The case against Judge Walker
Walker’s course of conduct would be sufficient cause for national scandal in any case. That it comes in a case that aims to radically remake the central social institution of American society makes it utterly intolerable.
I can’t imagine that any federal district judge has ever committed more egregious and momentous acts of malfeasance in a case.
On an unrelated note, Neo: Given your longstanding admiration for Winston Churchill, what do you make of this new book on Churchill that is being reviewed in tomorrow’s New York Times?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/books/review/Hari-t.html?_r=1&ref=review
Walker’s behavior looks like an overwhelming example of prejudice and judicial malpractice.
He’s brought gasoline to the fire: he invalidated not only a section in the California Constitution, but also laws and Constitutional amendments in every state that has enacted laws prohibiting same sex marriage, as well as the Federal Defense of Marriage Act. And he doesn’t think there is enough probability of being overturned to stay his ruling beyond a risible minimum.
And you don’t want me to call rotten people rotten.
When enough people don’t do that, then you get things like this happening.
Democrats (liberals/progressives/whatever – at this point there is no essential or effective difference)) are rotten people. ALL of them!
The judge here is simply emblematic since he does what everyone of them does all the time in smaller ways anyway.
Sorry. We’re in a Thunderdome match with these people. Being nice is so out of place, it is almost as if you were letting them win without a fight, or even letting them know that there should be a fight.
This is a battle for civilization itself. Nothing less.
re: Judge Walker, good. additional votes for us racist reactionary Nazi-Zionist imperialists sexist, meat eating homophobes come November.
Laundry Basket, I would like to tackle that book review denouncing Churchill as some sort of dual personality, and one of those personalities being a monster.
First a common mistake historians and historian wannabes make is transferring today’s morals back in time. The morals of Churchill’s teachers were different than those of our own time. They did not accept moral relevancy.
Two, self-rule by the locals was considered ridiculous during the hey date of the Empire, white man’s burden and all that. the locals had to be protected from themselves. Also the British were fighting for their Empire not exactly unusual in history, whereas the locals were fighting for their national identity, which was very new in the third world. Remember the nation-state is a comparatively recent European invention. I can add quite a few of these countries have absolutely no business being independent states today. Our morality, as the Italians say, is so good it is good for nothing. I can also how many of the descendants of those Afghan freedom fighters are how Taliban supporters?
three, We do not know Churchill’s motivations for his acts in some cases or even if he had knowledge of these acts.
four, the alternatives may have been worse.
five, reference Ireland, Churchill responsible for the atrocities of the Blacks and Tans? I do not know about that. I do know he had Mike Collins (unsure of name) the new Irish Defence minister and former IRA terrorist over for supper. They compared the rewards offered for their captures, Collins by the British, Churchill by the Boars (Churchill complained that Collins at least got a decent piece placed on his head, more than Churchill).
six, the morality of people changes as they grow. Washington evolved from giving away slaves as lottery prizes to being anti-slavery. Who was it who said that if I met the type of man I was before I was 40 I would spit at him.
seven, Any decent lawyer could do a hack job on Mother Theresa without telling a lie. That book sounds like a lefty hack job.
eight, so what if he disliked Gandhi. Gandhi wanted to talk peace and love to Hitler during WW2. As Orwell noted pacifist are really on the other side.
nine, the only way to have a prefect record is to have no record. BTW perfection is in the eye of the beholder.
ten, complain about the British Empire all you want. But with all it’s injustice, it bought enlightenment values throughout the world, ended slavery, ended wife burning and Thuggery in India, promoted democracy and the rule of law, peace, trade, relative prosperity; in short it was a blessing for mankind. Churchill saw it in that light. Let’s assume he defended it using cruel methods, he could defend his actions but arguing with absolute justice the alternative would be worse.
eleven, I do not know why Obama sent back the bust of Churchill, after all don’t they have everything in common?
twelve, if anyone picks on Winston they are going to have to go through me first.
Sorry, we got a little off the topic Neo.
Oh, and about Gandhi, see this.
I’m not a lawyer so reading all this legal stuff makes my head swell. But, what I did gather is that some Constitutional big heads are starting to catch on to Judge Walker’s ineptitude in handling this case.
I really don’t care if the people of California or any state wish to recognize homosexual marriage. I do care that this one Judge has so imprudently dismissed the will of people and stepped so far outside of his charter that he has taken it upon himself to define what the people alone can define: that which is.
And, the people of California have defined that which marriage is: marriage is between a man and a woman. Homosexuality is not a race, national origin or gender. It is a behavior to which the American people have given no special consideration. And, no special consideration should be given it to contradict the will of the people of California.
What a farce. This judge has done no less in his ruling than deem that a man is a woman and a woman is a man, and that we have no right as a people to discern from nature – that we are not the same. We are different, each to the benefit of society, each in our own way.
But, this judge is a zealot. He has stripped away 6,000 years of human history by labeling notions of gender difference an “artifact”. Not only has he taken away any debate to where any line of difference might be drawn, he has made the preposterous ruling that there is no line at all.
The absurdity. Surely, this buffoon can be impeached.
Vieux Charles, you summed up the best argument against gay marriage, it is silly.
Mike Mc: “Democrats (liberals/progressives/whatever – at this point there is no essential or effective difference)) are rotten people. ALL of them!”.
I think I am staring to agree with you. On a macro level I disagree, but then I read the news and find you are right.
Neo:
I’m wandering off topic, but in your link to your pervious post about Gandhi, I saw this comment by Ranjit Singh:
Ack. The last two paragraphs should not be blockquoted.
And of course, “pervious” should be “previous”.
Your previous post was not pervy. 😉
Can’t comment on the rest, but the notion that claims on behalf of homosexuals can only be ruled on by heterosexuals is offensive.
I’ve looked and do not find the offense on this site, Lorenzo. Why don’t you respond to material issues? Oh, you say you can’t. Q.E.D.
Buffoonery is regrettably not an impeachable offense. It is one arrow in a quiverful that should be shot against lifetime Federal judgeships. That adds to the sin of worshipfully honoring judicial precedent.
Both are chronic wounds of the Republic, very slowly draining its lifeblood.
Lorenzo: How about the judge’s malfeasance and what it says about his character and competence as an impartial judge in this important case? Might the tortured justifications he wrote for his decision send up red flags / suspicions about him that would not have be in question had his argument been founded on solid scholarly and legal grounds? Might that malfeasance be offensive to you . . . at least a little?
Tom: “Buffoonery is regrettably not an impeachable offense”
(sigh)
“Eloi Eloi lema sabachthani”
I was speaking out of desperation. Of course, I realize that this judge cannot be impeached.
Lorenzo: yeah, I can’t find anyone making the argument (that the judge should recuse himself because of his orientation) here either, though I’ve heard it in other conservative circles.
You may wish to go to one of those.
Conservatives are fighting a losing battle as long as they play by the rules assigned to them by the ruling class.
If they take power in November they have to wreak the leftist institutions that are the backbone of the progressive revolution. They need to eliminate and defund them as the first order of business.
As Newt Gringrich notes, early on in the Republic whole judicial circuits were eliminated. The ninth circuit should be removed/defunded immediately and replaced with rational constitutionalist judges.
The AARP has to be stripped of its federal funds and programs.
The department of Education has to be eliminated along with its programs and funding.
PBS has to be stripped of its federal funds.
Every college which does not have a ROTC program on campus must be defunded. Federal law requires this, enforce it.
The federal government unions must be broken, along with their monstrous contracts.
And of course the entire Obama agenda needs to be repealed.
And yes the left won’t like this, the media won’t like this, the polite company conservatives won’t like this, the big government Republicans won’t like it. BUT the people will like it.
We’ve got one last chance to restore America, dramatic efforts are required.
Harold:
That’s a good wish list. I’d take it a sep farther and say that all government unions must be abolished; federal, state, and local. That includes teachers, police, and firefighters.
Government workers are supposed to work FOR us. If they want to join a union, then they can go to work in the private sector.
Another addition to your list: Abolish “affirmative action”. Eliminate all race and sex preferences in hiring, college admissions, and government contracts.
It was the result that mattered, apparently. No interest in law developed over centuries. (Though that may indeed still be mistaken, and sometimes overturned, the wise person will at least pause and consider why it developed as it did and the possible consequences.)
AVI:
It’s occurred to me that the main difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals care more about the result and conservatives care more about the process.
Liberals want to arrive at a predetermined result, and they don’t care what it takes to get it. “The end justifies the means”, as Marx said.
Conservatives believe that there is a right way and a wrong way to do things. They care more about following the rule of law, even if it doesn’t always lead to the result they desire. But most of the time it does, and they’re OK with that.
Follow-up to my previous comment:
Hmm. The corollary is that following the rule of law usually doesn’t lead to the result that liberals want, and they’re not OK with that. Hence their disdain for the process.
@ AVI 2:02 p.m. It was the result that mattered, apparently. ISTM that’s true for a lot of cases. Why do they do it? Because they can. Once anointed… er… appointed, they’re in for life. (Unless they kill somebody or take some bribes.) I understand the reasoning the framers made the federal judiciary a life-appointment, but it was a serious, serious, serious mistake to have done so.
I agree with Harold @ 11:53 a.m. One or more of the circus… er… federal circuit courts needs to be abolished, rendering a bunch of judges benchless. If we don’t start teaching them that they’re not our rulers, they’ll continue to act as if they’re our rulers. Because we let them get away with it.
And… hey… Lorenzo: a homosexual judge who rules against defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman thereby grants to himself a “right” that he didn’t “have” before, which is not the case with a heterosexual judge.
Harold, rickl: agree 100% I’d also add defunding Planned Parenthood Title X counseling programs as this presents an obvious conflict of interest for an organization that earns its profits through abortion.
ELC: you could extend the same argument to the SCOTUS ruling on Washington DC gun ownership as Judge Roberts may wish to purchase a gun. The argument that Judge Walker should have recused himself for being gay is a weak, especially considering the extent of the many other flaws in his ruling on the Prop 8 case.
@Rickl
I strongly disagree with your claims of process vs result. Liberals simply prefer a process that removes the bulk of the voters and favor a process that involves one or only a few who make a decision. For the liberal, it is much easier to influence that smaller process than it is to influence a majority based process.
Conservatives rarely consider anything other than a majority process unless it is to overturn a liberal success in winning via a smaller process. This who gay rights decision is a perfect example. When the California Supreme Court ruled bans on gay marriage were unconstitutional, the conservatives simply got majority approval for a constitutional amendment defining marriage. Having lost in a majority based contest, the liberals simply defined another minority based process.
It has been exactly the same with the Arizona immigration law.
Lorenzo claimed it was “offensive”, implying it’s nothing but bigotry. It’s not.
Simply put, marriage is the union of a man and a woman because children need a mom and a dad. Regardless of whether or not traditional married couples actually have children (or divorce, etc.), that’s the foundation for the interest that the state has in marriage.
Why else would the state be interested in validating or privileging the relationship between two people? (a why couldn’t two roommates or elderly siblings enjoy marriage benefits under law?) I
t’s a debate that is ultimately about children. What we are seeing, with the increase in same sex couples building families, is a vast social experiment on children. And we won’t know the impact for a generation or more.
Another key, long-term issue is the impact of these new policies on religious freedom. When same sex marriage is enshrined in law, we’re moving toward a situation in which those that dissent (or teach different morals and values on marriage, such as Catholicism) will be penalized for doing so. It’s already happening (for example, a religious school could be sued for denying admission to children of same sex couples, or a photographer or caterer could be sued for refusing to perform work for a gay wedding).
This is what’s at stake here. It’s not a civil rights issue, or a matter of “bigotry.”
We need to give more credit to “tradition.” Tradition isn’t just a bunch of fossilized attitudes and practices from another time that exist for no reason or bad reasons. Rather it is an emergent phenomenon, by which I mean it is the result of millions and millions of rational decisions across many generations and that it evolves and changes in response society’s needs. It survives because it has a purpose or purposes that it fulfills well, even though is has never been designed. It survives because of what it delivers to those who adopt it, not because it can speak for itself. It represents the product of a complex, adaptive system that is not susceptible to intellectual reductionism that says “It is this and only this, and therefore it serves no productive purpose.”
So there is Reason embedded in Tradition, Reason beyond what we can easily describe or understand and accumulated wisdom, and we should proceed carefully and show it a decent respect.
I guess I’m channeling Edmund Burke through different language. For what it’s worth, that’s why I line up with the Conservatives against the Left, who are slaves to Hegel’s reductionism without necessarily being knowing it.
s/b “without necessarily being aware of it.” Changed in midsentence and didn’t catch myself.
Government employee unions do not have all that much effect on wages and salaries. Those are negotiated elsewhere. However, they are quite effective in forcing the Feds to obey their own rules and regs. My good Republican wife has had run-ins with her Federal employer, and the Union has gone to bat for her and protected her from arbitrary and capricious actions, the kind that usually end up costing the government money, like training a replacement employee.
@Michael, that is simply not true. In places like California, at the state and local levels, the unions channel a lot of campaign donations to the politicians, usually Democrats, who, after being elected, reward the unions with pension and salary increases.
That do you think this $64 billion for teachers was all about. It goes to states that have no teachers being laid off. The whole idea is channel some of that money back to the politicians who voted for it. Where I come from, that is called a bribe.
JulieB,
I think I am staring to agree with you. On a macro level I disagree, but then I read the news and find you are right.
Exactly. Remove the default judgement that these things are minor differences between well-intentioned neighbors and friends, and read the headlines.
After a while, there is no way that people who are supporting one side do not know what they are doing, and what effect their support is having.
Why we think we, against the grain of all recorded time, should be exempted from the age-old struggle of good vs. evil is in itself a bizarre indication of how far we have strayed from the basics.
Everyone knows there has always been Darth Vader and Obi wan Kenobi. There has always been King Arthur, and then Mordred. There has always been Israel and Babylon or Philistia.
But not today?
No way.
There is light and dark. It’s not all politics. There are good guys and bad guys.
Democrats, today, are on the team that wears the black hats. They are with the bad guys. That’s the way it is. When we don’t say that, we are giving them even more power and license than they already have.
Walker’s sexual orientation is only an issue because of his actions. Had he behaved impartially, reasoned objectively and rendered a verdict consistent with the law and accepted societal imperatives, no basis would exist for charges of incompetence and bias.
The same would be true if Walker were heterosexual and had exhibited a similar but opposite manner of “egregious and momentous acts of malfeasance”…
Mike Mc,
How far are you willing to go in labeling ALL Democrats and liberals as ‘rotten people’ akin to Darth Vader and Mordred? Certainly such people exist and I agree that right now the Democrat party and liberal elite are the bad guys wearing the black hats. You appear however to be asserting that anyone who votes Democrat is an enemy of liberty, not out of gullible ignorance but intentional mendacity, have I got that right?
Geoffrey,
I am willing to go ALL the way, effectively.
You will want to give some anecdote about your neighbor, sister, or second cousin.
I could pick one of the storm troopers and he’d give a great interview about why fighting on Darth’s side was a really good and noble thing he was doing. All those clean and decent Germans who heil hitlered. Same thing.
Read the news. Every day, the assault, the onslaught, it never ends.
People know. They must know. In this day and age more than ever, there is no excuse for not knowing.
It’s a great struggle of light vs. dark; of good vs. evil. It wasn’t my idea. I liked the brief times of unity and minor difference we had. Those days are gone. Lines have been drawn. Sides have been taken. There are no excuses or exemptions at this point.
You never read the proverb about father against son and brother angainst brother, and swords being brought into the world? It is so true. So sad and tragically true.
BTW: Your statement about the judge and his sexual orientation and how he’d have been prefectly reasonable if not for bringing that in…is a bit ridiculous. It reminds me of the old joke, “Other than that Mrs. Linclon, how did you like the play?” Other than being totally unreasonable, biased, unfair, dishonest and wrong – you are saying – he’d be prefectly reasonable. Huh???
CV,
Walker specifically ruled that a child needs neither a Father or a Mother, “Children do not need to be raised by a male parent and a female parent to be well-adjusted, and having both a male and a female parent does not increase the likelihood that a child will be well-adjusted,” the judge wrote in finding of fact No. 71 in his opinion.
“It’s a debate that is ultimately about children. What we are seeing, with the increase in same sex couples building families, is a vast social experiment on children. And we won’t know the impact for a generation or more.”
The consequential impact of the debate will be upon children but SSM advocates maintain the debate is about unconstitutional discrimination, as focusing on that issue allows them to ignore the larger societal issues.
What the left doesn’t want liberal supporters to realize is that same-sex marriage isn’t about equality at all, it’s about societal acceptance of homosexuality as fully normal.
And for the most radical of the leftists, the intelligentsia, even achieving ‘acceptance’ is merely a step in furthering the agenda.
Walker in his opinion states that, “Children raised by gay or lesbian parents are as likely as children raised by heterosexual parents to be healthy, successful and well-adjusted.”
Which begs the question; if millions of adults have visited psychologists and therapists over childhood emotional trauma resulting from the absence of a gender-specific parental role model, how can raising a child in the absence of either gender (a prerequisite in any same-sex marriage) NOT create psychological issues for the child?
In addition, since 90%+ adoptive children are heterosexually oriented, how can a gay parent act as a heterosexual role model?
Personal religious belief is different from religious doctrine. Ruling that the 14th amendment mandates the legalization of SSM will run right up against the 1st amendment. Ruling that a church must perform same-sex marriages is a direct infringement upon religious freedom. Nothing in the Bible prohibits interracial marriages but homosexual relations are unequivocally deemed sinful and requiring a particular religion to conduct services directly contrary to its core tenets is governmental intrusion into religious liberty. The government will be saying that, you can keep the parts of your religion we find acceptable.
Where SSM will almost immediately impact society is in the schools. Get ready for “Johnny has two Mom’s” to be mandatory reading in all public elementary schools. Anyone speaking out against it will be accused of being homophobic and engaging in hate speech.
Finally, should the SCOTUS eventually rule that banning SSM is an unconstitutional infringement of the equal protection clause, ALL LEGAL barriers to PLURAL marriage are logically removed and PLURAL marriages will become legal as well.
Joseph and Mary will have 3 fathers and two mothers one year and, 3 mothers and two fathers the next and where it will end is in complete chaos and societal dissolution of the family.
Mike Mc,
Evidently I expressed myself unskillfully. I was trying to say that sexual orientation ‘per se’ has nothing to do with objective impartiality. If the Judge abandons those standards in favor of an agenda, whatever their sexual orientation and whatever the agenda, they are supporting the view that the ends sought, justify whatever the means necessary for the achievement of those ends. When a judge engages in malfeasance, they have disqualified themselves from the office they hold.
I do read the news and many people do know. The majority however do not, getting their news and views from the MSM, with generations raised to believe the left’s lies and distortions.
After all, who seriously entertains the views of greedy capitalist racists? The average liberal believes they’re the good guys and, that we wear the black hats…
“There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof [are] the ways of death.”
There is a difference between ‘the left”s elite’ and their millions of gullible, ignorant “useful idiots”. Those liberals would balk at throwing political prisoners into gulags for merely publicly disagreeing in a peaceful way.
There is a great struggle between the light and the dark and many ignorantly support that darkness but “they truly know not what they do” or do you maintain that what was true in Christ’s time is no longer true?
There is a difference between the ‘banality of evil’ to which you refer and the knowing embrace of evil. There was a difference between the typical German soldier and the SS stormtroopers. That difference is illustrated by a simple example; the SS would never hesitate to slam a baby against a wall, bashing its brains out, simply because it was Jewish. The German soldier knew that was stepping over the line and couldn’t do it. The SS knew this and so settled for the soldier herding the Jews into the cattle cars and preventing escape. Obviously the soldier participated in the slaughter and facilitated it but unless all the German people deserve execution, refraining from being the one to slam the oven door has to count for something.
There is a difference between those who ignorantly raised their hands in salute and those who experimented on living human beings, who witnessed the starvation and brutality up close.
For if there’s not, then we all are lost and none deserve salvation, which means that none may enter the gates of heaven because all stand condemned. And who then, other than God may stand in judgment of whom may enter?
Not you or I.
Good point. Claims that criminal cases can only be judged by non-criminals is offensive too. All rise! Judge Charles Manson now presiding…
Congratulations on making the stupidest argument on the internet, overcoming some very tough competition.
I’ll make precisely that argument. Here’s why: the judge is a party at interest in the outcome of this case. In principle, he could rule on the case, and then hotfoot down to the registrar’s office to “marry” his boyfriend. Is there just a teeny-weeny scintilla of conflict of interest buried in there?
And the overarching principle is that a judge must not only be impartial, but be seen to be impartial. Walker flunked on both counts. Big time.
Geoffrey,
Points taken. But I still say that in this day and age there is a responsibility to know. One even surely must know (really) at this point, that the MSM is the propaganda wing of the Dem Party. There can be no one, except for the truly sad cases, who does not know they are being lied to.
The overwhelming majority of Dems know they are being lied to, and they willingly choose to believe the lie. The reasons vary but I am sure that is the case.
The excuses made for them only go so far. I am saying that they have run out and that the best thing to do, even the kindest, is to call them out and tell them they are rotten, rotten, rotten.
Which, I contend, they are.
Mike Mc.: I agree with the eloquent words of Geoffrey Britain.
In addition, concerning people who aren’t going to other sources of information, they do not know they are being lied to, and willingly choose to believe the lie. Believe me, I know many, many, many of these people. You may think they are negligent in not paying more attention and reading other sources and all of that, and you might be right. But that is quite different from rottenness.
And making the sort of moral distinctions Geoffrey Britain is suggesting does not take away the need to fight the left, or make the struggle less intense.
Alan Kellog,
Some things aren’t really funny.
The basic argument against same-sex marriage is that there is no such thing.
“Marriage” is the very term that we use to refer to the man/woma/child/family/socialhistorical thing that is part and parcel of the nature of being human and having a thing called humanity.
Period.
Take away marriage and there is no such thing as humanity. That’s an absolute fact. It more factual than gfreaking Jupiter, since Jupiter could disappear and humanity could still be a going concern; but marriage could not disappear without humanity itself disappearing.
Every six year old knows this. It takes a special kind of education (called fascist brainwashing thuggery) to make adults doubt the obvious.
A sexual or even committed relatinship (whatever that means) between two men, or two women, or even a woman and a man is not a “marriage”. The day some judge says it is, is the day we get a new name for “marriage”.
We would say, that same sexes are married…but not like the man and woman are. They are married in a different way.
We live in Alice in Wonderland. I suppose if a judge solemnly declared the existence of unicorns, then horses could try all day but they’d never grow the single horn.
Well said, Mike Mc.
You’ve hit upon the point I was making earlier: does this proposal promote the long-term health of society, or does it not?
We can tolerate a certain proportion of shirtlifters, animal lovers, and every other sort of pervert, just as we can tolerate a certain proportion of drug addicts and welfare parasites. They’re like warts on the body politic. We tolerate them, but is it possible to build a long-lived society based upon them? Is it possible to have a body composed of a wart?
No. It is not possible. These people and their choices are therefore to be deprecated. Not exterminated, not picked upon, but not encouraged or validated either. Tolerated, but deprecated, and otherwise ignored.
Here I go off topic again…
Jupiter, being the most massive object in the Solar System apart from the Sun, is thought to herd stray comets and asteroids into the main asteroid belt. Also, its large mass attracts those objects to itself, rather than let them careen around the inner solar system.
Take away Jupiter, and Earth would likely get hit more often by rather sizable objects, which means that humanity wouldn’t be a going concern for long.
Rickl,
You haven’t reflected well enough what humanity is or what my statement was. Hiumanity is not earth, nor earth humanity. And in any case, if there is a being in the Universe more powerful than Jupiter, it is the human being.
You did not go off topic. You stayed exactly on topic. You just didn’t realize it and that is one contributing reason why so many people even think there might be such a thing as “gay marriage”.
I like where this discussion has gone – quite interesting in terms of clarifying ideas.
As rickl noted, people who want the general American process to be followed tend to vote conservatively. People who want to find ways around that tend to vote for liberals. That is not a hard-and-fast rule, but a tendency. It also does not mean that the one is always correct and the other always leads to injustice. But it’s a good default position.
I would go Harold’s list one better and advocate not only that structural changes be instituted to prevent liberal advantage, but that we earnestly try and remove any unfair government advantage to conservatives as well. The entire edifice needs to be pared back, so that the basic principles of self-determination, liberty, and rule of law can flow as freely as possible. If under that system, as rickl noted, conservatives don’t always “get their way,” we must be willing to be okay with that. The best team doesn’t always win, but if the rules are followed, we’ll take our chances.
I will suggest that simplification of government/rules/process/regulation tends to promote continuity of values and cultural transmission, while complications of rules tend to fragment shared culture. Bureaucratism, then, while it is not inherently liberal, does tend to undermine the organic culture of a people and transfer cultural preservation to the state. As a practical matter, this empowers those who wish change a culture by fiat.
“…Is there a fundamental right to marriage? That, we’re told, is the basic question behind the same-sex marriage business. Unfortunately, that question doesn’t go far enough. Is there a fundamental right to marry whomever one chooses? That’s the real issue. And the answer is no. One can’t, for example, marry someone who can’t consent to marriage–a five-year old, for instance, or an insane person. Nor can a person marry someone who is already married to someone else, or otherwise marry more than one person at a time. And, at least in most places right now, a person can’t marry a member of the same sex. In short, there is a fundamental right to marry, but there are all kinds of provisos and prerequisites having to do with whom one may marry. The fact that many same-sex marriage proponents continue to speak as if “the fundamental right to marry” has no qualifications betrays their fundamental confusion or disingenuousness on the subject….”
Read the whole thing:
http://catholicexchange.com/2010/08/12/133233/