According
to the main stream media, aka the Pravda Press, the culture wars have been
rekindled. I agree, but I think the Supreme
Court lit the match. The Supreme Court has
made it a habit of removing social issues from legislative debate by issuing
edicts under the color of legal opinions. It's the edicts, not the social
issues themselves, which cause big emotional arguments. The Supreme Court is
abusing its power by rewriting laws and inventing Constitutional provisions. I think that Roe v Wade should have taught us
that the problem is not the issue of abortion itself. The problem is the Supreme Court finding
things in the Constitution that are not really there.
In 1868, when the 14th Amendment was
adopted, homosexual acts were illegal in every state. The legislators who
ratified it thought it was about race. The Supreme Court had to make it up to
use the 14th Amendment to proclaim same sex marriage as a Constitutional right.
If the Supremes had ruled that under the full faith and credit clause of the
Constitution, a marriage legally performed in one state must be recognized on
all states, there would have been right wing grumbling but not the explosion
you're seeing now. The way the decision was reasoned basically says that 5
Supreme Court Justices can do whatever they want. There are no Constitutional
limits which they will respect.
In the bakery case, it's rule of
law, free speech and freedom of religion versus political correctness. The
basic idea of the rule of law is that everyone should be able to know what the
law is in advance so they can obey it. In this case, nobody could know that the
fines imposed for refusing to create a wedding cake for gay marriage were going
to be more than the annual profits of the entire bakery. People would generally
feel that you sell standard goods to everyone, but you have the right as an
artist to refuse to put images and messages on custom cakes that go against
your convictions or religious beliefs. For example, you should not be forced to
make a Hitler themed birthday cake, especially if you're Jewish. The
administrative law "judge" made it up. There was no precedent for the
finding. There was no precedent for the size of the fine or damages, whatever you want to call the $135,000 assessment against the Oregon bakers. It was a
lawless act.
It's typically minorities that need
a strong rule of law to protect themselves from angry mobs. At the moment, gay
marriage has an angry mob on its side. Liberals must be very foolish not to see
the possibility that mobs might form with irresponsible opposing viewpoints. If
there's no law, whoever has the biggest mob wins.
At
this point most liberals tune out because they assume I’m a Christian
fundamentalist racist bigot. So now I
have to play identity politics. I believe
that married gay couples need to own guns to protect their homes, children and
marijuana plants. I go to a Protestant church once a year for Easter. My wife
is not a Christian. My sister in law is black and she's the best thing that
ever happened to my brother. I'm 64. I grew up in Montana. My family was a
little unpopular because we paid "white" wages to Indians working on
our ranch. I plan to attend a gay wedding in August where two of my friends are
getting married. This is not about the
state of civil rights in 1964. This is about now.
I haven’t been able to find a link
to anything about the Oregon law, either statute or administrative law. If any
reader has information concerning the letter of the law in Oregon, please leave
me a link in a comment. I would like a link to any published article that
spells out what the law was the day before the offense. Please include any
reference you find to specific penalties. To me, this looks more like $100
first offense than $100,000. Unless the law spelled out over $100,000 penalties or
damages, it's abuse of power.
Liberals say the bakers had it
coming because they publicly declared they would not make cakes for gay
weddings. This bothefree exercise of religion, freedom of religionrs me. I thought we
had a right to free speech. Wedding cakes are an artistic product. How far does
Oregon law go? If the cake is ugly, are the bakers in violation? If the bakers
intended to make it ugly as a form of civil disobedience, does that come into
whether they are in violation? Do devout Muslim or Orthodox Jewish bakers have
to make birthday cakes with bacon on them if an administrative law judge in
Oregon says they do? (Hint: Pork products, like bacon, are not kosher for devout
Muslims and Orthodox Jews.)
Liberal comments give away what's
actually happening. The bakers are being punished for having the effrontery to
actually have Christian religious beliefs that they want to live by. My 4
grandparents had 4 different religious traditions. Three were different
varieties of Christianity. One of my grandfathers was Jewish. We all got along
fine because nobody insisted on conformity. You have to have some tolerance for
other folks' beliefs. In the vernacular, you have to cut people some
slack. Punishing Christians for their
beliefs is not a good way to gain acceptance and gradually wear down resistance
to this major change. It's religious bigotry, which encourages extreme
reactions. Liberals believe everyone should conform to your views of the truth
and anyone who doesn't should be severely punished. Liberals think it's
justified, but it's every bit as extreme as the religious intolerance of ISIS
or Al Qaeda. The difference is that Liberals just want to impose severe fines. Liberals
don't want to kill the dissenters, yet.
So
what can we do about it? The first step
is to raise a fuss. If everybody objects loudly, we can gather sufficient
number to change this. It's also vital to make clear that the problem is the
law is being changed in an unlawful, dangerous way. Most people today evaluate
any judicial proceeding, including a Supreme Court decision, by whether they
like who "won" rather than by the reasoning used to get the outcome.
It's not gay marriage itself that is threatening, at least to me. If gay
marriage was adopted by state legislatures or state referendums then the people
would have decided on a matter that was clearly left to the states by the
Constitution. It's that the government no longer respects written law. It is
doing whatever it wants. Not enough folks seem to recognize that if the law is
fickle, no outcome is secure. Nobody's life, liberty or property is secure from
government seizure.
So gay people celebrate the Supreme
Court ruling on gay marriage with no thought that the decision makes no sense.
When the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, homosexual acts were illegal in
every state. If the Supreme Court had used the full faith and credit act to say
that a marriage legally performed in one state must be recognized in all
states, it would have been a small but understandable stretch. Using the 14th
Amendment as the reason gay marriage is legal tells people that 5 Supreme Court
Justices can do whatever they want with the flimsiest of excuses. When the
Supreme Court finds that when the law says an "exchange set up by the
state" really includes exchanges set up by the federal government as well,
they're making it up. The law has no meaning anymore.
Republican candidates should make
clear that process is much more of a problem than the outcome. We want legislatures to deal with these
thorny problems where the Constitution has nothing much to say. We do not want the Supreme Court finding
rights to privacy and dignity that aren’t there. Because once they start finding things that
aren’t there, everyone instinctively knows there’s no end to it.
Our original revolution was started
by people writing letters to each other. Committees of Correspondence are a lot
easier to set up with the internet and its social media. Raise a fuss. That's
what I'm doing.