Originally Posted by rahl

wasn't created by me nor you, so our rights came from someone else. That someone else was the govn't that was established over 200 years ago. And we have added rights numerous times since then. None of which are absolute. They can and have been changed multiple times.

Originally Posted by roachboy

uh...the constitution? you could say that the language of the constitution itself is what defines natural law by the way in which it posits rights which precede it. you don't need a substantive notion of "natural law" for the game to work.

it's better that way i think, that natural law be understood as created by the constitution itself as the space which precedes and conditions it.

i was gonna start a thread about this and still might, but yesterday the pope, that fine progressive fellow, used a notion of natural law as part of his lovely arguments against equal protection legislation that extends stuff like access to housing or adoption or marriage to people to happen to be gay. the pope called all that stuff a violation of freedom of religion.

think i'm joking?

Pope condemns gay equality laws ahead of first UK visit | World news | guardian.co.uk

so that mean the pope sees religious beliefs as being legitimately expressed through the exclusion of people. and debate about those exclusions? well, that just comes from hotheads and "radicals". how do you know they're just hotheads and "radicals"? because of what they're arguing against. and what are they arguing against? why natural law of course.