America has a nasty history with the idea of 'separate but equal'.
Separate but equal never really is.

We have a similar history in terms of gender but ours is more separate and absolutely not equal :P

Bear in mind we were still locking people up for homosexuality in my parents generation.

Talking of the slow route to equality.....do you know what year the British legal system recognised rape in marriage as a possibility? Prior to this it was not considered legally possible for a husband to rape his wife.

Bah, all kitchen stoves should be 2 feet high. :p

Thanks for that. I really like the video.

Rights are not a "manmade invention". They are a part of natural law. They are as real, as immutable, as tangible, and as undeniable as gravity. I do indeed have rights and my rights don't come from "society" or from "government". My rights are mine at birth and they can't be bought, sold, given, taken, or voted away. I'd have the same rights whether I was born in America, or North Korea. If someone is violating my rights, it does not mean I lost them.

If every person on earth unanimously voted for gravity to disappear, we'd still have gravity tomorrow. The same is true of our rights. They are a part of nature, and they can't be voted away.

Our rights come from the fact that we own ourselves. I own myself and my life. Therefore I have a right to defend that life, or if I choose...to end it. This is why honestly obtaining and owning any kind of weapon is a right. I own my voice. This is why I have the right to free speech. I own my thoughts, this is why I have the right to free expression. I own my body and my labor, and this is why I own the fruits of my labor. When I buy something with the fruits of my labor (money), it is an extension of my own body. This is why I have the right to own property.

No other person, or group of people, regardless of their number or what they call themselves (gang, society, government, etc.) has claim to my person, my labor, or the fruits of my labor. Nor do they have any legitimate authority to violate my rights or to limit them. The only valid limitation on my rights are the equal rights of others.

To claim we have no rights, or that rights are a social construct, or a man made concept, is to say that slavery is appropriate. It is to say that one person may have more of a claim to your body than you have for yourself. It is to say that when you are enslaved, you have no right to complain. It is to say that you do not own yourself.

Society or government, or whatever you want to call it, may never have any powers over and above the rights of a single individual. This is because all governmental power is derived from our rights. If we don't have a right to do something, it means we can't grant that power to government. It doesn't matter if it's one person or a billion people.

For instance, if I were on an island where there were other people, but no government at all, I'd have absolutely no right to prevent a gay couple from marrying each other, or to prevent a woman from having an abortion, or to use force to prevent another person from using drugs, or gambling, or committing suicide, or trading sex for money. These are consensual acts and the only people affected by these activities are those involved, and they have consented to any dangers involved.

Since I have no right to use force to prevent these things, neither do a thousand of me, a million of me, or a billion of me calling themselves "government" or "society".

The bottom line is rights exist independently of whether or not you can exercise them, independently of whether you are living alone or with a billion people, and independently of whether or not anyone is there to exercise them.

So, no power, no rights.

The more power you have, the more rights you have.

That sounds about right to me. ;)

Yes, but where do they come from, these magical "rights"? Who says you've got 'em? Is there proof that they exist?

It's not so much that rights are a manmade invention, it's that man has decided that they must exist and gave them the name "rights."

When you say you have a "right" do this or that, or "no right" to prevent this or that, you're talking about ethics, about what is morally correct or...what's the word..."right." Of course, ethics and morals are subjective and open to interpretation.

What are our "rights," anyway? Is there a list? Who created it? Was it like Moses and the ten commandments?

We do agree that one person's rights end where another's begin, but I think there's a great deal of overlap. For example, if you think a woman has a right to abortion, why doesn't the fetus have a right to survive? (and who says "rights" are given at birth instead of conception? Or even before conception, for that matter?) If you think someone has the right to suicide, why doesn't his family have the right to prevent it? Almost in no case are the only people consensually involved in an act the only people who are affected by that act. If you think you have no right to prevent someone from shooting up heroin, why doesn't that person's child have the right to a drug-free mother?

See, the trouble with "rights" they way you define them is that they tend to overlap or have blurry edges.

Which leads to the question of whose rights are more important.

And since "rights" are not immutable - in fact, are nothing more than a concept invented by man to define his sense of ethics - it comes down to who's got the loudest voice or the biggest weapon.

Don't agree? Prove it.

I've never used the word "magical" to describe rights. Is gravity "magical"? Where does gravity come from? Rights come from the same place as gravity; specifically from nature. They are all part of natural law.



Not really. Men discovered rights that always existed in much the same way Isaac Newton discovered gravity.


The natural state of man is freedom. The freedom to do ANYTHING you want as long as your actions do not physically harm, endanger, or violate the rights of others. No person has the right to initiate force against another, but all people have the right to use force in their defense.


Not really. You deny that rights are even real, so we obviously can't agree on where they begin or end.


Again, we own ourselves and no other person or other organism has any claim to our body against our will. As long as something resides within our body it has no rights, especially over and above our own. For all intents and purposes, we are the GOD of our own body. We alone get 100% of all decision making power over what will allow to live or die within our body. In fact, since we own ourselves and our life, we can take our own life too.

Because we own ourselves and no other person has any claim to our body or our life, even if they love us.


Emotional harm is irrelevant. Only physical harm does. If we locked up everyone who hurt the feelings of another, everyone on earth would be locked up and we'd have nobody to close the door and turn the key.


Because the person doing heroin owns their body and themselves. The child has no claim to the body or the life of their mother. The child does have a right not to be endangered or physically harmed by the parent. If the heroin using mother is also endangering their child, the child can be assigned new parents (as long as they are willingly taking this responsibility) where they won't be endangered.

Your rights don't include changing the person, property, or behavior of others as long as their actions do not PHYSICALLY harm, endanger, or violate the person, property, or rights of another. Since the child has no claim to the body of their mother, they do not have a right to a drug-free mother. They only have the right to an endangerment free mother.


Nope. They are clear and simple, and easy to recognize. There are no blurry edges. There is nothing vague or ambiguous about it. You own yourself, and you have no claim to anyone else. End of story.



There is no need to question this since our rights do not overlap. Your right to swing your fist ends where another person's nose begins.



The Descent of Man - Charles Darwin

Natural Law and Natural Rights - James A. Donald

Second Treatise on Civil Government - John Locke

The Rights of Man - Thomas Paine

The Declaration of Independence - Thomas Jefferson

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du citoyen) - National Assembly of France

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Magna Carta - Archbishop Stephen Langton

The Law - Frederic Bastiat

Natural Law - Lysander Spooner


Human rights have been self-evident for thousands of years throughout every part of the world. People have always known that freedom was the natural state of humanity. Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle even knew this. Rights are both self-evident and exist. You can't see air, but you can breath it. You can't touch gravity, but you know it exists. You have no proof that love exists, but few would doubt its existence. Humans didn't invent love. Nor did they invent rights.

Rights have existed for as long as the universe has existed and they come from the same place that created the universe and natural law. Human rights existed before humans existed and will exist as long as the universe does. They just are.

Are you having fun yet Juni? lol

To each there own...Just dont screw up my children

Well, you can list any number of opinions - smart men, great philosophers, but I'm still not convinced that is proof. Gravity can be proven and quantified. Love, much like rights, means different things to different people. Rights aren't something you can see, smell, touch, etc. so all those philosophers are just saying these "rights" are the way people should behave, ethically and ideally.

This argument is kind of silly anyway -- fundamentally we do not disagree. We do agree on what is right and wrong, what is best for society in general (with a few important exceptions).

I just don't think that life comes with any guarantees. The only "rights" you get are the ones you're lucky enough to be given or strong enough to take.

I do however appreciate your explanation of the pro-choice rationale. I disagree, but at least I understand better what I am disagreeing with.

Yup. :D

And this from the same a-hole who said throw out the bastards who don't agree with me. What a tard.

Just to throw in a thought or two. All this talk about rights, definition of marriage. What we are really talking about is changing deep cultural behavior/beliefs. Changing a deep cultural behavior, something that has been around for at least a couple of thousand years, probably won't happen in 50 years. It will take a bit more time for that to sink in.