When did every rock singer acquire a live on-stage set of back-up singers? More to the point, when did they mostly aquire a set of bimbo-girl backup singers? The first time I saw this on stage with the Moody Blues, about 15 years ago, I just didn't get it. You're a band. Play your music and sing your songs. I'm happy to look at Justin Hayward, thank you, I don't need the bimbettes. Although I admit I wouldn't be as happy to look at the Rolling Stones, but that's beside the point.When we were at the giganto mall yesterday walking around, at one point R, who was walking next to me, stopped and spoke to a complete stranger who was walking past us, which I thought was odd, and I glanced at him and I thought "My, that fellow resembles Chris Rock," but she had asked him if he was Chris Rock and he said yes. Which is within the realm of possibility, I suppose, since he could still have a home in or near New York City; if he wasn't, then he's someone who gets stopped all the time and asked if he is, because he looked exactly like him. Just walking through the mall like folk. (She said he sounded just like Chris Rock, too -- I didn't hear him, of course -- and Mr. Rock does have a distinctive voice.)
The first ten amendments to the Constitituion, aka, The Bill of Rights, are all about preserving various rights and liberties for all members of the population, hence the name. None of them address limiting the rights of anyone, let alone those in any one particular group of subset of society.
There are 7 among the amendments that follow that do address individual groups, or classes, if you will, of society.
- 12, 14, 15: The abolition of slavery and the illegality of denying any Constitutional rights on account of race applied specifically to former slaves and those of African descent, although it would ultimately also apply to other groups, for example, immigrants from China.
- 18: Prohibition applied only to those individuals who consumed or sold alcohol.
- 19, 23, 26: Granted the right to vote to women, to residents of the District of Columbia, and to those 18 and over, respectively.
What do these have in common? All of them, except Prohibition, were about guaranteeing rights for different subsets of society. The only one that didn't work, Prohibition, was the only one that was about denying, or limiting rights based on what was really an artificial distinction. And that one, of course, was repealed by #21. (Source here.)
So what does this tell us, hmmmm? That the point of the Constitution is not to declare that certain rights are off-limits to certain people. Yes, if we made a mistake and left someone out ("Oh, when we said everyone we meant black people, too. And women. You know.") then we correct it and make it clear that now the Constitution will also mean all of these people as well. Using it to say that "from now on, these particular people are officially and legally not the same and not as good as all these others" is Just. Plain. Wrong.
It's been tried before, of course, although not at the source, the Constitution. In this country they were known as the Jim Crow Laws. Elsewhere, they were called the Nuremberg Laws. You could look it up.
I'm asking, of course, how anyone can dare to create or pass laws, or god forbid, a Constitutional amendment, that have anything to do with people who identify themselves as homosexuals, or their possible marriages or child-raising, or anything else. Conservatives will say "It's not the same thing!" But of course, it is. Peoples, as the Muppets say, is peoples. That's all.
