Comment

Alabama's McClurkin, "Gohmert in a dress," pushing even more ultra-radical bills

291
wrenchwench2/27/2014 2:55:52 pm PST

re: #290 Political Atheist

So you don’r see much worthwhile difference between what the media by and large told us about this legislation and what actual legal experts had to say it means?

I don’t see how the public can have sensible opinions on a matter when / if perception over rides reality. I don’t want to live in strawman city.

Actual legal experts are humans with opinions that often don’t count for any more than your opinion or mine. That article only named three of the eleven signers of the letter. I’d like to know who the others are because they are all going on my ‘do not trust’ list. These are all from Wikipedia:

Mary Ann Glendon:

is the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a former United States Ambassador to the Holy See (February 2008 - January 2009). She teaches and writes on bioethics, comparative constitutional law, property, and human rights in international law. She is pro-life and “writes forcefully against the expansion of abortion rights.”[1]

She has an agenda directly counter to mine.

Michael McConnell:

In 1996, McConnell signed a statement supporting a constitutional amendment to ban abortion, which read, “Abortion kills 1.5 million innocent human beings in America every year…We believe that the abortion license is a critical factor in America’s virtue deficit.”[7]

He has an agenda directly counter to mine.

Douglas Laycock:

Laycock was one of the people who testified in favor of the Religious Liberty Protection Act of 1998.[3]

He has an agenda to uphold the thing that article was about.

He is one of three co-editors of the recently released book Same Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty. His own chapter in that volume argues that it is desirable, and usually possible, to protect the liberty of same-sex couples and also protect the liberty of religious conservatives who do not wish to support or facilitate same-sex marriages.[10]

I haven’t read the book, don’t know what his agenda is there, but his opinion is not that of a disinterested expert. He has a position to defend.

The opinions of ‘actual legal experts’ should not be given more weight than those of the people who would be affected by their opinions.