Today the California Supreme Court is hearing arguments about the contitutionality of the controversial Proposition 8 that was passed in November, amending the California constitution to prohibit homosexual marriage. Based on the things I have read and heard, it seems that many people are having a hard time understanding that the actual issue before the court is not the merits of such an amendment, but whether an amendment of this kind can be made by a simple majority vote. In other words, the California Supreme Court will not (I should say “should not”) be deciding whether or not homosexual marriage is a good thing, but whether the state constitution allows such amendments to be made the way Proposition 8 was. In short, this is a civil procedure case. Read the rest of this entry »

As with most legal questions, the answer is a resounding “it depends.” In one respect, there is a right to health care in this country. Various federal and state statutes mandate the provision of emergency health care even if the patient is unable to pay. Many more anti-discrimination laws focus on the health care industry to the extent that many doctors and hospitals practically take any patient that walks through the door. In this respect, there is a right to health care in the sense that anyone who needs it can procure it free from arbitrary objections.

On the other hand, there is not an absolute right to health care in the way it exists in other countries with socialized medicine schemes. With the exception of emergency treatment, medical care is a market commodity that cannot be gotten without paying the price. In this sense, there is no right to health care in the same way that there is no right to a steak dinner; you can get it if you pay for it, but you are not entitled to it in any ontological sense.

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In a culture that recoils at the very idea of teaching school children about the God of the Bible, one has to wonder about said culture’s self-appointed commitment to “truth” when one reads a story like this. So what do you think? Is it the job of educators to impart nothing more than empirically verifiable data or is there room for cultural traditions, even the fabricated ones?