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Cannot be a right because the mere existence of a prescription drug requires several individuals to create, produce and distribute said drugs. Since we cannot enslave them, we have no right to the product they produce. We have the right to seek to trade something the drug manufacturer values (money) for that which we want (the drug) in a manner we both find mutually agreeable (the sale), but beyond our natural right of voluntary association and ownership once the trade has been concluded, we have no rights concerning prescription drugs or any purchased good/service we did not create with our own labor and materials.
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Originally Posted by Wendell Phillips
There is no express right under the Constitution for a person to be married. The right of marriage is subject to state (not federal) law; and provided that such state laws do not violate a person’s rights to due process and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment (which has been deemed applicable to the several states), they are valid and enforceable.
There is no "right" of marriage in the states or the nation. There are benefits, privileges and regulations pursuant to the legal construct known as the marriage contract, but those are simply bureaucratic details on how one particular manifestation of the natural right of voluntary association will be administered, controlled and limited.
Consider the gay marriage example. Two homosexuals can be married without the government's blessing. They can be married in any number of religious sects, they can be in love, cohabitate, and generally feel/believe/know they are married. The "right" they are currently struggling with is for their voluntary association with each to get the same privileges, benefits and most importantly RECOGNITION from the government. But government does not grant them the right to be married in any other sense than laws relating to taxes, inheritance, spousal privilege, etc. It's privileges within the bureaucracy, not rights.
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Originally Posted by Wendell Phillips
Likewise there is no general right of privacy under the Constitution; but rather by decisions of the Supreme Court. The Fourth Amendment provides protection against unreasonable searches and seizures that is narrowly circumscribed, and does not extend to a general constitutional right of privacy.
There is a natural individual right to be secure in your own person and property against unreasonable search and seizure. The 4th Amendment says the government cannot violate that natural right without having probable cause, a sworn warrant, and a very particular scope of the search/seizure based upon the probable cause and sworn warrant.
The Madisonian view was adopted from Locke's "Second Treatise..." on natural rights couple with earlier English law concerning the English "castle doctrine" that traced back to 1604. Inherently, a person has the right to privacy in their person and property, and government must present a proper case in order to violate that inherent right. Madison all but plagiarized the Seyman's Case and Locke's natural rights when he penned the 4th Amendment.
But again, one must turn to the 9th to understand and accept that neither the Constitution, nor the Bill of Rights, is grantor of rights. Let's let Justice Goldberg in the Griswold v Connecticut case speak to that:
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Originally Posted by Justice Goldberg, Griswold v Connecticut, opinion, in part
“The language and history of the Ninth Amendment reveal that the Framers of the Constitution believed that there are additional fundamental rights, protected from governmental infringement, which exist alongside those fundamental rights specifically mentioned in the first eight constitutional amendments. . . . To hold that a right so basic and fundamental and so deep–rooted in our society as the right of privacy in marriage may be infringed because that right is not guaranteed in so many words by the first eight amendments to the Constitution is to ignore the Ninth [p.1505] Amendment and to give it no effect whatsoever. Moreover, a judicial construction that this fundamental right is not protected by the Constitution because it is not mentioned in explicit terms by one of the first eight amendments or elsewhere in the Constitution would violate the Ninth Amendment. . . . Nor do I mean to state that the Ninth Amendment constitutes an independent source of right protected from infringement by either the States or the Federal Government. Rather, the Ninth Amendment shows a belief of the Constitution’s authors that fundamental rights exist that are not expressly enumerated in the first eight amendments and an intent that the list of rights included there not be deemed exhaustive.”
And a reading of the Federalist Papers, Anti-Federalist Papers, Patrick Henry's anti-constitution speeches, and Madison's responses and contributions makes quite clear that the federal government was not to be constructed, empowered nor viewed as grantor of rights. That's what the 9th and 10th Amendments are there for.
So natural rights exist because they say so. I am not convinced any more than when you said so.
Where are these rights codified in nature? Where can I find them? Are they written in the stars? Did they come to us in dreams? I keep asking, you keep failing to answer. It's more likely that you believe these rights come with being born for no other reason than you've been told these rights come with being born, based on your appeal to dead guys in wigs. They do not.
Use the deserted island test.
On a deserted island, can I speak freely? Can I believe in/worship whatever deity I want? Can I defend myself, my life and that which my own labor produces from the materials around me? If a woman was there with me, could I love her and could we not mutually agree that we are married as far as our definition of marriage is concerned? Etc. At no point in my desert island existence is a society granting me these things you say come only from men and their governments.
When the Constitution was written we hadn't invented effective drugs for contraception (That would be 190 years into the future) , I think a form of the rubber existed made out of silk or pigs intestines but I wouldn't vouch for its effectiveness. Like everything else that modern technology has provided in the last 238 years of our Republic to better the lives of Americans it is covered onder the General Welfare clause (Article 1 Section 8) that gives Congress the power to appropriate funds from taxes to do anything or provide any product that improves the general Welfare of the American citizens or people under their jurisdiction.
As I said, that may fly with the courts but that is not what happened. That is what the courts instructed the politicians to do.
Defending the country is not funding a war of agression.
Who said anything about a war of aggression?
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Originally Posted by Rggr
Take it to court.
You think that someone should win who does not want to pay taxes that pay for war if they have a religious belief that war is a mortal sin?
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Originally Posted by pknopp
And the government can pay for birth control if it wants. Hobby Lobby can't be forced to fund a war.
Health insurance companies can be forced to pay for birth control, too. Just like they have to pay for depression screening, mammograms, and MMR immunizations.
Health insurance companies can be forced to pay for birth control, too. Just like they have to pay for depression screening, mammograms, and MMR immunizations.
Health insurance companies can not be forced to give anything away.
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