THE SUPREME COURT, by a ruling of 5-4, has struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex “marriages.” The decision, which was released this morning, can be found here. The justices also dismissed the suit over California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex “marriage,” clearing the way for legal “marriages” to take place there.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority:

“The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity. By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.”

Just to clarify this unwieldy conclusion, which could easily be used to defend the polygamist, here is the text of the Fifth Amendment:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The modern constitutional democracy, founded on equality and individual rights, is bankrupt. It has eaten up its very foundations. It is a rapacious, all-consuming beast that devours the common good and tears communities apart.

Under the ruling, not just marriage but parenthood will be redefined as the federal government grants equal status and parental rights to non-procreative unions.  “Mother” and “father” are discriminatory terms which do not recognize the “personhood” and “dignity” of homosexual couples. In other areas, the implications for taxes, Social Security, military benefits and other federal provisions are considerable as DOMA, signed into law in 1996, grants residents of states where homosexual unions are legal the right to all federal benefits granted to married couples. Nothing is to keep a friend from “marrying” another friend to grant him or her years of Social Security benefits. Harsh government measures will necessarily follow to force those who consider homosexuality immoral to recognize same-sex unions.

—- Comments —

Adam writes:

In Chapter 4 of his book, “The Great Heresies” (1938), Hilaire Belloc wrote:

Cultures spring from religions; ultimately the vital force which maintains any culture is its philosophy, its attitude toward the universe; the decay of a religion involves the decay of the culture corresponding to it — we see that most clearly in the breakdown of Christendom today. The bad work begun at the Reformation is bearing its final fruit in the dissolution of our ancestral doctrines — the very structure of our society is dissolving.

I feel sick to my stomach this morning. Yet again, it appears that our normal voting and legislative processes ultimately have no meaning, as the will of the people can easily be overturned by our overlords, the protectors of the Revolution. I remember in another post you said that we are living through a revolution. Today’s Supreme Court ruling is further evidence of that fact. Basic definitions are being overturned. “The very structure of our society is dissolving,” as Belloc said. What could be more elemental to the structure of society than marriage and family? Now in the waning days of this once great republic, no distinction can be made between marriage and non-marriage (overturning of DOMA and California’s Proposition 8) or between citizen and non-citizen (the Supreme Court’s absurd recent ruling that Arizona cannot require proof of citizenship to register to vote). The common thread between our government’s stance on marriage and citizenship (and all other matters) is that anything which seeks to protect or preserve the traditional order of society must be overturned; in short, all resistance to the Revolution must be eliminated. The Revolution goes by many names (e.g., socialism, radical egalitarianism, multiculturalism), but I find the phrase “utopian universalism” (written by one of your commenters in another post) to be as apt a description as any.

Henry McCulloch writes:

Justice Kennedy again!  The Supreme Court mushmind-middle swing vote strikes again.  It says nothing good about American government that the most will-o’-the-wisp Supreme Court Justice is the most powerful person in the country with respect to social issues, as he is the one to whom all the briefs and arguments are directed.  Kennedy succeeded Justice O’Connor in that role, and he may be a greater curse on the the tattered remnant of the Republic even than she was.  Affirmative action, O’Connor’s pet cause, is a racist outrage, but playing games with what marriage is is spitting in God’s eye.  Yet another malformed “Catholic.”  Will his bishop call him to account?  To ask the question is to answer it.

O’Connor and Kennedy: both Reagan appointees.  Put not thy trust in Republicans!

I have not yet read Kennedy’s latest foray into libertine judicial legislation, but nobody should have expected Kennedy to respect DOMA after he had previously joined O’Connor and Souter (a Bush I appointee) in opining that “[a]t the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”  The three anti-constitutional bandidos emitted that vapid nonsense in asserting, in Casey v. Planned Parenthood, the evidence-free proposition that the U.S. Constitution grants every woman the right to abort her child effectively at any time, for any reason or no reason at all.  That vapid nonsense is America’s controlling judicial philosophy today with respect to social questions.  And no amount of stirring Scalia dissents is going to change that.

Needless to say, Catholic social teaching does not concede to the individual any “right to define [his] own concept of existence…”  And yet Justice Kennedy is considered a Catholic in good standing.  Just like Pelosi, Biden, Sebelius, Cuomo, et al., ad nauseam…

Kennedy must be related to his namesakes of the Cretinous Clan of Massachusetts.  Is Scalia trying to atone for his inexcusable vote against Arizona last week?  Dissents may make for great reading, but they are the vented frustration of the powerless.

We live in the Post-America of “Wise Latinas,” not the America Antonin Scalia grew up in.

What more can America possibly do to reject God’s grace?

Bill R. writes:

The naked imperialism with which the Supreme Court wields it power manifests itself once again in a decision that reminds us ours is not, after all, a government of laws but of men (a word, that last, by the way, which if current trends hold will soon be deemed illegal sexist hate speech — if they can invent Constitution rights about same-sex marriage in a Constitution that doesn’t even mention the idea they’ll certainly find a way around the First Amendment when the occasion calls for it, and it will.)

We truly live in a tyranny whose very softness makes it all the more insidious and difficult to reverse or throw off or, for most people, to even recognize. In that sense, it would have been just as bad if the Supreme Court had struck down all the laws in the country that made same-sex marriage legal. Either way, a total mockery of the notion that we live in a self-governing republic. We may live in a “Republic” of philosopher kings we call “justices” — an office which itself in this country has become the very definition of injustice — but it is no longer a self-governing one.

With that said, however, let me add that we have no need to be concerned that the march of our government’s judicial tyrrany will proceed apace in any direction other than that of leftist uptopianism and its corresponding cause, the total extermination of all Western Christian traditions, if not, in fact, eventually, even those who believe in them.

This is a dark day for this country and for our civilization, but in tragic perspective only one of very many such days we have seen in our time — and will see.

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