The Gay "Marriage" Charade

After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the liberal pundits predictably cheered the ruling. With few exceptions, such pundits were very consistent (see here, here, here, here, here, and the Huffington Post, which dedicated a whole page) in one particular and notable aspect of this issue: it was “gay marriage” and not “same-sex marriage.”

Apparently it has escaped many liberals that, when one redefines marriage to include man/man and woman/woman unions, homosexuality never has to enter into the picture. Of course, for liberals this is really all about homosexuality. As I have noted before, marriage is just the means to a more sinister end for the homosexual movement. This is about sex and about legitimizing, through the American judicial system, a sexual lifestyle many Americans find immoral.

This is also about vengeance. Once the homosexual movement has the full protection of the law behind it (which it pretty much does now in about a dozen states), institutions with moral or religious objections to homosexual behavior will be attacked, not just with protests, but with the full legal force of the state. Churches, schools, hospitals, businesses, and the like will be targeted. Of course, in the liberal led states where homosexuality has obtained significant legal protection, this is already occurring.

Individuals who speak out against homosexuality will also be accused, and perhaps fined or arrested, for engaging in “hate speech.” This also is already occurring in other parts of the world where liberalism is more entrenched.

Liberals have become so consumed with forcing the legitimization of homosexual behavior down the throats (sorry!) of the American people that they have become blind to the unintended consequences of their legal actions. Let me provide you with a delicious scenario: legalized “same-sex” marriage—which is what we really have—renders the federal estate tax impotent.

Under current federal tax law, an individual can leave any amount of money to a spouse without generating estate tax. Thus, a small business owner or a farmer, wealthy or not, just prior to his or her death can “marry” a “partner” for no other reason than simply to avoid having his estate taxed (further) by the federal government.

What’s more, once the redefining of marriage is taken to its logical conclusion—unless, of course, the left wants to “discriminate” and limit the definition of “marriage”—and polygamous and incestuous relationships are given the legal protection of marriage, then a wealthy small business owner or farmer, nearing the end of his life, will be able to “marry” his son or daughter (no matter if either party is already married) for no other reason than to avoid paying additional federal taxes. Thank you, Justice Kennedy!

For conservatives, and other Americans still capable of actually feeling shame, there will be no shame or stigma in participating in such marriages, because the relationships will have absolutely nothing to do with sex and are all about “love” (loving to stick it to the feds, that is), and “love is love,” right libs?

For liberals, whether such relationships are sexual should have no bearing. I mean, what protest can a true liberal raise against any kind of sexual relationship between consenting adults? Upon what moral standard would they rely? After all, we would not want to “demean” a couple whose “moral and sexual choices the Constitution protects.”

Also, there would be no violation of God’s law either, because as anyone who truthfully understands Scripture knows, marriage can only exist as union of one man and one woman. Thus, all that would be occurring is taking legal advantage of the folly produced by liberal logic. I suppose liberals could always change their “marriage” laws and require that same-sex “marriages” occur only with those actually engaging in homosexual activity, but that would require the government to enter the bedroom, and we know liberals don’t want that! (How wickedly ironic would that be? We go from laws against sodomy to those requiring it!)

Of course, liberals would howl at conservatives “marrying” simply to reduce their tax burden, but the law says nothing about such relationships being sexual. As Fred Kopp noted in American Thinker nearly two years ago, “When applying for a marriage license, there is no box to check, no oath to take, no questions about a person's sexual proclivity.  Ironically, the very heart of the ‘gay marriage’ movement -- homosexuality -- gets nary a mention on the marriage application.”

Also, near countless number of times, liberals have gone out of their way to make the case that it matters not whether a marital relationship is capable of producing children, so, again, surely it would matter not whether a marital relationship had anything to do with sex at all.

Therefore, two widowed sisters (one with children and one without) could “marry” so that the estate of the childless widow could be passed on the children of the other with a significantly reduced tax burden.

When multiples are allowed to marry—and make no mistake about it, polygamists celebrated the Supreme Court ruling on DOMA as well—these scenarios become even more crazy and complicated. No matter, though, the legal logic stands.

In fact, homosexuals are already taking similar “crazy” steps in states where same-sex marriage is not recognized. While writing this column, a link appeared on Drudge to an ABC news piece about a homosexual man (65 years old) who adopted his partner (73 years old) to avoid paying Pennsylvania's inheritance tax.

A perversion (something with which most liberals have no problem) of adoption no doubt, but evidently legal, nonetheless. Thus, if gays can adopt to game the system, then straights can “marry” to do the same.

(See this column on American Thinker.)

Copyright 2013, Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason

Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World

tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

How the Founders Would View Same-Sex Marriage

In the ongoing debate on the definition of marriage, I have made it clear more than once that both sides are making a moral argument, and it is futile for anyone to decry the “legislating of morality.” I have also made it clear that, whether the issue is marriage or homosexuality, and whether one appeals to Scripture, Natural Law, or science, the morally superior position lies with the conservative Christian views on these matters.

When I ask a liberal upon what moral authority he relies when he reaches his pro-homosexual/same-sex marriage conclusions, inevitably the answer is the U.S. Constitution. No doubt, throughout our history, in order to further the pagan liberal agenda, liberal jurists have “interpreted” the U.S. Constitution nearly beyond recognition.

Thus, displays of the Ten Commandments on public property are ruled to violate the Constitution, while businesses peddling pornography are seen to be protected by it. When ruling on a matter pertaining to the Constitution, courts ultimately will rely on the words and deeds (though often rather selectively) of our Founders as evidence to the correct interpretation of the words of the Constitution.

One would have to have been raised by squirrels (or be a cast member of an MTV reality program) to be an adult in the U.S. and not at least have heard of the “Separation of Church and State.” In declaring government religious (mainly Christian) expression unconstitutional, the courts refer to the First Amendment, and they interpret that amendment through the words of Thomas Jefferson in a letter that he penned to the Danbury Baptists, which declared “a wall of separation between Church and State.”

For over 70 years, time and again U.S. courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have referenced Jefferson’s “Wall” in order to restrict religious (almost exclusively Christian) expression in America. Thus, as we weigh and debate marriage in the U.S., it would be an ironic travesty not to consider the words and deeds of our Founders as we draw our legal conclusions.

I submit (with sad and stunning trepidation that such a submission is even necessary) that not one single Founder would give the notion that marriage is anything other than the union of one man and one woman more than a half-second’s thought before (rightly) concluding that such an idea is either a terrible joke or spoken by a lunatic.

First of all, forget marriage; the idea that homosexuality should be considered normal and acceptable behavior would be deemed a wicked and ridiculous conclusion by our Founders. Under British law, sodomy was a capital crime. Sir William Blackstone, as I noted recently, was a favorite English jurist of our Founders, and his Commentaries on the Laws of England served as the basis of legal jurisprudence in America.

As David Barton remarks, “In addressing sodomy (homosexuality), [Blackstone] found the subject so reprehensible that he was ashamed even to discuss it.” Nevertheless, Blackstone declared:

“What has been here observed…the infamous crime against nature committed either with man or beast. A crime which ought to be strictly and impartially proved and then as strictly and impartially punished….I will not act so disagreeable part to my readers as well as myself as to dwell any longer upon a subject the very mention of which is a disgrace to human nature [sodomy]…A taciturnity observed likewise by the edict of Constantius and Constans: …(where that crime is found, which is unfit even to know, we command the law to arise armed with an avenging sword that the infamous men who are, or shall in future be guilty of it, may undergo the most severe punishments).

“THIS the voice of nature and of reason, and the express law of God, determine to be capital. Of which we have a signal instance, long before the Jewish dispensation, by the destruction of two cities by fire from heaven: so that this is an universal, not merely a provincial, precept.”

Following the same moral precepts, each of the original 13 colonies treated homosexuality as a serious criminal offense. Jefferson himself authored such a law for the state of Virginia, prescribing that the punishment for sodomy was to be castration. (You think modern courts will look to this for guidance?)

New York’s law read, “That the detestable and abominable vice of buggery [sodomy] . . . shall be from henceforth adjudged felony . . . and that every person being thereof convicted by verdict, confession, or outlawry [unlawful flight to avoid prosecution], shall be hanged by the neck until he or she shall be dead.”

Connecticut’s law read, “That if any man shall lie with mankind as he lieth with womankind, both of them have committed abomination; they both shall be put to death.” Georgia’s law (surprisingly—at least for today’s liberals) did not call for the death penalty, but stated, “Sodomy . . . shall be punished by imprisonment at hard labour in the penitentiary during the natural life or lives of the person or persons convicted of th[is] detestable crime.”

General George Washington dealt, at least once, directly with the issue of homosexual behavior in the Continental Army. A lieutenant Enslin was tried and convicted of attempting to commit sodomy with John Monhort, a soldier. The ruling declares, “His Excellency the Commander in Chief approves the sentence and with abhorrence and detestation of such infamous crimes orders Lieutt. Enslin to be drummed out of camp tomorrow morning by all the drummers and fifers in the Army never to return.”

Liberals should not bother with the “but the Founders supported slavery” argument. First of all, many Founders did not support slavery, and it was hotly debated at our founding and beyond. (Also, it should be noted that it was Bible-believing Christians who led the abolition movement.) This is certainly not the case when it comes to homosexual behavior. Secondly, one can’t appeal to the Founders only when it is convenient.

It is also noteworthy that the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments (the Fourteenth Amendment being ratified in 1868) did nothing to prevent all 50 U.S. states, including each state that entered the union after 1868, from enacting laws against homosexual behavior. As recently as 1962, sodomy was a felony in every state in the U.S.

In other words, for nearly 200 years and without any Constitutional conflictions or any serious debate, homosexual behavior in America was seen as immoral and therefore illegal. Thus, we see that the Founders do nothing but support the traditional (biblical) view of marriage.

(See this column on American Thinker.)

Copyright 2013, Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason

Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World

tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

Writing Our Own Moral Code

Ohio GOP Senator Rob Portman, who, for the last several years has frequently been in the conversation for national office, recently reversed himself and declared his support for same-sex marriage. According to Portman himself, two years ago, his son Will announced that he was gay. Not wanting to stand in the way of his son’s opportunity “to pursue happiness and fulfillment,” is, evidently, what led to Portman’s change of heart when it comes to the definition of marriage.

Writing for New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait (a supporter of same-sex marriage) describes Portman’s decision as a “moral failure, one of which he appears unaware.” According to Chait, this “moral failure” is due to the fact that Portman “opposed gay marriage until he realized that opposition to gay marriage stands in the way of his own son’s happiness.”

Chait goes on, “Portman ought to be able to recognize that, even if he changed his mind on gay marriage owing to personal experience, the logic stands irrespective of it: Support for gay marriage would be right even if he didn’t have a gay son. There’s little sign that any such reasoning has crossed his mind.”

Notice that? Chait is appealing to a moral standard (one of which he appears unaware). Chait decries Portman’s “moral failure” while appealing to logic, reason, and what is “right.” What makes Portman’s seemingly self-serving conversion a “moral failure”?

After all, isn’t looking out for one’s children noble behavior? Why must Portman think of others (or, as Chait puts it, “consider issues from a societal perspective”) to be considered moral, himself? What standard is Chait using?

Of course, Chait is appealing to Natural Law. He has rightly recognized Portman’s apparent hypocrisy. However, as I noted in my last column, by appealing to what is “right” in one situation, but ignoring it in another, he is sawing off the limb upon which he is sitting. For millennia, guided by Natural Law, civilizations the world over have deemed homosexual behavior as immoral.

No less than the U.S. Supreme has said so. As recently as 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court declared, “Proscriptions against [homosexual] conduct have ancient roots. Sodomy was a criminal offense at common law and was forbidden by the laws of the original 13 States when they ratified the Bill of Rights. . . . In fact, until 1961, all 50 States outlawed sodomy, and today, 24 States and the District of Columbia continue to provide criminal penalties for sodomy performed in private and between consenting adults. Against this background, to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is ‘deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition,’ or ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty’ is, at best, facetious [silly].”

Of course, the Court reversed itself in Lawrence vs. Texas in 2003, declaring that, “The petitioners [Lawrence and Garner] are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime.”

In his dissent, Justice Scalia correctly concluded that, “Today's opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.... [T]he Court has taken sides in the culture war, departing from its role of assuring, as neutral observer, that the democratic rules of engagement are observed.”

Unsurprisingly, after gaining the legal justification for homosexual sex, the next moral domino in the sights of the homosexual agenda has been marriage. On November 18, 2003, just four-and-a-half months after the Lawrence decision, the Judicial Supreme Court of Massachusetts ruled in favor of legalized same-sex marriage. Thus Massachusetts became the first state in the U.S. to grant marital rights to same-sex couples.

The Chief Justice of the Massachusetts court, Margaret Marshal, referenced Lawrence in the ruling: “Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.”

But “mandating our own moral code” is exactly what supporters of the homosexual agenda seek to do. Again, what existing moral code are they using to justify homosexual behavior? They rarely, if ever, appeal to one. The argument is simply, there are some people who want (it makes them “happy”) to engage in homosexuality, thus “liberty of all” dictates that it should be allowed.

The majority in Lawrence also concluded that, “[Liberty] gives substantial protection to adult persons in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex.” Of course, no such conclusions have been reached when it comes to prostitution, or polygamy, or incest, or bestiality. In other words, liberals have decided that homosexuality deserves special privilege when it comes to the law and “private sexual conduct.”

And thus we see the real goal of the “so-called homosexual agenda:” the legal legitimization of homosexuality across all of America. After all, if it makes liberals “happy” then it shouldn’t be illegal. And if it’s not illegal, well then, it must be moral.

(See this column on American Thinker.)

Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com

Legislating Morality

Being a lifelong fan of football, I have never had a problem with NFL instant replay. I’m in my early forties, so I can remember well the days before instant replay. Whatever the shortcomings of instant replay—and there were some significant ones in the early days—to me, the benefit of the official getting the call right always trumped any inconvenience that might result from a video review of a play.

Unsurprisingly, I find that most NFL fans approve of replay—especially when it is their team on the wrong end of a bad call. Don’t we all wish that there was an “instant replay” for life—a chance for an “official review” always to get things right?

Of course, “getting it right” means that there is a standard, much like the rules in the NFL, to which we all are (or should be) held. Despite notions to the contrary, as we argue and debate the issues of our day, ultimately each of us relies on such a standard, or some notion of right and wrong, or fair play, or rules, or morality, or whatever you want to call it.

What’s more, the very foundation of our government depends upon such a notion. In fact, the foundation of any good government, culture, society, or virtually any situation where human beings interact with one another rests upon what used to be called Natural Law.

Our Founding Fathers understood this well. However, the idea that liberty, good government, and just laws have their roots in Natural Law, or “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God,” did not begin with the founding of America. For millennia many philosophers, politicians, priests, and lay people alike knew the role that Natural Law should play in the “Governments [that] are instituted among men.”

Jim Powell, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and an expert in the history of liberty, credits the Roman philosopher and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 B.C. to 43 B.C.) with expressing the “principles that became the bedrock of liberty in the modern world.” Cicero was the leading lawyer of his time, and Thomas Jefferson credits him not only with influencing the Declaration of Independence, but also with informing the American understanding of “the common sense” basis for the right of revolution.

“True law,” as Cicero called it, is the “one eternal and unchangeable law [that] will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is God, over us all, for he is the author of this law…”

“[The] Law of Nature” wrote English philosopher John Locke (who also profoundly influenced our Founders), “stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other men’s actions must…be conformable to the Law of Nature, i.e. to the will of God…”

Sir William Blackstone, another renowned and favorite English jurist of our Founders, declared in his presuppositional basis for law that, “These laws laid down by God are the eternal immutable laws of good and evil…This law of nature dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this…”

C.S. Lewis concludes that, “Natural Law or Traditional Morality [whatever one chooses to call it]…is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained.”

Throughout the early colonies, the incorporation of Natural (or “Divine”) Law was prevalent. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (the first constitution written in America), as well as similar documents in Rhode Island and New Haven, specifically mentioned that their civil law rested upon “the rule of the word of God,” or “all those perfect and most absolute laws of His.”

References to, not vague religious babble, but specific biblical texts, such as the Ten Commandments, can be found in the civil law of every original U.S. Colony. It is a fact of history that throughout our pre-Colonial, Colonial, Revolutionary period and beyond, America’s lawmakers and laws were steeped in Natural Law.

Thus we can conclude that from the beginning our government has been “legislating morality.” All law is rooted in morality. “Laws without morals are in vain,” said Ben Franklin. Not only that, but as I implied above, every debate we have is rooted in morality.

It is absurd and ignorant to lament conservative Christian efforts when it comes to abortion, marriage, and so on as some attempt to “legislate morality.” The other side is attempting the very same thing! In fact, the lamenter (whatever his political persuasion) has also taken a moral stand. Thus, he is like the bank robber who calls the police because his get-away car gets stolen.

What’s more, those who attack Natural Law (because an attack on a position that stems from Natural Law is an attack on Natural Law) do so with arguments that are derived from Natural Law. It is a self-defeating effort. They are attempting to saw off the limb upon which they are sitting.

As Lewis puts it, “The effort to refute [Natural Law] and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There never has been, and never will be, a radically new judgment of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or (as they now call them) ‘ideologies,’ all consist of fragments from [Natural Law] itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to [Natural Law] and to it alone such validity as they possess.”

Sadly, recent examples of such nonsense come not from Democrats or their liberal friends in the media, but from self-described “Orthodox Christians” within the GOP. Michigan GOP representative Justin Amash recently complained that “We can't legislate morality and force everyone to agree with us.” It appears that Amash was trying to impress John Stossel and his gathering of a “thousand young libertarians.”

Stossel likes the fact that “Amash focuses on government spending.” In addition, conservative author Arthur Brooks implores republicans to focus on “improving the lives of vulnerable people” through the appropriate conservative policies instead of “imposing an alien ‘bourgeois’ morality on others.”

Libertarians and their like-minded friends want to focus on government spending or conservative fiscal policies, but they often fail to realize that one does not leave morality at the door when entering the realm of economics. If you want to make the moral arguments in favor of proper (“right and good”) economic policy (which, of course, are ultimately based in Natural Law), then you must accept the other moral conclusions (killing a child in the womb is wrong; marriage is only between a man and a woman) that go along with them.

In other words, it is folly to make moral arguments in favor of sound fiscal policy, all the while turning a blind eye toward killing children in the womb or the evils of homosexual behavior.

(See this column on American Thinker.)

Copyright 2013, Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason
www.trevorgrantthomas.com