Aslaug's Axe Shed

Good grief, I’ve been blog-active lately. Well, better that than the alternative and when it rains, it apparently pours.

I’ve had quite a few responses to my latest Proposition 8-related blog-entry. Almost universally from people supporting my stance and my views. But I feel it’s necessary to point out one example … just one example … of a dissenter. This wasn’t even someone dissenting to MY blog (which I doubt he’s ever heard of) but someone pointing out why Proposition 8, in HIS view, should be allowed to stand.

I must stress that I distance myself in every conceivable way from what he made himself a spokesperson for, but I’ll mention it anyway, because I’ve heard similar rumblings elsewhere, and because this is a deeply, deeply troubling situation which requires … in fact DEMANDS … a response.

His reaction was that after Proposition 8 was overturned, he felt that he was living in a dictatorship.

Innocuous enough, perhaps, at least on the face of it. He’s entitled to his opinion, after all. But here is why his opinion is not entitled to stand without being blasted for what it is!

By stating that a judge cannot overturn a popular referendum without turning a country into a dictatorship, that person made himself a spokesperson for a political system we really don’t want reintroduced to the world scene!

The specific reason why we have judges … and courts … and laws … and due legal process in the first place, is specifically to allow people who have been victims of an injustice to get proper satisfaction, and for the injustice to be undone if possible. In that regard, it is COMPLETELY inconsequential whether one person has been wronged by a million people, or a million people have been wronged by one person. It is TOTALLY irrelevant. The job of the court is to make sure that people who may have been wronged can be heard, and a proper decision be reached. Just as it is the job of the court to ensure that people ACCUSED of having done something wrong will be heard. That is what due process is all about, and that is why both sides are heard in a court-case. Why there is a prosecution and a defense, and why judges must be fair and impartial. These fundamental principles cannot be overturned simply because a majority of a population decides that they don’t like something. Laws are in place to protect minorities from the excesses of the majority, specifically for that reason. That is, in fact, the essence of civil rights.

So when a man complains that his country is now a dictatorship, because a popular referendum is overturned in court, what he is forgetting is not only that such laws exist, but also that you can’t ignore constitutional rights, simply based on your own prejudices.

You know what? I absolutely abhorr guns. I think it’s a load of unfathomable CRAP when people use trite phrases like “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. It’s forgetting the pathos-logos-ethos aspect of a good argument, namely that while guns do not jump up and fire themselves at random strangers, they PROVIDE people with a highly advanced, purpose-built method with which to kill each other. They are instruments created for one reason only, and that is to injure, maim and kill through ballistic force applied through a projectile, fired from said instrument.

But the United States Constitution protects people’s rights to own guns.

I have to accept that. As I don’t live in the United States, it’s made all the easier, but I retain the right to think that particular law, created specifically to allow people to keep guns in order to quickly form militias in case of a British invasion, is now rather antiquated. I also think it is HIGHLY problematic that it is defined so loosely, that private citizens can buy absolutely any gun they can afford, up-to-and-including military grade hardware, allegedly to protect their homes.

It is MY PERSONAL opinion that the second ammendment is the greatest contributor to gun-related violence anywhere in the western world. But it is the law of the land. And I can’t simply suggest a popular referendum saying “I don’t want anyone to be allowed to own guns”. The law is equal for -everybody-, folks … and while I agree with the sentiment that Chicago politicians showed by trying to implement tighter gun-restrictions in their city, I also have to agree with the decision to overturn it. Because it was against the law.

There are processes to be followed, set down in the code of laws of any country, for how to overturn an already existing law. In some countries, such as my own, a law cannot simply be removed. It can only be made redundant through passing another law. In the United States, you can’t simply undo part of the constitution by saying “I don’t like this!” and tossing it out the window. Slavery would never have been abolished in the south if that happened, because when slavery was made illegal, and for many, many years thereafter, the vast majority of southerners felt it was wrong to abolish that horrid institution in the first place. While today, the majority of southerners are against slavery, that is a state of opinion that has come only over time, and if … oh, let’s say Alabamans (just to take a totally random ex-confederate state) had been allowed to simply disregard whatever parts of the US constitution they wanted, then slavery would certainly never have been removed in Alabama to begin with.

Changing the constitution is a lengthy and highly controversial issue. Extremely so. It is in fact so contentious, to this day, that it has now been over EIGHTY FIVE YEARS since someone suggested an equal rights-clause be added.

The socalled ERA, or Equal Rights Amendment, was proposed in 1923 by Alice Paul, a noted Suffragete of her age. She argued that while the nineteenth amendment made it illegal to deny anyone the right to vote based on their gender, it did not remove all the other forms of gender-based discrimination that went on back then. So she drafted an amendment to the constitution with the following, exact wording:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

Here’s the 64.000 dollar question, folks.

Do you think America has an Equal Rights Amendment in their constitution today?

The answer is … *drumroll* … *cymbals* NO!

They don’t!

Constitutionally speaking, women in the United States are NOT guaranteed equal rights. It is, constitutionally speaking, possible to justify paying a woman half of what a man receives, for doing the exact same job, at the exact same skill level. It’s possible to deny women access to education, simply based on their gender. It is possible to deny them the right to walk down the street without dressing in specific items of clothing (oh dear, sounds rather Afghani to me if you don’t mind my saying so …)

Of course, no one in their right mind would dream of doing any of those things in today’s America, but that is not the point. Legislation is not in place to constitutionally guarantee women those rights. And it is not even because of Congress or The House of Representatives, because THEY actually PASSED this constitutional amendment unanimously in 1972 (still 49 years after the amendment was originally drafted), but lo and behold, the individual states who has to ratify amendments to the US Constitution refused to do so.

What does that mean? It means it’s practically impossible to change the constitution AT ALL. Today, a lot of republicans are ranting about changing or abolishing the 14th amendment. They want to do this because illegal immigration is a hot topic in November’s elections, but in truth, that kind of political bullshit is just a freebie ride. They can say they want to abolish the 14th amendment until they turn blue in the face, but in reality, they CAN’T DO IT!

However, Prop 8 supporters are licking their chops at the prospect. Because if the 14th amendment is removed, so is ANY minority-protection in the United States legal system. Any minority can be abused, denigrated and denied rights available to the majority at will. Because the one thing they have in place to protect them … their unbreachable shield … will be gone.

Stolen.

Is that the America people want to see?

Because I know a word for states like that.

Fascist.

A place where those who do not conform to the majority are, quite literally, second grade citizens, without rights and without the protection of the law.

Human beings in terms of biology, but superfluous waste material to the majority. A line of feces smeared under their nostrils. A fly in their soup. A nuissance to be removed.

Removing the fourteenth amendment is a deliberate attempt at dehumanizing the people protected by it. And once you have dehumanized someone, they are far easier to get rid of.

I’m going to lend an idea from a liberal news-anchor here … not because I necessarily agree with everything he says, but because in this particular case, he hits the nail so hard on the head he sinks it into the wood in one, single blow.

I’m going to quote someone. I’m going to quote a German, liberated from Dachau after seven years of incarceration in that dreadful place, and others like it.

His name was Martin Niemöller, and he was a lutheran pastor.

In German, what he said was:

“Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Kommunist. Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat. Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten, habe ich nicht protestiert; ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter. Als sie die Juden holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Jude. Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestierte.”

Translated into English, this means:

“When the Nazis came for the Communists, I didn’t speak up; after all, I wasn’t a Communist. When they locked away the Social Democrats, I didn’t speak up; after all, I wasn’t a Social Democrat. When they came for the Trade Unionists, I didn’t speak up; after all, I wasn’t a Trade Unionist. When they came for the Jews, I didn’t speak up; after all, I wasn’t a Jew. When they came for me, there were no one left who protested.”

I would like for you all to think about that.

In one way or another, -after all- … we are all part of one minority or other.