As for the person in the street, a lot of Christian fundamentalists seem to feel that being forced to live in the same society with married gay people is taking away their right to live in a Christian country. That's one of the most frequent "my rights are being taken away" complaints I've heard. Ignorant and illogical all in one swell foop.

As for rights really being taken away, Rapparee says above that if you don't want your email read, use the postal service. I can't agree with that. If they have the right to read our email, they have the right to open our snail mail.

I don't have any problem with taking photographs of people going through intersections. If you're out in public, you're out in public. Watching people who are out in public may unpleasant big-brotherlyness but I don't see it as violating any of our actual rights.

I'm not sure how I feel about being able to locate us by our phones. It falls somewhere between privacy and being in public. I suppose I would come down on the side of our location, when tracked by our phones, being private.

I think that allowing the Catholic Church to violate our employment laws is a violation of the Constitution. When they offer employment but not a normal full range of health insurance, and when that lack is because of their religious beliefs, they are imposing a religious test on employment. If you want to work for them you have to live according to their religion. If they want to behave that way, they should staff their businesses with volunteers. When Catholic hospitals fail to offer abortion services on religious grounds, they are practicing religious discrimination against people who don't share their faith. If restaurants can be forced to seat black people, Catholic hospitals should be forced to perform abortions. Or they shouldn't be in the business. Running a hospital or other business isn't the same as conducting a church service or deciding who can be members of your congregation. If they are in the public marketplace catering to non-Catholics they should have to follow the same rules that everyone else has to follow.