Posted on 07/21/2022 7:18:39 PM PDT by Ennis85
By a vote of 267 to 157, with 47 Republicans joining the majority, the House has passed a bill requiring all state governments to stick with the redefinition of marriage that the Supreme Court ordered in 2015. The best thing that can be said about this legislation is that it is legislation, not an edict from a judiciary usurping legislative authority. Senate Republicans should nonetheless oppose this bill, because these congressmen are making a mistake.
Or rather, they are making several mistakes. The bill raises four distinct questions for federal legislators. Is the judicially imposed definition better or wiser than the older one? If so, should the federal government insist that states adhere to it? Have the downsides of this specific legislation received sufficient consideration? And given that the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges continues to have the force of law, does passing the bill serve any good purpose? The answer to all four questions is no.
Start with the first question. We do not deny that committed same-sex relationships can and often do have much of great value: affection, mutual caregiving, love. Some same-sex relationships clearly exceed some opposite-sex ones in these important measures. But marriage as an institution, including its governmental dimension, does not exist to award certificates of worthiness on loving relationships. Love needs no license from the state. The stipulation that marriage unites two people, and only two people, does not rest on any official determination that three or more people cannot have the same feelings for one another, provide the same care, and so on — as “throuples” have increasingly insisted that they can since Obergefell.
It rests instead on the biological realities of our sexual dimorphism and complementarity, the economic needs of mothers and children, and the long train of human history, experience, and tradition. The reason it was considered the union of one man and one woman until just yesterday is because such unions, and only such unions, often produce children. Other, varying rules surrounding it — age restrictions, bans on participating in simultaneous marriages, and so forth — built on that basic reality. The Latin word matrimonium spells out that motherhood and the family were at the heart of it, that marriage was meant to foster and support the bonds of the natural family. The laws and rituals around marriage reflect the interest of an entire society in the estate of each marriage, and impose obligations on that society far beyond any normal contract between two consenting adults.
The law never took a purely instrumental view of marriage, one that regards it as worthwhile only insofar as it yields children. But it did regard it as oriented toward child-rearing. It aimed, in a way that grew less coercive over time, to encourage adults to arrange their lives so that as many children as possible are raised and nurtured by their biological parents in a common household.
Same-sex marriage was not the first step away from this model of marriage. Many social trends and legal developments have weakened the links between sex, marriage, and child-rearing. But that weakening has generally been regrettable rather than laudable. The need for a marriage culture that channels adult behavior in a way conducive to the well-being of children remains as vital as ever. Same-sex marriage obscures the purpose of marriage as an institution and therefore makes the institution less capable of achieving it.
And more bad effects have followed in its train. The bullying, unfairness, and sheer illogic of the trans movement have all drawn strength from same-sex marriage. The attempt to give same-sex couples the same legal and social dignity as married couples had demanded the expansion, and diminished the possibility of criticism and correction, of a market in human flesh: embryos and surrogates, an entrepreneurial field in which the most vulgar eugenics is practiced.
The facile argument that government recognition of same-sex marriages “does not affect you” has turned out to be risibly untrue. Countless lawsuits after Obergefell have worked to diminish the religious liberty of Jews, Muslims, and Christians who hold on to the historic moral and metaphysical commitments of their faith. It is not just bakers and florists, but religious universities, schools, religious orders, and adoption agencies that have faced all manner of legal threats since this alteration to our laws.
All of these are reasons for governments to adhere to the older view of marriage, and reasons for the federal government to allow them to do so. Allowing states to reach different conclusions on this issue would not cause chaos or prove unworkable, as it did not in the years just before 2015. Congress need not legislate a national policy.
And there are still unanswered questions about the Respect for Marriage Act. Its promise of total reciprocity among states, without exception or limitation, suggests the effacement of laws that regulate the age of consent for marriage and prohibitions against consanguineous marriages. Have proponents scrutinized it sufficiently?
There is, finally, the questionable need for the policy. As constitutionally dubious as Obergefell was, and as welcome a restoration of legislatures’ ability to preserve a better understanding of marriage would be, the prospect of the decision’s reversal is vanishingly small. Democrats are pretending otherwise because a grand total of one justice of the Supreme Court has written that Obergefell should be rethought.
He said so in his concurring opinion in Dobbs, in which a majority of justices voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. But Obergefell is much less vulnerable than Roe was. State legislatures constantly probed the limits of Roe. Nothing similar has happened to Obergefell. No cases about it are winding their way through the courts. If one ever appeared and the Supreme Court took it, even conservative justices could reasonably conclude that the case for overturning it is weaker than was the case for overturning Roe, which unjustifiably restricted legislative authority to protect human life.
What, then, is the point of this bill? It appears to be to demoralize social conservatives, to cast the opponents of same-sex marriage as a dwindling band of bigots. Republican politicians should not go along with it.
I don’t think there are enough spines for rent in the country.
I’m not sure why but RINOs appear to be feeling invincible because they are voting with dims on every bill that has been hitting the floor!
G W MORON was supposed to nip fag marriage in the bud, so we voted for him despite being a TOTAL POS MORON. Yet we still got fag marriage anyway. Then the fags forced us to bake them a cake and celebrate their perversity. Now it’s tranny story hour for kids.... what’s next?
Thanks a lot for nothing RINOs!!
This is a trap. The bill also protects inter racial marriage. If they vote against one you vote against the other. You can imagine the ads they will run against any Republican who votes “against racial marriage”’.
I see that GOP House Rep Mike Turner from Ohio voted for fag marriage. Turner is another Ohio RINO POS! Rot in hell Mikey!
What have conservatives actual conserved? They can’t even stand up for the foundation of human civilization Marriage and the Family.
(the us is barreling down the highway to hell....next stop is sodom. and we know what happened there.)
Yep
✝️🙏🛐
People should be free to marry who they want. It does not seem conservative to me to hold a different position. It may be religiously conservative to oppose gay marriage, but it is not the politically conservative position.
The RINOs have them, since they are nol longer afraid to show their true colors.
The conservative position is the moral position, and that’s against degenerate behavior.
Try pushing that line in Stalin’s Russia, an atheistic state. No necessary connection to religion, nor did it make Stalin himself moral; he was attempting to stop his dystopia falling apart too quickly. Nice try.
"10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
"From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added]." —United States v. Butler, 1936.
In fact, the Constitution's Supremacy Clause does NOT apply to constitutionally indefensible, desperate Democratic and RINO election year, so-called federal marriage laws imo.
"Article 6, Clause 2: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land [emphases added]; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."
Corrections, insights welcome.
And speaking of election year, Trump's red tsunami of patriot supporters are reminded that they must vote twice this election year. Your first vote is to primary career RINO incumbents in federal and state governments. Your second vote is to replace outgoing Democrats and RINOs with Trump-endorsed patriot candidates.
Again, insights welcome.
We are losing God’s blessings on this country at an ever accelerating pace. Not only do we continue to provoke Russia to our detriment, we are provoking God by overruling Him on ABOMINTAIONS. Woe is us.....
>> The bill also protects inter racial marriage
Typical Rat trap.
If the GOP had balls, it would condemn the Rats for equating Blacks with homosexuality.
I so loathe republicans.
Would this bill prohibit the Supreme Court from sending marriage back to the states?
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