SCOTUS on Gay Marriage

Arent some of those men wearing dresses?

It is important to see that there are two issues, not just one, involved in the recent US Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage: 1. whether gay marriage ought to be legal, and 2. whether it is a human right. Proposition 1 legalizes gay marriage. Proposition 2 makes it mandatory.

I see nothing wrong in principle with legalizing gay marriage; and I suspect most Christians would agree. It is in the public interest to encourage stable, long-term relationships. However, in embracing Proposition 2, the Supreme Court ruling becomes a significant concern, for reasons I will explain in a moment. And why do it? Homosexual marriage did not need the help: it was spreading across the nation at a pretty good clip in any event. Polls show a majority of Americans accept it, and so making it legal everywhere was probably only a matter of time.

Accordingly, the ruling did little for gays, or for gay marriage.

Some have argued that the ruling was undemocratic, taking the decision out of the hands of voters and legislators. Some have called it judicial overreach, or “legislating from the bench.” This in itself is a serious constitutional concern, a precedent that could lead bad places and be very difficult, even bloody, to undo. It moves in the direction of creating and empowering a ruling class.

But that, I fear, is only a part of the problem. Making homosexual sex a supposed human right also puts the doctrine of human rights at odds with all the major religious and moral traditions, all of which declare it immoral. This is a big problem for the effort to get universal recognition for the doctrine of human rights itself; it tends to discredit other human rights by association, in many foreign lands and quite possibly, eventually, in America itself. There is a good case to be made that al Qaeda, ISIL, and their ilk arose as a direct result of American promotion of feminism and gay rights.

If this were not enough, including a “right” rejected by religion makes the doctrine of human rights, in fact, self-contradictory. The doctrine of human rights is founded on religious assumptions. As the Declaration of Independence puts it, men are “endowed by their Creator” with their rights. John Locke based his claim of human equality on the premise that all are descended from Adam and Eve, with no “senior line” of ancestry. It is a moral equality, an equality of worth before God. By introducing a supposed human right at odds with religion, with our traditional and generally recognized covenants with God, the Court is undermining the concept of human rights altogether: if God can be wrong or superseded on A, he can also be wrong or superseded on B.

This self-contradiction is likely to become apparent over time. As Abraham Lincoln once noted, quoting the Bible, a house divided against itself cannot stand. And, as he also noted, you can't fool all of the people all of the time; such truths will out.

But wait; there's more. Homosexual marriage is an experiment. It has never been tried before, at least in any society remotely similar to our own. It is possible that it will not work; it is possible it will have unintended consequences. It is possible that all our ancestors were not idiots. If permitting it were simply a matter of law, this would not be too worrisome. We could try it in state A, and not in state B, and then compare what results. We could, after giving it a fair trial and discovering we do not like what results, repeal the law. But the Supreme Court ruling binds our hands tightly behind our back. We cannot repeal a human right, and we must recognize it immediately. A human right, by definition, is inalienable. All states must immediately recognize gay marriage, and it cannot be repealed no matter what. The fact that rescinding the right would now require a constitutional amendment is the least of it—in principle, human rights cannot be repealed even by the constitution. If the constitution is amended to do so, this is, per the Declaration of Independence, reason to overthrow the government. After all, if one human right can licitly be erased by legislation, they all can.

We are left to hope that all our ancestors were indeed idiots, God was wrong as we understood him, and there are no possible ill effects to the wider society from homosexual sex.