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Posted on 05/15/2015 5:47:37 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
At the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., William Duncan, the executive director of Marriage and Family Law Research Grant at BYU, tracked marriage language over the past fifty years in several U.S. Supreme Court cases, from Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 to the current case facing the court over same-sex marriage.
Marriage was relatively uniform and widely accepted as a union between a man and woman whose goals were united. But, the Griswold decision was a “key shift” and “a tentative move away from the past” as the court’s language changed from marriage’s goal from being one of security to one of being “hopeful” toward the future of the institution. As Duncan noted, “we see the seeds of hauling out” marriage in the Griswold court decision. Specifically, the court referred to marriage by way of using the word “association,” as if marriage was an agreement of “two individuals who sort of, obviously in league with one another…it is unclear [what the court intended].”
Courts work based on precedents from other cases, and Griswold laid the groundwork for subsequent cases. In 1972, Eisenstadt v Baird “codifies this new understanding of marriage” of it being an association and not a union. Duncan said, “The key issue here is the court is saying there is really no distinction between marriage and non-marriage” of individuals. Instead, the “family itself is reduced to a lifestyle choice” and an individual one. No longer was family or marriage considered an entity. In the words of the court decision, “the marital couple is not an independent entity with a mind and heart of its own.” The justices rationalized this new definition of marriage because the individual should be “be free from unwarranted governmental intrusions” such as deciding to have a child or not. Other decisions that built on Griswold and Eisenstadt in slowly redefining marriage and family were:
• Roe v. Wade (1973)– the case that legalized abortion in the U.S.;
• Department of Agriculture v. Moreno (1973) – the courts struck down the restriction on food stamps being distributed to households of “unrelated persons”;
• Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth (1976) – a case which invalidated the requirement to have written spousal or parental consent for an abortion;
• Carey v. Population Services International (1977) – a case where the courts said it was unconstitutional to limit who can distribute contraceptives, as it was limited to licensed pharmacists previously;
• Zablocki v. Redhall (1978) – where the courts no longer issued an order for a couple to obtain a marriage license, where the potential spouses would have to be up-to-date on child support payments;
• Turner v. Safley (1987)– prisoners had a right to get married without approval of the prison warden as protected under due process clause.
Now, “marriage is now a choice of two autonomous individuals” and even that legal definition is becoming blurred. Today, “the court becomes a vanguard of the revolution” regarding the definition of marriage and sexual values, Duncan said, and it is sad to see how “legal principles…have been abandoned in other cases” such as the ones mentioned above.
Why limit it to two?
Read Men in Black by Mark Levin. Errors piled on misinterpretations followed by half truths and lies by the Federal Courts.
Don't worry. It won't be. Where it will end up, no one knows.
How Marxist...
Polygamy has much, much more historical, sociological and scriptural support than does “marriage” between two persons of the same sex.
It’s a miracle that the right case hasn’t come in front of the court, but it’s only a matter of time.
And, since boys are not being raised or taught to be husbands, while most girls still want one, polygamy is probably inevitable.
Islamic hareems.
> “marriage is now a choice of two autonomous ***individuals***”
What’s an ‘individual’? A twin sister or brother? A goat?
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Wow, the Supreme Court has always batted a Thousand! >:(
Talk about the Branch of Government that is Completely antithetical to the founders intent.
Many think the state hasn’t had the right definition for centuries, for many more since the advent of civil no-fault divorce and remarriage. Now it’s ‘gay marriage.’ The state’s version of marriage in the modern era has always only been whatever judges, pols, or the voting majority happen to think it is at any one time. It doesn’t have any other way to define it. Pope Leo XIII warned about this 130 years ago.
Freegards
It’s too bad the founders didn’t double the length of the Constitution to provide greater protection against totalitarianism. Even a simple definition of “natural born citizen” would have helped.
God created, defined, and instituted marriage.
They think they’re redefining it, but they’re not.
Because the Creator and Almighty Judge of the Universe has never changed His mind on the subject.
In fact, all they’re doing is destroying their own institutions, exalting injustice, undermining the moral basis to the claim to liberty in America, and leading the ignorant and naive down to hell with them.
If a court redefined “up” as “down,” and then jumped off an eighty-foot cliff, would the rocks at the bottom care about their immoral, illogical, unreasonable, unnatural, foolish definitions? I think not.
now that you mention it...
Not REdefined, but UNdefined.
That’s the secondary purpose of “gay marriage”.
The primary purpose is to criminalize Christian beliefs.
If you redefine “cat” to be “any furry four legged domestic animal”, then how do you describe an actual cat?
Ah....
Islam.
Gay marriage is its stalking horse.
Ironically, Roy Cohn, of all people pointed that out at the time. Also, California trends have a way of setting the pace for the rest of the country for better or worse. For better, salad with meals, Reagan and the tax revolt. For worse, unfortunately the list may be much longer
You are correct: the land of fruits and nuts comes up with left-coast marxist legislation and within 15 years, due to the full faith and credit clause, legal fads spread across the whole country. Two of the very worst things for this nation were signed into law early on by Reagan as governor of California: abortion and "no-fault" divorce. He deeply regretted both.
coincidentally, we have an article coming up on the latter, which was the brainchild of a prof at Berkeley
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