Posted on 09/03/2015 7:30:33 AM PDT by wagglebee
A row broke out in a Kentucky county courthouse yesterday when a clerk refused to issue marriage licences to two same-sex couples. When one of the parties demanded to know under whose authority Kim Davis was acting, she said, “Under God’s authority.”
“To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God’s definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience,” she said. “It is not a light issue for me. It is a Heaven or Hell decision. For me it is a decision of obedience. I have no animosity toward anyone and harbor no ill will. To me this has never been a gay or lesbian issue. It is about marriage and God’s word.”
This episode is only the beginning of a bigger drama for Davis, who has legal proceedings against her, although she is by no means unsupported in her defiance of the US Supreme Court’s decision to impose a new concept of marriage on the whole country. At the same time it illustrates how conscientious stands against same-sex marriage are likely to multiply as a result of the decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.
This anticipated consequence of the Roe v. Wade of same-sex marriage is one of two main themes presented in Ryan T. Anderson’s new book, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom, which – also this week -- became available in hard copy from the US. I got my copy last week in New Zealand, where Anderson, as part of an Australasian trip, addressed a family forum in Auckland.
Anderson is a great speaker, clear as a bell, even when talking about deep philosophical issues like the nature of marriage, which few of us had to think about until quite recently. He is also a great writer, as anyone who has followed his articles from the Heritage Foundation’s news service (and in many other publications) will know.
The 33-year-old top political philosophy scholar is the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at Heritage, the founding editor of Public Discourse and a co-author of What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense (2012), as well as of a Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy article which preceded it.
His new book is designed to summarise the issues and suggest ways in which marriage can be promoted and defended in the wake of the court majority’s act of “judicial tyranny”. That act and its abuse of the US Constitution is analysed in some detail in the third chapter, which includes the scornful critiques of the dissenting judges.
A secular defence of marriage
In the first two chapters Anderson deals with the truth about marriage from a secular point of view based on natural law and social science. Starting with Aristotle’s analysis of a community according to its actions, the goods it seeks and its norms of commitment, he shows how the marital community is formed by a comprehensive union involving all three dimensions. This union is by nature between a man and a woman and has nothing to do with anti-gay animosity; its social purpose is to unite the spouses with each other in a permanent, exclusive union, and with the children they may generate, for the sake of the common good.
When marriage is not lived according to the norms of permanence and exclusivity – indeed, when it does not even intend to provide the child with its own mother and father -- children suffer and society suffers. Yet it is these very norms that are undermined by the Obergefell judges’ view that marriage is primarily about “love”, that is, emotion, and not the comprehensive flesh and spirit union ordered towards begetting children that is implicit in the whole history of the human race. Anderson points to the many activists as well as academics and the odd politician who have openly declared themselves for “throuples” and for “monogamish” and “wedlease” versions of “marriage”.
If marriage itself is threatened, so are the liberty and livelihoods of those who refuse to be complicit in the new definitions, like the Kentucky registrar. And while there are robust secular reasons to defend man-woman marriage, so far it is religiously observant people who have defended it in the public square. Anderson summarises cases in the US where church charities and schools, and business owners have been prosecuted for refusing to accommodate same-sex ideology in some way. Atlanta’s mayor sacked his fire chief for sharing a book based on a Biblical view of sexuality, and Brendan Eich, co-founder of Mozilla, was forced to resign as CEO of the company for privately donating $1000 to the Proposition 8 campaign in California – though not for any overtly religious reason.
Experience in other countries, notably Britain, confirms that religious freedom is definitely on the line in the far from finished debate over marriage. For this reason Anderson devotes a chapter to showing how this freedom is not only a basic human right but, as recognised by the US Constitution, the very first freedom. Federal law in the form of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act has also recognised the key importance of this principle, although it has, says Anderson, a “discouraging track record” in defending bakers, photographers and florists who don’t want to provide services for same-sex weddings. Protection of religious liberty is very much on the agenda, post Obergefell.
One of the biggest guns rolled out against free speech in this area is anti-discrimination law, based on the claim that opposing same-sex marriage is equivalent to racism. Anderson devotes a chapter to showing “Why Sexual Orientation Is Not Like Race”.
In selling their case to the public same-sex marriage advocates have also drawn attention to “real families -- loving, responsible, stable – who long for ‘marriage equality’” and research which shows “no difference” between children brought up by a same-sex couple or by their married mom and dad. Anderson therefore devotes another chapter to the social science which shows otherwise and to “The Victims” – individuals (and there are a significant number by now) who have spoken up about their experience of being raised in a same-sex household. Among these is Katy Faust, given a hard time in a televised Q&A in Australia lately for arguing against same-sex parenting, after formerly defending it.
Like 'bigots', or pro-lifers?
Anderson begins his book with a reminder that an equally momentous Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, did not end the debate about abortion. Indeed, apart from extremists, most people who accept abortion also understand and respect the reasons pro-life citizens oppose it. The latter have not been driven into some ghetto for bigots and the number of people who describe themselves as “pro-life” has grown.
"Will defenders of marriage be treated like bigots?" asks Anderson. Or will they be shown the same tolerance for their conscientious beliefs, and the right to express them, as pro-lifers enjoy today? It depends on what we do from here on. His last two chapters – “Building a Movement” and “The Long View” – set out the practical consequences of this task, and they range from living the truth about marriage to raising money for the public campaign; from becoming better Christians to fostering inter-religious dialogue. “The Church needs to find a way to capture the moral imagination of the next generation.”
Specifically, there is a need for new laws protecting religious liberty rights – already enacted in North Carolina, Michigan and Texas – in all states. In general, a fight for a sound judiciary, more limited government, and push back on the sexual revolution. It was the sexual revolution, after all, that got us to the point of seeing marriage as merely an emotional union that two men or two women – or three or more people of whatever sex – could take on, and, like the rest of us, throw off at will.
As Anderson concludes, the task ahead is nothing less than “rebuilding, over decades perhaps, the intellectual and moral infrastructure of a society that can once again appreciate the truth about marriage.”
Carolyn Moynihan is deputy editor of MercatorNet.
Exactly. Marriage is about continuing the human race, it's not about sex or even love.
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This statement is false. What is needed is for the government to follow the laws as written, not to invent new laws they will also ignore.
I disagree that we “need” more laws and a bigger government.
I am curious, intellectually, whether the laws and bigger government are results of or contributors to the amorality we see in this nation today.
Just finished reading it. Very, very readable and very, very important. If you don’t read another non-fiction book this year, read this one.
Really, the only winning argument I can think of is:
“Marriage is for the children”
Homos have claimed sympathy by playing the “minority victim” card, but innocent children can garner more sympathy than that. So we need to repeat loudly and often that “gay marriage” is fundamentally unfair to children, who deserve, whenever feasible, to be raised by their biological parents.
Homosexual “marriage” is about removing Individualism and Natural Law (Common Sense/Reason) from little children——to make them have an irrational tribal mind-—no different from muslims, Incas, Spartans, Samurai——etc. The elites stated this 200 years ago-—that billions have to be killed and that children have to be made so dumb they believe the State when they “say” “snow is black”. These minds will make “happy slaves” for the State. (Fichte 1810). They created the Prussian system to actually destroy Virtue in your children-—it created the Hitler Youth Mind.
Homosexual “Marriage” removes Objective Truth/Natural Laws from our Constitution-—so that all children raised in such an incoherent, irrational culture will be raised with such scientific Lies and the dehumanization which removes babies from their biological mother and father——it makes them into slaves/dumb/tribal thinkers. Biology is sacred and humanizing and connects children in meaningful ways to the past and future (God’s Design/Natural Law). Marx intended to remove all biological connections in children (that is why “no-fault” divorce (Lenin’s invention) to destroy unity—destroy the emotional development of children-—put them in irrational, artificial systems so Common Sense (emotional strength) is obliterated.
They will NOT be able to be critical, moral, mature people because they will be embedded with the images and “facts” that two males are interchangeable with male/female. They will grow up to be irrational and incapable of a Christian Worldview, like the Samurai-—so they will embed desires that use others in dehumanizing, and vile ways-—as a Means to an End—as Good. It is a Marxist Worldview-—incompatible with Christian Worldview (our Constitution) which is about seeing the face of God in ALL people——you HAVE to NEVER use others in degrading, meaningless, evil ways. (We are not perfect and will-—BUT all Just Laws promote VIRTUE ALWAYS.)
This making the Vice of sodomy “Good” is flipping Worldview to the opposite of Christianity and our Constitution—the ONLY worldview where all people have dignity and worth. Individuality is a Christian concept ONLY. Destroying sexual identity in children is the easiest way to destroy identity-—which is essential to make all people interchangeable cogs in the wheel for the NWO.
This “homosexual marriage” makes children into an object to buy and sell. It normalizes slavey like it was for thousands of years prior to Christianity. It is intrinsically evil as only Christians claimed-—as much or more than abortion which is also only Christians who condemn child sacrifice (and religious Jews). You are killing the Souls of children when you try to “normalize” sodomizing others....it is sick and irrational-—it is the today’s culture of muslims who hate women and who prefer boys for “sex”-—it was rampant in ALL pagan cultures-—including the pre-Christianized American Indian....it was the “norm” (segregation of males and females) when there is no true God and no Objective Truth.
The Christian Worldview is the ONLY thing which gave us the Age of Reason and Modern Science in the West=a RATIONAL God. True unity only happens when you unite the two most diverse people-—male/female.
Immaturity is the inability to love “the Other”....it is a fixation in the Latency period, where one will prefer “the Same” and reject the “Other”.
It is normal for 6-13 year olds to prefer the same sex-—it is essential for normal sexual identity formation. To “mature”, if they are not traumatized or warped (innocence is essential) and fixated in immature stages, children will grow to love the Other. All Spartans were homosexual as all muslims today (they hate and use women like cattle)-—it is a Worldview and learned like ALL worldviews. Walid Shoebat stated that the Saudis prefer the boys for sexual recreation-—like the elites in Hollywood and the Franklin Cover-Up group (Washington DC/FBI/CIA).
Without God, there is no Good and Evil. (Dostoevsky). And Without Virtue, there is no possibility of Freedom. (Montesquieu). Only unity (Love of others) creates Trust and economically flourishing cultures......otherwise, we will devolve in chaos and that will bring on Tyranny.
All Law that ceases to be Just (virtuous), ceases to be Law. Since Oliver Wendell Holmes, jr, we have removed “Justice” from Just Law (incoherent and impossible——but he got away with the Marxist “trick” and the destruction of Words and Language).
We need to put the treasonous judges in jail. Return the Meaning of Words (Truth)——they are removing Reason and Natural Law (God’s Laws) from Just Law and making Vice, Stalin’s Constitution of Slavery to sin or masters, normal in America.
So, you’re saying homosexuals are stuck in a 6-13 year old’s world view. I assume they are, because of some horrible abuse that occurred in those years.
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