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Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

> I want to emphasize that rights are not won once. Rights must be continuously fought for. Collectively, society has succeeded in performing an outcry against bills like this, and they've done so for well over a decade at this point. It's important to know that this is what winning looks like.

That may be, but once in a while it'd be nice to pass something positively affirming specific rights that prevents anyone from easily trying again to take them away. Constitutional amendments are hard to repeal. And some states have passed legislation that says things like "this can't be repealed by the state legislature, only by a vote of the people".

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Positively affirming rights are passed, and often passed regularly. But remember we monkey brains are drawn towards the negative. Positive news doesn't make it on the news that often, and even when they are, we forget them way faster than negative news.

Within the fairly recent times, people of certain races could marry. People of certain sexes could marry. Sweeping minimal standards for healthcare have been passed. If you go to the state level, Minnesota for example has been crushing it by guaranteeing abortion access, fertility treatment access, family planning, 12 weeks off for the birth of a child, universal school lunch, legalizing weed, etc.

> Positively affirming rights are passed, and often passed regularly.

If a legislature (or government generally) can grant a "right", then it can take it away.

That means it isn't a right, it's a privilege.

Oh, what's that? The government responded to the Will of the People? So, the Will of the People can revoke that "right". OR, a group that you think is abhorrent could get a majority to declare whatever rights they want.

I'm constantly astounded how many people confuse authoritarianism for liberalism.

Because you don't have to think too hard about the downsides when the outcome supports your view.

Everyone really also needs to remember everyone has rights, or no one has rights.

> Positively affirming rights are passed, and often passed regularly. But remember we monkey brains are drawn towards the negative. Positive news doesn't make it on the news that often, and even when they are, we forget them way faster than negative news

That's such a cop out. This is not a balancing thing. Since 911, privacy and fundamental rights have been increasingly crushed and no amount of gay marriage offsets that. It's two separate things.

Hell, while things like gay marriage are awesome and expand rights, we seem to be now using identity politics to limit them.

So no, there's no "glass half full" here.

The problem with mechanisms like that is that they can also be (ab)used for bad stuff.

For example - in my country gay marriage was made explicitly illegal with a constitutional amendment in 2005.

Many other countries could legalise it with a simple majority vote. But we now need either a 2/3 majority or a referendum. Both of which are very unlikely to pass.

Marriage is a dying concept anyways. With a few exceptions, it appears it is only used to secure relationships where children are involved. And given the declining birth rate and steadily increasing independence of women, marriage is a rather antiquated concept. It will not be missed.

Marriage is a solid legal ground for getting a visa for your partner whenever you move to another country - this is very useful.

Yup - my country considers gay couples not married - even if they have been married in another country. Even worse - if another country requests that information - my country will also say that they are not married. Because - obviously - they will ask the country that the couple are citizens of not some random 3rd country.

Do they really request that from your country of origin? I thought an apostilled american marriage certificate (which is relatively easy to get, no matter what coutry you are from) usually is enough.

Oh yes, I still remember the few cases where I saw that being put to "good" use. It was always about enabling immigration which would otherwise have failed. Find a woman to do a fake marriage with, pay her for it, and voila, you are in!

Unfortunately getting citizenship anywhere through fake (and even legitimate) marriage has became fairly hard these days. I firmly believe gettin in any country should be (for benefit of the country itself) easy for anybody who is not a thug an can take care of themselves.

Nice point.

I just wonder why do people care about others' sex and marriage so much that they would put that in the very constitution. To me this sounds like a constitution amendment to introduce a dedicated paragraph to ban pineapple pizza. I just eat what I want, have sex with whom we mutually want and share my life with whom I trust, how is my personal choice relevant to anybody else? Okay, if they feel so disturbed they could issue a separate law banning anything but how is this so important they need to put it in the definition of a country?

I think it would be more similar to prohibition than pineapple pizza, at least to people who care about it.

Presumably less alcohol/less gay marriage is expected to help save people from the temptation toward grievous sins (at least in Christian settings), and help support the traditional family unit in its duties to raise the next generation (less alcohol = less domestic abuse and financial stupidity / less homosexuality = more straight relationships, more children, and partnerships more likely to follow a traditional division of labor & have a woman to raise the children).

I'm in favor of equal rights to marriage, I just think your comment would badly fail the Ideological Turing Test.

> For example - in my country gay marriage was made explicitly illegal with a constitutional amendment in 2005.

Are you referring to the US?

Many US states passed state constitution amendments (some in 2005) to limit legal marriage and its rights/ privileges to heterosexual couples; it wasn't illegal as in a crime, nobody was getting arrested, but folks were being discriminated against by the government.

In 2010, then-President Obama repeated his opposition to same-sex marriage. It wasn't until 2012 and running for re-election that his position "evolved".

Same-sex marriage was not mainstream until very recently, even in supposedly liberal nations.

Yup, but the Americans now act as if they always had gay marriage and call people from other countries bigots. Especially on sites like reddit.

Consider that some Americans have always thought gay marriage should be allowed, and that other Americans are/were bigots for not wanting it.

> That may be, but once in a while it'd be nice to pass something positively affirming specific rights that prevents anyone from easily trying again to take them away.

For the point of discourse, I'll point out that the "otherside" thinks the exact same thing.

There is a great irony in folks downvoting your comment when the original article is about an attempt to codify positive "rights" which would infringe upon the innate rights of everyone else.

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