…I thought I should say something, since an event this important shouldn’t pass unremarked. Frankly, though, it was giving me a headache. Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling pretending to discover that somewhere in the Constitution — unsuspected by anyone who ever wrote it or voted for subsequent Amendments — lies an undeniable right to same-sex “marriage” is so lame it hurts to read it. He says stuff like: “The evidence shows conclusively that moral and religious views form the only basis for a belief that same-sex couples are different from opposite-sex couples.”
“Only?” Which is more absurd: The notion that morality has no role in law? Or the notion that there’s really no social basis for elevating an institution which gives children both a mom and a dad — as practically every society, ever, has done?
But this is a blog post, not a column, so I’ll keep it short by referring you to a couple other sources. National Review, for one, did a nice job. An excerpt:
On what grounds does Judge Walker hold that the considered moral judgment of the whole history of human civilization — that only men and women are capable of marrying each other — is nothing but a “private moral view” that provides no conceivable “rational basis” for legislation? Who can tell? Judge Walker’s smearing of the majority of Californians as irrational bigots blindly clinging to mere tradition suggests that he has run out of arguments and has nothing left but his reflexes.
And then there’s this column by Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage, ending with a splendidly punchy summary of the key issues:
Those in power will call it tolerance, they will call it pluralism, but in truth same-sex marriage is a government takeover of an institution the government did not make, cannot in justice redefine, and ought to respect and protect as essential to the common good.
Judge Walker is off-base: same-sex marriage is not a civil right, it is a civil wrong.
Couldn’t have said it any better. Read ‘n’ remark.
