Posted on 05/20/2014 12:34:44 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Common sense and thousands of years of historical precedent firmly put the burden of proof on those who wish to redefine marriage.
Another judge, this one in Arkansas, has struck down a state law banning same-sex marriage on the ground that the ban has no “rational” basis. In other words, the defenders of the law were not able to prove that the discrimination (against gays and lesbians) involved in the law served a useful social purpose.
It is a waste of time trying to prove that a law restricting marriage to male-female combinations is “rational” in the sense that it serves a useful social purpose. Now I happen to think that traditional male-female marriage is useful and that same-sex marriage will in the long run prove to be socially harmful -- very harmful indeed -- but I doubt that I can prove this to somebody who is not already convinced of its truth.
Why not, instead of trying to prove the irrationality of same-sex marriage, simply say that it is a “self-evident truth” that marriage must be a male-female thing? A self-evident truth is a truth that is known to be true without the need for any proof.
After all, we Americans have a very respectable tradition of holding that some truths are self-evident. In the Declaration of Independence our Founding Fathers itemized a number of self-evident truths -- that “all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” If Thomas Jefferson and the other Founders could make an appeal to self-evident moral truths, why can’t we?
Slavery was condemned and eventually abolished on grounds other than “rational” proof of its inutility. While it is true that slavery was not a socially useful institution, this is not why it was abolished. Americans (at least those Americans who lived outside the South) didn’t become anti-slavery because some economist proved to them that it did more harm than good to the GDP. They turned against slavery because they remembered what Jefferson had said in the Declaration and because Harriett Beecher Stowe -- without taking the trouble to give a “rational” proof that there is anything wrong with cruelty -- showed that slavery was a cruel institution.
Likewise when society, many millennia ago, first decided that marriage should be a male-female thing, this wasn’t because social scientists of that primitive society considered the possibility of same-sex marriage and rejected it in favor of male-female marriage because the latter, in their considered and very “rational” judgment, was more socially beneficial. Those primitive societies, along with every human society that ever existed prior to the 1990s, rejected same-sex marriage because it struck them as an absurdity. They rejected it because its irrationality could be seen on its face; it was self-evident; it didn’t require proof.
And if you are somebody who disapproves of same-sex marriage, is this because you have given it impartial consideration and, after much reading and discussion and contemplation, and after weighing up the pros and cons, you have been compelled by your sober and dispassionate rationality to the conclusion that it will be more harmful to society than beneficial? Or did you say to yourself when the idea of same-sex marriage was first proposed, “This is an absurdity”?
So if this is how almost every society that has ever existed on the face of the earth has decided that same-sex marriage shouldn’t be allowed, and if this is how many of us as individuals still decide against it, why when we enter a courtroom must we pretend that have a “rational” proof against same-sex marriage?
We ought to be able to go into a courtroom and say to the judge, “Your honor, you know as well as I that same-sex marriage makes no sense; and so I rest my case.”
-- David Carlin, a professor of sociology and philosophy at the Community College of Rhode Island at Newport, is the author of Homosexualism Versus Catholicism.
I think a major strategic error overlooked by conservatives is adopting the terminology of the enemy:
Using the term, “traditional marriage”
Tacitly one is crossing a very important psychological threshold just by using that term —you are allowing for the concept of NON-traditional marriage.
Right away you are giving away 50% of the battle, just by doing that. NEVER never never use enemy terminology, and the left rarely does that:
They always say, “anti-choice”, they never say, “pro-life”.
You can “love” many people....doesn’t mean you should MARRY them...or be sanctioned by the state into a marriage with them. And, yes....homosexual marriage is impossible...ie...”absurd”.
And...we should call it NATURAL Marriage....
We ought to be able to go into a courtroom and say to the judge, “Your honor, you know as well as I that same-sex marriage makes no sense; and so I rest my case.”
The real solution is to have the judge recalled and thrown out.
Problem is that there is no such thing as a self evident truth to the left. To them right and wrong only exist as long as they agree to it and they get to decide when to move the boundaries.
The problem is that this is already the argument of the opposition to God-designed marriage: “it’s a self-evident truth that people who love each other and want to commit to each other should be allowed to, regardless of their sex.” (Next year it will be “regardless of their number,” and the next it will be “regardless of their age.”)
There is no rational argument, because the argument is not rational, it is spiritual. I Corinthians teaches us that the rational mind cannot discern the things of the Spirit of God. Period.
Argue that permitting Gay Martiage in a state violates the First Amendment Rights of Christians.
Now that would really set them off.
The one thing they can’t stand is someone pointing out that they’re freaks.
We destroyed the particularity of natural marriage by winking at premarital sex.
We destroyed the stability of natural marriage by OK'ing easy, even no-fault divorce.
We destroyed the procreativity of natural marriage by accepting contraception, sterilization and abortion.
We destroyed the paternal significance of natural marriage by expanding the state to fill the role of the husband, making provision by actual men, husbands/fathers, redundant.
"Natural marriage" has been smashed to the pavement --- by heterosexuals -- and consists of a broken chassis and a scattering of shiny bits.
So now that there's nothing left of "natural marriage" except two adults registering their self-centered self-gratifying coupledom, there's no rational reason why they can't sift through the wreckage and pick out the fragments: the cake, the reception, the honeymoon, the bits they like.
The problem is that Progressives reject the ideas of the Declaration and its assertions of natural law. Progressives see “truth” as whatever is the contemporary sense of the norm. . .even if the contemporary sense is perversion. That’s why, for Progressives, it’s all about propagandizing the people to cow them toward the “norms” that their superiors, the experts, feel is best for them.
They already stole the word gay, leave marriage to the ‘breeders’. They can call their arrangement anything else they want.
Excellent points!
Excellent post!
BOOM!
Only a science denier would believe that it takes a male and female member of a species to advance that species! Only a science denier would believe that a gay trait in any species could survive millions of years of evolution without being able to procreate....
You science deniers are a whacky lot!
Wasn't much of a bother when, from 1969-1973, marriage was comprehensively redefined by the States and the courts.
Except that in many (most?) cases the judge is a federal judge who has a lifetime appointment.
Mrs. Don-o, I'm totally stealing every point of this post! VERY WELL SAID!! Bravo!
As for the judge and his 50+ year old term, rational basis is code for judges in disagreement with elective assemblies. It is a judicial bumper sticker that replaces thought with raw despotism.
Oh, and I ask everyone, do we live a free republic if unelected, unaccountable blackrobes can so casually redefine the foundation of western civilization?
When judges are so comfortable sticking pins in the eye of the civil society, how much longer can we expect any of our remaining and dwindling freedoms to last?
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