Posted by James V. Lacy at 12:00 am on Jan 19, 2010 Comments Off on Of Minarette and Moroni
Do people have a constitutionally protected right to dislike
someone? "Associational rights" spring from the First
Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and the U.S. Supreme Court says
this right includes both the right to associate with others, and
the right to not associate
with others.
The debate in the current Federal trial
in San Francisco on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the
initiative that bans same-sex marriage in California, has gone well
beyond resolving the question of whether gays and lesbians have a
straightforward "right" to marry. The case has included
allegations by the homosexual plaintiffs that the ballot
proposition passed by majority vote, was stimulated by an "animus,"
or dislike for gay people, and therefore constituted an illegal
conspiracy against them, rendering the Proposition null and
void. The plaintiffs have sought to "discover" private
internal memos and emails of Prop. 8’s political consultants,
hoping to find disparaging remarks against homosexuals, to help
prove their contention.
In the meantime, supporters of… Read More