Lots is being written on the SSM rulings by the Supreme Court, and much of it is decent (while much more of it is simply strained and awful). So if you can only read one piece — perhaps it’s all the legal bullshit being used to strip you of your rights as citizens and turned into subjects by way of philospher kings, imperial executives, and unelected bureaucrats born of legislative laziness, that turns your stomach, and limits your ability to engage at greater length) — I recommend, per Mark Levin, this piece from Amherst professor Hadley Arkes, which I’ll quote from at length:
These decisions, handed down by the Court today, affect to be limited in their reach, but they are even worse than they appear, and they cannot be cabined. They lay down the predicates for litigation that will clearly unfold now, and with short steps sure to come, virtually all of the barriers to same-sex marriage in this country can be swept away. Even constitutional amendments, passed by so many of the states, can be overridden now. The engine put in place to power this drive is supplied by Justice Kennedy’s “hate speech,” offering itself as the opinion of the Court in U.S. v. Windsor. Kennedy wrote for the Court in striking down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the part of the act that recognized as “marriage,” in federal law, only the union of a man and woman. In Kennedy’s translation, the Defense of Marriage Act showed its animus in its very title: The defense of marriage was simply another way of disparaging and “denigrating” gays and lesbians, and denying dignity to their “relationships.” As Justice Scalia noted so tellingly in his dissent, Kennedy could characterize then as bigots the 85 senators who voted for the Act, along with the president (Clinton) who signed it. Every plausible account of marriage as a relation of a man and woman can then be swept away, as so much cover for malice and blind hatred.
As Scalia suggested, that opinion can now become the predicate for challenges to the laws on marriage in all of the States. A couple of the same sex need merely go into a federal court and invoke Justice Kennedy’s opinion in the DOMA case (U.S. v. Windsor): The Supreme Court has declared now that a law that refuses to recognize same-sex marriage is animated by a passion to demean and denigrate. Any such law cannot find a rational ground of justification. As Kennedy had famously said in Romer v. Evans, those kinds of laws can be explained only in terms of an irrational “animus.”
That may be enough to have the laws and the constitutional provision overruled. But it gets even better if the state has a Democratic governor: For he may declare now that he will not enforce the constitutional amendment, for he thinks it runs counter to the federal Constitution. And by the holding today in the case on Proposition 8 in California (Hollingsworth v. Perry), the backers of the constitutional amendment will have no standing in court to contest the judgment. Constitutional amendments are meant to secure provisions that will not be undone by the shift in season from one election to another. But with the combination of these two cases today, any liberal governor can virtually undo a constitutional amendment on marriage in his state.
— To interject, why limit this merely to SSM? At the very least, Governors of either political party can now simply determine that, by their lights, some law passed by the citizenry of the state — as state that belongs to that citizenry — doesn’t comport with that Governor’s view of what should be, and the fig leaf of “may run counter to the federal Constitution” can then create an atmosphere in which politicized judge shopping delays the people’s will, if not overturns it entirely.
This is not representative government. It is not federalism. It is judicial tyranny enabled by executive dictatorship. They work hand in glove, and we, the people, are the targets of their desire to remake the country — and all those in it — in their own intellectual and moral image.
–All of which runs entirely counter to the ideas of the founders and the motivations of the framers. It is the US entirely deconstructed and reconstituted into a federal tyranny pretending to be a representative republic. And our choices are either to surrender to it or call its bluff, which involves fighting back, be it through refusal to comply, insularity, or civil disobedience.
Too, the power of the Supreme Court — where Anthony Fucking Kennedy can decide how 300+ million people must live and what they must believe — is clearly far too powerful, and has dramatically exceeded its role. State Supreme Courts should therefore reassert their own sovereignty and tell Anthony Kennedy and John Roberts — along with the lockstep cabal of leftists who nearly always guarantee 4 votes — to go pound sand.
Again, the only thing that gives Kennedy and the Supremes their power is our willingness to accept that arrangement. But we need not. We the people OWN the government. John McCain, Marco Rubio, Barack Obama, Karl Rove, Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, Anthony Kennedy and John Roberts — these are just other humans. They are not our Gods and they are not our sovereigns.
And it’s time they were reminded of that fact.
The Constitution grants the federal government enumerated powers. The federal courts, on the other hand, have gotten us to the point where Janet Napolitano is the only and final word on border security, and the President can go around Congress and merely decree that human exhalation is a pollutant in need of his management. Failure to fall in line with such astounding hubris is being a “flat earther,” according the man whose grades we’ve never seen, whose scholarship is largely non-existent, and who rules over the “57 states” (and the various corpse man who may live in each) with the arrogance of a third-world despot.
This doesn’t have to be.
Back to Professor Arkes:
Justice Kennedy sought to pretend, and Chief Justice Roberts pretended to believe him, that his judgment applied only to Section 3 of DOMA, in which the Congress declared that, in federal law, “the word ‘marriage’ means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.” Section 2 of DOMA sought to support the authority of a state to refuse to credit a same-sex marriage brought in from another state. It sought to prevent one state from indirectly nationalizing homosexual marriage, with the aid of the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution. Justice Kennedy insists that the decision on Section 3 does not touch Section 2: It does not compel any State to recognize same-sex marriage. But as Justice Scalia quipped in dissent, that claim falls into the list of “bald, unreasoned disclaimer[s].” Kennedy’s opinion will be hauled out in the cases to come to argue that the State has no justified ground for refusing to accept same-sex marriage in its own laws, or crediting the same marriages coming in from other states.
In Hollingsworth v.Perry, the Court refused to recognize the standing of the backers of Proposition 8 to defend that constitutional amendment in the courts. Once the governor of the state refused to defend the amendment, the backers of the amendment could claim no personal injury at stake in the litigation. When a federal district court struck down Proposition 8, the backers of the amendment had no standing to take the case into a higher, appellate court, and that court, in any event, turned out simply to confirm the holding of the district court. In denying standing, the Supreme Court now swept away the holding of the appellate court. All that is left is the holding of the District Court, which covers only the litigants in the case. And the holding has no precedential standing in any other court. And so, would the case cover no one but the litigants, and would Proposition 8 still be on the books? But more “bald, unreasoned disclaimer.” The legislature will take Justice Kennedy’s language in the DOMA case to call into question the standing of Proposition 8 as a constitutional amendment in California. And they may proceed then to legislate again to establish and promote same-sex marriage.
Our friends in the National Organization of Marriage could well be put out of business by the work that the Court today has completed. They may have to think anew on a strategic path once considered and long ago discarded: They may have to ponder again the use of Article V of the Constitution to amend the constitution on the appeal of two-thirds of the states. If we add the number of states that have constitutional amendments now to protect marriage, along with States that have resisted same-sex marriage in their laws, they would be more than enough to call for a constitutional convention to amend the Constitution on this subject.
The so-called culture wars are being declared over by legal fiat. This, again, is not the way it is supposed to be in a constitutional republic. Two days ago, the White House declared that the debate on climate change was over. Yesterday, Kennedy declared that the debate on upholding the historical definition of marriage is over.
But declaring it doesn’t make it so. We, the people, make it so. And it’s time we reasserted ourselves, because the role of protecting liberty falls to us, not to sequestered, relic Justices or Marxist ideologues looking for cracks in a constitutional system he so despises.
Good men?
I wonder how many who preached deference to this onslaught — which was quite foreseeable — have rethought that particular designation for the radicals running our government today.
I thought I recalled progressive outrage when SCOTUS dared to intervene in the workings of Florida election law a few years back.
Naw, I must have dreamed it.
Obviously, Republican governors should use this argument to repeal any and all annoying firearms laws in their jurisdictions.
So…..how soon before we see polyamorous marriages legalized? If marriage isn’t just between a man & a woman, than why limit to just 1 man and 1 woman? Or will we see child brides and cousin marriages first?
Can’t you just be happy that whites only voting was re-established in the American South and take that as a win?
Troll fail troll.
Or, should that be:
Troll assed fail troll.
Oh! He’s speaking of the glorified and uplifting ‘Dignity’ that comes with taking it up the poop chute, no?
No matter how much our cultural leadership plays their pretend games, there will always only be one #TraditionalMarriage. There will always be
a delineation, no matter the efforts by a few short-lived ‘men’ to change what they can’t quite comprehend: centuries of tradition will shrug ’em off.
Let them play their games of Aberration House. At least they’ll have nice curtains.
It is worse than just this one thing. The Prop 8 “standing” holding opens the way to overturn any Proposition since the State government alone can have standing. That is John Fund’s view at the link.
I think it goes farther than that even. It is my belief that now any state law or constitutional amendment that the state executive branch refuses to defend in court will have no defense, no defenders who have standing in federal court and thus only one side will be heard. A progressive Governor can use this to destroy any State laws or constitutional provisions that they don’t like, personally.
Tyranny of the executive.
What Geoff said–this is the partisan executive’s dream scenario. A favored constituency gripes about a statutory burr under their saddle. They sue, you direct your AG to half-ass a defense, lose, then decline to appeal.
It’s like a big culture war earmark, but you don’t have to spend any money. Win-win.
And a milder tyrant (think Mitt Romney holding the whip) is no guarantee of relief so long as the institutional Left can keep an issue alive in the courts (think Eric Holder and the Black Panther voter initimidation case).
Can’t you just be happy that whites only voting was re-established in the American South and take that as a win?
Dalek. Why are you lefties still stuck in 1965? Change is good. Embrace it!
Can’t you just be happy that whites only voting was re-established in the American South and take that as a win?
Dead people aren’t white? What you race-baiters were trying to do was use the Voting Rights Act to block sensible Voter ID laws.
Some illegal aliens are even white, come to think of it.
Dalek and his pals can’t accept the fact, Jack, that they are the racists here.
Come to think of it, I suppose dead people are gray?
At least temporarily they are, after a while things can get rather chromatic.
I see our Dalek Hunter is trolling again.
Dalek, you do know that the South, throughout the history of its deep racist history, was almost exclusively Democrat, right?
Can’t you just be happy that whites only voting was re-established in the American South and take that as a win?
Because not allowing minorities to vote twice is exactly the same thing as not letting them vote at all.
And remember — when the system comes crashing down around us, most of these battles will be meaningless. The ability and willingness of a society to destroy its families, churches, communities, and private charities, while depriving individuals of their jobs, guns, responsibilities, and dignity — that all goes away in an eyeblink, once the EBT cards go blank.
At a certain point, people will rediscover the importance of things like family, church, and personal defense. Our brilliant sages in Washington seem hell-bent on bringing us to such a point as quickly as they can. (Something about imminentizing the something-or-other…)
Hopefully people won’t have to experience Dr. Zhivago and The Gulag Archipelago first.
What Squid said.
But they will, Ernst.
To recap, as the law stands now:
1) It is not invidious discrimination to exclude a candidate from your publicly funded educational institution who has acceptable educational scores in favor of someone with lesser scores to further the goal of diversity – in sum, it is important that Colleges and Universities have representatives of each flavor of human being because “diversity” is a vitally important end to all educational institutions.
2) It is invidious discrimination to exclude two members of the same sex from any single marriage of two persons. The interests of “diversity” – which is to say that every marriage should have a representative of each of the two sexes – is not at all important to the institution of marriage.
Everyone get it?
I’m looking at Scalia’s and Roberts’ decision in the Prop 8 case and reading between the lines, I surmise that they think that had the case not been dismissed on standing grounds and the lower Court’s rulings vacated, there would have been five votes for a Constitutional right to ghey marriage. They may have bought some time, is what I’m saying.
Also, I can’t wait till the pidgin-writing yellow rat shows up to shit up and jollystomp all over the blog.
“shit up and jollystomp ”
Two threads back, I believe.
If the lower court’s ruling has been vacated? Whose ruling is in force?
I am sure the irony is lost on him, but Dalek’s post goes a long way to demonstrate how ridiculous and intellectually bankrupt the wringing of hands over the VRA ruling is.
My understanding is that the last proceeding in which the proper Defendant was a party, and therefore the last valid proceeding was the sham “trial” before the Faaaaabulous Judge Walker (who, through sheer and utter coincidence was assigned to this case) which found for the challenging Plaintiffs who just wanted to be left alone to destroy Western culture in peace, H8er.
“No Standing! – No Peace!”
As a practical matter, I know this is a non-starter, but as a matter of principle, can we agree that selective enforcement of the nation’s laws is impeachable?
can we agree that selective enforcement of the nation’s laws is impeachable?
Given the number of laws on the books, they’re all guilty of that.
The things the voices in your head tell you don’t apply to the people you hate.
HTH, HAND.
“Can’t you just be happy that whites only voting was re-established in the American South and take that as a win? ”
People with ID’s you mean. As opposed to cons, undocumented immigrants, paid ACORN shills, dishonest county election commissioners, and and Mickey fuckin’ Mouse.
I wish there were a way to keep dumbasses from voting. That would mean dalekhunter and his ilk wouldn’t get their way very often any more.
We could always bring back
LITERACY TESTS!
(OMFG!) dalekhunter just shit himself at the thought of night riders coming for him.
Bisexuals have a constitutional right to two spouses now, right? Anyone who disagrees is a bigoting hater.
When the definition of marriage involves everything, it will mean nothing. That’s the plan.
Brett says June 28, 2013 at 6:35 am
Bisexuals have a constitutional right to two spouses now, right?
“…and the three shall become one flesh”.
Oops. Need tag closure
Gay marriage supporters are fond of arguing that this is a matter of equality. When pressed, they say that married people are given privileges, both government and private, that are denied them. What they gloss over is that those privileges are denied all unmarried people. They want to be dealt into the privileges while leaving the inequality in place. So when they claim they are simply arguing for equality, they are demonstrating either their stupidity or their dishonesty. None of these privileges are rights; they can be repealed or withdrawn without violating anyone’s rights.
So what are those of us who know that marriage is the reproductive bond, not the diddling bond or benefits, to do to discomfit the tyrannical victors? I suggest all businesses end the marital benefits, treating all their employees the same. That’s the sort of consequence one should expect when one thinks the government can force anyone’s respect.
I suggest all businesses end the marital benefits,
So does Obamacare, albeit for a different reason…
– Let me know when we all have to renounce our citizenships so we can collect benefits as only illegal aliens will be eligible at that point. Same with jobs and healthcare.
if we went to Kmart and got some sidewalk chalk we could draw a line
one side of the line we could label the wrong side of history
the other side we could label the *right* side of history, and I would be on that side of the line eating cupcakes with Jessica Alba and y’all would be all on the other side looking at us with thinly disguised distaste
And then we could go to jail for 13 years for “vandalism”.
that makes me want to cry
“We could always bring back
LITERACY TESTS!”
Nope. Wouldn’t stop idiots like Noam Chomsky.
I suggest all businesses end the marital benefits,
Don’t burn down your house to spite the arsonists.
“Don’t burn down your house to spite the arsonists”
I’ll take the birthright of liberty over the mess of pottage. You should, too. It’s hardly burning down the house.
I’ll take the birthright of liberty over the mess of pottage.
Maintaining the supremacy of marriage over other relationships is hardly a mess of pottage. Many people suggest that The Problem Is that people get bennies when they’re married, which is why the gays are pushing marriage for themselves. As a pathway to benefits.
Similar to “get the gubmint out of marriage,” such proposed remedies assume that we can remove the trappings that gubmint and businesses provide to the married, thereby removing the incentive for gays to lobby for SSM.
Sweep up the sugar and the ants go away.
Except that you cannot preserve the vital function of marriage by stripping it of its unique and exclusive nature. Bennies are a way for society to recognize, support, and value the marriage bond. If we treat the married as no different from the unattached in all things, marriage begins to lose its ability to bless society.
The second problem with your argument is that it assumes that this fight is about marriage.
It is not.
It is about opening a fault line down the middle of the country that is so deep and so absolute that no conciliation is possible. It is about putting the new Untermenschen on one side and the Enlightened on the other, knowing full well that the Untermenschen cannot bring themselves to cross to the other side without abandoning that pesky Christianity. They’ve invented a pretext for creating these Untermenschen, whom they can safely persecute, humiliate, marginalize, dehumanize, and disenfranchise.
Either that, or marriage gets defined so broadly that it means everything and therefore nothing and is therefore destroyed, and there’s nothing those bitter clingers will be able to do about it.
For them, it’s a win regardless of which action we choose.
For us, the only win—and the only means to retain our liberty—is to separate ourselves from those who would crush us. To strip marriage of bennies or gubmint recognition—making it less accessible or desirable to gays—is to advance the Left’s ultimate goal of destroying marriage.
Hence, burning down your own house before the arsonists get to it.
Speaking of fault lines:
More than anything, ‘feets is terrified of being like those grizzled biggits who couldn’t accept the fact that blacks were allowed to vote without a poll tax or that the darkies can breed with our wimmins and nobody makes fun of their half-breed spawn.
Because history is going somewhere, dontcha know, always heading toward enlightenment and away from oppression. Every time a historically persecuted group points out its historical persecution and requests that the persecution stop, we ought to pay heed, because that’s progress.
Which, that makes plenty of sense, if all we’re doing is ceasing to be cruel to people who totally don’t deserve the cruelty.
What ‘feets fails to recognize is that there are some awful people in the world who think nothing of taking advantage of Americans’ immense capacity for tolerance and of our willingness to consider things that we hadn’t considered before.
And that these people stay awake nights thinking of ways to destroy their enemies so that they won’t stand in their way when they clamp down hard on the liberty of the people.
And that it’s possible to want to stop cruelty toward people who’ve endured injustices while at the same time recognizing the difference between a baby and its bathwater.
gay marriage is the future
deal with it
bonus points for dealing with it graciously
gay marriage is the future
deal with it
You don’t get it.
They won’t let us “deal with it,” graciously or otherwise. Our churches cannot accept same-sex pairings as legitimate, and so we will be forever branded as homophobes, beyond the pale, and free game for persecution.
That’s the PURPOSE of the exercise, ya moron. They couldn’t care less about gay rights, any more than they care about racial equality or erasing class distinctions.
::sigh::
Whatever.
Get as much moral preening out of this as you can, ‘feetsie. When the Zombie Apocalypse comes, they’ll come after your red velvet cupcakes. first.
“bonus points for dealing with it graciously”
tell it to the prop 8 opponents
nobody cares if your flyover churches accept gay marriage or not
nobody
it’s all in your head
mr. newrouter the fact that the fundies thought they had built some kind of gay marriage firewall in (dot dot dot)
wait for it (dot dot dot)
california
just shows how more than a little disconnected from reality they are
i raise my eyebrow at them
gay marriage is the future
The hell it is. A bunch of famewhores will get “married” and get in the papers. Then it will lose its panache since gays are swingers not monogamous.
deal with it
Go scratch. That isn’t going to happen.
well for now you don’t have to deal with it just
please don’t act out and do something silly like nominate one of those federal marriage amendment nutjobs
be like the grasshopper on the reed in the wind by the river under a new moon
Our Bishops are on it, happy.
“mr. newrouter the fact that the fundies thought they had built some kind of gay marriage firewall in (dot dot dot) ”
we be seeing you clowns don’t play by the rules. expect us to do the same.
oh please these are the same bishops what gave us obamacare
they love their socialisms and illegal immigrants and gun control way way way more than they have any loyalty to traditional marriage
you can tell cause of how they never get married
“you can tell cause of how they never get married”
yes this civil war will be fun i promise
List of all 50 states standing on the ghey marriage.
wow that list looks a lot different than mine
oh. mine is three years old
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20130629/DA772U100.html
Stoopid fat fingers
Nr, John Derbyshire has a great piece at Taki about the Cold Civil War.
gaymarriage is the gay and fabulous.
we are dealing with folks who would liquidate their opponents( see billy ayers) i’d like to do the same
we are dealing with folks who think killing a baby at 20 weeks is ok!
we are dealing with folks that think sharia is ok!
I believe that’s called “proving the point.”
“nobody cares if your flyover churches accept gay marriage or not
nobody”
thanks for the clarification elitist snob.
Just curious, ‘feets: When you hear your fancy friends say ugly hateful things about the God-botherers, do you tell them, “No, I have some blog buddies that bother God all the time, and they’re fine people. I’ll thank you not to insult them.”
Or do you join in?
“nobody cares if your flyover churches accept gay marriage or not
nobody”
You’re right, ‘feets. They’ll totally pass on this prime opportunity to slather on the loathing out of a sense of decency.
feets claims to be a godbotherer himself, but I think that he likes to imagine that he’s a non(godnonbotherer)botherer.
Or, that he doesn’t like to bother people who aren’t godbotherers. Also, that he makes a hobby out of bothering godbotherers. Which apparently includes himself.
Ok, I give up on this one.
I think ‘feets has a certain point, but could hardly be making it less annoyingly.
My church; my personal church, will never, ever perform a gay marriage. Practicing homosexuals will not be members. It just. Won’t. Happen. And pretty much no one in the congregation or synod gives a flying fuck if we’re labeled homophobic. We just don’t care. We’re not looking to grow all that much.
We’re quite comfortable with the rest of the world going their way, provided they leave us alone. And if they don’t? Tough.
It’s not homophobia. It’s that you can’t have a sinful relationship of any kind and still be a member. Cheating on your wife? You’re going to stop, or you’re going to be out. There isn’t a third option.
No one cares about my flyover-country church? It’s reciprocal.
mixing politics with religion is a perversity
especially our politics here in failmerica
it perverts both the politics and the religion in equal measure is what happens
a more modest conservatism is the answer
one what focuses on core principles
but conservatism is given to fits of the garish and the rococo, days are
it’s a death trap it’s a suicide rap you gotta get out while you’re young I think
happyeffetes is what happens when you sets your preferences according to The Boss.
To borrow from Flannery O’Connor: If conservatism is too modest to stand for the freedom of the free exercise of religion
then the hell with it.