Earlier today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Bush's proposed military trials for Gitmo detainees was illegal under both U.S. law and international Geneva conventions. I don't think this comes as a surprise to many observers, given Bush's flagrant and repeated disregard for both U.S. and international law. What is…
Once more a "we need to protect the flag" amendment is up before congress. It could not be more politically timed. It is soon to be July, wherein the Fourth Day thereof is our national Holy of Holies, when all the good citizens can get hammered on bad beer and…
We’ve recently raised a few issues regarding justifications for bigotry. What especially rankles some of us is the often-heard argument that people should do something a particular way (recently, the issue is preventing gay marriage) because that is the way that it has been done in the past.
What a ridiculous-sounding principle on which to base an argument! Ridiculous sounding, unless you are a lawyer arguing an important case. In courtrooms across this country, multitudes of lawyers lawyers stand up every day with straight faces and proceed to argue to judges that a case should be decided a particular way solely because a previous and similar case was handled that same way.
In law, this principle that judges should rely on precendent is given the obscure and mysterious-sounding label “stare decisis,” from the Latin, “stand by the thing decided.” [Stare decisis et non quieta movere, meaning “to stand by the decisions and not to disturb settled points”].
There is the great power in this heuristic. At least it’s an equal opportunity principle: Analogizing to old cases is a technique that can be used by crafty opportunists, as well as good-hearted seekers of justice.
Though we are tempted to scoff at this principle (of relying on precedent) when it is employed by bigots, we need to keep things in context. That very same principle is the heartbeat of justice. How strange, you might think, that such an amoral principle determines outcomes of important cases! That’s the way it is, however. I’ll …
Gays' enjoyment of drinking fountains undermines MY enjoyment of drinking fountains. Therefore, we need a "Defense of Drinking Fountains" Amendment to the United States Constitution. I'm simply extending this Administration's logic, you see. As Mr. Bush said “Our policies should aim to strengthen families, not undermine them. And changing the…
When I was a kid, I was always curious about why there were so many different kinds of Christian churches in America: Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Unitarian, Congregational, Baptist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Church of Christ, United Church of Christ, Reformed Church of Christ, Mormon, Quaker, Shaker, Greek Othodox, Russian Orthodox, Christian Science…the list seemed endless. It seemed like there were more different versions of Christianity in America than there were non-Christian religions around the rest of the world (Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Bahai, Shinto, Confucianism, etc.). Later, I learned that those other religions also had many different versions (Orthodox Judiasm, Ultra-orthodox Judiasm, Hasidic Judiasm, Reformed Judiasm, Sunni Muslim, Shia Muslim, etc.), so Christianity is not unique in that respect.
Meanwhile, Christians were fond of telling me that the Bible was written by God and, thus, was both perfect and complete. Naturally, this made no sense to me given the cornucopia of churches. If the Bible was perfect and complete, then why didn’t all Christians understand it the same way? Didn’t God know how to write clearly? More importantly, why were there so many different kinds of churches and what were their actual differences? To my immense frustration, churches of different denominations didn’t have signs out front explaining how they differed from the other churches down the street.
Only recently have I learned some answers to these questions. First, it turns out that the number of different versions of Christianity and other religions that I can name are only the tip of …