Posted on 03/13/2004 9:31:11 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
Tenn. (BP)-If the New York Times editorial board is correct, then it is only a matter of time before the nation embraces same-sex marriage. The board, which has opined on same-sex marriage several times in recent months, wrote a 1,300-word editorial for the March 7 edition explaining how homosexual marriage legalization will transpire. The idea of marriage between two people of the same sex is still very new, and for some unsettling, but we have been down this road before, the newspaper stated. This debate follows the same narrative arc as womens liberation, racial integration, disability rights and every other march of marginalized Americans into the mainstream. Same-sex marriage seems destined to have the same trajectory: from being too outlandish to be taken seriously, to being branded offensive and lawless, to eventual acceptance. As an example of the issues widening appeal, the board mentioned the pro-same-sex marriage editorial by Baylor Universitys student newspaper. The Times editorial compared bans on same-sex marriage to bans on interracial marriage, which were struck down in 1967 by the U.S. Supreme Court. Calling marriage one of the basic civil rights of man, the Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that Virginia had to let interracial couples marry, The Times editorial board asserted. Thirty-seven years from now, the reasons for opposing gay marriage will no doubt feel just as archaic, and the right to enter into it will be just as widely accepted. The Defense of Marriage Act, which gives states the option of not recognizing another states same-sex marriage, should be struck down as unconstitutional, the editorial argued. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have pointed to the law while saying that a federal constitutional marriage amendment isnt needed. But the law has not been tested, and it should eventually be found to violate the constitutional requirement that states respect each others legal acts, the editorial read. As a practical matter, the nation is too tightly bound today for peoples marriages to dissolve, and child custody arrangements to change, merely because they move to another state. LAWSUITS FILED -- Liberty Counsel and the American Family Association filed joint lawsuits March 11 in Multnomah County, Ore., and Seattle. The Oregon lawsuit, filed with the Oregon Supreme Court, seeks to stop Multnomah County from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The Seattle lawsuit seeks to stop Mayor Greg Nickels from giving benefits to city employees who marry elsewhere. OPINION IN CONN. - Even though same-sex marriages havent been attempted in his state, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal says he will issue an opinion on their legality within the next month. These legal issues are tremendously significant and merit careful and thorough research and analysis, he said, according to The Stamford (Conn.) Advocate. The statutes may not be definitive or absolutely clear on this, and there may be constitutional questions of very substantial magnitude and complexity. THE NEXT SAN FRAN.? -- Since the California Supreme Courts March 11 order to San Francisco officials to cease issuing same-sex marriage licenses, Multnomah County, Ore., is the only place currently issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. However, other localities may soon follow. The San Jose, Calif., city council voted 8-1 March 9 to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. In Pennsylvania, council members for the town of New Hope passed a resolution March 9 by a 5-0 vote favoring same-sex marriage legalization, although it carries no legal weight, according to the Associated Press. Same-sex marriage supporters have filed lawsuits in several states recently, including California, New York, Tennessee and Washington. PUPPY LOVE -- Entertainer Barbara Streisand criticized President Bush for supporting a constitutional marriage amendment, telling a gathering of the Human Rights Campaign that happiness can be many things, even a warm puppy. HRC is the nations largest homosexual rights organization. The law cannot dictate matters of the heart, she said, according to Talon News. When two people form a deep bond, there is usually a soul connection, and the soul has no gender. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are fundamental rights in this country. Happiness can be many things -- a good meal, a good friend, a warm puppy, and certainly ... love. How can anyone legislate who you can love? That is a human right, the right to love and be loved. VIRGINIA BILL PASSES -- The Virginia Senate passed a bill March 10 that would ban both same-sex marriage and civil unions. It passed by a vote of 28-10 and now goes to Gov. Mark R. Warner for his signature, according to The Virginia-Pilot. It already passed the House. Virginia has a ban on same-sex marriage, although legislators believe the state needs a broader ban that prohibits other types of contracts, such as those that exist in Vermont. WIS. HURDLE CLEARED -- The Wisconsin Senate passed a constitutional marriage amendment on a 20-13 vote March 11, clearing the first step in a three-step process to amend the state constitution. It already passed the state House. It now must pass in the next legislative session before going to the voters. Wisconsin has no ban on same-sex marriage. WINS, LOSSES -- Legislators in Kentucky, Minnesota and New Hampshire saw bills banning same-sex marriage advance in voting March 8-12, while legislators in Michigan, Maryland and Idaho saw bans fail. In Kentucky, the Senate passed by a vote of 33-4 an amendment that would ban both same-sex marriage and civil unions. A similar version is pending in the House. In Minnesota, a House committee passed a marriage amendment by an 8-4 vote. In New Hampshire, the Senate passed a statute banning same-sex marriage by a 16-7 vote. In Maryland, a House of Delegates committee voted down a statute and an amendment that would have banned same-sex marriage, the Associated Press reported. In Michigan, the full House failed to pass an amendment when a vote fell short of the required two-thirds majority. Needing 73 votes, the bill received 65 for it, 38 against it. In Idaho, the Senate voted 20-13 not to pull a marriage amendment out of a committee, according to AP. The committees chair earlier said the amendment isnt needed since President Bush backs a federal amendment. Supporters of the Idaho amendment say they will keep trying. Kentucky, Minnesota, Michigan and Idaho already have bans on same-sex marriage, although legislatures in the respective states are seeking to strengthen their laws against court rulings. Maryland and New Hampshire have no such protection.
That's next, I suppose.
The full faith and credit clause of the Constitution makes it impossible for one state to recognize a marriage, while other states do not.
Beyond same-sex marriage, which is against God's Law, lies advocacy for polygamy, which the European countries are already struggling with as immigrants form other cultures bring their multiple wives with them.
This is nothing less than an assault on 3500 years of our Judeo-Christian culture.
Please let me know when seccession begins, and which states plan to remain loyal to our civilization, which produced our Constitution.
When the Wall Street Journal phblishes such an editorial as this, its time to circle the wagons somewhere that we can live and teach our children the unchanging truth of Bible without being called hate-mongers, and bing charged with hate-crimes, as will become inevitable.
The Times editorial compared bans on same-sex marriage to bans on interracial marriage, which were struck down in 1967 by the U.S. Supreme Court.
I don't know, but I assume most of the religious congregations of the day wanted to keep the races separate. But I hazard to suggest that there were congregations that accepted inter-racial marriages. What were the arguments presented by the '67 Court?
And they see nothing wrong with that.
What We Can Do To Help Defeat the "Gay" Agenda |
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Homosexual Agenda: Categorical Index of Links (Version 1.1) |
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The Stamp of Normality |
The difference is that all these causes advanced because of their moral weight. Discrimination in these cases was just plain wrong. It is logically incorrect to believe that women shouldn't vote or that blacks are inferior to whites. And that pretense tells on the conscience of a moral people until eventually resistance gives way and the right thing is done.
Not so with homosexuality. Homosexuality is the wrong, not discrimination against it. Thus, it has no moral weight, and discrimination is perfectly justified and justifiable.
In the minds of left-wing social engineers, homosexuality equates to civil rights and suffrage. But not in the minds -- and the hearts -- of Americans.
George Bernard Shaw.
One only has to read what has befallen previous societies and cultures to know what will happen to us if we follow this path.
"O Father of our city, whence came such wickedness among thy Latin shepherds? How did such a lust possess thy grandchildren, O Gradivus? Behold! Here you have a man of high birth and wealth being handed over in marriage to a man, and yet neither shakest thy helmet, nor smitest the earth with thy spear, nor yet protestest to thy Father?"
"...But how can we take precautions against the unnatural loves of either sex, from which innumerable evils have come upon individuals and cities? How shall we devise a remedy and way of escape out of so great a danger? Cleinias, here is a difficulty. In many ways Crete and Lacedaemon furnish a great help to those who make peculiar laws; but in the matter of love, as we are alone, I must confess that they are quite against us. For if any one following nature should lay down the law which existed before the days of Laius, and denounce these lusts as contrary to nature, adducing the animals as a proof that such unions were monstrous, he might prove his point, but he would be wholly at variance with the custom of your states. Further, they are repugnant to a principle which we say that a legislator should always observe; for we are always enquiring which of our enactments tends to virtue and which not. And suppose we grant that these loves are accounted by law to be honourable, or at least not disgraceful, in what degree will they contribute to virtue?...[sic]"
Peter Robinson: "Do not believe it," says Scalia. "Today's opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions." A decade from now, will the Supreme Court have mandated homosexual marriage?
Judge Bork: I think it's less than a decade. Could happen in two ways. One is Massachusetts is about to announce a constitutional right under their constitution to homosexual marriage. At that point, people will come to Massachusetts, get married, go back to their home states. There is the full faith in credit clause, which says the other state, must give credit to the Massachusetts--there will be a fight about the constitutionality and an attempt to stop that. The other route--and that may spread across the country by state court action and by full faith and credit clause. The other route is direct appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, which I think, is ready to give a right to homosexual marriage, at least will be ready in a few years.
The only way to stop this is--there is a proposed constitutional amendment saying that marriage is something between a man and a woman. And you--and no statute or constitutional claim may be interpreted to say same sex marriages is a marriage. Now it doesn't try to stop civil unions. If legislatures want to approve civil unions, it's up to them. I would oppose that but it's up to them.
But marriage itself is too important I think to be sacrificed in the way that homosexual marriage would do. Now it must be said that heterosexuals have already done enormous damage to the marriage with their laws about no-fault divorce and that kind of thing so that the whole blame for the damage to the current situation of marriage and the family is certainly not to fall on homosexuals. But this would be a decisive step I think.
Peter Robinson: Unless there's an amendment to the Constitution, the Court will indeed mandate homosexual marriage?
Judge Bork: I think so.
Peter Robinson: Do you then support such an amendment?
Judge Bork: Yeah.
Peter Robinson: You do? And do you think that such amendment is likely to pass?
Judge Bork: It's iffy. The fact is that the opposition to homosexual marriage is eroding in the public. There's still a majority doesn't like it, thinks it's bad. But percentages are not as high as they used to be. And that is, in part, because of a brilliant campaign homosexual activists have waged to convince us that homosexuality is just like heterosexuality, just a question of taste, question of preference and no difference. I think that's not true but it's having its effect and it may be that the public will not be sufficiently alarmed to adopt a constitutional amendment.
Peter Robinson: So it's iffy?
Judge Bork: Yeah.
Bork said that when John Adams wrote the Massachusetts Constitution "it seems unlikely that he contemplated any principle which could conceivably create a right to homosexual marriage."
What the state constitution did create was three different, albeit equally important branches of government, Bork declared, but "by a 4-3 vote, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decided in Goodridge (vs. Department of Public Health) that the judicial power is also the legislative and the executive power."
" The state, in that respect, no longer has a government of laws, but one of four lawyers wearing robes," he continued.
Bork expressed dismay at the arguments used by the court to legalize gay marriage, calling them nothing but "vacuous theory ... that did not rise above the quality of a late-night philosophy session in a dormitory."
" A court majority took this decision from political correctness rather than law," he said. "Goodridge is a decision untethered to the federal or state constitution... If anything justifies the phrase 'judicial tyranny,' this one does."
According to Bork, the Massachusetts high court is not alone in making decisions which "are just not for the courts to decide."
" The U.S. Supreme Court is also guilty of judicial sin -- the willingness, even the eagerness to reach results by announcing principles that have no plausible relationship with the Constitution," he said.
Bork is a former federal appeals court judge and was solicitor general in the Justice Department 1972-77 and acting U.S. attorney general 1973-74. He has written several books, including "Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline."
He believes "judicial activism" stems from the "radical individualism which borders on nihilism" rampant throughout the country.
Absolute truths are no longer acceptable, he said. "Only the individual is allowed to decide what is meaningful to him."
Bork ended his talk by urging the legal professionals "to struggle (for the truth) even when the road seems long and the deck is stacked."
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