Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
But even with this kind of process in place, how do you keep from requiring people with honest differences of opinion on the subject from becoming subject to civil/criminal penalty because of the insistence of Christians?
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Why just Christians? Why not also atheists or liberals or conservatives or Muslims, or any group with an opinion?
I think you are losing sight of the point that this is a democracy. Ultimately we are not going to get anything that is not the will of the majority, because ultimately that's what politicians respond to. You might say we do have laws most people don't like. Maybe. But not ones they dislike enough to want to be bothered with trying to get them changed. If a vocal and motivated majority petitions the government, you can bet the government will hear them.
Who decides what is just? In a democracy the people do. So why can't Christians join in the debate? You keep talking like there is this oligarchy of Christians who are going to force their laws on everyone else. How are they going to do that? So that is really a red herring. We can't force anything on anyone, unless we are the majority and vote as the majority. And if we do then, well, we were the majority and that's the way a democracy works.
How did we get the laws we have? Because by and large the people approve of them. Now you wouldn't know that by the way people gripe, but basically Americans get what they want. They want Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid and they don't really want to have to pay for them. Well, that's what we've got. So you can be sure if we outlawed abortion, like we just outlawed single-use plastic grocery bags in Austin, it would be so because (1) the majority wants it OR (2) the majority doesn't want to bother with trying to fight it.
So your scenario about forcing Christian laws on Americans is really irrelevant because Americans can't force laws on anyone without being the majority, and a motivated majority at that, OR because the real majority doesn't care enough to do anything about it. And if they don't care, you really can't say anything was
forced on them.
Are you saying we would still be wise to keep abortion legal even if the majority wanted it illegal, just so we wouldn't offend the minority that wanted it legal?