Matt Walsh:
The Supreme Court is wrong. It’s pretty simple. They’re wrong. They’ve been wrong many times in the past, and seem to be wrong with an increasing regularity these days.
They were wrong yesterday when they announced that the federal government can offer Obamacare subsidies even though the law expressly gives that power to the states. They were wrong two years ago when they decided that the federal government has the right to force American citizens to buy a product from an insurance company. They were wrong forty years ago when they said mothers have a constitutional right to murder their children. And they were wrong today when they took out their magical magnifying glass and found, perhaps transcribed in microscopic code on the fibers of the Constitution, a mysterious entitlement to homosexual marriage.
They were wrong, but our culture doesn’t care because it long ago stopped asking its leaders to be right. And it certainly doesn’t care about the law, which is why liberals have been able to make the Constitution into an indecipherable mystic scroll that morphs to accommodate the fashionable ideologies of the day. As such, it is dead. It might as well not exist.
So, despite the fact that neither marriage nor homosexuals are explicitly or implicitly or actually or metaphorically or literally mentioned in the Constitution, our nation will now celebrate as a few con artists in black robes pretend all that stuff is in there anyway. Then again, they hardly even pretended this time. The majority opinion legalizing gay marriage across the country and undoing the will of the people and their elected representatives in 14 states reads like a lengthy Facebook post written by a 17-year-old. It says a lot of happy, bubbly, hollow things about how gay people love each other and so on, but it barely attempts to offer anything resembling a constitutional defense or a coherent thought.
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that gay marriage allows two homosexuals to “find a life they could not find alone.” Then he broke out his acoustic guitar and sang a rousing rendition of “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing.”
This is an embarrassment. Our nation’s highest court has just upended the institution of marriage, dismantled the rule of law, undermined the will of the people, and canceled out the legislative process entirely, and did so based on the reasoning that gay people want to find a life together. Maybe they do, but what in the hell does that have to do with the Constitution? And how was anyone being denied a “life together” simply because marriage has a definition?
Kennedy went further by bemoaning the fact that traditional marriage condemns gay people to “loneliness.” Is this man a Supreme Court Justice or Barney the dinosaur? If he’s concerned about lonely people, he can, by all means, go and be their friends. But the Constitution was not written to ensure that people aren’t lonely. Indeed, the loneliness or unloneliness of an individual is not a legal issue, and it’s incredibly nauseating that I even have to explain that.
The majority opinion even cites a couple’s need for “intimacy and spirituality” as a reasoning to decree gay marriage across the land. But since when is intimacy and spirituality a judicial matter? Liberals constantly drone on about wanting to “get the government out of their bedroom,” yet here they are, weeping tears of joy as five old people in black robes make legal decisions based on a human’s need for romance. How far does this go? Next will they find that my wife has a constitutional right to a bouquet of roses and a spontaneous slow dance on the beach at sunset?
It’s laughable. It’s disgraceful. It makes no sense at all, and barely tries to.
Yet liberals gloat because, though shameful and incomprehensible, the Supreme Court’s ruling at least delivers them a victory they can brag about on Twitter.
But whatever the Supreme Court says, the Truth remains the same: There is no right to gay marriage. There is no gay marriage. It’s not real. It’s not possible.
It’s make believe. It means nothing.
You might say it doesn’t matter now because the Supreme Beings have spoken, but I happen to think that Truth always matters. Despite what any judge says; despite the prevailing opinion; despite the surveys and polls and consensuses; the Truth still matters. If it doesn’t, then nothing matters and life is pointless. Your existence has no meaning if the Truth is irrelevant. There is no reason for you to be on this planet if there is no Truth worth fighting for.
And the Truth is that, due to the fundamental nature of human rights, marriage, and homosexuality, a union between two homosexuals is not, has never been, and will never be a legitimate marriage.
What is a Right?
We throw this term around like confetti these days, but I doubt the average liberal can define it. He thinks a right is some sort of cosmic force that guarantees him access to whatever he happens to want. He wants a phone, therefore he has a right to it. He wants a college education, therefore he has a right to it. He wants $15 an hour to sprinkle salt on fries at Wendy’s, therefore he has a right to it. He wants to have his romantic relationship with another man officially recognized by the State as a “marriage,” therefore he has a right to it. And so on.
This is all childish nonsense, of course. It’s a conception of human rights about as mature and intelligent as a toddler throwing a tantrum in the supermarket because his mommy won’t let him have any Skittles.
If our Founding Fathers meant only to establish a nation on these kinds of “rights” when they revolted against the king, they should have been spanked and sent to bed without any supper and that should have been the end of it. You can’t build a country on the idea that people have a right to whatever they want simply because they want it. That might be the core principles motivating kindergartners and the Democrat Party, but these are not the rights enshrined in the Constitution.
Constitutional rights are the kind endowed in us by the Creator. Rights inherent in our humanity by virtue of the fact that we are created by the Divine Force. God bestows in us a certain dignity, and no man should attempt to deprive us of it. Those are human rights.
You can’t seriously argue that “traditional” marriage deprives a gay man of his dignity. Marriage is an institution. As such, it has certain parameters and lines of distinction. The existence of those lines does not constitute an imposition on, or persecution of, those outside of it. It merely distinguishes one thing from another, that’s all.
The union between two men is one thing, the union between a man and a woman is another. This is not tyranny; it’s just common sense. Besides, with this new version of marriage, lines of distinction are still drawn. Still, two siblings cannot marry, two dogs cannot marry, a man and a tree cannot marry, a man and a child cannot marry, a man and an omelet cannot marry. Despite our spectacularly progressive attitudes, we still claim that marriage is something, and as long as we say that it is something, we say that it is not something else. What gives us the right to exclude the people who continue to fall outside of the new definition?
Or might we say that to destroy the definition of marriage ultimately excludes the whole world of it, and this is, in the end, the greatest indignity of all?
should our “Founding Fathers” have been spanked and put to bed for saying that black people could be forced to be slaves ?
Was slavery one of the things that the Supremes “got wrong”? way back then
It is very different from traditional marriage.
That’s for sure.
Can you imagine a husband telling his pregnant wife that he’s going out on her?
82% of homosexuals in long-term relationships do just that.
They have open relationships.
That won’t change with more marriages among them.
Liza Mundy writes about an old study from the ’80s that found that gay couples were extremely likely to have had sex outside their relationship—82 percent did
The 2010 Gay Couples Study—which, in following over 500 gay couples over many years is the largest on-going study of its kind— found that about half of all couples have sex with someone other than their partner, with their partner knowing.
When homosexuals see one another on the street or in a bar or a parade and are attracted, they simply have sex.
Later they may ”fall in love.”
But without the due diligence tied into the courtship dance their pairing is doomed.
How likely is it that a guy who looks at you with lust on a street and who you go all the way with within an hour of meeting will be ”the one?”
Not very.
Nanny G,
Even taking your stats at face value, I’m honestly confused as to what point you’re trying to make. Your post seems to boil down to:
“Same-sex couples can get now get married. And those same-sex marriages will have higher levels of divorce and infidelity than occurs in opposite-sex marriages.”
And if so… so what? Really – why does this trouble you? Do you see high-divorce rates in other demographic as grounds for outlawing those marriages? Baptists have notoriously high divorce rates (significantly higher than divorce rates among most other religious denominations – including atheists). But I doubt you see that as grounds to object to Baptists being allowed to marry one another.
So I’m really unclear as to why your response to the SCOTUS ruling fixates on divorce rates among same-sex couples.
A much larger study than the ones you cited, http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Marriage-Dissolution-FINAL.pdf
followed up on the status of about 150,000 same-sex couples in states that recognize same-sex unions or marriages. Their results quite plainly contradict your claims:
I bring this study up not to say that “Your statistics were incorrect”, but to help shed light on the point you’re trying to make. Specifically, if (for whatever reason) gay marriages end up dissolving at the same rate, or a lower rate, than straight marriages, what impact would that have on your thoughs on gay marriage?
@Kevin Kirkpatrick:
Actually both studies were finished before gay marriage was legal most places.
So it was about so-called gays in committed relationships.
Apparently gays intended all along to continue in open relationships whether married or not.
Their agenda is not over.
One of their next plans it to re-adjust what ”marriage” means to include openly unfaithful relationships.
It reminded me of the older widowed people who say, if gay marriage becomes legal, AND if it can benefit them financially, they would marry.
The resulting marriage is on paper only, not in any sense of the term as it used to be known.
Same-sex “marriage” is just another step in the process to erase the boundaries of what constitutes marriage and family.
As government redefines marriage for homosexuals it will have to continue redefining marriage for other groups or be guilty of the same discrimination for which it now accuses traditional marriage supporters.
Group marriages of three or more people is the next inevitable logical step in the dismantling of the western world’s traditional marriage laws.
One question we need to be asking is “where does it stop?”
I’ve come (perhaps a little late) to the conclusion that, when the appellate courts can’t find a legitimate justification for something, they grap for the 14th Amendment.
This thing is null and void.
@Nanny G:
I still don’t understand where you’re going with this. Say the percentage of opposite-sex marriages that are open/polyamorous (often using the term “swingers”) is X. You believe that the percentage of same-sex marriages that are open will be higher than X. Therefore…. WHAT? Are you deeply concerned that some straight married couples are okay with sex outside of their marriage? If not, what drives this voyeuristic urge of yours to spend so much time thinking and writing about gay married couples doing the same?
Before gay marriage, elderly widowed/unmarried people of opposite-sex would engage in paper-only marriages if it was mutually beneficial. After gay marriage, elderly widowed/unmarried people could do the same thing but with people of the same gender. Therefore… WHAT? Were you deeply, passionately concerned about opposite-sex eldery couples getting married for the financial benefits? Did those harm you in some way? What drives your concern that elderly same-sex couples can now getting married for financial benefits only? How would that harm you?
@Kevin Kirkpatrick:
How about backing that up with some scientific data?
Put another way, Nanny G – all of your points seem to come down to: Straight marriages have problems X, Y, and Z. Gay marriages will also have these same problems, but more frequently. Therefore _________.
I’m just looking for you to fill in the blank with something sensible. If you do have a logical point, then it should work universally. So after you fill in the blank, check your logic by applying it here:
Atheist marriages have problems X, Y, and Z. Baptist marriages also have these problems, but more frequently. Therefore _________.
“How about backing that up with some scientific data?”
Can do – I assume I need to meet the standard set by Nanny G?
.
In other words, are you asking if I can remember once hearing an elderly person say they’d marry someone of the opposite sex if it was economically beneficial to do so, even if they had no romantic interest in doing so?
Do you really think there are no elderly people out there who feel this way? Do you really think there aren’t straight people who marry for money, not for love?
@Kevin Kirkpatrick:
OK, so it is established you got nada.
@retire05:
I guess I got what Nanny G got – which, as you say…
Read an interesting article last night about the number of ‘gay legal unions’ (i won’t call them marriages because, by definition, a marriage involves one man and one woman. ) there are in the US now and what this new ruling means. Seems as if the expectation is that the number of ‘those committed’ won’t really increase because those that really wanted to ‘be united’ had already gone to a state where it was legal and done so and those that want to stay separate had remained in states where they couldn’t be united. Seems as if the nightmare of many gays has now come to fruition, they no longer have a legal right to remain ‘separate’. They wanted their candy but didn’t want to have to pay for it, now they may have to pay for it. Makes me think of the man with a mistress that wants to get married, but, alas, he can’t marry her because he still has a dying wife at home. His worst nightmare is when his wife dies and he then has ‘no excuse’ for why he can’t marry the mistress. The gays ‘dying wives’ have just passed away.
“Constitutional rights are the kind endowed in us by the Creator.”
Does the Constitution really say that? Does each Constitutional Amendment provide footnotes siting Biblical references from which the enumerated rights derive?
Curt is describing a theocracy. That’s not what we are.
YOUR morality might be endowed in YOU by YOUR creator, but mine isn’t, and the laws I live by are the Laws of Man, not “God’s.”
Constitutional rights were designed AND penned by MEN.
(For that matter, so was the Bible.)
Just as an example, there is nothing in the Bible specifying “equal protection under the law.” Americans wrote that, not God.
Our SECULAR rights obtain from the consensus of our fellow citizens, and those rights endure at their pleasure. They come and go.
We are SELF-GOVERNED, and have been since the Nation was founded. Neither our laws nor our Constitution is immutable – we change the details as the need arises. The insistence that our Law is sacred is ridiculous.
Nanny G comes up with silly speculations like:
“Apparently gays intended all along to continue in open relationships whether married or not” as if she has anything more than a right-wing-distorted perspective of what being gay is all about. I wish I had a farthing for every absurd inaccuracy about gays I’ve read here on FA – I’d be RICH!
Nanny G: Did you forget the alarmingly high percentage of STRAIGHT people who ADMIT to cheat on their spouses? I read a Fox News piece that said the number is around 70%. Wouldn’t that make gay couple’s cheating… NORMAL?
@George Wells:
“It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.”
– George Washington
“Congress passed this resolution: ‘The Congress of the United States recommends the Holy Bible for use in all schools.’ ”
– United States Congress. 1782
“The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the precepts of Christianity.”
– John Adams
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
– John Adams
“It cannot be emphacised too strongly or too often that this great Nation was founded not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
– Patrick Henry
“Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is their duty – as well as privilege and interest – of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”
– John Jay
“Education is useless without the Bible.”
– Daniel Webster
“Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutio s are emphatically Christian…This is a Christian nation.”
– US Supreme Court Decision in Church of the Holy Trinity vs United States 1892
“Religion is the basis and foundation of government.”
– James Madison
“The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country.”
– Calvin Coolidge
“The Bible is the rock on which our Republic rests.”
– Andrew Jackson
“It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.”
– George Washington
And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him.
– ISIS
One of these is misattributed. Points for identifying which. Bonus points for identifing actual source
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
– Our Constitution
“Anything uttered by someone who contributed eiter to this document or was subsequently elected to President, shall usurp its articles and amendments.”
– Funny, nowhere in our Constitution
@Pete #15:
I can’t escape noticing that all of your statements regarding the role of Religion in government are over 100 years old.
I also can’t escape the fact that while SOME of the founding fathers DID support giving religion a role in government – as your references demonstrate – others among the framers did not.
In spite of the wishes of some, the founding fathers did not establish a theocracy, nor did our government ever BECOME one.
To this day, there are some who would impose their religious views on others, and some who would not.
We have all sorts of laws protecting the equal rights of ALL citizens, not just Christians.
Sorry to disappoint you.
But stretching to find snippets of religious fervor buried among the countless musings of historical figures must have been fun, right?
If you can find enough examples of people believing is ghosts, ghosts must really exist.
At least that is where your logic is headed.
You might want to reconsider.
@Kevin Kirkpatrick:
So you acknowledge that the 1st Amendment clearly protects the free exercise of religion from acts of the government. Such a belief necessarily means that Christians cannot be forced to violate their religious beliefs against homosexual acts.
And trying to equate the evil that is ISIS with 18th, 19th and 20th Century US political statements in support of the clear Christian origin of our national founding documents is naught but historical ignorance. The statements athiests refer to in trying to bolster their ridiculous claims that the Founders were not Christians are taken out of the true context of resisting the establishment of an Official National Church. Yet the Founders put “In God We Trust” on our currency, and established a position of chaplain for Congress.
@George Wells:
There should be nothing but a vigorously waved white flag peeking out of the smoking rubble follower that.
“Gay Marriage Still Doesn’t Exist, No Matter What The Supreme Court Says”
“The Earth is Flat, No Matter What The Scientists say.”
“There is No Such Thing as Global Warming.”
“There is No Such Thing as Evolution.”
“Fossils are Tricks of The Devil. The Earth is Only 6000 Years Old.”
Don’t you ever wonder how the Republican Party got itself backed up so far into the extreme right ideological corner that it became compelled to deny the obvious at virtually every turn?
This compulsion to refute what stands plainly before you stretches WAY beyond rational differences of opinion.
Conservatism doesn’t require that you abandon your senses and disavow reality.
What the author seems to be working with is a particularly constipated definition of the word “exist” – in fact, a definition that “doesn’t exist.”
Or else there’s something pathologically wrong with his brain that he isn’t sharing with us…
@George Wells:
Point of fact, the Coolidge statement is not over 100 years old.
The Constitution is also over 100 years old, older in fact than almost all of the quotations listed. Using your reasoning, that would invalidate it.
Furthermore, historical facts do not become less valid due to their age. These statements were made by the indicated parties, many of whom were directly involved in the formation of our founding documents, and provide insight into the basis of said documents.
Moreover, the idea that there is some sort of expiration date on these proclamations on your part would indicate a willingness to impart a similar expiration period on things like Roe v Wade, or the current SCOTUS ruling on redefining marriage, apparently 100 years, per your post.
But let us cut to the chase. The 1st Amendment clear wording prohibiting the government from preventing people the free exercise of religion is now in direct conflict with the ambiguously based 14th Amendment SCOTUS ruling forcing homogamy on the country. What is the solution when 2 men demand that a Christian church perform their “wedding” despite the church’s Constitutionally protected religious prohibition against it?
@Tom:
Thanks.
Got this from Chad:
George,
We won! In a historic ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that bans on marriage equality are unconstitutional…
We Won…
Thank you for helping HRC change hearts and minds all over the world. This victory wouldn’t have been possible without you.
Thanks so much,
Chad Griffin
President, HRC
Such a fine day!
@Tom:
Hardly. To paraphrase Mr. Wells:
“Find enough people who believe a person born with XY chromosomes and still having a phallus is somehow a woman, then he must be a woman…”
I read an interesting statement:
Read more at http://freedomoutpost.com/2015/06/no-justice-kennedy-there-is-no-dignity-in-sodomy/#YrUbQ2L8CpwMvJcc.99
@Pete #23:
Point of fact, PETE:
My comment – the one you are ATTEMPTING to correct, was addressed:
@Pete #15:
… and it was accurate to that post.
And Calvin Coolidge is hardly contemporary, now is he?
Ummm, No, these statements provide insight into the religious beliefs of SOME of the persons who made them. These statements in no way represent the religious beliefs of ALL of the parties who contributed to the founding of our nation, and the documents referred to took great pains to avoid imposing one person’s religious beliefs on another.
I think that you misinterpreted my point, which was that there is nothing inviolable about ANYTHING written by Man.
What we now call the “Old Testament” was once the Law-of-the-Land for a great many people. But that law wasn’t written by God, it was written by Man. And now, all of those outrageously barbaric commands that various “abominations” be punished by stoning the offenders to death in the public square are no longer valid. THEY EXPIRED. WE became more CIVILIZED.
So what happened? Once put to pen and paper (or blood and sheepskin, or whatever) don’t the ancient scribblings become law FOREVER? Doesn’t “stare decisis” prevent the SCOTUS from EVER changing its mind?
NO, it doesn’t.
Neither is there any principle of precedence that compels future generations to abide by everything that was ever penned into the Constitution or the laws that followed.
The nation’s criteria for legal abortion is evolving, and while some day these limitations may disappear, there is also the chance that some day, Roe v Wade may be overturned. Same is true of same-sex marriage. The dissenters certainly said what they said as if they were preparing for the sequel… and they may get the chance if the next president is a Republican, as RBG is surely soon to retire. Nothing is forever.
This rant is particularly humorous. It has as its premise that there is almost never any conflict between one constitutionally protected freedom and another, and that simply is not the case. Freedoms clash all the time. Virtually ALL of the cases that make it all the way to the SCOTUS are cases in which there is precisely such a conflict.
Then the rant makes the remarkable deduction that in cases where the right to same-sex marriage conflicts with religious freedoms, the right to same-sex marriage would win every time, and that speculation is preposterous.
The SCOTUS has a VERY long record of favoring religious freedom protections over conflicting freedoms, and as the Obergefell decision specifically addressed this concern in the strongest possible language, there is simply no basis for your imagined consequence.
The Obergefell decision took nothing away from anyone else’s constitutionally protected freedoms. You still have your free-speech right to vocally object to same-sex marriage. You are still free to believe that same-sex marriage is a sin. While it will take some time for one of these baker-photographer cases to get to the SCOTUS, I predict that when one does, the SCOTUS will decide in favor of the baker or photographer, not the gay couple. That would be consistent with all of their other decisions concerning religious freedom. Look at the Hobby-Lobby decision. Same issue. You might THINK that religious freedom is under attack, but it isn’t. At least not at the high court, and if that court changes, it is likely to veer to the right, not to the left.
There are already so many churches that perform same-sex marriages, the court would have no compelling reason to require unwilling churches to perform them. There would be no “balance” issue with the scales of justice. They would be tipped overwhelmingly in favor of preserving religious freedom. Gay people have achieved virtually everything they sought, and frankly, at this point, it’s more than enough.
But thanks for the laugh!
@Pete #25:
Pete! What, are you some kind of idiot?
You can’t “paraphrase” someone and then put quotation marks around what YOU wrote!
What’s THAT supposed to mean?
And what the Hell is this nonsense about, anyway? Looks to me like you are commenting about Jenner, and I’ve had nothing to say on that tabloid object of ridicule. I feel sorry for him/her. But that isn’t relevant to this thread, is it?
@Pete:
Pete, please listen to what Richard A Posner has to say.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_breakfast_table/features/2015/scotus_roundup/supreme_court_gay_marriage_john_roberts_dissent_in_obergefell_is_heartless.html
More from Posner:
@Tom #29:
I won’t be surprised when Pete shows us that he can’t wrap his mind around the points that Posner put to pen, but what amazes me is that the dissenting SCOTUS justices couldn’t, either. Their dissents were sophomoric to the point of appearing to have been plagiarized from Fox News sound-bites. Scalia sounded drunk, resorting to badly off-comedy at times. They all seemed to be pi$$ed that their good bud Kennedy failed them more than once this cycle.
But I’ll take my victories any way I can get them.
@George Wells:
Nothing wrong with that. Kinda standard practice.
I agree that people shouldn’t be discriminated against based on who they are. For example, if I go into a florist and ask them to cater my wedding flowers down at the American Legion Hall. Do they have the right to refuse to do so? Suppose they do refuse and tell me it’s because they always have problems with the people that run the American Legion hall. Suppose I then sue them because I claim that they did it because they didn’t like me (for any reason), not because they had problems at the American Legion Hall. How should that end?
@George Wells:
You are being deliberately, deceptively obtuse, George. My post 16 was a continuation of 15. You also want to ignore the quote from a US Supreme Court case from the late 1800s, over 100 years after the Constitution was ratified, that states this is a Christian nation. That statement, along with Coolidge’s, was hardly contemporary with the time of the Founders, yet have the same ideological thrust.
My paraphrasing of your ghost rant to highlight the ridiculous nature of your position is not invalidated by the use of quotation marks. Your weak defense of “I didn’t say that” has a glaring problem, unless you can produce any post in which I ever said anything about believing in ghosts.
Your characterization of the majority versus the dissenting opinion on SCOTUS’ homogamy ruling is what is laughable, and your propaganda as to the allegedly obvious future rulings of SCOTUS flies in the face of reality. The transcript of the arguments between the pro-homagamy laywer and Justice Alito on churches being in danger of losing tax exempt status for refusing to support homogamy clearly show that. The government’s propensity to persecute Christian non-profits is ongoing vis a vis the topic of that group of nuns being told they must violate their religious beliefs against artificial contraception to be in compliance with obamacare.
And despite your protestations of the SCOTUS ruling in favor of those who do not support homogamy, recall the court refusing to take up the case of the judicial negation of California Proposition 8, where a clear majority voted against homogamy but had the vote made null and void by a homosexual judge.
Or will you argue the majority of those voters were not “contemporary”?
Just to point it out…. the constitution itself states that the enumeration of certain rights does not preclude other rights reserved to the people or the states. So it makes no sense to scan the constitution looking for a right to “X”, not finding it, then claiming people don’t have it. Some of the Founders were opposed to a Bill of Rights because it would be used in just that way.
I would also claim that defining marriage as between one man and one woman does *not* discriminate against gays. They are perfectly able to marry according to the legal standard… the fact that they’re not interested in doing it is just too bad…. That may sound like some Clintonesque verbal gymnastics, but that’s what our legal system is all about. ;-/
The overriding and most important question of all; will gays FINALLY shut the f**k up?
@Tom:
You, and Posner both miss, purposefully, as can be inferred from the propaganda nature of the piece, that the pro-homagamy side demands the state coerce acceptance – including forced participation in – the violation of Constitutionally protected religious freedom. The lie is clear, no matter the vociferous effort to obscure, that the pro-homagamists demand their opponents be punished for refusing to participate in that which their religious beliefs prohibit. The legal warfare against Christian florists, bakers and wedding photographers is not going to stop, and is the harbinger of future lawfare against Churches and religious organizations that try to exercise their religious faith not to engage in anything Christian doctrine clearly defines as sinful against the unconstitutional oppression of the state.
The piece currently on the daily beast, where the opinion writer accuses the 4 dissenting justices of treason, demonstrates the mindset and motivations of the pro-homagamists
@Pete #36:
I can’t help but wonder if the heterogamists believe that their situation is as static and stable as they seem to think it should be. Since they have been aggressively making the point that the Constitution makes no mention of -ogamy ANYWHERE, it would follow that the founding fathers didn’t bother to set in place any immutable standards at all, leaving the public to construct and construe whatever arrangements they wish to deem lawful. What is there to prevent heterogamy from being outlawed?
You might wish and hope that the Constitution now stands and will CONTINUE to stand on its religious heritage, and that this tenuous connection will survive future scrutiny and/or attack. But I see no compelling reason to expect that either the public or jurists in the future will respect such an imposition on their freedom to reinvent liberty as they see fit. I can’t stress this point enough. Fewer and fewer people are content to be told that their future is restricted by the ideas held by men long dead, and this does not bode well for the Republican Party..
I get that “conservative” means that things stand still, or that nothing changes save by the slowest possible means. Just as progress in many fields has advanced at accelerating rates over the past decades, I predict that progress will continue to accelerate in the future, and that conservatism will become increasingly difficult to exercise. These things HAVE been evolving over time, and the pace of that evolution will hasten more and more as time goes on. Instead of attempting to fight battles you’ve already lost, you might want to try to anticipate issues BEFORE they progress beyond you capacity to influence them.
“My post 16 was a continuation of 15.”
That’s nuts. Why’d you split them? I got your #15 and proceeded to answer it BEFORE you posted #16. That you had an afterthought isn’t my problem. And one SCOTUS declaration of religiosity doesn’t make the United States a theocracy, any more than John Adams’ bizarre musings make it so. Whatever did he mean by that nonsense about the Constitution being inadequate to govern atheists, anyway? And you reference THIS sort of thing as helpful to modern governance?
Well, looky, looky, looky what old George has revealed in his post #24.
How many times has George denied that he is simpatico with the radical gay movement? Yet, there it is; a personal email from the Human Rights Committee directed specifically to George. I guess the next lie to come from George (other than lying about what those on this board who disagree with him have said) is that he never signed up to receive emails from the one-most-fascist-gay-lobbying-group-in-America. Or perhaps he will tell us that the HRC webmaster possesses gaydar and could seek out his email address without his singing up to receive HRC’s emails. But then, how did HRC get his email address and shouldn’t it say ” Supporter” not “George?”
And who is the Human Rights Campaign? It is the largest gay “rights” group in American and they are nothing but bullies, willing to intimidate those who hold traditional religious views toward marriage going so far as to try to cost those of Christian beliefs their jobs.
So let’s take a look at this gaystapo group that George has, repeatedly, claimed he does not support:
Brendon Eich: Eich was the creator of Foxfire and CEO of Mozilla. The gay dating website, OKCupid, learned that Eich had donated $1,000.00, of his own personal money and not company money, I might add, the support California’s Prop 8. The gay mafia immediately got busy demanding Mozilla fire Eich. Not all gays agreed with the tactics:
“While many gay-rights activists and commentators welcomed Eich’s departure, there were dissenters.
Andrew Sullivan, a prominent gay blogger, railed against the pressure that led to the resignation.
“You want to squander the real gains we have made by argument and engagement by becoming just as intolerant of others’ views as the Christians?,” he asked. “You’ve just found a great way to do this. It’s a bad, self-inflicted blow. And all of us will come to regret it.”
Fred Sainz of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay-rights group, took issue with Sullivan.
“I don’t believe this is a question of suppressing free speech,” he said. “It’s a question of the market regulating itself.”
Had Eich stayed in his job, “a tsunami of negativity was going to eventually overwhelm him and the company,” Sainz said. “It’s entirely a measure of our success as a movement that we are now part of that long list of issues that CEOs have to consider.”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/04/05/mozilla_ceo_resignation_raises_concerns_about_openness_in_silicon_valley_122187.html
In other words, HRC wanted blood, and blood they got as Eich was forced to resign.
But that is not the only time the gaystapo of HRC has gone after those who support traditional marriage.
The IRS illegally released the tax records and donor list of the National Organization for Marriage. Those records were released by the IRS to the Human Rights Campaign.
“Heading into the 2012 election season where marriage was expected to be on the ballot in several states, the Human Rights Campaign demanded that NOM release confidential information of the organization’s major donors even though the law does not require such disclosure and few nonprofit groups, including the HRC, publicly release their list of donors. Shortly after the HRC’s president was named as co-chair of President Obama’s reelection campaign, the HRC published NOM’s tax return and list of donors on its website. The HRC claimed it had received the information from a “whistleblower,” but an investigation revealed that the tax return was illegally released by the IRS to a gay rights activist in Boston who claimed in documents uncovered during the litigation that he had a “conduit” for NOM’s donor information
http://www.theminorityreportblog.com/2014/06/06/national-organization-for-marriage-lawsuit-forces-irs-to-admit-wrongdoing/
With the release of NOM’s donor list on HRC’s website, the harassment and persecution of marriage traditionalists was in full force from job intimidate to death threats.
And then, there’s this statement from the Human Rights Campaign re Target:
“Target has been a champion for workplace equality for many years. That’s why their recent donation to MN Forward was so at odds with their sterling reputation as a great employer for LGBT people. The fact that their political contribution was used to advance an anti-equality candidate was extremely hurtful to all fair-minded Americans.
We appreciate Mr. Steinhafel’s statement to company employees this afternoon but it doesn’t go quite far enough. Target’s apology is welcomed but without tangible action behind it, the LGBT community and our allies will continue to question the company’s commitment to equality.
The promise to evaluate political contributions in the future, while a step in the right direction, is provided without details and does not mitigate their $150,000 supporting an outspoken opponent of equality for LGBT people. Target can still make it right by making equivalent contributions to equality-minded organizations and by making clear the procedure by which they will evaluate potential contributions in the future to include issues of LGBT-equality.”
Some, including me, would call that blackmail.
Now let’s look at the people responsible for organizing this group of fascists:
First up, we have Terrance Patrick Bean:
Terrence Patrick “Terry” Bean is an American political fundraiser, a civil rights activist, and a pioneer of the LGBT rights movement. He is known for co-founding several national LGBT rights organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign, the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund and the National Gay Games.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Bean
Old Terry, at age 66, was just a stand up guy who simply wanted to “share the love”, including to 15 year old boys.
“Detectives from the Portland police Sex Crimes Unit arrested Portland developer Terrence Patrick Bean on Wednesday on a Lane County indictment stemming from alleged sex abuse involving a teenage boy in 2013.
Bean, 66, a prominent gay rights activist and major Democratic Party fundraiser, was arrested at his home in Southwest Portland and booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center at 10:12 a.m.
The indictment charges Bean with two counts of third-degree sodomy, a felony, and one count of third-degree sex abuse, a misdemeanor, police said.”
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/11/former_boyfriend_of_democratic.html
But Terry, old enough to be the boy’s grandfather, seemed to really be into May-December relationships so he decided to share the love in a three way tryst:
“The former boyfriend of Terrence P. Bean was arrested early Thursday on sex abuse charges stemming from the same alleged 2013 encounter with a 15-year-old boy at a hotel in Eugene.
Kiah Loy Lawson, 25, was arrested at 1:15 a.m. at the Portland Police Bureau’s Central Precinct and booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center shortly after 2 a.m.
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/11/former_boyfriend_of_democratic.html
I don’t know many people who subscribe to emails from groups or organizations they claim to disagree with, but George does even as he continues to claim he disagrees with such radical groups.
George is a liar. He lies about what other people on this site say, and he lies about his associations with the gaystapo and took pleasure in posting an email from the gaystapo to him.
What can I say? A liar will always be a liar and George is a liar.
@George Wells:
Hmmm, all this time you’ve been saying homosexuality is your only obsession/objective. Your statement above makes it sound as if you may be now changing your objective.
Like Hispanics and Democrats that want to lure in as many illegal immigrants as is possible to enhance their political power (regardless of the damage caused to the nation), so do radical gays want to use whatever means possible, including violence, intimidation, threats and false accusations, to grow their own political power.
And why do they want or need all this power? It ain’t just to get a wedding cake.
@George Wells:
George, you more clearly reveal your uncomprehending disdain of both history and conservatism.
The very natural and scientifically based concept of marriage between man and woman are not mentioned in the Constitution because contrary to the insanity of current times, the immutable essence of the heterosexual nature of human existance as normal was not questioned, and was not something out 18th century founders would have ever considered needing to be written into the national founding charter. Following your bizarre logic to its conclusion, are you going to say that the Founders would accept incest and bestiality as human rights, since they did not explicitly forge an amendment that prohibits such acts?
Your antipathy against the ideology of “men long dead” is not surprising in a leftist at all, but reveals the hypocrisy, contempt and hubris of the wanton and historically ignorant against anyone or anything that dares to set any standards that interfere with what the leftist wants to do. Simply because we have greater technology than was available in the past does not automatically imbue greater WISDOM. In fact, one could argue that the Ancient Greeks like Pythagoras and Archimedes were more brilliant than modern scientists based on their discoveries being made on brain power from simple observation, rather than being spoonfed previously discovered science in school and aided by computers.
Your definition of “progress” is inherently flawed, unless by the term you are only measuring the accelerating imposition of leftist, anti-American ideology. Your understanding of conservatism is equally flawed, as you portray it as narrow-minded obsession with complete intransigence. Simply because someone disagrees that the path YOU think is correct, does not mean your opponent opposes change, or true progress. It is the hallmark arrogance of the left that they are convinced their worldview intrinsically equates to improved results, and that disagreeing with their ideology is always due to abject stupidity.
As I am busy doing multiple things at once while engaging you in this sad debate, I sent post 15 when I felt the writing was in danger of being lost to the screen refreshing tendency this website has. I have lost many posts in the past in this manner, and did not want to lose the very relevant quotes to such an even again. I simply added on the last 3 quotes right afterwards. Hence my accurate description of 16 being a continuation of post 15. It is not my error that you read 15 and frantically had to post your reposte before you saw 16.
You also rehash the anti-religious leftist drivel that falsely equates recognition of the Christian basis of our Founders’ beliefs and their character in our founding charter, with your non-existent boogeyman of “you think we are a theocracy.” If you really believe that, you have poor comprehension. If you are merely propagandizing what you know to be false, then you are dishonest.
@retire05: Sounds like a gay version of the Klan or Nazi’s. Glad I added his comments to my “do not read” list.
@Pete #41:
No, Pete, I’m not even HINTING in that direction, and neither am I hinting in the OPPOSITE direction.
I really thought that I made it clear that I was SPECULATING on the concept of the Constitution’s durability over long periods of time. History suggests that no country, no political structure, no dynasty, no philosophy of government will last forever. I see nothing in our Constitution – as much as I love it – to suggest that it will be any different. I’m not ADVOCATING for the destruction of our Republic, which I am sure your hyperbolic friends will interpret this observation as meaning. Neither am I suggesting that it’s demise is imminent. What I AM suggesting is that it will last a good bit longer if it is willing to change with the times, adjusting to what successive generations of Americans want and expect rather than trying to keep them firmly nailed to the cross of an inflexible document that was written hundreds of years ago.
What the founders would or would not accept is irrelevant. They’re dead and gone. What the living want and need is what matters, both now and in the future. The founding fathers didn’t anticipate gene-splicing, or cloning, or the internet, or just about every other wonder of the modern world. That’s why that stuff isn’t mentioned in the Constitution. Nobody knew. But that doesn’t mean that controlling those things has to be left to the states because “everything that isn’t specifically given to the federal government by the constitution automatically belongs to the states.” It just means that an old sheet of parchment can’t be the answer to every question that pops up.
That is perfectly true, but it is only part of the truth. The other part of the truth is that simply because the founding fathers were indeed wise doesn’t automatically mean that we can never exceed their wisdom. Technology doesn’t automatically make us unwise. I believe that “wisdom” rarely resides in particularly young people. I think that “wisdom” is something that accumulates over time, certainly in some people more than in others. But as we are living considerably longer now than we were in the time of our founding fathers, and as there are a GREAT many more of us than there were of them, it seems quite possible that collectively, there is a whole lot more wisdom out and about now than there was way back then. Add to that the wonderful advantage we have of virtually instantaneous communication, and you have the potential for a whole lot more people contributing their collective wisdom to their mutual governance than was ever possible WAY BACK THEN.
The founding fathers had some good ideas. But I’m not an originalists like Scalia. To me, the Constitution has to be a “living document.” From that perspective, I don’t distain those founding fathers. I just don’t worship them as if they were gods, and I don’t agree that their ideas must always trump our own.
My understanding of the term “theocracy” is that it means a form of government that is guided by a divine being – or one that at least THINKS that it is. The quotes you posted included a number of statements made by founding fathers who APPEARED to believe that such was the case here. Your quoting those statements suggested to me that you agreed with them. If you WEREN’T trying to make the case that our Constitution and our Laws have God as their ghost writer, what WERE you trying to say?
@Redteam #39:
There you go, exactly as I predicted.
When I speculate about what the future might be like, it doesn’t reflect my OBJECTIVES.
I happen to think that soon, all of the lobsters in the oceans will be gone. Their extinction isn’t one of my OBJECTIVES.
I happen to think that we will eventually have a colony on Mars. That isn’t one of my objectives, either.
The Constitution has been amended a number of times, and I predict that it will continue to be amended. Amending the Constitution isn’t one of my objectives.
The Bible has been rewritten, it chapters rearranged – some added, some dropped – many times. Rewriting the Bible isn’t one of my objectives.
Y’all are a mess if you can’t tell the difference between a prediction and an objective.
@retire05 #38:
I happily gave the HRC money that I hoped would be used in the battle for marriage equality. I also gave the ACLU money for the same reason. You might say that I “put my money where my mouth was.”
While I understood that both of those organizations work on other issues besides marriage equality, and that my contributions would not be used exclusively to support my cause, there was no other way for me to financially support the fight for same-sex marriage, and I was not about to enjoy the fruits of their collective efforts on my behalf without extending to them what I considered to be appropriate compensation.
I have no regrets.
We won.
Oh, and the other thing. I don’t consider either of them to be “radical.” Neither their literature nor their history identifies them as such, in my opinion. Last time I checked, I have a right to that opinion. And just in case I’m wrong, I have a right to be that, too.
Now, why don’t you vomit out a whole laundry list of ACLU-supported issues to remind your morbidly distressed allies why they hate the ACLU so much.
@Bill #40:
I imagine it is because they have been persecuted – let me check the calendar… Oh yes – FOREVER.
A person who has been starved for a long time often over-eats to the point of harming himself once food becomes available.
Then there is the possibility that greed is behind it – a natural part of human nature. Why does a billionaire continue to want more and more money?
If you get good at something, don’t you tend to do it a lot?
@George Wells:44 Yeah, you’re right
@George Wells:
You wouldn’t expect a radical to identify himself as a radical, would you?
@Redteam #48:
No, I certainly would not.
But when someone is fighting for the same thing that YOU are fighting for, it’s pretty difficult to turn on him and start accusing him of being too radical. Sort of that old “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” sort of thing. Also the same reason I’ve been voting Democrat, in spite of that party’s MANY bad ideas and MANY bad politicians. What choice did I have? Wait a thousand years for the glacially slow Republican Party to come to its senses on the subject of gay rights? I don’t think so. There being such a small fraction of the population that IS gay, advocacy funds are understandably limited, and there are relatively few non profits working to advance gay rights. Beggars can’t be choosers. Right?
@George Wells:
You know, of course, that the Founders included the amendment process to deal with future issues of which they could not predict. Our nation has done so 17 times after the Bill of Rights.
A theocracy is not how you have defined it. Iran is a theocracy. The Vatican is a theocracy. The US is not, and never has been a theocracy.
The hubris of the left is believing in change for change sake, with no regard for the traditions and rules that have been collected over time by those who experienced situations for which they forged the traditions and rules for society. By your posted assessment of conservatism, you seem to think conservatives never want change of any sort. Again, simply because we do not want to change in the manner the left demands does not mean we despise all change. The abolition movement was largely composed of what would be considered conservative Christians.
A child may feel he is being oppressed because his parents insist he must go to bed at a reasonable hour, while the child feels he should be able to stay up as late as he wants every night. But the parents know that the reckoning of morning will come, and reality is a harsh, uncompromising mistress.