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Friday, September 05, 2014
Destroying marriage to save it
A thought, brought into relief by Judge Posner's opinion for the Seventh Circuit (go here for highlights):
Have efforts to defend marriage-equality bans crossed over into Ben Tre territory, where they are destroying the town to save it? States' legal efforts to "preserve" marriage as a heterosexual institution have denuded that institution. They no longer defend it as a sancrosanct and powerful institution reflecting long-term intimate arrangements by committed adults who love and care about one another; instead, it has become a metaphorical prison to place fornicators who unintentionally produce a pregnancy. As Posner put it: "Heterosexuals get drunk and pregnant, producing unwanted children; their reward is to be allowed to marry. Homosexual couples do not produce unwanted children; their reward is to be denied the right to marry. Go figure." Opponents of marriage equality insist, without evidence (a point Posner nailed Wisconsin on), that allowing same-sex couples to marry would cause heterosexuals not to marry. But speaking as a heterosexual, I am not sure I would really want to join the marriage club that most states claim to have established.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on September 5, 2014 at 03:30 PM in Constitutional thoughts, Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics | Permalink
Comments
If we assume that God Is The Author of Marriage, and that The Word of God reflects The Truth of Love, we can know through Faith and reason, that only in an ordered, complementary communion of Love, between a man and a woman, united in Marriage as husband and wife, can two become one body, one spirit in Love, creating a new family. God desires that all our relationships be Holy. Our call to Holiness has always been a call to authentic Love, a Love that desires to reflect respect for the inherent personal and relational Dignity of the human person.
God Is Love. Love exists in relationship. What religious doctrine supports the erroneous claim that in order to be married to one another, it is no longer necessary to exist in relationship as husband and wife? Such a religion, if it existed, would be built on a false pretense.
Only The True God can endow us with our inherent unalienable Rights; to suggest that it is unconstitutional for a man and woman to exist in relationship as husband and wife, is a lie from the start. The only question before the Court should be, whether or not it is constitutional to protect and secure the marital relationship for the sake of Marriage and The Family. One cannot be securing and protecting the marital relationship, while denying the very essence of marriage, existing in relationship as husband and wife.
Posted by: N.D. | Sep 8, 2014 9:39:48 AM
Assuming for the sake of argument that God is the creator of all, including marriage, same sex marriages repeatedly involve religious ceremonies (though these cases involve the government side of things), most of which recognize God and the couples as persons who are sons etc.
But, I'll leave dealing with such natural law arguments to the like of Andrew Koppelman though the person here sounds like someone I and others talked to at another blog.
Posted by: Joe | Sep 6, 2014 4:41:48 PM
Denying that human persons are in essence, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, and reordering persons as objects of sexual desire/orientation, is consistent with atheistic materialism, not with a Nation that professes to be One Nation, under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.
Posted by: N.D. | Sep 6, 2014 3:09:49 PM
I agree -- it is depressing, among other things, how small the opponents are making state protected marriage out to be.
Turner v. Safley has a long paragraph listing a range of things. The opponents here -- not being able to rest on "God says" being agents of the state or "gays are bad" -- given precedent and overall current public thought -- grasp at counterproductive straws.
BTW, the argument provided seems to ignore bisexuals anyway.
Posted by: Joe | Sep 6, 2014 12:30:13 PM
No doubt, to claim that Marriage need no longer serve for the Good of the husband, the Good of the wife, and thus the Good of the new family that is created when a man and woman are united in a Marriage as husband and wife, can only be seen, in essence, as an attempt to destroy Marriage, not save it.
Posted by: N.D. | Sep 6, 2014 12:14:47 PM
With all due respect, this Nation was founded on Judeo-Christian principles as evidence by the fact that our Founding Father's recognized that it is God, not Caesar, Who Has Created all men equal, from The Beginning, and endowed them with their unalienable Right to Life, to Liberty, and to The Pursuit of Happiness, the purpose of which can only be what God intended. Our Founding Father's were well acquainted with The Word of God, and the fact that Christ Revealed God's intention for Marriage, which existed, before the State existed, "Have you not heard that from The Beginning, God created them male and female, and for this reason (singular), a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh, so that they are no longer two, but one; what God Has joined together, let no man separate."
Posted by: N.D. | Sep 6, 2014 9:48:57 AM
I may regret doing this, but I do not recall Hamilton, Madison, or anyone else saying that God is the author of Marriage.
Posted by: Howard Wasserman | Sep 5, 2014 6:21:56 PM
Our Founding Father's recognized that God Is the author of Marriage; it is man who is the author of the theory that we are, in personhood, objects of sexual desire/orientation.
Posted by: N.D. | Sep 5, 2014 6:18:27 PM
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