Sexuality and Gender

Marriage Redefinition without Representation

Author Amy K. Hall Published on 10/07/2014

Here in California, our governor and attorney general refused to defend our democratically-established constitutional amendment maintaining the definition of marriage as one man and one woman. So last year, since the Supreme Court decided that no one other than these men had the necessary legal standing to defend Prop 8, the people of California had no way to defend their votes, and an earlier judge’s decision to strike the marriage amendment down was allowed to stand. The will of the people of California meant nothing. The power and opinions of these few individuals trumped all.

In many other states, judges are striking down the democratically-established legal definition of marriage according to their own opinions about whether or not man/woman-only marriage is irrational and secretly motivated by malice.

This isn’t the way a free society is run, and it’s certainly not the way to maintain a stable one (see the Roe v. Wade debacle of the last 40 years), so the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday to not weigh in on whether or not the people of our country have a right to legally define the most basic and necessary institution in our country is a blow. From Ryan Anderson:

Today the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review appeals from Utah, Oklahoma, Virginia, Indiana and Wisconsin on the definition of marriage. This means that lower court rulings that struck down state marriage laws now will go into effect, forcing the redefinition of marriage in these states and potentially in other states in the 4th, 7th, and 10th circuits....

The truth of the matter is that the marriage laws in these five states—as in many states across our nation—are good laws that reflect the truth about marriage. Frequently they were passed with overwhelming democratic support. The Supreme Court should have reviewed these cases and should have upheld the authority of citizens and their elected representatives to make good marriage policy. Instead, the Supreme Court left standing bad rulings from lower federal courts that usurped authority from the people by striking down good laws.

The cases at issue involve lower court rulings that struck down state marriage laws, claiming that they violated the U.S. Constitution. But the courts never provided compelling arguments that laws that reflect the truth about marriage are unconstitutional. Indeed, as former Attorney General Ed Meese and I argued last week in The Washington Post, the Supreme Court should have reviewed these cases and declared the laws constitutional.

It’s very hard to watch our culture rush headlong into its own destruction waving celebratory flags. I love our people. I love our country. The consequences we’ve been warning about are already beginning to show themselves throughout the West, and things are going to get worse. It’s like watching a nation of snowmen fight for a right to live in greenhouses. We can reason, and weep, and plead, but they want their “freedom,” and they just won’t listen to us haters.

Russell Moore has some advice for us going forward.