“Some men say the earth is flat.
Some men say the earth is round.
But if it is flat. Could Parliament make it round?
And if it round. Could the king’s command flatten it?”
– St. Thomas More during his trial for treason for refusal to acknowledge Henry VIII as the head of the Roman Catholic Church of England. For that refusal he was beheaded.
More’s statement came to mind last week when our modern day ephors in the Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage legal nationwide in a 5-4 ruling, invalidating the laws of over a dozen states.
Let’s put aside the specific matter at hand aside. While many believe this ruling represented progress toward freedom, this ignores the ramifications of SCOTUS’ decision.
Some may say that it doesn’t matter, because people were given freedom they have been denied. Americans should know better than to make Faustian bargains with the feds.
First and foremost, this ruling was an enormous power grab by the judicial branch. Nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government given authority over defining marriage. The 10th Amendment makes it clear that such authority is left to the states.
Keep in mind something very interesting about what they didn’t argue. The court did not claim marriage licenses were unconstitutional, but only laws that restricted same-sex couples from marrying (why not also polygamists?)
The very fact that you have to get a government marriage license to get married infers that it is not a right but a privilege. If this is not the case, why do we have to get a license to get married? Why can people not simply write their own marriage contract?
Whatever the answer may be, it inevitably comes down to maintaining government control over people’s lives.
Although government does not exercise its theoretical power over marriage as much as it does other activities also licensed, it’s still the same principle. Marriage, under current law, is not a right but a privilege granted to us by government, and SCOTUS did not dispute this.
To summarize, what happened was not a blow for freedom but a power grab by the federal government to implement their own preferences as to the exact provisions of state laws. Notice they still upheld the restriction of two persons in a marriage; isn’t that still discriminatory? On what basis, then, is the government definition of marriage determined?
They did not give same-sex couples the “right to marry,” but the ability to ask permission from the state to marry.
The sad truth is that this latest ruling did not fall out of the sky one day, but came as a result of the state governments licensing marriage and meddling in institutions it had no business controlling in the first place. Then came federal programs like Social Security that discriminate on the basis of marriage, followed by a byzantine tax system that employs similar types of discrimination, we suggest to check the Gender Discrimination law services los angeles ca for further information on this matter.
The good news is, there is very palpable silver lining in this ruling. It should inspire states to get out of the marriage business entirely. Several states have recently considered bills that would abolish marriage licenses and allow people to enter into private marriage contracts.
Marriage outside of government control has been the mainstay for most of human history. Restoring marriage as a private institution will not only end needless bickering over political factions, but deprive the federal government of any claim over authority they were never intended to have.
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