Posted on 07/14/2004 1:42:44 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Yes: Greater good will result from preserving the sanctity of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
Two U.S. Supreme Court rulings from the 1960s concerning sex and marriage announced results almost certainly favored at the time by a majority of Americans. In 1965, Griswold v. Connecticut held that government cannot restrict a married couple's access to contraceptives; in 1967, Loving v. Virginia concluded that government cannot withhold marriage from a man and a woman of different races. Central to both decisions was the fundamental importance of the husband/ wife relationship.
Almost 40 years later, the court in Lawrence v. Texas held on June 26 that government cannot criminalize noncommercial, private, homosexual acts between consenting adults (reversing the 1986 case of Bowers v. Hardwick) - a ruling that a majority of Americans may or may not favor.
The approach and language of Lawrence one day will lead to a Supreme Court result that a large majority of Americans strongly disfavor: same-sex marriage. We say "will," not "may," for two reasons. First, despite disclaimers from Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor, the reasoning of Lawrence, especially in the light of the reasoning in Griswold and Loving, leads to such a result and nowhere else. Second, Roe v. Wade (the 1973 pro-abortion decision), Romer v. Evans (the 1996 case blocking resolution by democratic means of affirmative action for gays) and now Lawrence destroy all hope for a Supreme Court that can withstand the temptation to displace the views of the American people in answering these deeply felt issues.
Lawrence is just the latest evidence that same-sex marriage is coming to America - whether the people of America want it or not. Within days, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Goodridge et al. v. The Department of Public Health will mandate same-sex marriage in the Bay State. The resulting Massachusetts same-sex marriages will not necessarily be limited in their effect and validity to that state.
According to the U.S. Constitution, all states are obligated to give full faith and credit to the "public Acts, Records and judicial Proceedings of every other State." That clause traditionally has been understood to apply to marriage law. (Many reading this essay were married in a state other than their present residence.) Massachusetts, therefore, may redefine marriage for America.
What the Supreme Court did in Lawrence, and what the Massachusetts court may be about to do in Goodridge, reveals an undeniable (and disturbing) reality of modern American democracy. Jurists often view themselves as particularly enlightened regarding our day's profound issues relating to marriage and sexual conduct - so much so that they do not hesitate to substitute their enlightenment for the people's judgment. As they do, the democratic prerogative - indeed, duty - of the American people to resolve moral and ethical issues is being abrogated in state after state, year after year. This sad reality of modern American democracy will continue unless and until there is a powerful sea change in present political/legal currents.
That change is the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) to the U.S. Constitution. Declaring that "marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman," the FMA is virtuous in two ways. First, its enactment and ratification will be a truly democratic act, the discharge of democratic responsibility, the fulfillment of the people's work. Neither the American people nor their elected representatives ever have enshrined same-sex marriage as a fundamental right. Nor have the great majority of Americans ever wavered in their judgment that marriage is wisely and properly limited to a union of a man and a woman, husband and wife. The FMA has the advantage of being the legitimate result of a legitimately democratic process.
The FMA also is substantively virtuous. The social, moral and political judgment of the great majority of Americans is right: Greater good will result from preserving marriage for the union of a man and a woman. Consider the following: Throughout the ages, marriage between man and woman has proved essential to individual development, social progress and communal prosperity [see, for example, Brigitte Berger's article, "The Social Roots of Prosperity and Liberty," in the journal Society (March 13, 1998)]. Indeed, as Berger has demonstrated, among influential institutions marriage between man and woman is unsurpassed in its impact on society. Natural marriage's central role in society's health - not just in American, but universally - has made natural marriage a "highly preferred" legal relationship. That preferred status is reflected in the numerous statutory and other legal preferences that have been created for the marital relationship, ranging from special tax and employment benefits to laws dealing with property ownership and intestacy to a whole host of other preferences and protections.
Contemporary American society can attest to the link between the health of natural marriages and the resulting nuclear families on one hand, and the health of society itself on the other hand. That experience has been demonstrated with divorce, particularly with the negative social consequences resulting from the 1970s divorce "reforms" that made divorce easier to achieve and vastly more common. The United States has paid an indisputably heavy price for the widespread "unmaking" of natural marriages and families. At the same time, contemporary American society also has witnessed positive evidence of the value of natural marriages and families, evidence ranging from the relatively high achievement of children from intact marriages in school and other worthwhile endeavors to their relatively low entanglement in the criminal-justice system.
Of equal or greater importance is the reality that natural marriage is essential to the very survival of society. The very conception of marriage indissolubly is linked to the societal imperatives of procreation and child-rearing. As the Supreme Court noted in the 1942 case Skinner v. Oklahoma, "Marriage and procreation are fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race."
Then there is the question of morality. Contrary to the vacuous assertion of occasional pundits, every government legislates on the basis of some notion of morality. It is impossible to excise all moral judgments from the lawmaking process, especially when lawmaking unavoidably involves issues as central to the human experience as love, sex, marriage, procreation and child-rearing.
Recognizing the difficulty of establishing an infallible ultimate arbiter of better and worse moral notions, Madisonian democracy leaves the moral decisions to the voice of the people, trusting that the judgments of the greater portion of the people will be better than those of the minority. In this process, the moral judgment of the common laborer is of equal dignity with the moral judgment of the university professor. (This last point merits particular notice, given the demonstrated divergence of the views of American judges and academics from those of the populace in general relating to the moral value of natural marriage, traditional families and same-sex marriage.) The moral judgment of the greater portion of the American people is that marriage is rightly left to a union of a man and a woman, husband and wife.
Judicially imposed same-sex marriage founders on all the points that support the virtue of natural marriage - and the virtue of the Federal Marriage Amendment. For example, although bearing the burden of proof, same-sex marriage advocates have brought forth no persuasive evidence that such an arrangement will contribute to, rather than subtract from, salutary individual development, social progress and communal prosperity.
Mere predictions of possible contributions well may be no more valid than the promises underlying the divorce "reforms" of 30 years ago (as well as the early 1970s promises, such as "abortion will not become routine," that were made to sustain the switch to abortion on demand). And to any charge that the burden of proof is unfair (given that societies for millennia have limited marriage to the union of a man and woman and thus precluded the needed database), the reply is simple: Perhaps the collective, indeed, universal wisdom of the ages ought not be discounted.
Because of humankind's profound interest in its own existence and perpetuation, because of its surpassing interest in channeling and promoting responsible procreative behavior, human societies throughout recorded history uniformly have preferred natural marriage. Same-sex marriage advocates fail to refute the basis for that preference: the imperative social interest in procreation. It is quite true that not all marital unions are fertile and that married couples may decide not to have children. But this reality does not support the claims of activist groups that heterosexual and homosexual unions are "equal" with "equal" social value. They are not.
Procreation requires a coupling between the two sexes. Sexual relations between a man and a woman, therefore, fundamentally differ from homosexual couplings. Homosexual couplings do not have the biological potential for reproduction: Children are possible only by means of legal intervention (e.g., adoption) or medical technology (e.g., artificial insemination). Bluntly put, society has a profound interest in its very future, which is provided by the bearing and rearing of children. Accordingly, society has a correlatively profound interest in promoting the single institution that for centuries has proved to be essential for the social, physical, mental and economic health of women, men and children: marriage between a man and a woman.
Finally, again, there is morality. To the repetitiously used argument that in a modern liberal democracy a portion of society should not impose its moral values on individuals of a different mind, the answer is this: Marriage in America will be unavoidably defined either by the morality of the majority or by the morality of the minority. Under our democratic ethos, the definition by the minority would be profoundly immoral.
Which brings us back to adoption now of the FMA. The amendment is this nation's only assurance that the same-sex-marriage issue will be debated and resolved democratically - with the values and the voice of the day laborer and the secretary carrying equal dignity with the values and the voice of the university professor and the unelected judge. That is how the issue should be resolved. That is how it must be resolved.
Yes, unless you can get those black robed people to quit legislating from the benches.
Let the amendment stand or fall on the weight of support of the people.
We are supposed to have a government by "The Consent of the Governed". The amendment process is one that allows the governed to have a voice.
Vote on it, up or down, but let the people decide.
We don't need either the tyrany of the judicial or leftist elitism preventing the people from speaking.
By defining marriage as between a man and a woman, no one is discriminated against.
Homosexuals could still get married to a person of the opposite sex just like everyone else could.
Everyone would be treated equally under the law.
Homosexual Agenda Ping - An excellently reasoned argument in favor of the Constitutional Amendment to protect marriage. The writer is too negative, though. He starts off by stating that same sex marriage will happen, which I don't buy. I think it can be stopped. If it isn't, then the future is very, very dark.
Let me know if anyone wants on/off this pinglist.
Please read my position over [here].
FReegards--
NO. Sanctity refers to things that are sacred and things that are sacred are about individual faith, religious tradition and practice. NONE of these is the domain of government.
Look at how it is today: You have civil ceremonies. You have church weddings. You have no-fault divorce and states where that isn't possible. You have community property states and those which are not. You have weddings between minors or not depending on the state. You have divorce, the secular dividing up of assets, legal custody and so forth but some religions have their own dissolution procedures. Catholics, for example. Orthodox Jews, I think, for another. More examples of the distinction between *sacred rights* and *legal rights*.
This duality has served us well. We're a free people, with freedom of religious practice, we claim to value the rights of states first before federal interference.
The only thing going on here is fundamentalist religious furvor compelling a vocal minority to toss aside over 200 years of precedent, national convention, and American secular values to serve and sooth everything from well-meaning paranoia to bigotry wrapped in alleged divine cloth.
Oh, please! How many unborn children will Lawrence vs. Texas cause to be legally murdered? Roe vs. Wade is in a completely *different* and barbaric category.
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