Posted on 11/08/2014 12:28:30 AM PST by GonzoII
Yesterday, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals struck a reverberating blow on behalf of natural marriage and the Constitution by upholding bans on sodomy-based marriages in its jurisdiction.
It is impossible to overestimate the importance of this ruling.
It means, for one thing, that the issue is now on the fast track to the Supreme Court. If the Court accepts a marriage case by January, a decision will almost certainly be issued by next June.
From a constitutional standpoint, the 6th Circuit’s ruling is a model of sound jurisprudence. The ruling observes that the Supreme Court has already settled the question of the role of the states in defining marriage, in the 1972 case Baker v. Nelson. It’s often forgotten that the first challenge to bans on gay marriage were raised over 40 years ago, and the Court ruled flatly in Baker that Minnesota’s ban on same-sex marriage did NOT raise “a substantial federal question.”
In plain English, it means that defining marriage is exclusively an issue for the states to decide. The federal government, including the judiciary, has precisely zero authority to impose its own twisted definition of marriage on the states. None, zip, nada.
Now liberals are big-time fans of stare decisis, the doctrine that prior rulings create binding precedents that must be respected. If their precious principle of stare decisis has any abiding relevance, it’s game over. The issue was settled in 1972 and that precedent is still binding today. End of discussion. Marriage policy is something for the states alone to decide.
That marriage is the exclusive domain of the states is plain from the language of the Constitution itself. More precisely, this is plain from the language that is not in the Constitution. The words “marriage” and “homosexuality” never occur, not even a single time. You can read the Constitution left to right, right to left, upside down, and in Sanskrit and you will never, ever run into the word “marriage.” It’s not in there.
Article I, Section 8 lists all the powers of action that “We the People” have conferred upon the central government. If a power of action is not listed there, the central government has no legal or constitutional right to exercise it.
According to that same Constitution, the 10th Amendment thus reserves exclusively to the states every other power of action, including the power to define marriage. No authority, none, not even a smidgen of authority is given in our Constitution to the central government to decide questions of domestic policy.
And no state can be dictated to on this matter by another state, even through a feeble attempt to invoke the “full faith and credit” clause. Said the 6th Circuit, “states have always decided for themselves when to yield to laws of other states.” Quite simply and quite correctly, the court ruled that if a state doesn’t want to recognize a gay marriage performed in another state, it doesn’t have to.
Along the way, the court ruled that the 1967 Loving v. Virginia ruling, overturning a state ban on interracial marriage, is irrelevant, because that ruling left intact the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. It didn’t change the fundamental character or understanding of marriage at all.
Importantly, the 6th Circuit ruled that the only standard state bans need to reach is the “rational basis” test. That is, if it can be demonstrated that there is a rational foundation for a ban on sodomy-based marriages, such a ban is perfectly constitutional. There are abundant reasons to reserve marriage for man-woman unions, including public health issues (homosexuality is the number one risk factor for HIV/AIDS and is a risk factor for an enormous number of sexually transmitted diseases) and creating stable family relationships that provide the optimal nurturing environment for the raising of children.
Tellingly, the court ruled that there is no evidence that amendments upholding natural marriage were motivated by “animus” towards gays and lesbians. The judges pointed out that courts would have to be able to read the minds of 8.6 million voters to make a determination about their motives. That is obviously something that no court could do even if it was entitled to try.
Lastly, the court said - and this is huge - that “the federal courts have no long-lasting capacity to change what people think and believe about new social questions.” These issues must be settled by America’s people, not by black-robed tyrants swinging gavels like sledgehammers.
There is much to celebrate in this ruling. Perhaps, just perhaps, we have taken our first step away from the edge of the moral abyss.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
Bttt
What are you going to do about the multiple Federal/State programs/laws that include a spouse attached to the beneficiary? In some cases these laws have been around since the time of the Articles of Confederation.
This news will deeply disturb (assuming they can get more deeply disturbed than they already are) the folks managing the penguins at the San Francisco zoo... who’ve been trying to pervert social cooperation among penguins into an image of their own un-natural perversion and abomination of nature.
Applause for the 6th Circuit on this.
We would need to control the media to control the language, and we don’t. The leftist lapdog lackey media will always helpfully use the left’s terms and definitions, just as they do with”climate change” and “deniers”, and furthering the left’s meme that “the science is settled”.
bookmark
Hope all you want, but unless the states use their power to amend the Constitution to clarify the relationship between X and XIV, and to limit the authority of Federal courts over state constitutions, you’re wasting your time.
Reid’s elimination of the filibuster of circuit and district court judges is what led to so many circuits “finding” queer “marriage”.
And the allowing of these unholy unions to be performed and recognized in 32 states will give Kennedy the cover he needs to go against the states.
I pray that I’m wrong, but I really have no confidence at all in Kennedy on this one.
And it’s even harder to imagine one of the other four liberals going our way.
I’m praying that we either prevail or that they just get it over with already and our sovereign infinitely SUPREME almighty God will render His judgement.
Our hope cannot be in any man or man made institution. They will always ultimately disappoint and fail.
Jesus is the hope of all the world, and He never fails. He will remain my comfort and salvation.
Moral abyss is one thing, the demographic abyss that inevitability results from a death loving sodomite endorsing couture is one from which there is no recovery.
Marriage and family is the foundation of any civilization for a good reason. Civilizations that abandon family are unable to continue being civilizations for all the resulting reasons. They stagnate and die replaced by the more healthy world around them just like sodomite unions there is and can never be a future there. Its just not in the card of nature.
This is why we thinking conservatives can know with absolute certainly that the homosexual sodomy movement will burn itself out. Its not a matter of power or prudent planning its simple biology and nature.
Doing nothing about the closely-related heterosexual culture, with its sub-replacement birthrates. Thanks for playing, white Western culture ...
People have the general right to form such relationships as they see fit, and to decide as individuals what forms of relationship they will recognize. For certain purposes such as taxation and probate it is necessary that the government recognize certain relationships; the fact that the government recognizes certain relationships, however, should not impart upon anyone else an obligation to recognize such relationships except to the extent necessary to carry out legitimate government functions (e.g. if probate law says that a certain relationship entitles someone to some part of an estate, the executor of the estate should be bound by that regardless of his personal feelings about the relationship).
IMHO, what Republicans need to do (and should have been doing from the get-go) is focus on the question of whether individuals have the right to force other individuals to recognize their relationship. On the question of "should people have the right to recognize between themselves whatever kinds of relationships between they see fit", a majority of people would probably say yes. On the question of "should a same-sex couple have the power to compel every other individual to recognize their relationship as being equivalent to a natural marriage", however, I would expect in most places a strong supermajority "no". If supporters of natural marriage focus on the latter issue, they'll win. If they get distracted by the former, they'll lose.
More importantly, secular evidence strongly suggests that the fundamental concept of natural marriage(*) has been around long before any form of recognizable religion; a marriage requires a male and a female not because some religious people say so, but because the most important aspect of marriage (allowing a husband to know that he is the father of his wife's children) is only relevant to such couples.
(*) Fundamentally, a marriage is a public declaration by a man that a particular woman is going to mate with him exclusively, he will be the father of any children she bears, and that anyone else who tries to mate with her will face his wrath. Note that while marriage often implies reciprocal exclusivity, it would be meaningful even if only the woman was exclusively bound. For a man to know that his wife's children are his, the wife must mate exclusively with him. A woman, however, does not need a marriage to know that any children she bears to anyone will be hers.
Courts are like that. Arbitrary, I mean. There are enough words out there that the judges can pick and choose the ones that suit the outcome they want. It's not unusual for a court to cite a case as standing for the exact opposite proposition that the case stands for.
Question: “What are you going to do about the multiple Federal/State programs/laws that include a spouse attached to the beneficiary?”
Answer: allow a citizen to make a public filing of who they declare their beneficiary to be. This will have the side benefit of covering the case where a person wishes to designate a non-related beneficiary. We are free people, we have an unalienable right to decide who our beneficiary is without intrusion by government, including the income tax or inheritance tax.
I agree. As I posted elsewhere, free citizens have the unalienable right to designate with whom they care to share living arrangements with. They also have the unalienable right to designate who their beneficiary is. This is a matter that I considered to be “reserved to the People”, as mentioned in the Tenth Amendment.
“Doing nothing about the closely-related heterosexual culture, with its sub-replacement birthrates. Thanks for playing, white Western culture ...”
I wont dispute that the self-serving cutre of death in the rest of the western world is doomed too. I would however point out that this is only a subset of the broader heterosexual culture the rest of which will come to replace the western failures.
As for us doing something about this failure i strongly agree we must. Indeed i see this cultural problem as a broader result of the same self-destructive idea that has led to these same people to embrace rather than be concerned about sodomites. Put plainly people today are taught to place their personal pleasure and happiness above that of the survival and prosperity of their family or country for that matter. So far and accepted as healthy this idea has become that people are actually killing themselves biologically.
scotus refused to take up the cases supporting gay marriage waiting for this case. They now have the ability to end the whole gay marriage scheme for ever.
They will
do not use the word gay to refer to the reality of homosexual desires or you give way to the confiscation of a good word but instead refer to those who have such desires as homosexuals
all marriages are gay events between man and woman
once the court legitimates men putting their organs in each others orifices as a marital act this perversion will be taught in public school sex ed programs and churches will be forced to say ok or lose nonprofit status
Excellent observations.
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