But it was still a surprise to hear the finding in a recent study by libertarian professors that Maryland came in dead last in personal freedom among the 50 states. (Alaska is No. 1.)
Among the reasons: Maryland lacks gay marriage or civil unions, aggressively prosecutes victimless drug crimes, keeps tight controls on land use and has the nation's second-strictest gun laws after California.
"You might call it 'suburban liberalism' ... kind of the idea that we need to take care of people, make sure they don't harm...
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Maybe - 2009-03-22 12:13:58
Tom,
Maybe your title shouldn't read slave rights/gay rights if you are comparing and contrasting the treatment of gays and those affected under aparteid. A big difference that you fail to mention, if we are talking about comparing the two, a homosexual does have a choice where to wed and where to live, a slave did not. Gays have a level of autonomy in our society that you could really not even compare to that which slaves had. Maybe your teacher should have been more selective and stuck to comparing marriage rights among certain groups as it seems your teacher is unfairly saying that marriage rights in some way represent all civil rights, which honestly, is not the case. There is more to this issue than a simple view on how people view gays that impact marriage laws. The are still a large majority of states that have a slew of "sex laws" on the books that would make the "blessing and consumation" of a gay marriage illegal, so its not as simple as just amending marriage laws to encompass gays. Further, especially in this current economic crisis, most states have no idea how much money they would lose if gay marriage would pass in terms of tax benefits. Opposite sex couples already marry/elope for that reason alone, could you imagine same sex people being afforded the same opportunity; to include friends and roommates. Not to be too cynical but it would drive up every insurance premium and create a tax deficit that, at this point we wouldn't even want to fathom.
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Johnathan Locke - Edgewater, MD - Karma: Excellent
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Slave rights/gay rights - 2009-03-22 10:48:08
Compare and contrast; one of my high school english teachers drilled that one.
Compare and contrast: Slave rights and gay rights; the contrasts are easy, the comparisons are profound. Slave marriages were not honored legally either. They could not sign contracts and what is marriage mostly (legally speaking) but a huge contract with thousands of rights and responsibilities.
Navanethem Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights spoke there last year saying, "That just like apartheid laws that criminalized sexual relations between different races, laws against homosexuality are increasingly becoming recognized as anachronistic and inconsistent both with international law and with traditional values of dignity, inclusion, and respect for all".
Apartheid: A system of laws applied to one category of citizens in order to isolate them and keep them from having privileges and opportunities given to all other.
Stop gay apartheid.
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