Posted on 05/01/2015 6:51:35 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Dear Justice Kennedy:
The forces for gay marriage are powerful. You have been their hero in the past, when gay people were not so powerful. The tables are turned now, as I think is clear to everyone. The LGBT community has built a powerful cultural, legal, and political movement. They are not helpless or friendless. They do not need you to distort the Constitution to win the right to live as they choose. We who believe in the traditional understanding of marriage do need your help. We live at a time when our livelihoods are under new attack, when our standing as equal citizens is under attack, when the system of ideas and the deep human realities that gave rise to marriage for millennia are now being dismissed as mere bigotry, as irrational, incomprehensible hatred.
Let me offer you four reasons why you should reject the idea that marriage equality requires all states to treat gay unions as marriages.
1. It is not true that same-sex and opposite-sex couples are equal. Not all sexual relationships are equal, even if they are loving and committed. Same-sex couples have to deal with the preference that the majority has for opposite-sex relationships, ranging from mama’s slight mourning for the family her son will likely never have to Westboro Baptist’s awful, crude, ugly, and unchristian hatred. Opposite-sex couples have the task of managing the reality that from the about age 14 until the woman ages out around 45, every single act of sex could make new life. Nothing the Supreme Court says or does about marriage will change these realities, but importing gay marriage into our Constitution will unleash a cavalcade of consequences for traditional believers.
2. The equality line will require continual policing, because it is based on an untruth about human nature. Maintaining the idea that there is no significant difference between same-sex and opposite-sex couples will require actively suppressing the reality that the potential for new life in opposite-sex unions is both morally and socially significant, that it colors the meaning not only of marital unions but of most every sexual interaction between male and female. Of course we will notice that sex makes babies, but every time we do, we will have to twist our heads in a pretzel to think of the ways same-sex unions and opposite-sex unions are the same and to make those the significant features of marriage.
You were a hero to proponents of same-sex marriage when gay people were not so powerful. The tables are turned now, as I think is clear to everyone.
3. This policing of the equality line will fall the heaviest on those most committed to the older view of marriage, that it is deeply rooted in the reality that society must bring male and female together to make the future happen; that marriage is more than a relationship, it is a social institution with purposes larger than the intentions of the young couple in love, that it exists to channel erotic love in such a way that men and women can live together across the gender divide, and share the task of loving and raising their children. This means that sustaining marriage privately, without public or governmental approval, will become immeasurably harder, as the portions of society most committed to marriage, classically understood, become consumed with the task of figuring out how they survive the hatred and dhimmitude directed their way. When the solicitor general of the United States concedes tjat the argument he is making may lead to stripping Christian schools of their tax-exempt status, you know we are not making things up, or whining, or complaining for no reason. If we want to get to live and let live, we need your help to not constitutionalize the Human Rights Campaign’s sexual morality.
4. Finally, dear Justice Kennedy: Government cannot confer dignity on our relationships. My best friends, my adult children, my godchildren, my brothers and sisters, every single intimate relationship that I have and that gives meaning to my life, government has no role there. To imagine that a government stamp of approval is what creates value in human relationships, or gives dignity to our sexual lives, is to accord to government a power it does not have: a power to impose an idea of equality that is not true, and to remove from the American people the hard work — of negotiating, compromise, and dealing with one another — that belongs to the democratic process, not the Constitution.
Justice Kennedy, you’ve surprised us before. Do it one more time. If originalism doesn’t move you, perhaps an honest plea for pluralism from the newly stigmatized might?
— Maggie Gallagher is a senior fellow at the American Principles Project. She blogs at MaggieGallagher.com.
Too little too late.
Talk about the tail wagging the dog. Less than one percent of the population fits into that category yet they have managed to bull sheite their way all the way to the SCOTUS.
It’ll fall on deaf ears.
Frankly, it is pointless to appeal to any side of his nature for anything honorable. He ENJOYS being the judicial equivalent of that so-called “Independent” or “moderate” voter.
IOW, he likes the attention, the wonder and bemusement surrounding on that one ego-question, “what on Earth will he do?”
The fact is that he, along with the others, have a LIFETIME’s worth of prestige, power and potential lasting effect on what becomes of our Constitution. In his case, that effect translates into outright pleading, pandering, and more importantly, self-serving ego-maintenance.
You can see the makeup of the court and know there are two vastly different sectors: one who endures constant berating and derision to ensure the adherence to our founding document, and the other self-serving, rabidly ideological or just self-serving. There’s a reason why older/sicker than dirt Ginsberg doesn’t retire. Same with some of the others except that they have important transformative work to do to devolve this country into a third world shithole.
The three (3) biggest SCOTUS disappointments in the last 30 years have been: Sandra Day O’Connor, David Souter and John Roberts. All three turned out to be Liberal wolves in Conservative sheep’s clothing, and ALL THREE WERE PLACED ON THE COURT BY REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTS.
The homosexuals on the court should be required to recuse themselves.
The political version of taqiyya.
I don’t disagree. But I think the Democrat President appointments were far worse. Ginsburg, Kagan and Sotomayor among THE worst.
Oh, granted; the Dem Court appointees were/are the worst JUDGES but, I said the three I mentioned were the worst DISAPPOINTMENTS. The horrible Dem nominees did not disappoint us; we knew what they were going in.
Oh I fully understood that and was just extending your comment.
To me Souter was the worst traitor. However, I was heartened by the group that wanted and worked at condemning his family home for the public benefit after he sided with some plaintiffs trying to stop eminent domain solely for the purpose of government enrichment.
why don’t you list Kennedy as one of the disappointments?
why don’t you list Kennedy as one of the disappointments?
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I very well could have. I really don’t know, unless it could be because he has not disappointed me as often or as deeply as the other 3 I mentioned. He gets it right once in awhile.
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