RI Civil Rights Roundtable Discussion

The RI Civil Rights Roundtable met this week to discuss 'civil rights' issues they hope will be addressed in the coming year. They will be seeking to enact legislation that Allows immigrants to obtain driver's licenses Does not compel local police to act as federal immigration officers. Because of homeland security, police departments have been pressured by immigration officials to add immigration responsibilities. It opposes a proposal that would allow drug offenders who commit crimes near or in public housing to receive sentences that are twice as long if they committed the crime elsewhere.. The legalization of gay marriage and the mandatory recording of police interrogations are two other issues that coalition members will work to achieve with new laws. One question has been ringing in my head in this neo-civil rights era and that is, just what are civil rights? If you have the time and academic stamina to read the likes of Aristotle, Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, etc. one thing becomes clearly evident: each defines inalienable rights as differently as the colors of a rainbow. I find it curious that proponents of gay marriage consider it a right granted them by the constitution to marry. Curious in that marriage is a religious act which many of these same proponents would ardently fight to keep out of children's books, schools, and city Christmas lightings. Instead, they would have our children taught to believe that a union between a man and another man is perfectly fine-not only fine, it is the right of man to have the ability to marry another man. With the passage of gay marriage legislation would then come common-day examples in textbooks vis a vis its acceptance within the legal system. In other words, if we decide that it is the right of a man to marry another man, then it is therefore their right to be exemplified in textbooks that teach our children. It's much like the argument that if black people are x number of the population, we should see them in x number of shows and so on. Don't think this is reaching either. Consider the first court case where two married gay parents' children ask them why they aren't learning about gay parents in school and only hetero ones. You won't be able to say ACLU fast enough before they've filed the lawsuit. As I get off my soapbox, I just am saddened to see the commingling of what I consider true civil rights with ideologies of the left.