Year: 2010
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Argentina Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage
by Jason Stotts Yesterday, Argentina became the first Latin American country to legalize same-sex marriage: [The new law] gives same-sex couples equal marriage rights, including the ability to adopt children. The law was backed by the center-left government of President Cristina Kirchner, who has said she will sign it. [CNN] Congrats to all of the…
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Recent Important News Stories
by Jason Stotts With crashing OCON, work, and a long essay I’m working on now, I’ve been rather remiss in blogging. Unfortunately, this means that I missed the chance to discuss several really important news stories, so I’m going to remedy that here and condense them all into one post. 1. DOMA Ruled Unconstitutional A…
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Holidays: Altruism’s Corruption of the Holy
by Jason Stotts Some time ago, I met a young woman by the name the name of Julia. After getting to know her, I was surprised to find that the Fourth of July was her favorite holiday, since I had never heard anyone identify the Fourth as their favorite holiday. It’s not that I’m surprised…
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Christians Lose Again
by Jason Stotts In another Supreme Court ruling, Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, 08-1371, SCOTUS ruled that a christian group cannot bar gays from being members if it receives public funding. The AP report (from SFGate) notes Justice Stevens: …was even harsher, saying while the Constitution “may protect CLS’s discriminatory practices off campus, it does…
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Victory for Individual Rights!
by Jason Stotts The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) today handed down their judgment in the Macdonald v. Chicago case (08-1521). The Justices ruled 5-4 that the second amendment is incorporated against the states through the fourteenth amendment. I haven’t read the complete decision yet, since it is quite long and was only…
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Harrison Bergeron
by Jason Stotts I was recently sent a link to the short story “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, about the ideal of “equality” and the practical implications of that. I strongly recommend taking a look at the story, which you can find here. THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only…
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Iceland Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage
by Jason Stotts Reuters is reporting that Iceland has passed Same-Sex Marriage in a unanimous vote. Iceland, the only country in the world to have an openly gay head of state, passed a law on Friday allowing same-sex partners to get married in a vote which met with no political resistance. The Althingi parliament voted 49…
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Is Love a Zero-Sum Game?
by Jason Stotts Many people tend to assume that love is a zero-sum game and I think that that’s an interesting assumption. In order to figure out if it’s true, let’s take a look at what it would mean and see if we can come to understand whether love is, in fact, a zero-sum game.…