Time to Defend Marriage and Federalism

With full control of the House but not the Senate or the White House, Republicans lack the ability to enact positive legislation; yet they have the power to stop bad bills. Unfortunately, GOP leaders have made it clear they are willing to pass much of the Obama/Reid agenda because they don’t want confrontation with Democrats ahead of the midterm elections. For conservatives, that pretty much leaves us with the strategy of attempting to pass good bills out of the House just for messaging purposes.

With unelected federal judges and administration bureaucrats forcing gay “marriage” on sovereign states across the country, now would be a good time to show that we stand for federalism, religious liberty, and yes – even the social conservative platform to which so many members pay lip service during primaries. Abandoning the fight on this issue now could bring the death knell of concession because liberals have the infrastructure in place and are fighting harder than ever.

First the social liberals pushed their agenda in blue states through the court system. Then, with the help of Justice Anthony Kennedy, they forced the federal government to recognize gay “marriage” at first for exclusively federal purposes, such as for immigration status. Now, federal judges are forcing gay marriage on the states where the people and the legislatures voted decisively against it. To make matters worse, Eric Holder is now using the federal government to promote his agenda in those states

Looking back at this brutal winter, it’s important to remember another debate that seemed lost just a few years ago. Towards the end of President Bush’s presidency, most Republicans started buying into global warming and green energy socialism. The media joked about Senator Jim Inhofe being the last man standing against climate fascism. Then, buttressed by Climategate, we fought back against the farce and showed how their agenda was built upon a false premise. Now you can’t find a Republican who is willing to promote global warming, and even many Democrats have shied away from the issue.

We might not have the votes to enact marriage protection right now, but we still have a voice. We should use it.

Because some people in government are now hostile to marriage as God defined it, in order to protect godly marriage we must remove the power of the State to define and regulate marriage. Then anyone will be perfectly free to enter into whatever relationship they want. However, they will not be able to call upon the police power of the state to force me to recognize a “marriage” that I don’t want to accept.

If we remove government from marriage and return it to the private sphere where it came from, lesbians can still marry each other, but they won’t be able to use government to force me to sell them wedding cake or artfully photograph their “marriage”. They will be free to do as they please without being able to coerce anyone else about their private affair.

But this was never really about marriage. For homosexuals it was social engineering and payback. They could bust marriage as God defined it, they could rub Christianity’s nose in it, they could punish people who objected and they could force anyone who was too vocal to shut up. But what they really want is approval, and it just galls them that a lot of people will never give it to them.

Kennedy’s ruling was one of the most devious, treacherous abuses ever let loose upon the Republic.

His opinion defined defense of traditional marriage as prima-facie evidence of bigotry. Every lower court at the State and Federal level will now fall into place...because if they don’t they are practicing bigotry.

Love to know what snarky young clerk on his staff came up with THAT idea.

Marriage is recognized by the state as an important social construct, promoting lifetime unions of male-female so that children that might be conceived will have both their mothers and fathers to raise them. This helps children by giving them both a mom and dad, and it helps society by encouraging parents to take joint responsibility for the children that they conceive, reducing the chance that the children will become charges of the government.

What the law needs to do is strengthen marriage to promote this noble purpose: reinstate fault-based divorce laws, ditch same-sex “marriage,” and reduce single-mother benefits.

Kennedy’s ruling was one of the most devious, treacherous abuses ever let loose upon the Republic.

His opinion defined defense of traditional marriage as prima-facie evidence of bigotry. Every lower court at the State and Federal level will now fall into place...because if they don’t they are practicing bigotry.

Love to know what snarky young clerk on his staff came up with THAT idea.

It comes, unfortunately, from the original judge's decision in the Prop 8 case.

Olsen and Boeis put that forward as their reason for having Prop 8 overturned, that only bigotry would account for its passage. The idiot "defenders" of Prop 8 didn't challenge that account, didn't offer any substantial defense of the millions of Californians who voted for Prop 8 in good faith, so that contention formed the backbone of his ruling.

They so bungled the case that they offered Kennedy and his cohorts a perfect excuse to kill the Prop and brand its supporters as bigots. I sometimes wonder if the fix wasn't in from the start, their work was so poor. "Protect Marriage," or whatever the group was called, handed SCOTUS a bludgeon to use against anyone who disagrees.

This is where I plead with people who consider themselves to be “conservative” to seriously consider what exactly they are conserving and what means they intend to use in so doing.

Conservatives (and I used to count myself as one) want to defend marriage, and I agree that it is our obligation to defend it, but they are willing to send armed agents of overtly secular government to do it. Yet these same people today are not willing to send armed agents to prevent people who are not “married” in a legal manner from copulating and conceiving children.

Government is not a person, it is people in office with power. When those people were generally in agreement with God’s definition of marriage, then the State had laws and administered them in a way that was generally in rough harmony with God’s law. Up to my parent’s generation, it would have been out of the question for the state to marry two people who were of the same sex.

Moreover, it would have been even more out of the question for the State to have legal sanction, to threaten jail or to send armed agents to punish a person who politely declined to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple on their way to that State ceremony.

Now a Christian can be thrown in jail for politely declining to enable a marriage that God calls an abomination.

Anyone who thinks that the State that has gained same-sex marriage will repeal it does not see the social trend. I now know that the State should never have been allowed to intrude on the institution of Marriage, and I plead with conservatives to see why their past actions in this regard were contrary to their own liberty in the long run.

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