Rights aren’t pie!

  1. Do you have a right to use your car/ house/ contents of your bank account? 
  2. Would it reduce your rights if I was allowed to use them too? 
  3. If not, give me the car keys, house keys, and your bank cards. Thank you very much. 

Flippant as it sounds, some rights ARE pie. “Claim rights” are diminished when others are allowed to access them too. For example, suppose there was a right to apply for a scholarship if you were from a household where no one had been to university before. If they then increased the pool of people who could apply to include people only ONE of whose parents had gone to university, it is fairly obvious that the rights of the first group are affected, because one thing is being shared between more people. 

This is different to “freedom rights”, or liberty rights, such as gay marriage, where heterosexual marriage was not affected by same-sex couples also having the right to marry. Even in that case, the “rights” of (say) priests not to have to marry same-sex couples were protected, because no one wanted to take that pie away. So yes, even there, rights were pie.

Forward to Trans Rights Are Human Rights!

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