Chris Adamo
Can the Supreme Court alter reality?
By Chris Adamo
Last week the United States Supreme Court heard arguments in the cases of California Proposition 187, which upholds marriage in the Golden State as being between one man and one woman, and DOMA, the federal Defense of Marriage Act passed by Congress and signed by Bill Clinton in 1996. The tenor of the arguments before the court, as well as the thoroughly tainted and lopsided "reporting" by the liberal media in their aftermath, sheds significant light on just how the insidious onslaught of "political correctness" and its demands for total conformity to the mindset and goals of the liberal counterculture has thoroughly undermined the ability to hold a reasoned discussion in modern America.
Amid all of the hyped emotionalism and sanctimony from the left, little is being said of what is really taking place here, and what the intended end game of the counterculture actually entails. As with every other leftist attempt to erode the foundations of Western civilization, the entire discussion is couched in platitudes and evasions of the real agenda. Instead, every conceivable excuse, from the freedom to "love" to the inequities of inheritance taxes is invoked as justification for the leftist assault on marriage and the family. Certainly more revealing of the nature of those who seek to eradicate marriage in its historical sense is the manner in which any disagreement is immediately categorized as "hate" and "intolerance," with the sole purpose of suppressing it.
To restore a remnant of authenticity to the discussion, it must first be stressed that for several decades, nobody in America has been prevented from establishing a relationship with any other person, in any manner. Nor does any governing entity constitute a looming threat to do so. If hospital visiting privileges are problematic, the situation can be directly addressed and is readily fixable. The same is true for inequities of inheritance taxes, which would be more suitably alleviated to the betterment of all by entirely removing the government from the sordid business of confiscating any portion of a deceased person's private property.
But although such arguments are ostensibly offered as worthwhile reasons to demand marriage be redefined to include individuals of the same gender, in truth they are mere distractions. It would seem that if the once professed concept of "live and let live" were actually the goal, it had long since been realized. Something far more encroaching and sinister is behind the current effort to recast "marriage" according to the precepts of the counterculture. Its ultimate aim is to force governing institutions not only to tolerate or tacitly accept, but to officially sanction the homosexual lifestyle and thus require everyone under their jurisdiction do likewise. Only in this manner do the advocates of same sex "marriage" believe they can establish the lifestyle under the auspices of normality that they so fervently seek.
Having thus far failed to win over a majority of the voters or lawmakers, they now look to the courts to once again do an end run around the electoral and legislative processes and declare their wants as irrefutable law. And if the Supreme Court does indeed render a decision to officially endorse same sex "marriage" and by default the lifestyle of its participants, does anyone doubt that the occasion will be quickly followed by a flood of lawsuits against any individual, any Church, or any business that refuses to assent to the court edict? In essence, the entire First Amendment prohibition of state mandated religious doctrine will be circumvented, and the citizenry henceforth obliged to redefine morality and truth not on any spiritual teaching from the Bible, but according to the secularist dictates of the state. What was once the unquestioned institution of "Holy Matrimony" would thereafter be legally bound to an activity which many will find impossible to describe as such. In its stead, the official diktat will be "What the state hath joined, let no person put asunder." If such a scenario sounds implausible, consider for a moment the degree to which this manner of thinking has already been established as the indisputable standard for governing.
During the March 28 oral arguments on DOMA, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, quoted the 1996 House Judiciary Committee report which stated "Congress decided to reflect and honor of collective moral judgment and to express moral disapproval of homosexuality." Kagan asserted that such a contention represented a drastic departure from past positions held by the government, claiming that "The only uniformity that the federal government has pursued is that it's uniformly recognized the marriages that are recognized by the state." It is revealing that liberals militantly demand gender quotas in every area of life except the one place where they have been concretely established throughout all of human history. And in that place alone they tirelessly work to abolish the premise.
Worse still, according to Kagan's thinking, since neither the Constitution nor any of its amendments specifically defined marriage as being between one man and one woman, and furthermore that it does not expressly prohibit such a redefinition, any restriction whatsoever would be unconstitutional. However, as her seditious thinking becomes more generally accepted, a dangerous Pandora's Box is opened. The Constitution likewise places no limits on the use of drones or governmental infringement on purchases of ammunition, in which case "We the People" will soon be engulfed by a flood of onerous new encroachments on life and liberty.
Nor does Kagan's assertion have any validity on the basis that the element of "morality" somehow negates a law's standing, which is a foundational contention of modern liberalism. Rather, the glaring irrationality and hypocrisy of that ideology renders her statement moot. Every principle of civil law in America, from the basic premise of "equality" for all citizens to the pursuit of justice itself, is a derivative of a moral code which was rooted in the nation's Judeo-Christian ethic. Even incessant liberal calls for "fairness" tie directly to a component of morality in societal order (although the selective and capricious manner in which the left invokes or ignores real fairness on any given occasion ultimately exposes their fundamental immorality).
Certainly governments could run far more efficiently and the "greater good" of the state be pursued with enhanced ease if those complicating factors of integrity and individual rights were not allowed to frustrate the process. And admittedly, as the elements of America's moral code have been erased, line by line, from the underlying philosophy of its government, the nation has drifted ominously in this very direction.
At present, and without the help of the Supreme Court or the cadre of leftist "social reformers," anyone in America is already free to marry. What they cannot do is invoke the power of the court to redefine "marriage" in a manner that aligns with a lifestyle that is inherently at odds with it. Of course the attempt may be made. In 1857, the Supreme Court likewise sought to negate the humanity of America's slave population with its abhorrent Dred Scott decision, pushing the nation beyond its tipping point and plunging it into the Civil War. Again in 1973, the Court chose to ignore the biological reality of unborn human beings when it handed down Roe v. Wade, thereby giving its approval to a genocide of innocents that now surpasses the fifty million mark. In every case the end result has been a debasement of American civilization with tragic consequences to follow. Despite any legal gymnastics, activist liberal courts simply cannot recreate reality in conformity to their warped perception of life.
So perhaps the Supreme Court in its arrogance believes it can forcibly impose a redefinition of marriage on America. Let it next endeavor to strike down the law of gravity as "unconstitutional" on the basis that it clearly affects citizens in a decidedly disproportionate manner and thus is a primary source of "inequality" among the people. Then every concurring jurist, bureaucrat, and countercultural activist who regards the court's decision as credible will be free to find a high precipice from which to test its merits. We will then see benefit that can actually be reaped from blind faith in liberal arrogance.
© Chris Adamo
April 5, 2013
Last week the United States Supreme Court heard arguments in the cases of California Proposition 187, which upholds marriage in the Golden State as being between one man and one woman, and DOMA, the federal Defense of Marriage Act passed by Congress and signed by Bill Clinton in 1996. The tenor of the arguments before the court, as well as the thoroughly tainted and lopsided "reporting" by the liberal media in their aftermath, sheds significant light on just how the insidious onslaught of "political correctness" and its demands for total conformity to the mindset and goals of the liberal counterculture has thoroughly undermined the ability to hold a reasoned discussion in modern America.
Amid all of the hyped emotionalism and sanctimony from the left, little is being said of what is really taking place here, and what the intended end game of the counterculture actually entails. As with every other leftist attempt to erode the foundations of Western civilization, the entire discussion is couched in platitudes and evasions of the real agenda. Instead, every conceivable excuse, from the freedom to "love" to the inequities of inheritance taxes is invoked as justification for the leftist assault on marriage and the family. Certainly more revealing of the nature of those who seek to eradicate marriage in its historical sense is the manner in which any disagreement is immediately categorized as "hate" and "intolerance," with the sole purpose of suppressing it.
To restore a remnant of authenticity to the discussion, it must first be stressed that for several decades, nobody in America has been prevented from establishing a relationship with any other person, in any manner. Nor does any governing entity constitute a looming threat to do so. If hospital visiting privileges are problematic, the situation can be directly addressed and is readily fixable. The same is true for inequities of inheritance taxes, which would be more suitably alleviated to the betterment of all by entirely removing the government from the sordid business of confiscating any portion of a deceased person's private property.
But although such arguments are ostensibly offered as worthwhile reasons to demand marriage be redefined to include individuals of the same gender, in truth they are mere distractions. It would seem that if the once professed concept of "live and let live" were actually the goal, it had long since been realized. Something far more encroaching and sinister is behind the current effort to recast "marriage" according to the precepts of the counterculture. Its ultimate aim is to force governing institutions not only to tolerate or tacitly accept, but to officially sanction the homosexual lifestyle and thus require everyone under their jurisdiction do likewise. Only in this manner do the advocates of same sex "marriage" believe they can establish the lifestyle under the auspices of normality that they so fervently seek.
Having thus far failed to win over a majority of the voters or lawmakers, they now look to the courts to once again do an end run around the electoral and legislative processes and declare their wants as irrefutable law. And if the Supreme Court does indeed render a decision to officially endorse same sex "marriage" and by default the lifestyle of its participants, does anyone doubt that the occasion will be quickly followed by a flood of lawsuits against any individual, any Church, or any business that refuses to assent to the court edict? In essence, the entire First Amendment prohibition of state mandated religious doctrine will be circumvented, and the citizenry henceforth obliged to redefine morality and truth not on any spiritual teaching from the Bible, but according to the secularist dictates of the state. What was once the unquestioned institution of "Holy Matrimony" would thereafter be legally bound to an activity which many will find impossible to describe as such. In its stead, the official diktat will be "What the state hath joined, let no person put asunder." If such a scenario sounds implausible, consider for a moment the degree to which this manner of thinking has already been established as the indisputable standard for governing.
During the March 28 oral arguments on DOMA, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, quoted the 1996 House Judiciary Committee report which stated "Congress decided to reflect and honor of collective moral judgment and to express moral disapproval of homosexuality." Kagan asserted that such a contention represented a drastic departure from past positions held by the government, claiming that "The only uniformity that the federal government has pursued is that it's uniformly recognized the marriages that are recognized by the state." It is revealing that liberals militantly demand gender quotas in every area of life except the one place where they have been concretely established throughout all of human history. And in that place alone they tirelessly work to abolish the premise.
Worse still, according to Kagan's thinking, since neither the Constitution nor any of its amendments specifically defined marriage as being between one man and one woman, and furthermore that it does not expressly prohibit such a redefinition, any restriction whatsoever would be unconstitutional. However, as her seditious thinking becomes more generally accepted, a dangerous Pandora's Box is opened. The Constitution likewise places no limits on the use of drones or governmental infringement on purchases of ammunition, in which case "We the People" will soon be engulfed by a flood of onerous new encroachments on life and liberty.
Nor does Kagan's assertion have any validity on the basis that the element of "morality" somehow negates a law's standing, which is a foundational contention of modern liberalism. Rather, the glaring irrationality and hypocrisy of that ideology renders her statement moot. Every principle of civil law in America, from the basic premise of "equality" for all citizens to the pursuit of justice itself, is a derivative of a moral code which was rooted in the nation's Judeo-Christian ethic. Even incessant liberal calls for "fairness" tie directly to a component of morality in societal order (although the selective and capricious manner in which the left invokes or ignores real fairness on any given occasion ultimately exposes their fundamental immorality).
Certainly governments could run far more efficiently and the "greater good" of the state be pursued with enhanced ease if those complicating factors of integrity and individual rights were not allowed to frustrate the process. And admittedly, as the elements of America's moral code have been erased, line by line, from the underlying philosophy of its government, the nation has drifted ominously in this very direction.
At present, and without the help of the Supreme Court or the cadre of leftist "social reformers," anyone in America is already free to marry. What they cannot do is invoke the power of the court to redefine "marriage" in a manner that aligns with a lifestyle that is inherently at odds with it. Of course the attempt may be made. In 1857, the Supreme Court likewise sought to negate the humanity of America's slave population with its abhorrent Dred Scott decision, pushing the nation beyond its tipping point and plunging it into the Civil War. Again in 1973, the Court chose to ignore the biological reality of unborn human beings when it handed down Roe v. Wade, thereby giving its approval to a genocide of innocents that now surpasses the fifty million mark. In every case the end result has been a debasement of American civilization with tragic consequences to follow. Despite any legal gymnastics, activist liberal courts simply cannot recreate reality in conformity to their warped perception of life.
So perhaps the Supreme Court in its arrogance believes it can forcibly impose a redefinition of marriage on America. Let it next endeavor to strike down the law of gravity as "unconstitutional" on the basis that it clearly affects citizens in a decidedly disproportionate manner and thus is a primary source of "inequality" among the people. Then every concurring jurist, bureaucrat, and countercultural activist who regards the court's decision as credible will be free to find a high precipice from which to test its merits. We will then see benefit that can actually be reaped from blind faith in liberal arrogance.
© Chris Adamo
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