Comment by kemotep | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kemotep | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Sure specific legislation and court rulings that have passed that target LGBT people include things like:

* Bans on teaching about the existence of LGBT people[0].

* Bathroom bills[1] that could call for genital inspections that would require this person[2] to use a women’s restroom because they were born with a vagina.

* Democrats passing (and majority of Republicans opposing) The Respect for Marriage Act, which enshrines into Federal law the right to marriage, regardless of religion, race, gender, or sexual orientation.

* Bans on gender affirmative care but only for LGBT people, not cisgender individuals.[4]

So these are actually laws, beyond just rhetoric, these are actions that discriminate. There are stark differences that are irreconcilable between the parties. One supports LGBT rights the other opposes.

Your point about Abortion is baffling. You are claiming that one group wanting to not make abortion illegal is engaging in government overreach? That doesn’t make any sense to me.

The approaches the two parties take to war, immigration, government spending, taxes and so on are different if you look into it. There are a lot of similarities. American hegemony is going to be very similar even if a third party had control of the white house. Even thinking both parties are the same is something similar to both the left and right do! So are communists and neonazis the same because they both believe America is bad and both parties are the same?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-LGBT_curriculum_laws_in_t...

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathroom_bill?wprov=sfti1

[2]:http://thefightmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/BuckAngel1...

[3]: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-congress-expected-pass-b...

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_rights_in_the_Unit...

Thanks for the specific sources related to LGBT legislation! If have to dig much deeper to really understand the bills either proposed or passed, but in general I think this aligns with my view that both parties seem to be aligned with having a larger government. They are talking about different details, but both believe that fundamentally the federal government should be allowed to decide these topics in the first place. Personally I'd argue that no level of government has any business in my bedroom or my pants, but that's an argument for another day.

My original point really wasn't meant to say that both parties have the exact same view on any one specific political football, if that's how it came across then I explained myself poorly. My point was simply that, in my opinion, we've lost the classic left/right divide that was trying to find a balance between government powers and individual freedoms. Both parties in the US believe the government should have a say over nearly everything, from who you can love to what food you can eat. We don't have an option for a party that wishes to see keep government small by prioritizing individual rights. I may very well just misunderstand the core of the elft/right divide, but I was always led to believe that it came down to how big the government was, how much it spent, and what we can be told is/isn't allowed.

With regards to my point about abortion, it's much too detailed to put here and was probably an unhelpful distraction. But I don't see either party arguing that abortion should never be illegal, save for a few extremists both parties seem to agree that abortion should be illegal at some point and only disagree where that point is. Meaning, they disagree about whether that line is conception, birth, or sometime in between but both parties believe that they have the right to legislate what a pregnant mother can or can't do.

I am interested in hearing your opinion about Abortion. Specifically this November in Ohio, they are voting on an amendment to the state constitution that would add the right to reproductive health care including but not limited to abortion. You can read more about the specifics here[0].

My questions would be the following:

Do you believe that this is an expansion of government power? Or is this an example of limiting government control over people?

How are rights (of any kind) protected in a society, if you would support the right but not specifically laws like these?

[0]: https://ballotpedia.org/Ohio_Issue_1,_Right_to_Make_Reproduc...

I'm not familiar with Ohio law so I'm not sure what, if any, existing abortion laws are on the books.

Assuming there aren't existing laws either protecting or prohibiting abortions, my read on this bill is that it is playing two roles.

It does establish a right to reproductive treatment and grant elgal protections to Healthcare workers providing it, I don't see this as an expansion of government powers as it is focused entirely on protecting the rights of the people. The state isn't really claiming any new ground there, and if anything is limiting it's own powers a bit by protecting individual health decisions.

The second part of the bill seems to get into an expansion of powers though. The state is granting itself the right to prohibit abortions after the treating physician deems a pregnancy viable, unless the physician believes the mother's life is at risk. Thats absolutely a expansion of government if there aren't currently any abortion bans in Ohio today, as the state otherwise hadn't claimed the power to ban abortions.

Given both in the same bill, my personal read on that would be the first section protecting freedoms is a political stunt to get the second part through. The state is leaving itself a backdoor of the definition of "viability" as well as the line for what level of life/heath risk to mother warrants a later term abortion. If passed, the state would also have the opportunity to try a case in court that challenges a treating physician's determination of either point, opening the door for case law that would effectively expand or refine the law based on the court's ruling.

tl;dr; I see this as the state protecting some rights while claiming more power under certain conditions. The line distinguishing the two is a gray area that the state has likely left poorly defined and/or can try to move later through case law rather than legislation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com