Posted on 08/31/2014 11:58:15 AM PDT by Kaslin
In all the bad days that opponents of same-sex marriage have had lately, few compare with the one they had this past week in a courtroom in Chicago. Lawyers defending the bans in Wisconsin and Indiana were buried in an avalanche of skepticism and incredulity.
The judges demanded to know what worthy goals the prohibitions serve, and the attorneys had terrible trouble coming up with any. Perhaps the low point for their side came when one was asked why Wisconsin makes it so hard for same-sex couples to adopt and ventured to say, "I think tradition is one of the reasons."
At that, Judge Richard Posner did not slap his forehead and exclaim, "Of course! Why didn't we see that? Everything makes sense now!" Instead, he retorted: "How can tradition be a reason for anything?"
Many states, he noted, had a hallowed tradition of forbidding interracial marriage until 1967, when the Supreme Court said they couldn't. Posner couldn't see how entrenched practice, no matter how ancient, mattered in that case or this one. The argument, he said, amounted to: "We've been doing this stupid thing for a hundred years, a thousand years. We'll keep doing it because it's tradition."
His rebuff betrays a fatal problem for opponents of same-sex marriage. One of their central arguments is that we should limit marriage to male-female couples because that's been the norm in Western cultures for millennia. It's an argument deeply rooted in conservative political philosophy. But conservative political philosophy has never really had much influence in the United States, even among those who call themselves conservative.
In his 1953 book "The Conservative Mind," Russell Kirk expounded a view peculiar to the right. "Even the most intelligent of men cannot hope to understand all the secrets of traditional morals and social arrangements," he wrote, "but we may be sure that Providence, acting through the medium of human trial and error, has developed every hoary habit for some important purpose." It's not an argument often heard in our debates.
Americans do pay homage to our past by invoking the Declaration of Independence, the framers, the Constitution, Abraham Lincoln and so on. But the idea that we should be afraid to make changes in our laws for fear of rending the organic fabric of society doesn't command much allegiance on either the left or the right.
Liberals have never made a fetish of obeisance to the past. They agree with the revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine that giving primacy to tradition unjustly places "the authority of the dead over the rights and freedom of the living."
American conservatives largely share that premise. The New Deal has been in place for some 80 years, but conservatives don't believe in conserving that. Their feeling is it was a bad idea then, and it's a bad idea now.
None of this means Americans have no use for traditions. We have all sorts of favorites, from fireworks on the Fourth of July to football in autumn. But we feel entitled to alter and embellish them at our whim. The fireworks we see are bigger and better than the ones Americans saw a century ago. Football now starts in August and goes till February.
Marriage morphed repeatedly long before gays got it. Women acquired more rights, divorce became available to anyone who wanted it, and alimony grew less common. People of different races can now marry each other even in places where it was once cause for lynching.
Longstanding arrangements that make sense endure without controversy, and that's just the point: They make sense. Tradition and a good reason will win an argument, just as tradition and $2 will get you a ride on the bus. Americans don't keep doing things unless they serve our purposes, even if they suited our grandparents to a T.
The 20th-century Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. spoke for most of us: "It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past."
The prevailing ethos in this country is that we are the masters of tradition, not the servants. We treasure the customs and practices passed down from our ancestors. And we change them anytime we want.
I am sad that it has come to the day that I see Holmes quoted in an article where Posner is the bad guy. And I agree with Holmes....geez
One of the political challenges is that women don’t see the problem. To them all the characters are feminine and not a direct threat. One way to explain it is: Imagine going to work every day and part of the work requirement is for you to undress in front of, shower with, and dress in front of the most lecherous, creepy, straight male that you can think of (for help see link below). How would you feel? Have that nasty feeling in the pit of your stomach? Now you get it.
The deplorable state of marriage began, I think, with the concept of what was called ‘ no fault divorce ‘, back about 40 years ago. This idea trivialized marriage, and was itself the result of the sexual revolution that began years earlier. I wish an attorney for conservative thought would point out that gay marriage is not a civil right, or about marriage, but hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, and nothing more. Under this reasoning, cigarettes and heroin addiction are civil rights also, for they represent the pursuit of pleasure far more, and have more participants, as a percentage of the population. When the proponents suggest that it’s about companionship also, I would point out that most people have more friends than they do sex partners, friends who do not provide them with sexual pleasure. However, they’re not interested in reasoning, only the destruction of traditional America, of which marriage is part and parcel. They push the idea of gay marriage as a civil right, because civil rights are something that voters cannot do away with at the next election cycle. The very idea of it being a civil right is being endlessly repeated in the media for that very reason, even though the concept itself is ridiculous.
Do me a favor and don’t hold us women for dumb
Things become traditional for a reason.
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“Marriage morphed repeatedly long before gays got it. Women acquired more rights, divorce became available to anyone who wanted it, and alimony grew less common. People of different races can now marry each other even in places where it was once cause for lynching.”
“Now, since the family and human society at large spring from marriage, these men will on no account allow matrimony to be the subject of the jurisdiction of the Church. Nay, they endeavor to deprive it of all holiness, and so bring it within the contracted sphere of those rights which, having been instituted by man, are ruled and administered by the civil jurisprudence of the community. Wherefore it necessarily follows that they attribute all power over marriage to civil rulers, and allow none whatever to the Church; and, when the Church exercises any such power, they think that she acts either by favor of the civil authority or to its injury. Now is the time, they say, for the heads of the State to vindicate their rights unflinchingly, and to do their best to settle all that relates to marriage according as to them seems good.”
—Pope Leo XIII, 1880
To the state in the modern era, marriage is simply whatever judges, pols, or the majority of the voting public think it is at any one time. That’s it, that’s all it can ever be to the state.
FReegards
All sorts of orientations and experimentation coming out of high schools.
I recently coached baseball therein for 3 seasons, and was all but shocked at some of the interpersonal developments that gradually took place. Ones that I would never have seen in high school in the late sixties. This despite all the homo-bashing on the field which, as a coach, is very hard to stop as it is essentially ritualistic and fluent among teenage boys.
American society's increasing acceptance of homosexuality however, will come at a price of decreasing males with higher probabilities, or desirabilities of reproduction, and given the continued weakening of traditional marriage, will come to make that institution less and less viable regardless.
I think this represents a very serious problem which, while it may not result in a significant decrease overall in the national birthrate, it will perhaps fatally impact America's traditional Judeo-Christian ethic. And when that's gone, America is surely gone.
But isn’t our jurisprudence system based on the tradition of English common law? Does Judge Posner favor throwing that out as our society slouches toward Gomorrah, or are the courts sacrosanct in that regard?
Let’s just answer the question posed:
1. Why make it hard for same sex couples to adopt?
a. Children are more likely to be molested.
b. Children have better outcomes when raised by their biological mother and father.
2. How does homosexual marriage injure anyone?
a. Makes the culture more dangerous: disease, molestation.
b. Causes early death for homosexuals.
c. Injures children...see 1b above.
d. Injures the social niche created to protect mother and child.
e. Costs society tax dollars intended for the purpose of child rearing, not sexual feelings.
The rationalize behind homosexual marriage is that homosexuality is normal and equal to heterosexuality. It is not equal, it is a mental disorder. There is no gay gene as is claimed by homo advocates. You do not afford the right to something as important as marriage to something as twisted as homosexuality.
Homosexual couples should not adopt children because it is not in the interest of the state to have children raised by homosexuals, or otherwise have the homosexual population to increase.
Excellent and timely quote. If you ever wondered what happened to your country, there it is, all laid out neatly and concisely.
Think of how a viral or bacterial infection spreads, both in a body and from body to body, then with that picture in mind, use it as a lens to view US and the current state of our Union.
It's easy to see the infection then, like identifying a specimen on a slide under a microscope.
I remember what life was like before 1963. I was just a kid, but I remember praying the Our Father in kindergarten in public school. I remember when nearly everyone had large families. I remember when nearly everyone felt good about America. And then a haze came over America and left it dismembered. Well, that is until Ronald Reagan and we got a reprieve for a while to catch our breath and feel normalcy for a while.
Satan has had his eye on defeating America for quite a while. He now has his guy in the White House. And, sometimes it all seems insurmountable.
However, I do believe that we are in the process of renewing our strength. And sooner than Obama thinks, we will be victorious.
Satan and all his cohorts be damned.
Thanks for posting this. I refuse to give Buttless-Chapsman any creditable clicks on his articles at Clownhall since he’s the token sodomite at that site.
When I read Revelation 18:1-24, I wonder if the US specifically and the western world in general is becoming/has become the Babylon it refers to:
Babylon the Great has fallen, and has become the haunt of devils and a lodging for every foul spirit and dirty, loathsome bird. All the nations have been intoxicated by the wine of her prostitution; every king in the earth has committed fornication with her, and every merchant grown rich through her debauchery.Sounds more and more like US everyday the longer we stay on this path:Her sins have reached up to heaven, and God has her crimes in mind: she is to be paid in her own coin. She must be paid double the amount she exacted. She is to have a doubly strong cup of her own mixture. Every one of her shows and orgies is to be matched by a torture or a grief. "I am the queen on my throne," she says to herself, "and I am no widow and shall never be in mourning."
For that, within a single day, the plagues will fall on her: disease and mourning and famine. She will be burnt right up. The Lord God has condemned her, and he has great power.
"There will be weeping and distress over her among all the traders of the earth when there is nobody left to buy their cargoes of goods;The more it says, the more that looks like US and where we are going.All the fruits you had set your hearts on have failed you; gone forever, never to return, is your life of magnificence and ease. The traders who had made a fortune out of her will be standing at a safe distance from fear of her agony, mourning and weeping.
Yes, that would mean people who can’t decide which sex they are attracted to are thus being denied their civil right to marry both a man and a woman. It has now been established that no one can be denied, as a civil right, marital sex with the object of their desire. We therefore can’t legally deny a man taking vows with a Nubian goat, so long as she (or he!!!!) is over the legal goat age of eight months.
Very well said! I pray you’re right that we will soon see reason return to our nation.
What they want is no restrictions. In those days when only a man could marry a woman there were restrictions. Couldn't marry same-sex, or your brother, sister, 1st cousin, mother, father, a young child related or not, an animal. Couldn't marry if you were "feeble-minded" or had syphilis or married to another at the time.
So what we are talking about here is the tearing down of all boundaries that were intended to protect the institution of marriage and for the protection of children.
amen. God is not finished with America.
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