun; it rose because other states didn’t do the same thing.

“Massachusetts probably has the toughest laws on the books, but what happens is people go across borders and buy guns and bring them into our state,” rationalizes Boston Mayor Tom Menino. “Guns have no borders.”

This has become a popular argument in gun-control circles. It may even be convincing to someone emotionally committed to the belief that ever-stricter gun control is a plausible path to safety. But it doesn’t hold water.

For starters, why didn’t the gun-control lobby warn legislators in 1998 that adopting the toughest gun law in America would do Massachusetts no good unless every surrounding state did the same thing? Far from explaining why the new law would do nothing to curb violent crime, they were positive it would make Massachusetts even safer. It was gun-rights advocates, such as state Senator Richard Moore, who correctly predicted the future. “Much of what has been said in support of this bill will not come to pass,” said Moore during the 1998 debate. “The amount of crime we have now will at least continue.”

But crime in Massachusetts didn’t just continue, it began climbing. As in the rest of the country, violent crime had been declining in Massachusetts since the early 1990s. Beginning in 1998, that decline reversed — unlike in the rest of the country. For example, the state’s murder rate (murders per 100,000 inhabitants) bottomed out at 1.9 in 1997 and had risen to 2.8 by 2011. The national murder rate, on the other hand, kept falling; it reached a new low of 4.7 in 2011. Guns-across-borders might have explained homicide levels in Massachusetts continuing unchanged. But how can other states’ policies be responsible for an increase in Massachusetts homicides?

Relative to the rest of the country, or to just the states on its borders, Massachusetts since 1998 has become a more dangerous state. Economist John Lott, using FBI crime data since 1980, shows how dramatic the contrast has been. In 1998, Massachusetts’s murder rate equaled about 70 percent of the rate for Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York. Now it equals 125 percent of that rate.

Clearly something bad happened to Massachusetts 15 years ago. Blaming the neighbors may be ideologically comforting. But those aren’t the states whose crime rates are up.

If the majority of Americans decide that guns ownership should be limited in some way, you might see changes in the way the Constituion is interpreted by the courts.

Or you might see attempts to change the Constitution.

..Or simply laws on back ground checks and registration being excepted.
And in that case it might be that Americans would have decided that gun proliferation is infringing on their freedom to enjoy their public and ptivate spaces without fear of gun violence.

But thats a pretty remote possibility right now, don't you think?
Gay marriage, on the other hand, is almost fait accomplis

If the majority of Americans decide that guns ownership should be limited in some way, you might see changes in the way the Constituion is interpreted by the courts.

If that is true, it is perverse. The courts are NOT supposed to wet their collective finger and do a "direction check." They are supposed to interpret the law, NOT polls

rickyp wrote:rickyp

If the majority of Americans decide that guns ownership should be limited in some way, you might see changes in the way the Constituion is interpreted by the courts.

Fate

If that is true, it is perverse. The courts are NOT supposed to wet their collective finger and do a "direction check." They are supposed to interpret the law, NOT polls

In 1898 the SCOTUS decided "equal but seperate" (segregation) was Constituional.
In 1954, and subsequent, SCOTUS decided that was a mistake and not Consitutional.

Please explain. Was that perverse?

Were they not suppossed to change their opinion once decided? Can they not reinterpret the Constitution based on evolutionary changes in society? (The answer is They did. So they can.)

Um, a change does not necessarily prove they looked at the polls and changed. It's entirely possible they may decide a previous decision was interpreted wrongly (and thus applied incorrectly) or that the previous court decided a bit of the law they should not have, or that a previous court was wrong. Stare decisis does not mean "written in stone," as it were. It indicates some deference, not absolute deference

rickyp wrote:fate

Um, a change does not necessarily prove they looked at the polls and changed. It's entirely possible they may decide a previous decision was interpreted wrongly (and thus applied incorrectly) or that the previous court decided a bit of the law they should not have, or that a previous court was wrong. Stare decisis does not mean "written in stone," as it were. It indicates some deference, not absolute deference

I've never said anything about them reading polls. I've said that society changes,
and that the way the courts interpret the constitution is derived from their experiences and knowledge of society.

We have Congress and a President to respond to the will of the people. The Court exists to interpret the law, not the electorate

Is the current sensibility the basis on which the USSC decides

rickyp wrote:fate

We have Congress and a President to respond to the will of the people. The Court exists to interpret the law, not the electorate

Nevertheless.....
the Constitution, did not change, but was interpreted differently in 1898 then in 1950. Dramatically so....

Is the current sensibility the basis on which the USSC decides

Unless members of SCOTUS exist in some vacuum they are affected by everything they are exposed to within the culture and within society. It was not unusual and perfectly acceptable to be a vocal racist at the turn of the century. Segregation was acceptable and somehow found constitutional protection when challenged.
50 years later, sensibilities had indeed begun to change. And thankfully the members of SCOTUS had been affected by this change and ruled entirely differently .....
The same thing is occuring today, with gay marriage. It is not just a coincidence that it is happening at a time when sensibilities regarding inclusion of gays and lebians have profoundly changed versus 50 years ago.
.

Doctor Fate wrote:

rickyp wrote:In 1898 the SCOTUS decided "equal but seperate" (segregation) was Constituional.
In 1954, and subsequent, SCOTUS decided that was a mistake and not Consitutional.

Please explain. Was that perverse?

Yes, next question.

danivon wrote:

Doctor Fate wrote:

rickyp wrote:In 1898 the SCOTUS decided "equal but seperate" (segregation) was Constituional.
In 1954, and subsequent, SCOTUS decided that was a mistake and not Consitutional.

Please explain. Was that perverse?

Yes, next question.

Which one was perverse - the 1898 decision or the 1954 reversal?

1. DOMA didn't exist 50 years ago.
2. The concept of "homosexual marriage" did not exist 50 years ago.

If that is true, it is perverse. The courts are NOT supposed to wet their collective finger and do a "direction check." They are supposed to interpret the law,

While all but one justice personally rejected segregation, the judicial restraint faction questioned whether the Constitution gave the Court the power to order its end. The activist faction believed the Fourteenth Amendment did give the necessary authority and were pushing to go ahead. Warren, who held only a recess appointment, held his tongue until the Senate confirmed his appointment.
Warren convened a meeting of the justices, and presented to them the simple argument that the only reason to sustain segregation was an honest belief in the inferiority of Negroes. Warren further submitted that the Court must overrule Plessy to maintain its legitimacy as an institution of liberty, and it must do so unanimously to avoid massive Southern resistance. He began to build a unanimous opinion

rickyp wrote:fate

1. DOMA didn't exist 50 years ago.
2. The concept of "homosexual marriage" did not exist 50 years ago.

So what?

What does this have to do with providing evidence for previous SCOTUS rulings that indicate that this statement of yours is not grounded in reality.

Unless members of SCOTUS exist in some vacuum they are affected by everything they are exposed to within the culture and within society. It was not unusual and perfectly acceptable to be a vocal racist at the turn of the century. Segregation was acceptable and somehow found constitutional protection when challenged.
50 years later, sensibilities had indeed begun to change. And thankfully the members of SCOTUS had been affected by this change and ruled entirely differently .....
The same thing is occuring today, with gay marriage. It is not just a coincidence that it is happening at a time when sensibilities regarding inclusion of gays and lebians have profoundly changed versus 50 years ago.

If that is true, it is perverse. The courts are NOT supposed to wet their collective finger and do a "direction check." They are supposed to interpret the law,

(I took out your refeerence to polls since that was your manufacture.)

If the SCOTUS didn't do a direction check on racial segregation and the unconstituionaity of "seperate but equal treatment" .... then what did they do?

Warren's Speech to his SCOTUS peers regarding the Brown V ruling specifically addressed public attitudes about race... Attitudes that had dramatically changed.

While all but one justice personally rejected segregation, the judicial restraint faction questioned whether the Constitution gave the Court the power to order its end. The activist faction believed the Fourteenth Amendment did give the necessary authority and were pushing to go ahead. Warren, who held only a recess appointment, held his tongue until the Senate confirmed his appointment.
Warren convened a meeting of the justices, and presented to them the simple argument that the only reason to sustain segregation was an honest belief in the inferiority of Negroes. Warren further submitted that the Court must overrule Plessy to maintain its legitimacy as an institution of liberty, and it must do so unanimously to avoid massive Southern resistance. He began to build a unanimous opinion

.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._B ... _Education

The parallels to the change in societies view of homosexual and lesbian people is strikingly similar...

It Laws against homosexual sex acts were common in states and it wasn't but a few years now since laws against sodomy were declared unconstituional by SCOTUS.

Its amazing how SCOTUS works isn't it Fate.... Not being cemented into an unchanging interpretation of the words in the Consittuion they've been able to adapt to changes in the attitudes of society.