Posted on 12/08/2003 7:12:17 PM PST by Kay Soze
How legalizing gay marriage undermines society's morals
By Alan Charles Raul
WASHINGTON - The promotion of gay marriage is not the most devastating aspect of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's recent decision. The more destructive impact of the decision for society is the court's insidious denial of morality itself as a rational basis for legislation.
This observation is not hyperbole or a mere rhetorical characterization of the Goodridge vs. Department of Public Health decision. The Massachusetts justices actually quoted two opinions of the US Supreme Court (the recent anti-anti-sodomy ruling in Lawrence vs. Texas and an older anti-antiabortion ruling, Planned Parenthood vs. Casey) to support the proposition that the legislature may not "mandate (a) moral code" for society at large. The courts, it would seem, have read a fundamental political choice into the Constitution that is not apparent from the face of the document itself - that is, that individual desires must necessarily trump community interests whenever important issues are at stake.
These judicial pronouncements, therefore, constitute an appalling abnegation of popular sovereignty. In a republican form of government, which the Constitution guarantees for the United States, elected officials are meant to set social policy for the country. They do so by embodying their view of America's moral choices in law. (This is a particularly crucial manner for propagating morality in our republic because the Constitution rightly forbids the establishment of religion, the other major social vehicle for advancing morality across society.) In reality, legislatures discharge their moral mandates all the time, and not just in controversial areas such as abortion, gay rights, pornography, and the like.
Animal rights, protection of endangered species, many zoning laws, and a great deal of environmental protection - especially wilderness conservation - are based on moral imperatives (as well as related aesthetic preferences). Though utilitarian arguments can be offered to salvage these kinds of laws, those arguments in truth amount to mere rationalizations. The fact is that a majority of society wants its elected representatives to preserve, protect, and promote these values independent of traditional cost-benefit, "what have you done for me lately" kind of analysis. Indeed, some of these choices can and do infringe individual liberty considerably: For example, protecting spotted owl habitat over jobs puts a lot of loggers out of work and their families in extremis. Likewise, zoning restrictions can deprive individuals of their ability to use their property and live their lives as they might otherwise prefer. Frequently, the socially constrained individuals will sue the state, claiming that such legal restrictions "take" property or deprive them of "liberty" in violation of the Fifth Amendment, or constitute arbitrary and capricious governmental action. And while such plaintiffs sometimes do - and should - prevail in advancing their individual interests over those of the broader community, no one contends that the government does not have the legitimate power to promote the general welfare as popularly defined (subject, of course, to the specific constitutional rights of individuals and due regard for the protection of discrete and insular minorities bereft of meaningful political influence).
Even the much maligned tax code is a congeries of collective moral preferences. Favoring home ownership over renting has, to be sure, certain utilitarian justifications. But the fact is that we collectively believe that the country benefits from the moral strength growing out of families owning and investing in their own homes. Likewise, the tax deduction for charitable contributions is fundamentally grounded in the social desire to support good deeds. Our society, moreover, puts its money (and lives) where its heart is: We have gone to war on more than one occasion because it was the morally correct thing to do.
So courts that deny morality as a rational basis for legislation are not only undermining the moral fabric of society, they run directly counter to actual legislative practice in innumerable important areas of society. We must recognize that what the Massachusetts court has done is not preserve liberty but merely substitute its own moral code for that of the people. This damage is not merely inflicted on government, trampling as it does the so-called "separation of powers." It does much worse, for when judges erode the power of the people's representatives to set society's moral compass, they likewise undercut the authority of parents, schools, and other community groups to set the standards they would like to see their children and fellow citizens live by. Indeed, it is a frontal assault on community values writ large.
It is thus no wonder that many feel our culture's values are going to hell in a handbasket. Yet, neither the federal nor Massachusetts constitutions truly compel such a pernicious outcome. Indeed, to this day the Massachusetts Constitution precisely recognizes that "instructions in piety, religion and morality promote the happiness and prosperity of a people and the security of a republican government." It cannot be stated better than George Washington did in his first inaugural address: "The foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the pre-eminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens and command the respect of the world."
• Alan Charles Raul is a lawyer in Washington. This commentary originally appeared in The Washington Post. ©2003 The Washington Post.
Your report cites 73% not 76%. I confess I've had sex with a girl under age 18 in my life. Put me down in your hetero research. Oh you say you don't have any hetero research on that stat. Does the stat include when the respondant was in the same age group as the "victim." Do you think an 18 year old having sex with a 17 year old is molestation? This is indicative of the misuse of research by the folks of your ilk. You cite numbers and when someone looks into it, you cannot draw the same conclusion. Typical of zealots and propagandists.
Your mental health issue is ridiculous and not backed up by any intelligent thinking person. Shall we go outside and take a poll? There are many things that have been considered mental illness historically which are not now seen as such. If you think the decision to remove the designation was a political one. you may be right and just ignorant as to what "political" means. Our elections and our government are mostly political for example.
The owner does not like things homosexual. He has removed threads which had positive things to say about homosexuality including research. He has allowed namecalling and personal attacks including nazi and gestapo when referring to activists, we may disagree with. He has however, to his credit, banned at least one poster who called for violence. Homos and muslims are people you can excoriate and personally attack here with no sanction.
You've been here 1 month longer than I, how many posts that support homosexual rights or interests have you seen posted? It may be religious to blast homosexuality, but it is not necessarilly conservative. In fact, I argue that it is unamerican to paint all individuals in a category with the same brush. And when the paint is inaccurate of false, it is dishonest.
Sorry. You are absolutely right. Let's go back to my statement:
The idea that we are somehow beyond the need for the state to involve itself in the regulation of procreation is laughable. Marriage is the institution around which this regulation centers.
The reason for this regulation of procreation (even before the state entered the picture) is to maintain stable family structures. I must have said that on other threads and neglected to make it clear here.
I don't know what you mean by this. I do know that marriage has changed over and over. It has been different in different countries and in places in the US.
What's one more change? What problem does this creat for you? Doesn't it have some health or stability benefit for society?
Look, I know you are trying to argue that because the government doesn't perform fertility tests that that can't be the purpose of marriage. NutCrackerBoy and I simply reject that logic. That's just not how it works.
Again, it gets back to the promotion versus prohibition concept. We are not prohibiting certain people from joining together in a private union or even having children, we are promoting the best possible family structure for doing so by providing legal advantages for this structure. The fact that people take advantage of that legal benefit without using it for its express purpose is immaterial, as long as it accomplishes its overall goal.
Furthermore, a reliable conclusive test for infertility has yet to be developed. Yes there are certain physical conditions where it becomes clear that infertility is a near certainty, but for couples in general there's no way to gauge fertility with certainty. So it's just not a practical test. Again, it doesn't matter, because the government's goal is achieved even if people get married without having children, because the majority of married couples do at least try to.
Finally, even if a couple is infertile, they can choose to adopt. And frankly the best family structure for adoptive children is the same as for bioligical children: a stable heterosexual marriage. Hence there is still an interest in promoting the marriage among infertile couples.
But if insist want to go down this road, where the government cannot promote am institution unless only its purpose is fulfulled, that's fine. I am more than willing to entertain a new legal structure in which the full protections of marriage are reserved only for heterosexual couples with children. In other words, you would still get married in a personal ceremony, but full legal status would kick in only upon the birth or adoption of a child.
Your reading comprehension skills are about those of a ten year-old, I said that it would impact the rights of a yet-to-be-born issue from that marriage.
You on the other hand, are arguing that homosexual marriages somehow intrude upon your rights, but fail to explain how so.
I will say it again, it is not a matter of what the law allows. If two people want to go to a hyper-liberal church and have the pastor perform a marriage ceremony and pronounce them man and wife, or man and man, or man and wife and wife 2, so be it. Nobody is stopping them from doing this. They're just not going to receive the same benefits from the government for doing so. And equal protection does not mean equal provision.
Take my charitable tax deduction analogy. I am free to donate money to whatever cause I want---well, save a random terrorist organization here and there (a subject for another thread, please :)). But I can only deduct on my tax return those charities that are registered non-profits under appropriate U.S. Treasury codes. I am not being prevented from doing anything: I'm just receving the same encouragement.
I disagree with you on specifics regarding homosexuality, as to:
1. homosexuality is a disease with a definite cure - I take it as a way that someone is, with a limited degree of changeability
2. what constitutes public or private behavior
3. what constitutes recruiting
However, I don't entirely blame you for being intolerant on many counts.
Of course the humane thing is to get them cured but if they won't seek the cure then they will bear the responsibility for it. Can't force someone to get better...
Human beings must be responsible in any case for what they are and what they do.
...you can only quarantine them away from the healthy population
I'm afraid you've once again stepped way out of line, in my opinion.
The government played no role in that relationship.
I cite real world cases. You spin.
The problem is that you are dealing with Constitutional issues, and Constitutional rights cannot be defined by gender. Citizens have rights, and "citizen" is a genderless entity.
The fact that we have a definition that you agree with does not mean that it will stand a Constitutional challenge.
You're correct. I was quoting from memory and didn't go back to the other thread to get the right number. My fault. (just installed firebird and haven't had time to play with the tabbed browsing yet. Looks like it will be a great help.) Of course 73% is just as abominable as 76% when it comes to molesting.
I confess I've had sex with a girl under age 18 in my life. Put me down in your hetero research.
So did I but I was also under 18.
Oh you say you don't have any hetero research on that stat.
see scripters database. The numbers for hetero molestations are included also.
Does the stat include when the respondant was in the same age group as the "victim."
Yes
Do you think an 18 year old having sex with a 17 year old is molestation?
depends on circumstance. Usually not but sometimes yes. It is however statuatory rape.
Your mental health issue is ridiculous and not backed up by any intelligent thinking person.
Once again see scripter's database for the articles on this. There are a large number of psychiatrists who split from the APA over this. Also many with the org that disagree with it.
Shall we go outside and take a poll?
How many people qualified to make that distinction would be walking past your house right now? not many I guess. Most of them have never read the applicable portions of DSM III, the revised portions of DSM IV or the history behind the issue. Of course in my neighborhood everyone would agree with me. I have the benefit of living in a very Christian small town
Glad to hear that JR knows the truth. (I suspected strongly but didn't know)
Since the breakem screen name is only since 8/24/2001 who were you before? I've been here since 7/8/1998. I lurked for a while before that though.
While your points may or may not be true my point was that the physiology does not point to polygamy or monogamy, it points to heterosexuality
Please don't tell me you are going to say a definition of marriage (that matches the dictionary definition) interferes with a person's Constitutional right to marry whomever he or she pleases.
If her teacher is indeed 'homosexual' you can bet your last dollar that your daughter has been exposed somehow to homosexual behavior. It could be in stories about her teacher's 'friend' or in the bias that theteacher brings to the class. But she is trying to recruit. They all do.
(admittedly she may not be consciously recruiting but since for the mentally diseased ('homosexual') person sex is everything they are, her perversion will color the rest of her life.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.