Posted on 06/26/2015 8:41:45 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Distancing themselves from the majority on the Supreme Court, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas filed a dissenting opinion to Wednesday's Defense Against Marriage Act ruling, stating that “same-sex marriage presents a highly emotional and important question of public policy – but not a difficult question of constitutional law."
"The Constitution does not guarantee the right to enter into a same-sex marriage,” the justices wrote.
The landmark case was filed by Edith Windsor of New York, who was forced to pay taxes on an inheritance when Thea Spyer, the woman she married in Ontario, Canada, died in 2009.
Windsor was asking the court to “resolve a debate between two competing views of marriage,” the dissent reads: traditional marriage, between a man and a woman, and what the justices refer to as “consent-based” marriage defined as: “… the solemnization of mutual commitment – marked by strong emotional attachment and sexual attraction – between two persons.”
“The Constitution does not codify either of these views of marriage,” Alito writes. “The silence of the Constitution on this question should be enough to end the matter as far as the judiciary is concerned.”
Windsor asked the Supreme Court to look at DOMA through the lens of the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause. But Alito argued that the due process clause does not apply to this case.
“It is well established that any 'substantive' component to the Due Process Clause protects only those fundamental rights and liberties which are, objectively, ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,’” Alito explains in his dissent. “It is beyond dispute that the right to same-sex marriage is not deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.”
In fact, Alito points out, “No country allowed same-sex couples to marry until the Netherlands did so in 2000.”
“What Windsor and the United States seek, therefore, is not the protection of a deeply rooted right but the recognition of a very new right,” Alito writes. And because of the lack of deep-rooted history, he believes the “Justices have cause for both caution and humility.”
“Perhaps because they cannot show that same-sex marriage is a fundamental right under our Constitution, Windsor and the United States couch their arguments in equal protection terms,” Alito writes.
“In my view, the approach that Windsor and the United States advocate is misguided,” since they asked the court "to rule that the presence of two members of the opposite sex is as rationally related to marriage as white skin is to voting or a Y-chromosome is to the ability to administer an estate,” Alito maintained.
“In our system of government, ultimate sovereignty rests with the people, and the people have the right to control their own destiny. Any change on a question so fundamental should be made by the people through their elected officials,” he added.
“I hope that the Court will ultimately permit the people of each State to decide this question for themselves. Unless the Court is willing to allow this occur, the whiffs of federalism in the today’s opinion of the court will soon be scattered to the wind.”
“This week, with three rulings, the SC has effect effectively nullified the constitution.”
This week? How about the recent decisions such as the government can take ANY property for ANY reason, including just wanting to use it for taxes, or the decision that says your silence can be used against you in a court of law?
The rebellion won’t start until they start executing their true objectives and start targeting churches that will not allow their facilities to be used for gay “weddings”.
And they WILL seek out those churches, just as they sought out those poor pizza shop owners.
Keeping your head down and hoping they won’t notice is not going to work.
Now 0bama can claim he’s also the first gay president.
He will before his term ends. IF it ends.
The Constitution, as now written, does not even address marriage. Anywhere.
There is an oblique reference to the powers reserved to the states, if not prohibited to them, in the 10th Amendment.
Yes, that's the only option to preserve religious freedom. You will get married by a Justice of the Peace. The church ceremony will be purely a blessing of the marriage.
Churches will then be free to conduct same sex marriages or not without facing revocation of their tax exempt status.
I wonder how this will impact military chaplains.
Louisiana Covenant Marriage looks to me to be something in much need. It would strengthen the bonds of matrimony and be good for the family and therefore society.
I teach elementary and middle school. I see how divorce wounds my students.
Glad you didn’t flame me since these last two days have my body temperature close to spontaneous combustion.
I think all Catholic Priests and Southern Baptist Ministers are on the way out. None will make promotion from this day forward and be required to leave. Already this is happening, I know of two cases firsthand.
The Fairfax Co, VA school board is in the process of shoving faggotry down the throats of middle school students. There was a public hearing, in which this outrage was strongly opposed. (The board voted for it anyway). The supporters of the faggotry seemed, from news footage, to be all ugly bulldykes.
For now, in order to keep from being charged with discrimination, churches who oppose this ruling will have to get out of the business of signing off on certificates of marriage. In that case, a church marriage ceremony will have nothing to do with the recognition of marriage by the government. It will be a sacrament or blessing only.
I don’t think there is a law that compels the clergy to sign off on a marriage certificate (yet). It has just been traditionally done.
There will be no shortage of churches in which same sex couples can be married, but there must be an avenue for dissenters to practice their freedom of religion as well. If there isn’t, things could get real ugly.
People can get married by a Justice of the Peace or maybe a County Clerk. There is no reason to involve clergy unless there is an agenda that is trying to be met. This(Gay Union) is no reason to force someone to do something against their conscience.
Which is why we need and Amendment. We need the US Constitution to explicitly state no number or composition of parties can marry except for the exclusive case of one individual man marrying on individual woman.
I guess this wouldn’t speak to sex changes, but I am OK with that loophole as long as faggots and dykes and communes and swinging eigth-somes can’t marry.
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