On the Wrong Side of God, Evolution and Humanity

We’ve been told that people who want to maintain the man-woman definition of marriage are “on the wrong side of history.” Perhaps so. Maybe “history,” which is determined largely by how people behave, will continue to move toward making marriage genderless in the 90 percent of governments that still maintain the natural definition.

But remember, Moses was on the wrong side of the golden calf. And Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation was on the wrong side of Dred Scott—the 1857 Supreme Court decision that declared blacks were “so far inferior that they had no rights.” Thus, being on the wrong side of some popular moral assertion doesn’t necessarily mean that your position is wrong.

Now that five judges say that same sex marriage is a new “right,” I would like to ask a more foundational question. Where do rights come from? Specifically, where does the right to same sex marriage come from?

If you say that rights come from governments or constitutions, then how can they really be rights? Isn’t a right something you have regardless of what a government says? For example, if same sex marriage is really a right, then you actually possess that right even if you live under a government that doesn’t recognize same sex marriage. You may not be able to exercise it, but you have it nonetheless.

Moreover, if there is no overarching moral standard that transcends human governments, then how could we prosecute Nazi soldiers for violating the rights of others? The Nazis were just following their government.

The truth is rights don’t come from men or governments. Instead, “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,” as our Founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence. In fact, that was the entire point of the Declaration—the government of King George was usurping the rights of colonists, so we declared our independence.

Doesn’t evolution provide us with a right to same sex marriage? Some make this claim but without thinking it through. If natural selection has a goal of survival, then how could same-sex marriage help with that? Such marriages are an agreement to stay in a sterile and medically unhealthy relationship—the exact antithesis of survival. In fact, if everyone lived faithfully in same sex marriage, the human race would end quite quickly.

Even if macroevolution is true, moral rights don’t result from biological processes. Rights are prescriptive and come from an authoritative person. Biological processes are descriptive and have no authority to tell you what to do. How does a mutating genetic code have the moral authority to tell you how you ought to behave or how you ought to treat others?

The truth is, just like history describes what does happen and not what ought to happen, biology describes what doessurvive, not what ought to survive. Why should humans survive as opposed to anything else? And which humans, we or the Nazis?

Even if one could make the case that evolution somehow makes survival a moral right, we are left with several thorny questions. Isn’t self-sacrifice to save others morally superior to your own survival? Should a person murder if it helps him survive? Should a person rape to propagate his DNA? Should a society exterminate the weak and undesirables to improve the gene pool and help the desirables survive? Hitler used evolutionary theory to justify just that. Homosexuals were many of his victims.

So if rights don’t come from governments or evolution, then where do they come from? To truly be rights, they can only come from an authoritative being whose nature is the very standard of perfect Goodness. That’s what we mean by God.

Without God there is no authoritative moral standard beyond humanity, which means that every action or behavior is merely a matter of human opinion. The murder of Jews, gypsies and homosexuals? It’s just your opinion against Hitler’s opinion. Child crucifixions? It’s just your opinion against that of ISIS. Freedom of speech? That’s just your opinion to that of a dictator. Gay bashing is bad? Again, just your opinion.

The same holds true with any supposed right, including the right to same sex marriage. While you can get five judges to assert it is a right, without God it is just an opinion (thus the Court’s judgment is aptly named).

The major religious books state just the opposite. So does the Natural Law derived from God’s nature. Thomas Jefferson called this “Nature’s Law” from which we get “self-evident truths” and the fact that people “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Same sex marriage is not one of them. In fact, Jefferson and other politically incorrect Founding Founders called homosexual acts “crimes against nature” because such acts go against the natural design of the body and frustrate the goal of perpetuating humanity. This observation is not based on bigotry but on biology. (It’s ironic that our Founding Fathers were more apt to follow science than today’s secular left who ignore science when they insist that biological gender is changeable and sexual behavior is not. The exact opposite is true!)

Since real rights can only come from God, if you want to insist same-sex marriage is a right then you must assume that God is for same-sex marriage. But then you must also assume the implausible notion that God wants you to harm your own health and that of the human race by contributing to its extinction. How’s that for love? Don’t be fruitful. Don’t multiply. Don’t survive. Same sex marriage is not only on the wrong side of God and evolution; it’s on the wrong side of humanity.

So if not from governments, evolution or God, where does the “right” to same-sex marriage come from? Our imaginations. Perhaps well intended imaginations, but imaginations nonetheless.

I would ‘dovetail’ this article, with a request to the reader, to go and find Judge Andrew Napolitano’s article, “What is a right?”

Evolution does not equate any of the human socio-economics, that are part of human history. Evolution, as it was originally defined, are ‘steps’ of individual species, changing to a changing environment.

The human race is only one species, and does not react to an environment, but has engineered it’s own environment through construction and automation. At our base, we are still either in the flesh, Cain or Abel, and equally proficient, as we choose, hence, “the human condition”.

As such, it is WE who have created myriad societies, and have found it is good, both for the individuals, and for society’s permanence, whether deemed by shaman, rabbi, or priest (any label of sorts), for the joining of a man and a woman. Daughters for the household, and the key to future generations, and, Sons for the professions of the houses, the security of that society when threatened, the lording over as required, and for the element necessary to produce those future generations. Such, homosexuality has been, and still is, a threat to these things mentioned above. No future generations, no societal security when threatened.

The Theory of Evolution wouldn’t pretend to dictate morality but it can examine the impact of morals on species survival. For instance, modern humans have far too big a brain to be able to give birth to a fully developed child like dogs essentially do. Human children require care and nurturing through a long childhood as their brain develops. Physically they are incapable of caring for themselves and reproduction for a much longer time than any other species. This, in turn, requires a monogamous parent relationship with both parents contributing to the care and feeding of the child.

That’s why most cultures are centered around male / female families. In those cultures where polygamy and homosexual marriage have existed, the relations are outside the norm. Polygamy requires some level of wealth and the children are not well served in their maturation. Gay marriage is a blank cartridge being a dead end in genetic survival.

Evolution, even here, does not generate moral laws, it can however tell us which ones will benefit species survival.

Dear Tophat,

I really wonder at your estimation:
“I thought Judge Andrew Napolitano was on the Libertarian party pro gay marriage bandwagon like Glen Beck?”

First being a Libertarian, is not being a liberal, which fits your wording, i.e., “pro gay marriage bandwagon”. I think you need to go find a few YouTube recordings of Neal Boortz to learn what Libertarianism is about.

Second, Here is the article I referenced from Judge Napolitano, since you did not do your homework, before replying to me.

What Is a Right?
Judge Napolitano on the difference between ‘rights’ and
‘goods’
December 18, 2009
By Judge Napolitano
FOXNews
Hello America. In the continually harsh public discourse over the President’s proposals for federally managed health care, the big government progressives and both the Democratic and Republican parties have been trying to trick us.

These folks who really want the government to care for us from cradle to grave have been promoting the idea that health care is a right. In promoting that false premise, they have succeeded in moving the debate from whether the Fed should micro-manage health care to how the feds should micro-manage healthcare.

This is a false premise and we should reject it. Health care is not a ‘right’ it is a ‘good’ like food, like shelter and like clothing. Okay what’s a ‘right’.
A ‘right’ as a gift from God that extends from our humanity. Thinkers from Saint Thomas Aquinas to Thomas Jefferson to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
to Pope John Paul the second have all argued that our rights are a natural part of our humanity.

We own our bodies, thus we own the gifts that emanate from our bodies. So own our ‘right’ to life, our ‘right’ to develop our personalities.

A ‘right’ to think as we wish, to say what we think, to publish what we say.
A ‘right’ to worship or not worship.
A ‘right’ to travel, to defend ourselves, to use our own property as we see fit.
A ‘right’ to due process, which is fairness from the government.
And a ‘right’ to be left alone are all rights that stem from our humanities.

These are natural rights that we were born with.

The government doesn’t give them to us and the government doesn’t pay for them and the government can’t take them away unless a jury finds that we have violated someone else’s rights.

What is a ‘good’?
A ‘good’ is something we want or need. In a sense, it is the opposite of a ‘right’. We have our rights from birth. But we need our parents when we are children and we need ourselves as adults to purchase the goods we require for
existence.

So food is a ‘good’.
Shelter is a ‘good’.
Clothing is a ‘good’.
Education is a ‘good’.
A car is a ‘good’.
Legal representation is a ‘good’.
Working out at the gym as a ‘good’.
And access to health care is a ‘good’.
Does the government give us ‘goods’? Well, sometimes it takes money from us and gives that money to others. You can call that taxation or you can call it theft.
But you cannot caught it a ‘right’.
A ‘right’ stems from our humanity. A ‘good’ is something you buy or someone else buys for you.

Now when you look at health care for what it is, when you look at the US constitution, when you look at the history of human freedom, when you accept the American value of the primacy of the individual over the fleeting wishes of the government, it becomes apparent that those who claim that health care is a ‘right’ simply want to extend a form of government welfare.

Now when I make this argument to my big government friends they come back at me with “well, if people don’t have health insurance they would just go to hospitals that will end up paying for them anyway.” Well, why should that be?

We don’t let people steal food from a supermarket or an apartment from a landlord or clothing from a local shop. Why don’t we let them take health care from a hospital without paying for it? Well, my big government friends contend that’s charity.

Well, they’re wrong again. It’s impossible to be charitable with someone else’s money. Charity comes from your own heart, not from the government spending your money.
When we pay our taxes to the government and it gives that money away, that’s not charity. That’s welfare.

When the government takes more from us than it needs to secure our freedoms so it can give some of that money away, that’s notcharity. That’s theft.

And when the government forces hospitals to provide free health care to those who can’t or won’t care for themselves, that’s not charity.

That’s slavery.

That’s why we now have constitutional chaos, America. Because the government steals and enslaves. And we outlawed that a long time.”

I did a search and there are several What if articles by Judge Andrew Napolitano in Townhall.com but not the one you are mentioning.

I went to his site and found this one

My Top 10 Legal Stories of 2012

Published on Dec 12, 2012

-- snip --

6. Same-Sex Marriage

In a very famous case called Loving vs Virginia, the Lovings were a bi-racial, opposite sex couple who got married in the District of Columbia and then moved back to their native Virginia. The police broke into the bedroom of their home in the middle of the night and arrested them because Virginia law prohibited bi-racial couples. The case made it to the Supreme Court and the ruling invalidated the law that prohibits bi-racial couples, but it also said your right to choose a mate is a fundamental liberty with which the state cannot interfere. Obviously the case did not involve same-sex marriage but the language is clear and that language has been undisturbed by the Supreme Court since the opinion came down in 1968. Expect the same rationale in the same-sex marriage cases.

-- snip --

Perhaps that is the one you are talking about?
I will do a search in Townhall.com and see if it was posted under a different title

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