Lack of legal basis for accepting gay marriage
Like so many who advocate the oxymoronic concept of same-sex “marriage” or marriage-by-another-name arrangements, letter-writers Anne Price and Raishel Wasserman (May 4 Open Forum) built their entire cases upon premises that have no rational basis.
The legal benefits of civil marriage are incentives our society grants to encourage a behavior it desires. These benefits are not rights. Suggestions to the contrary rest on the irrational premise that the promotion of norms and customs – the entire purpose of all law – is inherently illegitimate. While anarchists might actually believe that, an anarchist would not care about legal recognition of marriage or anything else. Price’s proposal for a “rights deficit reduction” on her tax bill is therefore without merit, because no rights are at stake.
Wasserman’s irrational premise is that the rule of law can exist without fixed definitions of terms. Without such definitions – of the term “marriage,” for example – dictator wannabes in the judiciary would be free to make decisions in advance and manipulate terminology any way they needed to support the pre-determined conclusions, thereby replacing the rule of law with the far more arbitrary rule of men. This is what happened in Hawaii, Vermont, and Massachusetts. The proposal to explicitly define marriage does nothing more than reaffirm the rule of law and repudiate judicial dictatorship.
Eric Krein, Lakewood
Extending tax breaks for wealthy Americans
Re: “GOP, Bush OK $70 billion package extending tax cuts,” May 3 news story.
Buried on Page 5A in last Wednesday’s Denver Post was a story about the administration’s renewed efforts to extend tax breaks that are heavily skewed toward the very wealthy. This at a time when we have record deficits and we, and our kids and their kids, are buried in debt.
The president’s spokesperson is quoted as having said that the “tax relief that the president has advocated and passed is working to do exactly what it was intended to do, get the economy growing and help create jobs.” The theory is that those with money to invest will do so and jobs will be created and everybody in the economy will benefit as economic activity broadens.
First, the improved economy we’ve seen lately is an unexceptional and delayed “recovery” from a shallow recession and could be described as the inevitable upsurge in a business cycle. Nobody has claimed that business cycles are a thing of the past.
Second, the president would have us believe that those who received the big tax breaks thus far have invested the money saved and are the cause of our “recovery.” Unsaid is the impact that the hundreds of billions of dollars of government-borrowed funds being pumped into the economy have had on the highly touted “recovery.”
Third, you don’t suppose some of that freed-up investment money from the tax cuts might have gone into the very safe government securities necessitated by our out-of-control government borrowing and spending habits, do you?
John Borgen, Grand Junction
Lack of legal basis for accepting gay marriage
Like so manywho advocate the oxymoronic concept of same-sex “marriage”
or marriage-by-another-name arrangements, letter-writers Anne
Price and Raishel Wasserman (May 4 Open Forum) built their entire cases
upon premises that have no rational basis.
The legal benefits of civil marriage are incentives our society grants to
encourage a behavior it desires. These benefits are not rights. Suggestions
to the contrary rest on the irrational premise that the promotion of
norms and customs the entire purpose of all law is inherently illegitimate.
While anarchists might actually believe that, an anarchist would
not care about legal recognition of marriage or anything else. Price’s proposal
for a “rights deficit reduction” on her tax bill is therefore without
merit, because no rights are at stake.
Wasserman’-‘s irrational premise is that the rule of law can exist without
fixed definitions of terms. Without such definitions of the term
“marriage,” for example dictator wannabes in the judiciary would be
free to make decisions in advance and manipulate terminology any way
they needed to support the pre-determined conclusions, thereby replacing
the rule of law with the far more arbitrary rule of men. This is what
happened in Hawaii, Vermont, and Massachusetts. The proposal to explicitly
define marriage does nothing more than reaffirm the rule of law
and repudiate judicial dictatorship.
Eric Krein, Lakewood
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