Quote:Stop ducking the question by introducing things that are not related. Are you saying the 14th Amendment was good enough to grant former slaves full equality, but the government was unwilling to enforce it until the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was passed?

 

lol.  Unrelated?  I give you a clear example of a federal law that strictly forbids an activity yet goes unenforced by the leadership of the federal government and you say that's unrelated?  And you say that i am ducking the questions?  lol.  

 

I am saying quite simply that if i were a judge in 1871 after the passage of the 15th amendment then I would have held that grandfathering in a bunch of iliterate white farmers at the expense of blacks through literacy testing would have been unconstitutional.  I would have held that denying blacks full citizenship and participation in society with all the rights and privilages of citizenship would have been a violation of the 14th amendment.  

 

I would also hold that denying someone housing based solely on their lifestyle choice would be a violation of the first amendment (freedom of speech and freedom of religious expression) and the 14th amendment (equal protection under the law).  As well as acknowledge the fact that under the first amendment the government could not prohibit consenting adults from entering into whatever kind of domestic arrangement they saw fit as their interpretation of a religious institution.  

 

That's not to say that legislation cannot be passed to clarify and define certain interpretations. Such as the voting rights act of 1965 which clearly denoted that poll taxes and literacy tests were discriminatory.  My only point is that i think that could hav ebeen held by a judge after the passage of the 15th amendment.  

 

One of the reasons that it was more preferential to have new pieces of legislation is that there was a time in this country that we acknowledged that it was better to have broad sweeping bipartisan support for massive social change than just a 5-4 court decision that would bind 300 million people (why there is such a backlash against Gay marriage).  

 

Moreover, i didn't say that LGBT people had no bearing on every day life.  i said that show votes and redundant legislation has no bearing on everyday life.  One of the first things that they passed at the beginning of Obama's first term was the Lilly ledbetter act.  We're still talking about equal pay for equal work and no one i know has ever initiated a lawsuit based on that statute.  

 

The constitution, federal laws, local laws and state laws are all meaningful and have impacts on our lives, but that's only if they are enforced.  You can have all the speeding signs that you want but if there is no cop on the beat willing to write a ticket that won't mean anything.  It's illegal to enter the country without the knowledge and consent of the state.  Did that stop 11 million people from entering the country ilegally?  We even had a bipartisan act in 1986 to secure the border.  The 13th 14th and 15th amendments to the constitution have within them the basis for the civil rights and full inclusion of the freed slaves, the thing that changed the most in the mid 60's was not just the passing of the civil rights and voting rights bills.  It was the awareness of the country based on the actions of the Kings, X's and other leaders of the world to change the trajectory of the hearts and minds of the electorate.  If the 1968 voting rights act was treated like the 1986 act to secure the border then we would still see black people denied the right to vote in the absence of federal action.  

 

Still waiting on the blind lady.

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