Friday, June 28, 2013

Another Pension Depletion Mechanism is Upheld



What is happening to the United States? Does this decision advance the common good? What does the future hold for our great country when absolute craziness is prevailing at the highest levels?

Today in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman, is unconstitutional. This decision compels the federal government (i.e. taxpayers) to provide  federal benefits to homosexual couples who have “married” in states that have jettisoned sexual complementarity from the legal definition of marriage. This decision does not require states to legalize same-sex “marriage.”
In a scathing dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia excoriated the presumptuousness (and incomprehensibility) of the majority opinion:
This case is about power in several respects. It is about the power of our people to govern themselves, and the power of this Court to pronounce the law. Today’s opinion aggrandizes the latter, with the predictable consequence of diminishing the former. We have no power to decide this case. And even if we did, we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation. The Court’s errors on both points spring forth from the same diseased root: an exalted conception of the role of this institution in America.
[S]etting aside traditional moral disapproval of same-sex marriage (or indeed same-sex sex),there are many perfectly valid—indeed, downright boring—justifying rationales for this legislation. Their existence ought to be the end of this case. For they give the lie to the Court’s conclusion that only those with hateful hearts could have voted “aye” on this Act. And more importantly, they serve to make the contents of the legis­lators’ hearts quite irrelevant….By holding to the contrary, the majority has declared open season on any law that (in the opinion of the law’s opponents and any panel of like-minded federal judges) can be characterized as mean-spirited. 
The majority concludes that the only motive for this Act was the “bare…desire to harm a politically unpopular group.”…Bear in mind that the object of this condemnation is not the legislature of some once-Confederate Southern state…but our respected coordinate branches, the Con­gress and Presidency of the United States. Laying such a charge against them should require the most extraordi­nary evidence, and I would have thought that every attempt would be made to indulge a more anodyne expla­nation for the statute. The majority does the opposite—affirmatively concealing from the reader the arguments that exist in justification. It makes only a passing mention of the “arguments put forward” by the Act’s defenders, and does not even trouble to paraphrase or describe them….I imagine that this is because it is harder to maintain the illusion of the Act’s supporters as unhinged members of a wild-eyed lynch mob when one first describes their views as they see them.
The unconstitutionality of Sec. 3 of DOMA must come as a surprise to the 342 representatives (including 118 Democrats) and 85 Senators (including 32 Democrats) who voted for it in 1996. And it must really come as a surprise to Rhodes Scholar, attorney, and former president, Bill Clinton, who signed it into law. IFI understands that people’s positions on an issue can “evolve.” What is baffling is that scores of attorneys could be so mistaken on the constitutionality of this law. In fact scores of Democratic attorneys didn’t notice the unconstitutionality of DOMA, including Senators Joe BidenDick DurbinHarry ReidMax BaucusChris DoddRuss FeingoldPatrick LeahyCarl Levin, and John Dingell, and Representatives Bob Menendez and Chuck Schumer, all attorneys who voted for DOMA.
Even though this decision reflects only a limited constitutional question, it will likely fuel the intellectually and morally vacuous state efforts to legalize so-called same-sex “marriage”—an oxymoron, if ever there was one. Intellectually lazy lawmakers who have no idea what marriage is or why the government is involved in the marriage business will use it for political cover.
The U.S. Supreme Court also decided with uncharacteristic voting alliances that the Proposition 8 case had no standing and to vacate the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Prop 8 decision.
Prop 8 was the ballot initiative in California that established marriage as the union of one man and one woman. After the people of California through Prop 8, in effect, overturned the same-sex marriage law, a lawsuit followed challenging Prop 8. A closeted homosexual activist judge, Vaughn Walker, voted against Prop 8 in a widely ridiculed decision (in which he potentially had a personal stake), after which he popped out of the closet and retired.
Today’s Prop 8 decision, though having the destructive result of allowing same-sex “marriages” to resume in California, did not decide on the merits of Prop 8 or Judge Walker’s infamous judicial reasoning. It merely decided on the jurisdictional issue of who has legal standing to defend Prop 8.
Today’s decisions will not contribute to a strengthening of marriage or an advance for equality or movement toward smaller government or a victory for justice or increased protection for children. Quite the opposite.
And while the red cape of this decision is fluttered in front of the charging marriage-destruction bull, Americans will continue to avert their gaze from the essential questions of whether homosexuality is really analogous to race; whether same-sex marriage is really analogous to interracial marriage; why marriage should be limited to two people; why the government is involved in marriage; and whether children have an inherent right to be raised by a mother and father, particularly their own their biological mother and father.
Marriage has a nature that the government merely recognizes and regulates. The state does not create something called “marriage” out of whole cloth. And the reason the state is involved in marriage is to protect the needs and rights of any children that may result from the particular type of sexual union that is marriage.
If marriage is solely constituted by intense loving feelings with no connection to sexual complementarity or procreative potential, there is no reason to prohibit government recognition of plural unions as marriages and, indeed, no reason for government involvement at all.
These are two more sustenance tubes yanked from the dying body that is marriage in America. It’s truly a sad day for America, and most especially America’s children.

10 comments:

  1. Anonymous6/28/2013

    I am all for it! The more Same sex marriages in America, the less Democrats in the next generation.

    ReplyDelete
  2. When the Supreme Court reached its decision, I called my wife to make sure our marriage was still intact. She assured me it was. Whew!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous6/28/2013

    Cut all the pensions why should my tax dollars continue to pay for your pension when I don't get one? All you government workers live in a totally different world from those who work in the private sector.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous6/29/2013

      Government workers are in a different world. Soon they will know it. Too late to do anything now.

      Delete
  4. Anonymous6/28/2013

    It is a victory for gay rights and the country.


    Murph, you need to spare the melodrama. When you look at polls that show 81% support gay marriage (not "gay rights" or "civil unions" -- that is the M word, gay marriage), you have to realize how so few people agree with you. If you discount the crazies, the super-closeted Lindsay Grahams and Marcus Bachmans, etc., you can literally say that just about everyone supports gay marriage between 18-29.

    Now, as you know, in all societies, around 20% by default resist change. In any organization, a new policy will be generally speaking resisted by 20% of the staff and employees.

    Gay marriage, among 18-29 years old, breaks that threshold. I am not aware of a single other political issue that is debated what those kind of numbers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous6/29/2013

      Wait they get the bill for this.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous6/29/2013

      Using demographics of the present to extrapolate out 3 - 5 - or 20 years down the road is a mistake. Yes right now the demographics for gay marriage are supported by majorities in the 18-29 demographic. However, people change their views, especially the young and dare I say very naïve generation of today. They go out and find they cannot get a job. They find out the incredible taxes they must pay. They get married and have children. I would not be surprised that this generation of college aged kids votes in the majority for Republicans by the next Pres race. Two, three, five seven years of delayed dreams,taking jobs far beneath their potential, being forced to live at home AGAIN with parents might make them wake up and see the farce that is the Obama "Change" train. One last thing. It is silly to say homosexuals cannot marry and somehow their civil rights are being denied. Of course they can get married - to someone of the opposite sex.

      Delete
    3. Anonymous6/29/2013

      Can I get married to three other guys now ? Or say four of five? One of us will work and get the health insurance for the rest of us. I can drop my insurance and get on my "spouse". How dare you say we don't love each other. Love is never wrong. I like my cat a lot too. Just thinking.

      Delete
  5. Anonymous6/29/2013

    This is all about destroying the fabric of American culture and paving the way for sustained far left governance. Read Stabley Kurtz on Obamaism and learn quickly that this guy was installed by the likes of Bill Ayers, Axelrod and scores of others with no interest other than the destruction of American culture as we know it. Homoism is incidental to these people. Look at the perverse Senate bill just passed on immigration. Thousands of illegal criminal aliens running the streets
    and protected by these leftist policies. The astonishing aspect of all this is how Chicago Dems. have been duped by these by assurances of power and money. In the end they will be canned unless we the people wake up.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous7/01/2013

    LGBT Lobby has money and influence. Politicians are only too eager to take it. The same as all 19th ward crony pols. You know who I'm talking about. They sit in your church on Sunday, coach your kids in basketball, and you pucker up for them every chance you get.

    ReplyDelete