Posted on 07/25/2003 10:20:26 AM PDT by cpforlife.org
The theme of judicial arrogance has been invoked so often in reference to the Supreme Court that it seems like belaboring the obvious to invoke it again in reference to the court's decision approving sodomy.
Yet what else but arrogance can you call it when six unelected justices presume to tell us that moral intuitions central to Western culture and law for centuries no longer count? Of course, citing "moral intuitions" regarding sodomy invites the rejoinder that, along with intuiting the wrongness of homosexual sex, earlier ages intuited the rightness of, say, slavery. Evidently more needs to be said.
Writing in 1933, not long after the Anglicans' Lambeth Conference had approved contraception, the great historian Christopher Dawson pointed out that the willed separation of sex from procreation weakened marriage by encouraging people who wanted sex without procreation to look for it outside the married state.
Although it took several decades for the consequences to sink in, this insight into human nature helped explain the sexual revolution of the 1960s. So did the complementary principle that individuals have a virtually unlimited right to do whatever they want in matters of sex.
Cohabitation and premarital sex have soared ever since. Meanwhile, predictably, the marriage rate has declined, and we have hastened merrily down the path of social decay in the name of personal liberty. If Supreme Court justices have not noticed what's been happening, they need to open the windows of their ivory tower and look.
Dawson, nevertheless, failed to anticipate that a second front would be opened in the assault on marriage by extending its legal form to homosexual unions and calling these "marriages."
In this scheme, marriage is reduced to the status of a civil contract — open to same-sex couples as much as to anyone else — whose purposes are mutual comfort and economic advantage. Sex and procreation are still sundered, of course, while sex rendered procreationless by gender takes its place in a new version of marriage a la mode.
Catholics will recall that Pope Paul VI saw what was coming in his encyclical Humanae Vitae, which repeated the Church's condemnation of contraception. As we prepare to mark the 35th anniversary of this much-maligned document, issued in July 1968, it becomes increasingly clear how tragically accurate it was in pointing to the implications of separating sex from procreation.
The scope of the sodomy decision is indicated by a passage in Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion that speaks of the constitutional protections afforded to "personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education."
Citing this passage, Justice Antonin Scalia remarked in dissent: "Today's opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition in marriage is concerned."
If the people of the United States don't want same-sex marriage imposed on them by their arrogant courts — as Canadian courts and the Canadian government have just imposed it upon our unhappy neighbors to the north — it will require amending the Constitution. The obvious, yet now controverted point, must be made that marriage is between a woman and a man, not a woman and a woman or a man and a man.
President Bush says he wants lawyers to tell him whether an amendment is needed. But there are no serious grounds for delay. However much some of those in the White House might prefer to duck this issue, the Supreme Court has made it clear that ducking is not an option any more.
Russell Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, D.C. You can email him at RShaw10290@aol.com.
You may be the product of the public schools system, or have read something somewhere that led you astray, but allow me to give you a brief history lesson.
The objective of the American Revolution was to sever the political ties of the thirteen colonies to the British crown. That is why the Declaration of Independence begins: “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands …”
The reasons for this were listed in the Declaration. The first reason given was the FAILURE of the crown to “… assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” The Declaration goes on in the very next sentence: “He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance…”
Surprised? I bet you thought that the Colonists were just aching to repeal the laws of the British crown. Not exactly the reasons that I suppose excite the fantasies of Libertarians.
Imagine that, the American Revolution was fought for the right to make our own laws, and more of them.
The Declaration of Independence goes on, listing offenses such as cutting off trade, imposing taxes without our consent, depriving us of trial by jury, and many other offenses. It’s worth reading the Declaration to find out just why the Framers put their lives at risk.
But not mentioned in the Declaration is “personal freedom.” Which is scarcely surprising since not only were a number of the signers slave owners (including the sainted Jefferson) but most, like John Adams, had a very strong sense of morality that was enforced by public law and private censure.
But for you who believe that a supreme judiciary has moved things in the right direction, here’s another accusation against the Crown from the Declaration” “For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.” When nine unrepresentative people (like a king), chosen for life (like a king) invest themselves with power to tell us what we can and cannot do, does it occur to us that we may have replaced King George with an equally imperious and unaccountable ruler?
Regarding the issue of sodomy laws, prior to the ruling they were so rarely enforced as to be a dead letter. And in most states they had been repealed. However, in those states that had them on the books, they represented the will of the majority. My version of the Constitution does not address the subject. For that reason, the court has chosen to impose it’s version of morality – not the law - on the people. Like the usurpations of the British crown that led to the Revolution, that is troublesome.
You may approve of the ruling and find people who disapprove of sodomy and sodomites are intruding busy bodies. That’s you’re right as a free man. But don’t try to clothe your personal beliefs with the weight of the Constitution and sanctify it with the blood of the Founders.
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