Justices To Rule On Law Banning The Depiction Of Cruelty To Animals

[Sonthert]

Seriously, we're going to let people deiced what is appropriate or not? If we used that logic in all cases, schools would still be segregated...the majority of Americans didn't want to desegregate schools...or gay marriage would be illegal...oh yeah, it is. A minority of Americans can have their lives altered due to the majority of American's beliefs.

I'm sure that Thomas Jefferson, when he was writing about "Inalienable rights". meant that we should take a survey or poll to decide what rights people were endowed with.

[judgeposer]

Seriously, we're going to let people deiced what is appropriate or not? If we used that logic in all cases, schools would still be segregated...the majority of Americans didn't want to desegregate schools...or gay marriage would be illegal...oh yeah, it is. A minority of Americans can have their lives altered due to the majority of American's beliefs.

I'm sure that Thomas Jefferson, when he was writing about "Inalienable rights". meant that we should take a survey or poll to decide what rights people were endowed with.

I think you point out well the tension between recognizing (as something more than paying lip service to) those certain inalienable rights we possess as humans and democracy, which can, at times, thwart that effort.

Letting people decide what's appropriate is, it seems to me, truly democratic. Of course this might, and often does, translate into a tyranny of the majority, which we can balance by requiring that any legal amendment pass scrutiny by means of the legislature or the public through the Amendment process. I'm not sure that we can say the logic of Democracy would lead to segregation, or have us still segregated, etc. The truth is, we don't know the answer to that question -or many others- because the Courts, our least democratically accountable branch of government, intervened to make those decisions for us. Such behavior -on the part of our judiciary- can, and often does, lead to a tyranny of the minority.

Neither tyrannies are ideal, admittedly, but one at least reflects most directly the popular will.

[mustang_steve]

BS, depictions of it means there's actual cruelty going on...which there's already a law for...so no point in making redundant laws.

depiction:
1. to represent by or as if by painting; portray; delineate.
2. to represent or characterize in words; describe.

its not just a filmed incident, it would even be a drawing of it, or even a story about it.

In which case, if false, is just that...no harm done. If depicition is used only in that scope, then this is more thought crime legislation...and no thought is criminal, only actions. Otherwise, we start paving the road towards jailing opposing political parties and other acts.


Actually I think it sits somewhere in between being a redundant law and a thought crime law...either way, the person who came up with this legislation needs to think about what they are doing a bit more often.