Posted on 05/01/2003 4:30:44 PM PDT by adamyoshida
Lex malla, Lex nulla
The recent ruling of the BC Court of Appeal, declaring that the Federal Government must impose gay marriage upon the people of Canada in little more than a year or have it imposed directly by the courts, is a landmark decision in every sense of the word. For this decision is more than just another simple occasion where a small elitist and radical clique tells the great majority of our people that their views and their values no longer matter, and that when they conflict with the sentiments of the politically correct left they will simply be overruled. It is much more than that: this is a critical step in the Europeanization of our country, a long and slow process whereby representative democratic bodies and their decisions are phased out and replaced by unelected courts, boards and tribunals who legislate by fiat, imposing upon the people values and concepts which they find morally unacceptable and repellent.
Who elected the Judges of the BC Court of Appeal? What gives them the right to say to the couple who has been married for fifty years and which has five children and six grandchildren that, “you are no different than John and Jack who met one hot and noisy night in Stanley Park”? For thousands of years marriage has been between one man and one woman. If we allow gays to marry how long can it be before, given that we have already declared that whoever and whatever can marry as they like, we allow polygamy and bigamy? If a man and a man can be married, on what grounds should we disallow the marriage between blood relatives? The decision renders the act of marriage meaningless for all people. It is yet another blow to families in our Province, another step down the well travelled road towards the destruction of the traditional family altogether.
Leaving all of that aside for the moment, whatever you think about gay marriage, such a radical revolution in our society cannot and should not be forced upon us by courts and judges. The words of the great Justice Ken Smith are not handed down to us upon great stone tablets. In the days and years to come, as the Courts continue to impose this upon us, all of us should remember a single simple Latin phrase: lex malla, lex nulla, a bad law is no law. We should fight this judicially-imposed abomination and, failing we should simply refuse to follow it.
Of course, any opposition to this decision will soon be declared, by people who think so highly of themselves that they give out self-portraits for Christmas (assuming, of course, that they haven’t stopped celebrating Christmas to protest against Capitalism or to join in Wiccan rites), to be ‘homophobic’ or ‘heterosexist’. Just like Chris Kempling, a teacher who was suspended for writing polite and respectful letters to newspapers and political figures expressing his moral opposition to homosexuality, all of us who oppose this will soon find ourselves vilified and figuratively crucified for our beliefs.
What we think about homosexuality must be determined by what we believe about the origins of the thing. If homosexuality is, as it was originally maintained, a biological phenomenon, then we must conclude that homosexuals are deserving of protection because, well, they can’t help themselves. If, as the rights activists of today would seem to contend, homosexuality is a choice, then it is no more deserving of special consideration than foot fetishism. Certainly no sane person would argue that the homosexual lifestyle is a positive thing, a cursory examination of the life expectancy of homosexuals shows this much. According to one study Gay Men in the United States enjoy a life expectancy of just forty-three years.
The homosexual lifestyle is one of the abandonment of all responsibility and restraint. Some would argue this is a positive thing, I would not. Homosexuality is something that exists, and we must accept its existence, but it should be marginalized and minimized, not encouraged and officially endorsed. It is the final step in the destruction of the family and the traditional order, a building block of a utopian, libertine existence that a few radicals hope to create by destroying all of our old morals and traditions.
Now, of course, people will accuse me of ‘hating’ homosexuals for saying these things. Nothing could be farther from the truth, I have no hatred for homosexuality, I just have no desire to join them or to see society endorse their lifestyle in any way, shape, or form. Isolated gays pose no danger to us, we should pity them and try to help them, not hate them. But we should certainly not be so stupid and naïve as to attempt to pretend that being gay is good or normal.
However, you will never hear these issues realistically discussed (even though a very large percentage of Canadians holds similar views) because we in Canada live under what can only be described as a ‘progressive’ dictatorship. Elite opinion in this nation has always, and seemingly always will, trump the views of the great majority of the people. If it were up to the people we would not let murderers out onto the streets after six years and people like Clifford Olsen would be shown to the chair or the needle. If it were up to the people we would not have the CBC, or the Gun Registry, or official bilingualism, or multiculturalism, or any of the other countless socialistic boondoggles imposed upon us from above. So long as we remain in Canada it would seem that we in the West have only two choices: have dangerous, immoral, policies imposed upon us by people we didn’t vote for in Ottawa or have them imposed upon us by Courts that not a single person voted for.
We cannot rely upon the Federal Government to protect us, and we know that our courts long ago stopped protecting the rights of the people. Because of this an appeal to the Supreme Court in this matter will almost certainly prove to be futile (not that it shouldn’t be tried!) because, after years of Liberal and Red Tory appointments, the Supreme Court of Canada is morally unredeemable. For this reason we must turn to the defender of the last resort, the Provincial Governments. Our abominable travesty of a Constitution has, in this case, provided us with a remedy: the Notwithstanding Clause. The Governments of British Columbia, Alberta, and any other places in our blighted land were common sense and decency remain in abundance, should invoke the clause and declare, now and forever, that marriage is, only can be, and always shall be between one man and one woman. To stand by during this moment of crisis would be a fundamental betrayal of the people who have not been consulted about this matter.
British Columbians, at least, have one final resort they can turn to if the Provincial Government fails us. The Recall and Initiatives Act provides us with the ability to put a bill before the legislature even if our politicians lack the requisite courage to do so. If we must, we should at least attempt to exercise this power. We must act. We can wait no longer, to do so could well be fatal to our society.
See link in #20
Haste makes waste, so make haste slowly.
All libs go north; all conservatives come south. Canada can be socialistic and PC and lib to its hearts content, and the U.S. can thrive and be the envy of the world.
Bingo. It is when the churches gave up their responsibility to determine marraige that started this process. Let the Church define who is married and who is not. Get the state out of it.
For things like child support and property issues, honor the right to contract, and have an enforecable, written contract that both parties understand, instead of the unwritten, uncertain "marraige contract" where people learn that they have undertaken obligations and given up rights that they had no knowledge of. The obligations and rights even vary from state to state when you move, so you are not even held to the contractual facts of when and where you married!
The author can't even get his facts correct. The above statement is false. There have always been numerous places where polygamy has been legal and honored. It still is, even today, in most of Africa, the middle east, and much of Asia.
Well, there's the problem right there. What they say they want, and what they really want are two different things. When people talk about limited government, they just mean they want government interference limited to those groups they have a beef with.
The culture which created the Canadian nation is the Judeo-Christian one, which has a tradition of monogamy going back thousands of years - monogamy was firmly rooted in the Roman, Germanic and Pharisaic Jewish cultures from which modern-day Canada ultimately derived.
Sadly, that's exactly true for most people.
Yes, which is why this concept would quickly lead to saner, reasonable contracts. We are already seeing a trend in this direction with pre-nuptial agreements.
Lex mala, lex nulla.
A bad law is no law.
When I first read that, I thougt he was saying that marraige law was bad, and should be done away with. Boy, was I surprised!!
For thousands of year, polygamy was practiced in Judaism. The Old Testament is chock full of it. The Germanic tribes practiced concubinage, though I have to admit, they only had one "wife" . The Romans definitely had concubinage, though again, only one wife. Having one wife in those cultures never meant exclusive sex with only that woman, as it came to be in later Christian cultures.
It is possible that my limited reading of history is incorrect, but AFAIK, the above statement is true. Please show me Roman Law forbidding sex with a woman not your wife, if you want an easy way to convince me that I am wrong about this.
Yet by 400 BC, religious Judaism characterized the practice of polygamy as a privilege of the patriarchs and restricted it to levirate marriages.
By the time of Christ, Israel had long been a monogamous society.
The Germanic tribes practiced concubinage, though I have to admit, they only had one "wife".
In ancient German and Roman society, as in modern US society, the wealthy and powerful often had "kept women" or concubines. Yet the moral standard of society was monogamy - if concubinage were considered legitimate and socially acceptable, then it would have been a legally recognized and lauded aspect of the culture.
The Romans definitely had concubinage, though again, only one wife. Having one wife in those cultures never meant exclusive sex with only that woman, as it came to be in later Christian cultures.
The lex Julia de adulteriis of 18 BC provides for severe penalties for both female and male adulterers - there is no provision in the law for legal concubinage. Moreover, that law was instituted to harmonize and recodify preexisting laws on the same subject.
This happened decades before the name of Christ was ever circulated in Rome.
These cultures all had prostitution, extramarital affairs, mistresses, nobles having a quickie with the scullery maid, etc. So did Christian Europe.
None of them had official recognition, endorsement or encouragement of plural marriage.
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