[BRIGADE] PJB: Post-Christian America
Published: Fri, 05/23/08
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Friday, May 23, 2008
"A Victory for Equality and Justice," blared the headline above the
editorial. "Momentous," "historic," "a major victory for civil
rights," "a scrupulously fair ruling based on law, precedents and
common sense."
This was the ecstatic reaction of The New York Times to the
California Supreme Court's declaration that homosexuals have a
right to marry and have their unions recognized as marriages.
Now there may be hugging around the newsroom at the Times, where
one senior writer said, a few years back, three-fourths of the
folks who make up the front page are gay. But this is just another
streetlight on America's darkening path to perdition as a society
and republic.
To declare that homosexuals can marry is patently absurd. The very
definition of marriage is the union of a man and woman, first and
foremost, for the procreation of children.
To say two men who live together and engage in sex can be married
renders the idea and ideal of marriage meaningless. The court may
declare it, but it cannot redefine an institution that nature and
nature's God have already defined. As they say in Texas, you can
put lipstick and earrings on a pig, and call her Peggy Sue, but
it's still a pig.
"What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder,"
Christ taught. Through the Old Testament and into the epistles of
St. Paul, homosexual sodomy is an abomination leading to personal
destruction and damnation, one of the five sins that cry out to
heaven for vengeance. How, then, can four judges declare it to be
integral to the sacrament of marriage?
Well, we don't believe all that rot, comes the reply.
Fine, but Christianity is the cornerstone of Western Civilization.
Since the fall of Rome to our own time, nations have believed and
acted on the belief that marriage and traditional families are the
cinderblocks on which a society must be built. When these
cinderblocks crumble, the society collapses. The truth has been
born out in our own time.
With a third of all children born out of wedlock -- 50 percent of
all Hispanic kids, 70 percent of black kids -- and half of all
marriages ending in divorce, the social indicators have recorded
explosions -- in crime, violence, drug and alcohol abuse, dropout
rates, gang membership, and jail and prison populations.
The correlation between prison inmates and broken homes, or homes
never created, is absolute. What armies of social scientists with
six-figure salaries today tell us, 12-year-olds knew 50 years ago.
Setting aside the risibility of the court's conduct, consider what
it says about us as a democratic republic.
We are supposed to be a self-governing people. "Here, sir, the
people rule." Elected representatives write our laws.
Yet, no Congress or state legislature ever voted to declare
homosexual unions a marriage. The idea has everywhere been
rejected. Wherever it has been on the ballot, same-sex marriage has
been voted down. In the 13 states where it was on the ballot in
2004, it was defeated by 58 percent to 85 percent -- the last
figure rolled up in Mississippi, where black Christian pastors told
their flocks to go out and vote down the abomination.
Californians have consistently expressed their opposition and voted
against recognizing the idea of homosexual marriages and granting
the benefits of married couples to same-sex unions. What is bigotry
at the Times is common sense to most Americans.
Homosexual marriage is not in the California constitution, else
someone would have discovered it in 160 years. Where, then, did the
state Supreme Court find this was a right?
Four of seven justices unearthed this right by consulting what
Orwell called their "smelly little orthodoxies." They then decided
to overturn the expressed will of the voters, declare their opinion
law and order the state of California to begin recognizing
homosexual unions as marriages. And they did it because they know
the Times types will hail them as the newest Earl Warrens.
Not long ago, a governor of California would have laughed at the
court and told the justices to go surfing, and ordered state
officials not to issue the marriage licenses. The voters would have
put the names of the four justices on the ballot in November and
thrown them off the court, as they did Chief Justice Rose Bird, a
generation ago.
We used to have executives and legislators like that.
Thomas Jefferson came into office and declared the Alien and
Sedition Acts null and void, released all editors from jail, and
refused to prosecute any more or to enforce the law. Andrew Jackson
said of the great chief justice: "John Marshall has made his
decision. Now let him enforce it."
In 2004, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom handed out marriage
licenses to thousands of homosexuals. Today, conservative mayors in
California, if there are any, might engage in similar civil
disobedience against this latest judicial usurpation of the
legislative power that belongs to elected representatives and the
people.
What's sauce for the goose, etc.
SOURCE: http://buchanan.org/blog/?p=994
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