Free Republic

Five Supreme Court justices agreed that culture reigns over Constitution in Obergefell v. Hodges, as they found another emanation from the 14th Amendment--this one granting "dignity and liberty"--a phrase that most (American) third year law students would be hard pressed to find in their texts (at least before Friday). Fortunately, Americans pay Supreme Court justices for their careful legal analysis and foresight on issues like this.  Four of them saw the cowardice in having the Court decide what is outside their proper role. Four of the justices dissented in the case.  Here are their own words. In his dissent, Justice...

Within hours of the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, an array of conservatives including the governors of Texas and Louisiana and religious groups called for stronger legal protections for those who want to avoid any involvement in same-sex marriage, like catering a gay wedding or providing school housing to gay couples, based on religious beliefs. They demanded establishing clear religious exemptions from discrimination laws, tax penalties or other government regulations for individuals, businesses and religious-affiliated institutions wishing to avoid endorsing such marriages.

Jesus died so that heterosexual and homosexual sinners might be saved. Jesus created sexuality, and has a clear will for how it is to be experienced in holiness and joy. His will is that a man might leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and that the two become one flesh (Mark 10:6–9). In this union, sexuality finds its God-appointed meaning, whether in personal-physical unification, symbolic representation, sensual jubilation, or fruitful procreation. For those who have forsaken God’s path of sexual fulfillment, and walked into homosexual intercourse or heterosexual extramarital fornication or adultery, Jesus offers astonishing mercy....

Texas Senator and Presidential Candidate Ted Cruz said 2 Supreme Court rulings were so wrong they constitute one of the “darkest periods” in US history. I can not even begin to understand the blinders you’d need to wear to make such a callous statement as this. Slavery. Lynchings. Trail of Tears. Triangle shirtwaste factory. Hiroshima. Nagasaki. My Lai. Kent State. 9/11. Hurricane Katrina. When we first learned about Abu Ghrab. 115 migrants dead in the Texas borderlands in 2014. Even Charleston just last week. These were dark days folks. People dying is a dark day. People dying because we killed...

FAIRFAX, Va. — Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday night berated her Republican presidential rivals for protesting the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing gay marriage and for resisting stricter gun laws after the mass shooting in Charleston. Reflecting on what she called “an emotional roller-coaster of a day,” Mrs. Clinton lauded the 5-4 decision recognizing gay marriage and renewed her calls for “common sense” gun control. But she saved her strongest words for criticizing the Republican contenders, who she said “seemed determined to lead us right back into the past” on those and other issues. “Instead of trying to turn back the...

Stumping for president in northwest Iowa, Sen. Ted Cruz described the ruling as “the very definition of lawlessness” — the same epithet he applied a day earlier when the court affirmed Obamacare subsidies nationwide, even in states that, like Texas, refused to create their own insurance marketplace as contemplated in the text of the law. “Today is some of the darkest 24 hours in our nation’s history,” Cruz told Fox radio host Sean Hannity. Both rulings, he said, were instances of “naked and shameless acts of judicial activism.” To curb judicial excess, Cruz proposed a constitutional amendment requiring justices to...

Continuing his critique of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions on Obamacare and same-sex marriage, Sen. Ted Cruz said Friday that the rulings mark “some of the darkest 24 hours in our nations history.” Cruz made the comments in an interview on Sean Hannity’s radio show Friday afternoon. “Today is some of the darkest 24 hours in our nation’s history,” Cruz said. “I couldn’t say it more eloquently,” Hannity responded. “Yesterday and today were both naked and shameless judicial activism,” Cruz said. “Neither decision — the decision yesterday rewriting Obamacare for the second time. Six justices joined the Obama administration. You...

In 2001 the Netherlands legalized same-sex marriage, then came Belgium in 2003, South Africa in 2006, and Argentina in 2010. With Friday's historic Supreme Court ruling, the United States has done the same.Given that the American Psychiatric Association classified homosexuality as a mental illness until 1973, that's quite the turnaround. As the Pew Research Center has documented in their polling, the stance on same-sex marriage in America has undergone a radical transformation in the past 12 years. In the words of Time reporter David Von Drehle, same-sex marriage is an "increasingly uncontroversial controversy."In 2001 the Netherlands legalized same-sex marriage, then...

Take heart, patriot Americans. In the end, with faith in God, we will prevail over the forces of evil recently manifested in the two Supreme Court decisions. Continue to oppose tyrannical Obamacare and any other government mandates, and do not recognize gay faux marriage. I know that I will not recognize it, and neither will my Church: http://www.pravmir.com/archbishop-demetrios-marriage-is-a-sacred-institu... Work hard to elect constitutional conservatives who hold traditional moral values like Ted Cruz for president. Things may look glum right now with this tyrannical progressive onslaught, supported by most of the media powers, but not nearly so dismal as what General...

The Supreme Court has ruled 5–4 that the Constitution guarantees a right to gay marriage. Will this decision be the Brown v. Board of Education of our times or this generation’s Roe v. Wade? The difference, of course, is that Brown v. Board definitively established a magnificent new public morality that racism is wrong. The Supreme Court’s decision to strip human life in the womb of all legal protections, by contrast, set in motion a 50-year struggle that has yet to end. Which will it be? A great deal depends on how the men and women who want to be...

(snip) “The Court has long held the right to marry is protected by the Constitution,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the opinion. “For example, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12, invalidated bans on interracial unions, and Turner v. Safley, 482 U. S. 78, 95, held that prisoners could not be denied the right to marry.” Kennedy wrote that four principles “demonstrate that the reasons marriage is fundamental under the Constitution apply with equal force to same-sex couples.” “The first premise of this Court’s relevant precedents is that the right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept...

Distancing themselves from the majority on the Supreme Court, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas filed a dissenting opinion to Wednesday's Defense Against Marriage Act ruling, stating that “same-sex marriage presents a highly emotional and important question of public policy – but not a difficult question of constitutional law." "The Constitution does not guarantee the right to enter into a same-sex marriage,” the justices wrote. The landmark case was filed by Edith Windsor of New York, who was forced to pay taxes on an inheritance when Thea Spyer, the woman she married in Ontario, Canada, died in 2009. Windsor was...

June 25, 2015 (ThePublicDiscourse) -- It seems that the Supreme Court will probably strike down the conjugal marriage laws of our states. It seems Anthony Kennedy may have finally made up his mind that Aristotle was wrong in the first book of his Politics. Things are beginning to feel like a game of chicken: get out of the way now, or face being on the wrong side of history. For young people who have any proclivity to think the nature of marriage is rooted in sexual complementarity and generational renewal, the inevitable judgment of the ages can sting.The phrase “the wrong side...

June 24, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) -- I was a law student when I first learned of the consequences of not being politically correct concerning homosexuality. A former Miss America’s contract as the citrus growers’ brand-ambassador was allowed to lapse because she had successfully campaigned for the repeal of a pro-homosexual ordinance in Miami-Dade County. She was quoted as saying, “What these people really want, hidden behind obscure legal phrases, is the legal right to propose to our children that theirs is an acceptable, alternate way of life.” She was publicly humiliated -- "pied" on national television -- and her name -- Anita...

Australia’s leading gay activist claims that a booklet defending natural marriage by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference clearly breaches an anti-discrimination act. Worse, it exposes “vulnerable children” to “damaging messages”.Rodney Croome, national director of Australian Marriage Equality, is angry that Catholic schools in the state of Tasmania are distributing “Don’t Mess with Marriage”. Archbishop Julian Porteous plans to give 12,000 Tasmanian Catholic school children copies to pass on to their parents.Some teachers were horrified at the prospect of Catholic schools distributing Catholic literature, says Mr Croome: “The Catholic Church has every right to express its views from the pulpit but...

June 23, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) -- Perhaps as early as Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide whether America should become the 18th nation in the world to redefine marriage. Most observers expect the Court to strike down laws defining marriage as it can only be -- between a man and a woman.However, no matter what the Court decides, marriage can never change. Furthermore -- for the sake of children, other marriages, people with same-sex attractions, liberty, and society as a whole -- governments have a vested interest in promoting marriage, not abandoning it.As we head into the final...

It's amazing how quickly much of society seems ready to change the definition of an age old institution that has been at the core of its growth and development, without so much as a second thought. No societal institution has been as responsible for the growth and development of every individual, and of society as a whole, as has traditional marriage, the bedrock upon which stable children, stable families and flourishing personal and societal growth spring forth. One must also ask whether we would be equally as unquestioning were someone to suggest changing the other age old definition that is...

The polling results indicate that same-sex marriage will be an important, and likely very divisive, factor in the 2016 U.S. general election New polling data from the Pew Research Center shows very low levels of support for same-sex marriage among Republicans. The Pew Research Center survey, conducted May 12 to 18 among 2,002 adults, found just one-third of Republicans support same-sex marriage, in contrast to 65 percent of Democrats and Independents. Among religious groups, white evangelical Protestants are dominantly opposed to same-sex marriage, with a 70 percent opposition rate. Other major groups surveyed—including Catholics (38 percent opposed, 56 percent in...

Full title: 'Civil War' And 'Endless Trauma': What Opponents Predict Will Happen If Marriage Equality Is Legalized The Supreme Court will issue its decision this month in Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that could affirm that same-sex couples around the country have the constitutional right to marry. Same-sex marriage is already legal in 37 states and the District of Columbia. But in the remaining states, gay couples are prohibited from marrying, and couples who were legally married in other states are barred from having their unions recognized in these non-marriage equality states. If the Supreme Court affirms that same-sex couples...

Canon Jeremy Pemberton argues at Nottingham employment tribunal that Church of England unlawfully revoked his permission to officiateThe first priest to marry his same-sex partner has begun a discrimination case against the Church of England over its withdrawal of his right to officiate as a priest following the union. Canon Jeremy Pemberton, who married Laurence Cunnington in April 2014, had been informed that Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS trust was withdrawing an offer of a job after Bishop Richard Inwood refused him the official licence in the diocese of Southwell and Nottingham. The clergyman, who argues that Inwood unlawfully discriminated against...