Posted on 04/25/2015 9:19:07 PM PDT by NKP_Vet
On April 28, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Obergefell v. Hodges and three other cases, testing the constitutionality of state bans on same-sex “marriage” and state refusals to recognize existing same-sex “marriages.” The outcome may well impose same-sex “marriage” on the entire United States of America, much as Roe v. Wade imposed abortion on demand upon the entire nation in 1973.
Such another sweeping “exercise in raw judicial power” (to cite Justice Byron White’s famous dissent in Roe) would be, in large part, based upon claims, rooted in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to the effect that homosexuals have been unjustly denied “equal protection of the laws” by not enjoying access to homosexual “marriage” and, thereby, to the legal status and benefits given to those citizens who are free to enter into traditional heterosexual marriages. The following analysis addresses this central claim presented in the pending cases.
Traditional marriage already has a legitimate and exclusive foundation in the Constitution, because the Constitution’s Preamble explicitly states that among its enumerated purposes is to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
According to Burton’s Legal Thesaurus, fourth edition (2007), “posterity” means, exclusively, entities, such as “later generations,” “children,” “progeny,” and other terms unequivocally identified with biological descendants.
Since the Preamble establishes the “legislative intent” that judges look to in determining the meaning of a law or constitution, it is clear that the U.S. Constitution is designed to secure the blessings of liberty to the biological descendants of the citizenry that constituted the United States at the time that the Constitution was enacted. This makes those biological descendants and whatever essentially pertains to them, including, presumably, the process by which they come into being as citizens of the nation, a central part or purpose of the Constitution itself.
“Equal protection of the laws” found in the Fourteenth Amendment language is cited in both state and federal claims alleging that homosexuals have the same right to marry as heterosexuals.
But such equality claims are illicit unless litigants are similarly situated before the law.
Since heterosexual marriage as a general institution can, at least potentially, further the purposes of the Constitution by securing the “blessings of liberty … to … our posterity” (biological descendants)—insofar as traditional marriage is the only institution that is naturally able to produce society’s posterity (biological descendants)—and since homosexual unions cannot produce any “posterity” (biological descendants) by themselves, the potential litigants are not similarly situated.
That is to say, while anyone can contribute to the blessings of liberty which may be bestowed upon posterity, traditional marriage between a man and a woman is the only civil institution naturally able to create the very object which is to receive those blessings, namely, posterity itself—the biological descendants of the present citizenry.
Anyone can make contributions to posterity, but the sexual union of male and female alone actually makes posterity itself. Marriage is the civil institution that regulates that union in civil society.
Thus, the Preamble’s wording establishes a distinct and special basis for traditional marriage, which does not obtain in homosexual unions.
This role of traditional marriage in producing society’s posterity is consistent with the classical meaning of marriage, even as understood by the pagan Romans.
Matrimony is taken from the Latin, “mater,” meaning “mother,” and “monium,” meaning “a state or condition,” thus defining the purpose of marriage as a man taking a wife in order to have children. In ancient Rome, this was understood as the purpose of marriage, the production of new citizens for the pagan Roman Empire.
While not every traditional marriage may actually beget new citizens for America, and while anyone may be able to adopt children, nonetheless traditional marriage between a man and a woman is the sole natural institution through which our “posterity” is begotten in order to replenish and perpetuate the citizenry of our nation. No merely arbitrarily formed contract—including so-called “same-sex marriage”—can fulfill that role as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, when they created a Constitution that secured the blessings of liberty, not only for ourselves, but also for our posterity.
Therefore, there is no legitimate basis for demanding “marriage equality” for homosexual unions—given the wording that expresses the legislative intent of the Founding Fathers as stated in the Preamble to the Constitution.
The Fourteenth Amendment cannot be legitimately employed to impose same-sex “marriage” upon the United States of America—unless the present Supreme Court intends once again to bear the infamy of engaging in an “exercise in raw judicial power.”
It’s stupid.
“Equal protection of the laws” found in the Fourteenth Amendment language is cited in both state and federal claims alleging that homosexuals have the same right to marry as heterosexuals …Since that has already turned into an attack on the First Amendment, which it is inherently anyway but of late in the courts, then the answer is obviously “no”.
Homosexuals can enter into matrimony as freely as all other citizens, and many have done so throughout the ages. There is absolutely no bar to a homosexual marrying if he or she can find a willing partner of the opposite sex.
What homosexuals ought not be able to do is force a complete redefinition of marriage on all the rest of us.
All homosexuals already have the exact same right to marriage as normal people. They simply have to marry someone of the opposite sex, like a normal person. They don’t want equal protection under the law, they want special privileges under the law. Legitimizing perversions and mental illness will surely be one of the many downfalls of this country.
That’s always what it’s been about—the redefinition of marriage. John Adams did not say in vain that the Constitution is only for “moral and religious people” and “is wholly inadequate to the government of any other”.
And how is it “matrimony” when the root of that word is “mother”?
Correct. That’s why “hate crime” laws are unconstitutional due to creating “protected classes”, just for starters.
I would not recommend making such an argument at SCOTUS.
STUPID.
The Preamble is not LAW. It’s a philosophical statement.
NO legal consequences can be drawn from anything in the Preamble.
What’s stupid? It wouldn’t be you, would it?
What Adams meant was that if the People become irreligious and immoral, there is nothing in the Constitution to save them from tyranny.
While it is true that nothing in the Constitution authorizes the federal government to impose gay marriage on the states, there is also nothing in the Constitution that prevents each state, or eventually all the states, from redefining or abolishing marriage.
Only a moral and religious people can protect THEMSELVES from abominations. In the absence of such a people, the Constitution will simply slip into desuetude.
Because the American People have accepted government schooling, the fed, the income tax, welfare, abortion, and gay marriage, the Constitution is defunct. There was never anything IN the Constitution that could prevent it.
Nobody is challenging traditional marriage. Noting that the states have never amended the Constitution to expressly protect gay agenda “rights” like gay marriage, the problem is the following.
Activist, pro-gay federal judges are wrongly using a vote-winning, pro-gay, PC interpretation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protections Clause as an excuse to declare that 10th Amendment-protected state laws which prohibit constitutionally unprotected gay marriage are unconstitutional.
Perfect summary.
Sorry but the law has to have a rational basis...there can be inherently illegal laws...
I doubt Justice Kennedy will buy it. It’s his country after all,we just live in it.
The Preamble is the document's statement of purpose. Saying it is not part of the supreme law is like saying that a foundation is not part of a building.
One of the best articles I’ve ever seen on FR.
Not only does “gay marriage,” and abortion for that matter, violate the crowning stated purpose of the Constitution, they both destroy every single clause of the stated purposes of the Constitution, making them all impossible of fulfillment.
That’s like saying there is no “law” in the Declaration of Independence. Such an assumption would assume that there is no legal “Right of the People to alter or abolish” a tyranny—which is what the USA was founded upon doing.
I didn’t say the Preamble is meaningless. It is very meaningful. That doesn’t make it LAW.
There isn’t a syllable in the Preamble that MANDATES anything. It is a statement about WHO is creating the Constitution, and for what overall purposes.
It is not LAW. It can be neither obeyed nor disobeyed. It commands nothing and forbids nothing.
No one can be coerced to DO ANYTHING or NOT DO ANYTHING on the basis of the Preamble.
It is not LAW. The rest of the Constitution is law. But the Preamble is NOT LAW.
Why not simply pass a law that says a person can leave his “stuff” to anyone he pleases and he can name whomever he or she wants to visit them in a hospital and name whomever they want to make medical decisions for them.
I know that I can leave my “stuff” to a dog if I want to but there are many gay marriage supporters who don’t believe that’s the case because they watch liberal TV.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.