Comment by electronvolt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by electronvolt | Hacker News Reader

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Any prior Republican support for women's reproductive rights/etc. had dried up at that time because of their alignment in the '80s with the evangelical Christian right. In the '80s the party platform dropped support for the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion rights.

Also, religious groups that were traditionally very liberal/voted Democrat (e.x. Catholics) on social issues also broke off from the Democrats over abortion and reproductive rights related issues over the course of the '80s, which isn't to say they were specifically /for/ those things at any point, they just became something more political in the '80s.

I wouldn't really have said that 1991 was a clear date for the 'start' of that process, though. Perhaps more "When it got into full swing." The other thing is that the loss of large groups like the Catholics and the involvement of the Christian Right in general caused the Democrats to swing right as well, which means that even when the Dems were in power in the '90s their attitudes and the policies they enacted were often more conservative than they had been before RE: women's lib/rights/etc., even if they still supported most of the issues on paper.

So an actually accurate statement would have been "some people are opposed to complete freedom on abortions". That's not quite the same as not supporting the advancement of women in society.

How is the campaign to legally revert the status of womens' bodies to property supporting the advancement of women in society? http://www.theocracywatch.org/women2.htm

Dishonest rhetoric is why the abortion debate is so heated. It has no place in a reasoned discussion.

> Dishonest rhetoric is why the abortion debate is so heated.

No, clash in fundamental values is why the abortion debate is so heated (its also the reason for the dishonest rhetoric, since extremists on both sides feel that the cause is so important as to justify any dishonesty.)

>No, clash in fundamental values is why the abortion debate is so heated

Except most of the people who "like murdering babies" don't actually like murdering babies and most of the people who "want to control women's bodies" don't actually want to control women's bodies. Most people's feelings on the subject are actually a lot closer than the rhetoric makes it appear. The rhetoric was created by people with agendas, who don't want people to recognize that both sides have valid points and are actual human beings who care.

> Except most of the people who "like murdering babies" don't actually like murdering babies and most of the people who "want to control women's bodies" don't actually want to control women's bodies.

Most of the people who use the phrase "control women's body" of the "pro-life" side do, in fact, see that as the motivation of the pro-life side, and ditto with most of the people who use "murdering babies" to describe the "pro-choice" side.

There's nothing dishonest about those particular examples. Yes, they aren't accurate to how the described side sees themselves, because they are using descriptions based on interpreting the described side in context of the values of the describing side.

That's not dishonest rhetoric, its a clash of fundamental values.

> Most people's feelings on the subject are actually a lot closer than the rhetoric makes it appear.

Most people's feelings on the subject may be a lot closer than the descriptions by the loudest voices would make it appear, because they don't fully hold the values of either of the clashing sides. But that has nothing to do with why the debate is heated -- the people in the middle, and what they believe and feel, have nothing to do with that.

> The rhetoric was created by people with agendas, who don't want people to recognize that both sides have valid points and are actual human beings who care.

To the people who hold the extreme positions, the people on the other side don't have valid points. The validity of a moral argument -- which both sides arguments are -- isn't a matter of fact, its something that only exists within a particular value framework.

>Most of the people who use the phrase "control women's body" of the "pro-life" side do, in fact, see that as the motivation of the pro-life side, and ditto with most of the people who use "murdering babies" to describe the "pro-choice" side.

That's the point.

>There's nothing dishonest about those particular examples. Yes, they aren't accurate to how the described side sees themselves,

So they are dishonest.

>That's not dishonest rhetoric, its a clash of fundamental values

No amount of making a random baseless assertion will turn it into a fact. Try spending some time working as a mediator with people with "extreme" views on this subject. You'll find their views are not actually extreme, they are just misrepresented.

>To the people who hold the extreme positions, the people on the other side don't have valid points.

Again, that's the point. Is this some kind of joke? Yes, the whole point is what A thinks about B is false, and what B thinks about A is false. A doesn't think B has a valid opinion because they don't know B's actual opinion, just a deliberate misrepresentation of it by the people who created the harmful rhetoric in the first place.

> So they are dishonest.

"Honest" means that the speaker believes it, not that it is true. If it accurately represents what the speaker believes -- colored by the speakers values -- it is honest even if it is not accurate.

> No amount of making a random baseless assertion will turn it into a fact.

Its neither random nor baseless, but, in any case, "honest" doesn't mean "well-founded".

> Try spending some time working as a mediator with people with "extreme" views on this subject.

I've spent quite a lot of time with people with views at pretty much every point on the spectrum, from hardline activists on both sides to people everywhere in between.

There are plenty of people with actually extreme views. There are plenty of people with relatively moderate views that are seen -- honestly -- as indistinguishable from opposing extremists by extremist of one or the other side (sometimes from both sides.)

> >To the people who hold the extreme positions, the people on the other side don't have valid points.

> Again, that's the point.

Its the exact opposite of what you said when you claimed that the rhetoric was merely an expression constructed to prevent people from seeing that the opposing side has valid points, and the opposite of your claims of dishonesty. So while it is my point, I think its directly opposed to yours.

Unless your point contains multiple self-contradictions.

I can't imagine any way to make it clearer for you, sorry. But perhaps I can set you on a path that might help. The word "honest" does not only mean "sincere; frank". It can also mean "honorable in principles, intentions, and actions; upright and fair".

What about dropping support for the Equal Rights Amendment and attempting to reinforce/reinstate "traditional gender roles" isn't about putting the breaks on the advancement of women in society?

The issue wasn't just abortion: abortion was, perhaps, a catalyst or a trigger issue, but it also had implications on the rhetoric surrounding the passing of anti-discrimination laws, domestic violence laws, etc.

The equal rights amendment was not about equality. I am legally equal to a man. That should be the end of government involvement. Discrimination is already illegal. Domestic violence is already illegal. Being opposed to absurd DV legislation that requires arresting men who seek help when they are being abused is not being anti-women.

> The equal rights amendment was not about equality. I am legally equal to a man.

Discrimination on the basis of sex is, in fact, not as illegal as, e.g., discrimination based on race -- particularly, government acts discriminating based on sex are subject only to intermediate scrutiny, while race-based discrimination is subject to strict scrutiny.

Correcting this has been expressly cited by ERA backers as a key motivation for the ERA. As a woman, you are not, under existing law, guaranteed to be legally equal to a man even to the extent that a Black person is guaranteed to be legally equal to a White person.

This is seriously the level of discourse here? Just flagrant outright lying?

I'm curious how you are reading particularly, government acts discriminating based on sex are subject only to intermediate scrutiny, while race-based discrimination is subject to strict scrutiny.

It seems to be a plain description of how the supreme court rules on things:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_scrutiny#Sex-based...

Or maybe you think it is some sort of misdirection to bring it up in the context of this thread?

This part: "Discrimination on the basis of sex is, in fact, not as illegal"

I was asking you understood the part I quoted, not what part you took issue with.

And I am telling you that is not the part I said is a lie.

You clipped that in the middle and left a statement that doesn't make any sense. "...as illegal" can't be true, false, or even meaningful without the comparison that comes after. And with that comparison -- the comparison to forms of discrimination (such as racial) that are permitted only when the standard of strict scrutiny are meet, it's a simple statement of the fact of well-established constitutional case law. And is one of the motivations for the ERA, whose advocates argue that it is necessary to subject sex discrimination to the same degree of scrutiny.

Next time read a whole sentence before accusing someone of lying.

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