[Professor S]

Originally Posted by Vampyr

I agree that if you live in a place that tends to go against all your ideas you should move, but that still sets the person back even further economically, just because of where they were born.

But I'm not just talking about adults stuck in a situation that they don't like. I mean how many people grow up into a tragic lifestyle because they were born in a state that willing fosters and encourages intolerance and ignorance? Teenage pregnancy, hate crimes, drugs, etc. A lot of people don't even have the chance to get out before they are consumed and become just another cog moving the wheel forward.

While I appreciate the good intentions of having national government handle the issues you mention, I'm not sure what any national or state government could do about much anything you mentioned. Culture supersedes laws, and in most states that have poor records on those issues they already have laws on the books that haven't done much.

And I think we would be worse off than we are without Roe v. Wade. I think there would be more deaths due to illegal abortions than there are deaths from people rallying against abortion. I mean, no one is pro abortion. Everyone wants there to be less or zero abortions, and evidence from around the world shows that places where abortion is legal and sex education is more available, there are actually less abortions.

That assumes that the status quo of the early 1970's would have maintained. I would argue that most states would have at least early term abortion legal with appropriate protections against late term abortion/infanticide. But then again, we're both speculating. In any case, abortion is a very blurry issue because both the rights of the mother, and at some point the rights of an unborn child (from months 7-9 the only real difference between a viable baby and a fetus is location), need to be considered. Honestly, this is why I tend to favor the state by state approach because it allows 50 states to create solutions as opposed to one country that can't seem to agree on anything...

Same with gay marriage. In my mind it's a human issue alongside gender and race and a state shouldn't be able to up and discriminate against those people under the guise of culture and heritage. That rings a little too close to the KKK slogans for me.

I don't personally disagree, but IMO we have to measure the severity of the violation to rights to the impact it would have on the society, and compare that to momentum. Prohibiting gay marriage doesn't really "hurt" anyone, but telling a state they had to allow gay marriage could lead to reactionary violence in the least tolerant regions. Also, momentum is definitely moving towards gay marriage being legalized on a state by state basis. Given a decade, I would assume half of the states will legalize gay marriage, if not more.

But these are two very different schools of thought and an argument that has been going on since the birth of the nation. I'm the Hamilton to your Jefferson.

Very true.