Posted on 02/24/2004 11:59:52 PM PST by JohnHuang2
Time for the counterrevolution
© 2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, has given America an object lesson in how the Left imposes its radical social revolution on a confused majority that knows not how to fight it.
Out on Sodom by the Bay, Newsom, in defiance of a law enacted by California voters two-to-one in a referendum, ordered city officials to hand out marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Newsom says that the law violates the state constitution. For his civil disobedience, he has become a hero to militant homosexuals all the way to Provincetown. His defiance has spread to New Mexico and Chicago, where Mayor Richard Daley has declared his solidarity.
Where did Newsom get his idea? Perhaps from Massachusetts, where the Supreme Judicial Court has ordered Gov. Romney and the legislature to start handing out marriage licenses to homosexuals by May.
Civil unions do not meet our demand, the court told Bay State elected leaders. You must vote homosexuals absolute and equal rights to marry. Now stop dithering and get on with it.
What is happening here in America is an end run around democracy by an elite that believes its superior morality places it above the law. First, the Left engages in defiance and disobedience of a law it detests, then it goes judge-shopping to find some jurist-ideologue who will agree and overturn the law. And thus does the minority rule America.
Yet, seeing the smug certitude of Newsom, and the befuddlement of the authorities, there is no doubt who is winning the culture war and who will prevail if Middle America does not find leaders of greater fiber. We live in an age, wrote the poet Yeats, when "the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity."
Now, no state in the Union has ever provided for homosexual marriages, and most states have enacted statutes prohibiting such nonsense. However, the people may now have lost their right to decide. For the judges have stepped in and seized the issue.
In Massachusetts, it was the state's highest court that ordered the governor and legislature to license same-sex marriages. In California, the state supreme court will decide whether Newsom's licenses are valid. In this capital, the Supreme Court will tell us whether denying homosexuals a right to marry violates our Constitution, though no one ever imagined such an absurdity until last year.
While the idiocy underway at San Francisco city hall exposes the moral rot in America, it also reveals how we are losing the republic that was our patrimony. Our forefathers overthrew a rule of kings. But we have meekly submitted to a rule of judges.
The majority no longer rules, and America needs either a counterrevolution or a second revolution to reclaim the republic born of the first. And there are weapons within the Constitution we can employ to carry off that revolution.
President Bush has taken a bold first step with the recess appointments of David Pryor and Charles Pickering to the U.S. appellate court. Both men were denied a vote by Senate obstructionists. Should Daschle, Kennedy and Co. deny Bush a vote on his first Supreme Court nominee, he should not hesitate to make history's first recess appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. He can become as great a hero to Middle America as Newsom is on Castro Street.
It is time presidents began using their constitutional power to uphold and defend the Constitution against justices perverting it to impose their cultural Marxism on a once-Christian republic. We need the spirit of Jefferson, who refused to enforce the Alien and Sedition Acts, of Jackson, who roared: "John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it!"
Yet, the real power to rein in and corral a renegade court lies with our Congress. Under Article III, as South Carolina law professor William Quirk has long argued, Congress "determines the jurisdiction of the federal courts."
"Congress has the power to establish or abolish all federal courts except the Supreme Court and ... the power to abolish includes the power to limit their jurisdiction."
Congress, writes Quirk, "could re-enact the Defense Of Marriage Act restricting marriage to men and women with one sentence, 'This law is not subject to review by the lower federal courts or the U.S. Supreme Court.' Then the issue would return to the states, where President Bush and the Democratic candidates say it should be."
In Boston and Sacramento, Govs. Romney and Schwarzenegger and the legislatures could reject the Newsom licenses and defy any court order that overturns validly enacted law, or tells legislators what laws they must enact. What would the state supreme courts do? Order Schwarzenegger and Romney arrested? Declare the legislators in contempt?
Let them. Then the legislators can impeach the judges, throw them out, and get new judges who can read and understand constitutions.
Yet, the real power to rein in and corral a renegade court lies with our Congress. Under Article III, as South Carolina law professor William Quirk has long argued, Congress "determines the jurisdiction of the federal courts."
"Congress has the power to establish or abolish all federal courts except the Supreme Court and ... the power to abolish includes the power to limit their jurisdiction."
Congress, writes Quirk, "could re-enact the Defense Of Marriage Act restricting marriage to men and women with one sentence, 'This law is not subject to review by the lower federal courts or the U.S. Supreme Court.' Then the issue would return to the states, where President Bush and the Democratic candidates say it should be."
Marriage Protection Act of 2003 H. R. 3313
To amend title 28, United States Code, to limit Federal court jurisdiction over questions under the Defense of Marriage Act.
Article 3, Section 2, Clause 2
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make
Article III, Section 2 - The Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED
In the 107th Congress (2001-2002), Congress used the authority of Article III, Section 2, clause 2 on 12 occasions to limit the jurisdiction of the federal courts.
The Marriage Protection Act addresses that possibility by removing the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction, as well as inferior federal courts’ original and appellate jurisdiction, over DOMA’s full faith and credit provision. It also removes appellate jurisdiction from the Supreme Court and inferior federal courts over DOMA’s marriage definition.
This is the sort of legislative check the Founders intended. Article I, Section 8 and Article III, Sections 1 and 2 of the Constitution grant Congress the authority to establish inferior federal courts, determine their jurisdiction and make exceptions to the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction. By implementing this legislative power we can preserve each state’s traditional right to determine its own marriage policies without federal court interference. (For instance, a state of appeals court in Arizona last week upheld that state’s DOMA law.)
DOMA - Protecting Federalism in Family Law
Congress clearly has the power to enact legislation defining the full faith and credit effect of states' laws, records and judgments. The very language of the Full Faith and credit Clause of the Constitution (Article IV, §1) explicitly provides that "Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records, and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof." The Supreme Court has repeatedly acknowledged Congress' constitutional authority to establish full faith and credit rules.
THE MARRIAGE AMENDMENT - ANOTHER TROJAN HORSE
The second problem with this "Marriage Amendment" is that the U.S. Government has no authority or right to define marriage, only God has. James Madison observed in The Federalist, #45, "The powers delegated by the proposed constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite." This amendment would, for the first time ever in history, give the federal government jurisdiction over marriage and the home. The 10th Amendment is our protection from the federal government getting involved where they should not be. Marriage should remain exclusively under state dominion. My state, as many others, already has laws that define marriage. When the Federal government decides that marriage can be anything it wants it to be, what happens to the state laws?
To truly save marriage the way God intended it to be is to attack the root of the problem. The root of the problem is you and me, the Christians who are ignorant of the Constitution, who vote into office pro sodomite Republicans, Republicans who are afraid to take a stand, and Republicans who will not impeach judges or reign in their jurisdiction.
Article III Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution has the remedy for tyrannical unconstitutional judges. Congress is to impeach them or reign in their unlawful rule.
They have not done their job because we have not made them do their job.
I am very concerned with why pro family groups like Focus on the Family and American Family Association who are behind this amendment when they know it will not help. Something strange is going on here. The cure is very simple - make congress do their job. Adding an amendment to the constitution takes 2/3rds of the states voting yes, a great feat and very expensive. It will not stop runaway judges!
Government doesn't set the standard. God sets the standard, and hopefully government will recognize it. Too often they don't. I don't need government "permission" to be married before God. Some may need government help to enforce divorce circumstances, custody arrangements, etc. Therefore government has to have the ability to recognize when someone is married and divorced.
In any case, your position just isn't reasonable. Government is involved in marriage whether we like it or not, and that isn't going to change. What may change soon is the government's perception of what is real marriage and what is not, and the cultural ramifications of that stand.
So because of present circumstances, I'm fully on board with an amendment. It's the only way.
TVC Leader Travels To Massachusetts To Defend Marriage!
http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1321
Traditional Marriage Is Worth Protecting!
http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1231
Same-Sex Marriages And Domestic Partnerships: Are They Good For Families And Society?
http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=getit&lid=22
Domestic Battering: Homosexual couples experience high rates of physical violence and emotional abuse.
http://www.traditionalvalues.org/pdf_files/DomesticBattering.pdf
Homosexuals Attack The Institution Of Marriage
http://www.traditionalvalues.org/pdf_files/HomoMarriage.PDF
Do Homosexuals Really Want The Right To Marry?
http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1150
They Want Marriage To Mean Nothing
http://www.family.org/cforum/feature/a0028405.cfm
The Marriage Amendment
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0310/editorial.html
Christian Institute Statement On Marriage
http://www.christian.org.uk/html-publications/gaymarriage.htm
Protecting The Traditional Definition Of Marriage In Canada
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/marriage/mf0041.html
The Many Benefits Of Traditional Marriage
http://www.academia.org/campus_reports/2000/december_2000_4.html
Gay Marriage And Defense Of Traditional Marriage: A Breakpoint Compendium
http://www.leaderu.com/socialsciences/colson-gaymarr-compendium.html
Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-One Conclusions From The Social Sciences
http://www.americanvalues.org/html/a-wmm_introduction.html
The Marriage Movement: A Statement Of Principles
http://www.marriagemovement.org/html/report.html
Vatican Statement On Same-Sex Marriage
http://www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/CDfhomun.htm
You are right about this. We don't need to define marriage in order to solve property disputes. People don't have to be married in order to jointly own property.
Marriage is a cultural institution which was usurped by the anti-Christian socialist state. We should have complete separation of marriage and state. That way people could have their atheist weddings or gay weddings or cross-species weddings or whatever. No one would have a problem with any of it as long as the government wasn't involved.
Unfortunately this will not happen, so we are forced to support a federal amendment.
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