positive vs negative rights
Comments: 0 - posted on June 11th, 2009
(quoted by Nate Silver:)
"How to get 63% of Americans to support gay marriage. (Maybe.)
"Back when I used to do high school debate, there were all sorts of esoteric arguments related to the notion of positive and negative rights. The distinction, to simplify the matter greatly, is that a positive right is something that permits you to act a certain way -- something granted to you -- whereas a negative right is a claim to noninterference -- something that precludes action from being taken against you, either by government or by other people. [...]
"Take for example the issue of gay marriage. When gay marriage is polled, it is almost always framed as a positive right, as in: "should the government permit Adam and Steve to get married?" [...] But there is a different way to frame the question that is no less fair, and flips the issue on its head. Namely: "should the government be allowed to prohibit Adam and Steve from getting married?". This is closer to the logic embodied by the court decisions in Iowa, California, Massachusetts, and other states. [...]
"And it turns out that if you frame a polling question in this particular way, as Gallup and USA Today did recently, you get a very different set of responses. [...] When USA Today asks whether gay marriage is a private decision, or rather whether government has the right to pass laws which regulate it, 63 percent say it's a private decision. [...]
"[L]ook at what Equality California said on its website at the time:
Every Californian should have the choice to marry the person they love. It’s a personal and fundamental freedom guaranteed by the California Constitution.
[...]
"What if Equality California had instead said this:
California's government should not have the right to interfere with the decision of two loving adults to get married. It’s a personal and fundamental freedom protected by the California Constitution.
"You see the distinction? Equality California was still stuck in the positive rights paradigm."
