posted on July 22, 2004 09:51:56 PM new
It's true. Think of it.
If some lowlife broke into an elderly women's house and beat her, raped her, then robbed her, he would have MORE rights than a gay man. His rights would start at the very moment that any police official wanted to question him. He would have the right to....
Remain silent and not be forced to speak.
The right to a paid attorney, and to discuss the charges with the attorney before speaking to the police about them.
The right to a public trial, and to choose a jury or bench trial.
The right to refuse to take the stand in his defense.
The right to appeal the verdict if found guilty, using attorneys that are paid for by the taxpayers. And appeal again if there is new evidence of a chance of acquittal.
In many state, he would have the right to a free education.
He would also have the right to medical care, up to and including heart and other organ transplants if needed.
The CBS News story says........
Prisoner Gets $1M Heart Transplant
A California prison inmate serving 14 years for robbery received a heart transplant earlier this month, renewing a debate about who deserves to get desperately needed organs.
The taxpayer-supported transplant, expected to cost $1 million with follow-up care, occurred as 500 Californians waited for hearts. The operation saved the 31-year-old inmate from dying of a viral heart condition, said Russ Heimerich, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections.
a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court ruling declaring it "cruel and unusual punishment" to withhold necessary medical care from inmates. And he noted that in 1995 a federal court ordered prison officials to give a kidney transplant to an inmate whose request had been denied.
On another case involving this, the ABC News story says.......
Thanks to the state of Oregon, a law-abiding citizen in need of a kidney transplant may have to die so that death-row prisoner Horacio Alberto Reyes-Camarena can live.
Reyes-Camarena, 47, has been on Oregon's death row since 1996, when he was convicted of repeatedly stabbing 32- and 18-year-old sisters he met in a farm-labor camp. The older woman survived 17 stab wounds to testify against him.
Every year, as Reyes-Camarena appeals his conviction, Oregon — which is struggling through budget cuts and having a tough time providing a basic education for its children and health care for its poorer citizens — pays a reported $121,000 a year to keep Reyes-Camarena on dialysis. Last month, his prison doctor determined he was a good candidate for a kidney transplant.
So, today in the United States here we have a convicted felons on death row receiving transplants. And we also have a segment of the population striving to gain the same right as everyone else. That is the equality of marriage. They are honest, hard working, tax paying citizens who are treated as second class individuals because they are gay or lesbian people. They didn't hurt or cause harm to anyone, but a simple human right is being denied to them. How unfair can that be? It really goes to show the difference on how we view people and who they are.
True Americans do not exclude anybody. They recognize that everyone should have the same rights. Bigotry, intolerance and hatred are cancers of the mind.
posted on July 23, 2004 06:08:40 AM new
Except in this instance:
Stripping ex-cons of the right to vote should be a crime
Published July 22, 2004
When a convicted felon completes his time behind bars and returns to society, he has a basic choice to make. He can return to the thug life, preying on innocents and spurning civilized norms. Or he can change his ways, stay out of trouble and follow such wholesome customs as getting a job, taking on a mortgage, raising kids and participating in democracy.
Well, except for participating in democracy. Though we expect ex-convicts to remake themselves to fit into society, we don't want to get carried away. Felons get most of their basic rights back once they've served their sentences, but in many states they don't automatically regain the franchise. Heck, if you let former offenders vote, next thing you know they'll want to pay taxes.
One of the states that cancel voting rights is Florida, whose experience in the 2000 presidential election showed that ex-cons are not the only people who can be adversely affected by this policy. Thousands of Floridians showed up at the polls only to be told that their names appeared on lists of felons barred from voting. Since the lists turned out to be rife with errors, lots of upstanding citizens didn't get to cast their ballots.
That episode forced Americans to reconsider the practice known as "felony disenfranchisement." In 2001, a bipartisan commission headed by former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter issued a report proposing a raft of election reforms, one of which was to let ex-cons reclaim their voting privileges. In the last four years, a number of states have eased or eliminated their proscriptions.
Today, most states lift the ban once an offender has completed his sentence, including any time on probation or parole. But according to the Sentencing Project in Washington, seven states deprive convicts of the vote for life. Another seven disenfranchise some offenders permanently or impose a waiting period to get back voting rights. In Florida, which requires most felons to go before a clemency board to request renewed privileges, some 600,000 who have served their time may not vote.
What is the policy supposed to accomplish? It makes some sense to say no prison graduate should be trusted with a firearm, since guns can be very useful to anyone with criminal intent. But nobody ever held up a convenience store with a punch-card ballot.
We let ex-convicts marry, reproduce, buy beer, own property and drive. They don't lose their freedom of religion, their right against self-incrimination or their right not to have soldiers quartered in their homes in time of war. But in many places, the assumption is that they can't be trusted to help choose our leaders.
Many of them can be. The pleasures of long-term confinement serve to deter a lot of them from reverting to mischief. If we thought criminals could never be reformed, we wouldn't let them out of prison in the first place. If we regard voting as a commendable activity, we should encourage it among ex-convicts as a way of reintegrating them.
The felons who are incorrigible are not likely to exercise the franchise anyway. They're too busy stealing cars and mugging old ladies. The people hurt by the loss of voting rights are the ones who want to live normal, productive lives. All disenfranchisement does is inflict a humiliating disability on offenders trying to stay on the right track.
The chief obstacle to change is not that the idea lacks merit, but that it could tilt the electoral balance. One study calculated that if all those 600,000 excluded felons had voted in Florida, Al Gore would have won the state and the presidency. So Republicans may be forgiven for a lack of enthusiasm.
In fact, though, most of those offenders probably wouldn't have voted, and it's by no means guaranteed they would go Democratic anyway. With the recent plague of corporate corruption, who knows? Some correctional facilities may even become GOP strongholds.
The Sentencing Project reports that Sen. John Kerry favors letting ex-convicts vote. As governor of Texas, George W. Bush signed a bill restoring the vote to felons as soon as they finish serving their time.
This is one of those cases where we should do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may. Depriving ex-convicts of the ballot is a mindless form of punishment that only discourages them from becoming upstanding members of the community. They'd be better off if we let them vote, and so would the rest of us.
Let's have a BBQ, Texas style, ROAST BUSH
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All Things Just Keep Getting Better
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We the people, in order to form a more perfect Union....
.....one Nation indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for ALL.
posted on July 23, 2004 06:22:22 AM new
Make a choice live with the consequences, not hard at all.
I do believe the life ban on voting is extreme, but the state should be allowed to decide what punishment a criminal is given...
Homosexuals get the same treatment in prison as other prisoners... so what is your point yeager?
The bill just passed in the house will let the states decide about the homosexual marriage issue, without interference from the courts...
The senate will pass it, because it is what the people have been saying, let the states decide that issue... it just takes away any activist judges say in the matter...
Why are you all so against it? After all logansdad, yeager and other supporters of homosexual marriage... the State will decide if it wants homosexual marriage without federal interference.
posted on July 23, 2004 07:02:38 AM newHomosexuals get the same treatment in prison as other prisoners... so what is your point yeager?
Where is your proof to back up this statement? Have you been in prison at some point in your life? Have you been gay at some point in your life? If you can't asnwer yes to both of these questions then HTF would you know what goes behind prison walls.
Let's have a BBQ, Texas style, ROAST BUSH
------------------------------
All Things Just Keep Getting Better
------------------------------
We the people, in order to form a more perfect Union....
.....one Nation indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for ALL.
posted on July 23, 2004 12:05:38 PM new
I suppose homosexuality could be criminalized to obtain these 'rights' for you. Handicapped people have more rights than able bodied people, heck, they get the best parking places! That doesn't mean I am complaining, objecting, or want to be one.
Don't be scared, that bright light is just Yeager's argument going down in flames.
posted on July 24, 2004 02:06:35 AM new
parklane and twelve
Maybe the both of you should take a remedial reading course. I think my point is quite clear. If you think that this thread is about comparing apples to apples, that is gay receiving the same treatment in prison, then you are wrong. We all know that apples are the same as apples, and that oranges are different than apples.
The point of this thread is that a segment of society (the criminal element) can create hell for another person, and be given many, many rights. They will be punished for the crime and there will be an end date for the punishment, that being the date of their release. However, the honest, hard working, taxpaying gay man or woman is being told that NEVER will be have the chance to marry the person that he/she wants to. That is what this thread is about!!!
Now do you get it????????????
True Americans do not exclude anybody. They recognize that everyone should have the same rights. Bigotry, intolerance and hatred are cancers of the mind.
posted on July 24, 2004 05:26:25 AM new
Oh gee yeager.... is that what you wanted to get across, who would of thought that considering what your last paragraph read... however I chose to ignore that portion and make light of the fact you are wrong...
But since you brought it up... you're still wrong, homosexuals should not be allowed to be married...
However it appears that once the senate passes that bill, each state can do as they wish and I am sure some will legalize marriage...
posted on July 24, 2004 11:12:06 PM new
I don't really care if gays have the right to get married. I think they, as citizens of this country should have the SAME RIGHTS AS EVERYONE ELSE, INCLUDING MARRIAGE.
True Americans do not exclude anybody. They recognize that everyone should have the same rights. Bigotry, intolerance and hatred are cancers of the mind.
