What I find most interesting when I read things about the removal or creation of "rights" for certain people is that people do not understand what rights are to begin with. There never been white, black, asian, african, american, eastern, european, gay, lesbian, hetero, bisexual, trans rights. The only thing that ever existed is human rights and those are not granted or created by the "government". Those are inherent to creation itself and without them life wouldn't even exist and they are declared as "unalienable rights" in different constitutions around the world because of the self-evident facts that exist in nature.
Simply explained a right is an action that does not cause harm or loss to another sentient being. What we are not allowed to do can be broken down to three words. Do not steal and here is how.
If someone takes your life he steals your life.
If someone takes your liberty he steals your liberty.
If someone takes your property he steals your property.
The only thing that governments have ever created and removed is privileges and this is something people really need to understand.
George Carlin said it best. "Rights is not rights if they can be taken away, they are privileges and that's all we ever got from the government"
He really understood the difference between rights and privileges and if one has followed the work of Mark Passio who talks constantly about natural law then one would understand this more deeply.
For people that wants to learn more about natural law then check out this link. http://truthseeker.se/natural-law-seminar/
You see gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans marriage and so forth should never even be a question to raise because it's not the "government" that decides if you can marry someone or not, it's you and your partner that does. The only thing the "government" provides is to make it into a business deal where you are dealing with a merger of two corporations/persons/legal fictions/ID. A marriage in the eyes of the "government" is a business deal with three parties, the "government" and two other parties making the merger.
With this understanding we need to take a step back and look at ourselves and what we are doing and demanding.
Here is something I wrote a year ago that is quite relevant.
We know there is two bodies of law, the law of the land and the law of waters. The law of waters is also known as the commercial law, admiralty law, maritime law. What is the commercial law but not the law of commerce and money. Many talks about the language of law as legalese but recently I have come to understand that the English language is the language of commerce and it's easily proven.
See if we look at the dollar symbol $ and break it down we get 2 x I and 2 x S which is upon each other which gives us ISIS. ISIS was a moon goddess and if we look at the word moon it's similar to the word mon which is part of the word money. Check the picture in this post to clearly see an example of what I am saying. I can admit it is a bit of a stretch but bear with me.
money (n.) Look up money at Dictionary.com
mid-13c., "coinage, metal currency," from Old French monoie "money, coin, currency; change" (Modern French monnaie), from Latin moneta "place for coining money, mint; coined money, money, coinage," from Moneta, a title or surname of the Roman goddess Juno, in or near whose temple money was coined; perhaps from monere "advise, warn"
"Juno is the equivalent to Hera, the Greek goddess for love and marriage. Juno is the Roman goddess of love and marriage. Ancient etymologies associated Juno's name with iuvare, "to aid, benefit", and iuvenescendo, "rejuvenate", sometimes connecting it to the renewal of the new and waxing moon, perhaps implying the idea of a moon goddess."
"Latin Iūno Monēta). The latter's name is source of numerous words in English and the Romance languages, including the words "money" and "mint"."
In short $ -> ISIS -> Moon -> Mon -> Money
Now we know that the law of commerce is the law of water but how can we see that in the language itself? Well when we think of the moon we think of ebb and flow right? Which is why we for example say "The money flows" or "My bank account dried out". Then of course we have all kinds of words connected to water such as: member-ship, citizen-ship, scholar-ship, intern-ship, friend-ship etc. This is not by accident.
We can also make a connection between energy and water quite easy.
Money -> Currency -> Current -> Electricity -> Energy
This is why Morpheus in the movie The Matrix holds up a battery when he tells Neo what we been turned in to.
Now that we established that we can move on and check other things in the commercial law such as corporations. Many still refuses to acknowledge the truth that we are walking stock and corporations but there is a hint in the language itself. "You are bad COMPANY" or "Mind your own BUSINESS" or "He had an AFFAIR".
Bottom line is this. People need to take a step back and question what rights are, where they come from, who created them and what the deeper meaning is of this kind of knowledge and understanding. Again go to http://truthseeker.se/natural-law-seminar/ and check out the seminar about natural law because it will probably one of the most important things you will ever learn in your life.
These are the things that is the foundation of everything because if we do not understand these things we cannot possibly start to work towards a more moral society with more freedom because as the law of freedom states. As morality increases, freedom increases. As morality decreases, freedom decreases.
I don't buy it. Rights certainly are granted by governments. Human rights are not self-evident, nor well-defined, and life certainly existed even in ancient rome despite the slave trade and other blantant human rights violations. Moreover human rights change over time and are dependent on culture. For example, now broadband is a human right:
https://www.wired.com/2011/06/internet-a-human-right/
Personally, I don't find this self-evident in the slightest. So you can see that rights are alienable, and human rights must be protected by governments, otherwise the natural tendancy is toward exploitation. This is why anarchism isn't a viable system of government; there is noone to protect those who cannot defend themselves, for example, the elderly and the disabled.
Marriage is not a personal institution. It is a public statement of comittment. Historically in societies with Christian backgrounds, it was foremost a religious one, and secondarily a legal one. Currently it is a solely legal one. You can't just say "We are married" and it is true. It must be affirment contractually, whether by religious vow, or legal documentation.
Everything thereafter is reaching, to say the least.
Anarchy vs government and a resource based economy including the importance of right and wrong
https://steemit.com/anarchy/@johnblaid/anarchy-vs-government-and-a-resource-based-economy-including-the-importance-of-right-and-wrong
The whole premise of natural law is flawed. People do not act rationally. We do not protect others even when basic empathy dictates to do so.
Anarchism is not viable because humans do not tend towards good. Even when intentions are good, we can be mistaken about the correct means to achieve these ends.
Moreover, paradoxically, a government offers increased liberty over a simple anarchy model. It is a fundamental mischaracterisation of the objection to anarchy that it is "but then we have no rights". It is more nuanced, it is that there is nothing to enforce the rights, and hence no effective rights at all.
We are not born with rights. A basic understanding of world history, in particular pre-medieval history will make this more "self-evident" than the rights you claim will ever be. Rights only exist when they are enforced.
Some rights, also, we are obviously not born with. For example, the right to own property. This is spoken of as a right, yet we are not born with it. However, without a government, militias will take your land; very quickly indeed. Other capital will be seized. This obviously decreases economic efficiency.
Also, we create rights all the time. As earlier cited, the right to broadband. Did this right always exist? No, clearly not in th 2nd century, nor in the late 20th century, when internet connections were expensive. These cannot be considered human rights violations.
Once again, to imply there is any set, fixed set of natural laws is misguided. Society has made arbitrary rulings, for example in the form of the UN, to arbitrarily dictate arbitarary human rights. They are only rights because they are widely recognised as such. If the UN were to turn around tomorrow and say that living in Vatican City is a basic human right, would it be? If not, why not? Is it because the UN were "wrong"? How do we know they are not wrong about other things then? The truth is that all human rights are arbitrarily dictated and are not the result of some "natural law" influencing our decisions.
This can be moved past. The two options are to embrace a religious code, or to accept that rights are arbitarary and in fact morality needn't exist. A rudimentary understanding of ethics dictates that this pair is exhaustive.
A good attempt to convey a fundamental construct of a long standing world reality. It is the paradox of security that keeps people from gaining a perspective of this beyond the personal. It will be interesting to see if open-source and blockchain modalities can shift the world soul.