re: "There Is No Dignity in This Kind of America" (The New York Times, February 10, 2023)
What Americans need is a new Bill of Rights style amendment to the Constitution, one that enshrines at the highest level what the Supreme Court justices complicit in that decision describe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Care Organization as "a broader right to autonomy and to define one’s 'concept of existence'."
As the justices note in the reasoning for the majority opinion there, it is the absence of any such explicit constitutional protection of the fundamental right to the autonomy required for a full-fleshed liberty that allowed them to overthrew Roe v. Wade.
That same defect is apparent in the abuses that have been legally allowed against other groups in the US since its foundation, and that continue to legally violate the dreams of liberty to pursue happiness in their own lives of many Americans held hostage to the prejudices of powerful sects who care nothing for individual freedom.
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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.
It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/opinion/trump-desantis-transgender-rights.html#commentsContainer&permid=123112855:123112855
@Jules
ReplyDeleteThat gay and lesbian people are now more widely known is not because of any explosion in their number in the last couple of decades. The number has likely always been about 5% of the population, of every human population.
What has changed is that in many, but not all groups in American society, it is now relatively safe for gay men and lesbian women to be as open about their sexual interests as mixed-sex lovers have traditionally been.
Whilst some young people might experiment, I don't think there is any evidence to suggest that masses of young men or women have been confused about whether they prefer sex with men or women just because of the greater honesty now possible.
Perhaps there have always been rather more trans-people than a society in intense denial had ever admitted. And that too many perhaps still have trouble admitting today.
For comparison, some benighted African leaders under the influence of faith-driven ideology continue to insist that there are no homosexuals in their society, such a condition being deemed a Western cultural sickness. The result is that the 5% of gay and lesbians in those societies continue to suffer mightily for the ugly faith of the conservative, traditionalist bigots.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/opinion/trump-desantis-transgender-rights.html#commentsContainer&permid=123112720:123113020