Judicial Arrogance Prevails

7/25/03 | Russell Shaw

[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.

[cpforlife.org]

“The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of evil that Dickens loved to paint but is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.” C. S. Lewis

1973 United States Supreme Court

Note that the only two who voted against the majority in Roe v Wade (against MURDERING babies) are on the right side of the photo. Rehnquist standing and White seated. Now isn’t that interesting….Hmmmm………

[cpforlife.org]

Please let me know if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.

[nickcarraway]

BUMP

[LiteKeeper]

INTSUM

[lodwick]

bttt

[gcruse]

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?

Here, let another set of justices help you out with that.

The Georgia Supreme Court noted:

The individual's right to freely exercise his or her liberty is not dependent upon whether the majority believes such exercise to be moral, dishonorable, or wrong. Simply because something is beyond the pale of "majoritarian morality" does not place it beyond the scope of constitutional protection. To allow the moral indignation of a majority (or, even worse, a loud and/or radical minority) to justify criminalizing private consensual conduct would be a strike against freedoms paid for and preserved by our forefathers.

[Eala]

General agreement. But this seemed out of place:

when six unelected justices

Sorry, but election is not a cure-all for all ailments. If it were, we'd have a pure democracy ("The People..." "lured by the loudest throat" -- Kipling).

[Eala]

"If the people of the United States don't want same-sex marriage imposed on them by their arrogant courts ... it will require amending the Constitution."

Somehow, given a judiciary prone to see "rights" in the "shadows and penumbras" of the Constitution (and such peculiar rights too -- a right of privacy that protects abortion but not governmental and corporate collection and dissemination of personal information, for example), and which seems not to see even those rights explicitly stated in the Bill of Rights... somehow amending the Constitution seems like a totally inadequate, futile measure.

[nickcarraway]

Charge: Father, Daughter Married (Is it Okay With Sandra Day O'Connor?)

[moneyrunner]

”The individual's right to freely exercise his or her liberty is not dependent upon whether the majority believes such exercise to be moral, dishonorable, or wrong.”

So far, most people would nod their heads except that this statement is either meaningless or buncombe on high red wheels. Exercising my liberty could mean free speech or it could mean killing you for dissing me. I would certainly be much freer if I could simply shoot the next SOB who cuts me off, without fear of retaliation by the “jack booted thugs” right? So it matters very much whether a majority believes my right to do this is moral, dishonorable or wrong.

” Simply because something is beyond the pale of "majoritarian morality" does not place it beyond the scope of constitutional protection.”

OK. But that sets up a straw man. A great deal of deference must be paid in a free nation to majoritarian morality. To impose its will on a majority, especially if it involves matters as fundamental as morality, a minority must in the final analysis rely on force or persuasion. The problem with judicial fiat is that no persuasion is involved. It is simply an edict from on high, no different than edicts from the throne recalling the divine rights of kings.

What the Courts have been doing in the area of morality is not creating new moral strictures, i.e.: forcing mandatory church attendance. Instead it is busy demolishing settled moral taboos established over millennia which the drafters of our civil contract – the Constitution – either never addressed or considered perfectly normal.

” To allow the moral indignation of a majority (or, even worse, a loud and/or radical minority) to justify criminalizing private consensual conduct would be a strike against freedoms paid for and preserved by our forefathers.”

To suggest that our forefathers died and struggled for pederasts to proudly proclaim their perversions and for same sex marriage is so bizarre as to be amusing.

[gcruse]

To suggest that our forefathers died and struggled for
 pederasts to proudly proclaim their perversions and
 for same sex marriage is so bizarre as to be amusing.

They died for personal freedom.  Not your right
to reject it for others because you think it is immoral.

[kimmie7]

I'd like on the pro-life ping list, please.

[JesseHousman]

They died for personal freedom. Not your right to reject it for others because you think it is immoral.

Oh please!

I'm certain they fought and died so that some butt-rangering homosexual can get his jollies!

How disgusting and perverted is the anal-worshipping homosexuals and their perverted plans for our children!

[gcruse]

What goes on between consenting adults in the privacy of their bedroom is no concern of yours or the government.

[JesseHousman]

What goes on between consenting adults in the privacy of their bedroom is no concern of yours or the government.

But when they are permitted a podium in classrooms to describe their various and perverted ways of achieving orgasm to minor children....isn't that my business?

When they smear the Boy Scouts and Judeo-Christian principles....is that not my business?

I think so and you, of course, can think any way you wish but, like most Americans, I'm sick to death of their filthy agenda.

Now. How do you feel about people who are interested sexually in their animals?

[gcruse]

How do you feel about people who are
interested sexually in their animals?

Your parentage is of no interest.

[roderick]

Funny, hah hah. So you believe there's a God given right to bugger your buddy but not be born. Right. Dream on.

[roderick]

In addition to judicial arrongance, doesn't it bother you that judges regularly relieve legislators of their duty to legislate? The RATS controlled Congress for much of the past 30 years but neither the pig Teddy, nor Daschle, Bonior, et al ever bothered to introduce federal law to protect Roe v. Wade. Why? They didn't need to.

Justices for life did their dirty, evil work.

[gcruse]

Since I am not of the gay persuasion, the use of 'your'
is misplaced. Acts between consenting adults, however, are no business of yours or the government. The Georgia Supreme Court says as much, as did the USSC. The whining hasn't subsided from the social conservative side yet, but it will. It's really about liberty, not someone's set of morals itching to become law.

[Ronaldus Magnus]

Sorry, but election is not a cure-all for all ailments. If it were, we'd have a pure democracy

I believe that the author was referring to a state of accountability to the electorate rather than the mode of selection. Lifetime appointments without feasible means of removal have no place in a republic and may be the greatest error of our nation's founders in designing our governmental system.