Nonsense. The phrase "taken away" doesn't mean "removing what once was given" here, but rather "depriving of an option for some that's available to others".

Before women's right to vote was protected a century ago, they had the right, just as men had the right. Exactly as Black people's right to vote prior to 1865. But the government wasn't instructed to protect that right. Their right to vote was taken away by the refusal of the state to register them. If you say that's not "taken away", your disagreement is purely semantic, and irrelevant.

The issue for Conservatives is that you're bigots. Period.

The Constitution instructs the creation of government as representatives who have the power, elected by people who have only the power to vote and to petition for redress of grievances, and implicitly to exercise rights the government is instructed to protect. The government of representatives has all the other power.

That is the definition of a republic.

Though of course I'm a fan of the 13th and 15th Amendments, the democratic process for passing them required the killing of hundreds of thousands of people, the forced abdication of their elected leaders, and the military occupation of their lands after destroying much of their infrastructure. I am grateful for the outcome of the Civil War, but the ends contain the means, and more than just democracy produced those Amendments.

The rest of those Amendments and laws weren't purely democratic in their process, either, but rather republican and otherwise political outside of simply voting, whether by citizens or by their representatives. Indeed, even the Civil Rights Act was enforced by threat (and sometimes exercise) of violence. As, sorry to say, are most laws that prevent some people from taking without permission from others.

It forces the government to deny equal protection (of marriage) to some people but not to others, based on a difference that does not conflict with the public interest in applying the protection to anyone. That is why this is a marriage equality issue, just as it was when the difference was racial, not gender.

Slavery was popular. Violating people's rights like that should not be. Judges have the power to throw out laws for this very reason.

Old people and others can't reproduce, but there's no fertility test for marriage. Nor do we require marriage for reproduction. Because marriage isn't primarily for the purpose of reproduction: it's for the purpose of people joining their lives together akin to a single person, and for joining families and property as if to a single person.

BTW, sex change recipients are almost always sterile.

Rights aren't given, we have them and we create governments to protect them.

Oh, and you're citing "an affront to religions everywhere" while insisting "you do not have the right not to be offended". The remedy for people trying to silence you is not for you to kill them.

You are wrong about everything. You are a pretty sick person. You are probably gay, terrified that our society is gradually removing excuses for you to stay in the closet, and hate gay people because they make you feel things you want to repress. Just like nearly every person who hates gay people, and gets all worked up to talk about killing people over gay freedoms.

Just kiss that guy/girl who makes you feel funny already. The rest of us won't even notice, except that you finally shut up about your personal hangups.

Or you might be a non-American who so fetishizes their own fellow citizens that you think only American mobs are tyrannical. A bigot, in any language.

What about spousal abuse, child abuse and other domestic abuse? There's lots of threats to the "sanctity" of opposite sex marriage, coming from heterosexuals.

Why don't you actually try to convince your church of your idea, instead of putting it in the purely hypothetical conditional? You're a Christian, you're supposed to take action especially among Christians to do what you think your church says is moral. See what people who say they agree with your morals actually do when you try to actually live by them.

What does John Huntsman have to do with libertarians? Nothing.

Libertarians of course agree on contractual marriage rather than government marriage, since libertarians are anarchists. They tend not to be found on this issue because they're typically anarchists because they resent the state protecting some people or another from their bigotry or just general desire to oppress.

The idea that libertarians are too busy to expend energy on any issue other than government spending, debt and regulation is laughable Any issue they perceive to possibly reduce their power to do whatever they want regardless of consequences causes them to scream, usually all together like good nonconformists.

Because nobody calls heterosexual marriage "civil union". We all call it marriage. Just as we don't call marriage between a Black and a White spouse "miscegenation". Because indeed calling it "marriage" is "magic", in that it causes us to accept a lot of conditions based on modeling behavior, regardless of rational analysis.

Right, because a system so oppressive that even a king must jump through hoops to navigate it to marry a commoner must be a better way.

"Marriage" is more than a religious or tax association. Just using the word helps many people change their lives to accommodate the changes they've said they'll accept.

The simple solution is that churches are free to refuse to marry anyone not a member of their church. Just as any private club is free to refuse to perform any of their ceremonies on any non-member. Catholic churches cannot be required to perform a Jewish marriage ceremony. And indeed they cannot be forced to perform a gay marriage ceremony. Meanwhile, governments cannot perform a Catholic, or Jewish, or Flying Spaghetti Monster marriage ceremony.

This is the case right now. Except where governments enforce religious rules, like prohibiting gay marriages. It's obvious what we need to change.

Not to become more like a theocratic monarchy like Morocco is.

They're not forcing you to be gay. That pressure you feel to lust after your fellow gender is yourself. Stop blaming them. You're not inhuman because you're a repressed homosexual, any more than they are inhuman for not being repressed.

Actually, copyright is censorship, of the first order. It is indeed the only element of this story that infringes anyone's rights: Card can't publish a Superman story unless DC allows it. DC has a copyright on a character, not even something Card is actually copying, that was first published three quarters of a century ago, long past the time when it has become as much a part of folk culture as a currently produced product.

Yet even here on Slashdot, few are unhappy about the only censorship in the story. More are unhappy that someone's bigotry is blowing back on their popularity.

Maybe they haven't done enough research. But if they haven't, they haven't been turned off to the artist. It doesn't require research to know what Card is broadcasting. Once they know it, they're turned off, won't enjoy the work because they're distracted by the artist, and won't buy the art.

Personally I have stopped watching movies featuring several actors who've injected their political views I dislike into public discourse. I watch some other actors whose views I like with extra affection. Similarly I like or dislike seeing/hearing some actors and musicians more or less because of the occasional biographic features I've seen, like stories about eg. Bill Murray's off-camera life. However, some directors I've learned were bad people I haven't found turning me off to their movies.

So people who won't enjoy his work knowing he's a bigot as they read it should buy it anyway? It's a personal attack on him, even though it's directed at an argument he's making?

Speaking of irrational bullshit...

When the capitalists are extremists, they're monopolists: tyrants. They hate the part of capitalism that works for anyone else.