There is probably no other decision that could stir the fires in the Republican Party to further the SPLIT than this decision, despite the fact that it is legally correct. You cannot deny gays equal rights without surrendering your own, for that is how the law really works. If you say a black cannot vote, then that will be expanded to Jews, Catholics, Muslims or whoever is the minority for that is the primary danger of Democracy where the majority can outlaw the minority.
What this Obergefell v. Hodges decision actually stands for in reasoning should be applied uniformly to all subject matter, and that means progressive taxation is unconstitutional as well. In the 5-4 ruling, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority of the Court with the four liberal justices. Each of the four conservative justices wrote their own dissent. Yet here is the core legal opinion that is correct, which should apply to us all in every aspect of who we are from race, creed, to class status, making it truly illegal to tax us by socialism or Marxist idealism. Justice Kennedy wrote: “They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law,” Kennedy continued: “The Constitution grants them that right.”
Legally there is no difference from blaming the decay of social morals on gays as distinguished from the rich. Saying that your taxes have risen because the “rich do not pay their fair share” is equally discriminatory if you replace the world “rich” with gays, Jews, blacks, women, Muslims, Atheists, welfare recipients, or white males over 18. It is all the same under what is supposed to be “law”.
Obergefell v. Hodges upholding gay rights is indeed a monumental decision that will go down in history with Brown v. Board of Education, and Roe v. Wade, which NPR reported. However, I would add to this collage of decisions GRISWOLD V. CONNECTICUT, 381 US 479 (1965) which upheld the Right to Privacy, which seems to be ignored by everyone from Congress to FATCA, NSA to Google. The Griswold case was over outlawing married couples from using condoms under the religious belief that God said go forth an propagate, so preventing pregnancy was wrong. The approach was the same as FATCA, where they could not direct the law at married persons, so they directed it at selling or giving them a condom. FATCA requires foreign institutions to report any American or suffer, as their assets will be confiscated in the USA. The question in Griswold: How can you enforce such a law? Do you then require a permit to have sex and someone from government must come in the bedroom to inspect before insertion? Sounds like even more perverts would be working for government.
Legal reasoning is never consistent and it would be far better to have a computer become the Virtual Supreme Court. For example, in PERRY v. UNITED STATES, 294 U.S. 330 (1935), the issue was U.S. Treasury Bonds sold in 1917 when gold was money, so was it legal for Congress to retroactively change the terms by removing it to be payable in gold nearly 20 years later? The court held the bond still paid you in dollars, which is legal tender and any other argument would be “Not a recoupment of loss in any proper sense, but an unjustified enrichment.” Hence, they held Perry could not even state a claim worthy to file a case.
The Supreme Court far too often rules in the favor of government. The Court upheld disproportionate application of income tax in BRUSHABER v. UNION PACIFIC R. CO., 240 U.S. 1 (1916). How can you discriminate against someone who works and one that does not to justify disproportionate percentage of income taxes?
From a cyclical perspective, this decision comes curiously 43 years after the formation of the gay rights movement, precisely in line with the pi frequency. Nearly 46 years to the day after a riot at New York’s Stonewall Inn, which sparked the issue within 3.14 years of that event, the gay rights movement began. This decision could settle one of the major civil rights fights of this era, but it should apply to civil rights even in taxation. The language of Kennedy’s opinion spoke eloquently of the most fundamental values of family, love and liberty, but it is not limited to just that area.
“Under the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their personhood to deny them this right,” Kennedy wrote. He was joined in the ruling by the court’s liberal justices: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.
What Justice Kennedy is saying has nothing to do with religion. This is the legal right to inherit property if two people live together or one is in a coma and the other has no legal standing to even be in the hospital room. These are the “legal” rights that are attached to a civil marriage, which requires a license because it is a tax.
Once the state requires a marriage license, even to get married in the eyes of God in a church, it ceases to be a religious right and enters the realm of civil rights that require a license. The religious people who are against gay marriage are barking up the wrong tree. Why does the government have the right to charge a tax to get married? This comes from the king’s right to sleep with the bride on the night of her wedding called Prima Noctum. There is no account that he ever exercised that right in England, but the ledgers are full of “fees” being paid to relieve the king of that right and this fee, with time, became the marriage contract.
So if you do not pay the fee today, you have NO RIGHT to be married anywhere including a church or in the eyes of God, unless the government is paid. In this context, this is what a right to marry is all about and you should not confuse this with religion to begin with. This is a right for the government to simply charge a license fee – not religion.
Chief Justice Roberts’ argument centered around the need to preserve states’ rights over what he viewed as following the turn of public opinion. In ruling in favor of gay marriage, he said, “Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law.” He further wrote, “If you are among the many Americans—of whatever sexual orientation—who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today’s decision. Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal,” he wrote. “Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of new benefits. But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it.”
Roberts continues:
“Understand well what this dissent is about: It is not about whether, in my judgment, the institution of marriage should be changed to include same-sex couples. It is instead about whether, in our democratic republic, that decision should rest with the people acting through their elected representatives, or with five lawyers who happen to hold commissions authorizing them to resolve legal disputes according to law.”
Justice Roberts is being a bullshit artist here. Once the government charges a fee for marriage then it is no longer a religious right. The government legally can deny that license to anyone, so there could be no legal marriage even in a church.
Roberts is selectively arguing for state rights on this issue, yet upholds Federal superiority on just about every other issue. He ignores equal protection of the law and upholds progressive taxation. It was Roberts who virtually unilaterally upheld Obamacare the first time, arguing it was a tax. He effective jumps back and forth and stands only for bigger government. Progressive taxation also violates equal protection and state rights. His inconsistent rulings are an abomination. Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas joined him in his dissent.
Roberts disparaged the majority decision of Kennedy by saying that it was nothing more than a flimsy argument.
“Stripped of its shiny rhetorical gloss, the majority’s argument is that the Due Process Clause gives same-sex couples a fundamental right to marry because it will be good for them and for society,” Roberts wrote. “If I were a legislator, I would certainly consider that view as a matter of social policy. But as a judge, I find the majority’s position indefensible as a matter of constitutional law.”
The Due Process Clause does not consider what is good for society. That is not a legal position that has EVER been taken. I was denied Due Process of Law, saying civil contempt is not criminal so I had no right to lawyers or a trial. How is that “good” for society? It was a precise complaint in the Declaration of Independence.
Roberts’ other dispute is that many of the arguments made in support of gay marriage could be used to also support plural marriage.
“If not having the opportunity to marry ‘serves to disrespect and subordinate’ gay and lesbian couples, why wouldn’t the same ‘imposition of this disability’… serve to disrespect and subordinate people who find fulfillment in polyamorous relationships?” Roberts writes. “I do not mean to equate marriage between same-sex couples with plural marriages in all respects. There may well be relevant differences that compel different legal analysis. But if there are, petitioners have not pointed to any.”
Having more than one wife has been part of different religions. Indeed, if one’s brother died, it was a moral obligation to marry the sister-in-law, even as a second wife. This was not about sex, rather it was about fulfilling the marriage contract to ensure she and her children would be taken care of. One of the most misunderstood directions of Christ from the cross is “Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother.” (John 19:26–27). This is a reflection of social obligation that he is to take care of his mother as the obligation of a son. It is not that he had a brother. If he were his biological brother, there would be no point to say such a thing. This was all about the obligation of family members in ancient times BEFORE socialism. Children took care of their parents in old age. Socialism has undermined that bond.
Justice Antonin Scalia, who is normally judicially honest and has gone against the government many times based upon historical precedent, as in Crawford v US – 541 US 36 (2004), this time he seems to show personal bias calling the decision “judicial putsch.” He claims this is not a case the Supreme Court should decide, which Justice Clarence Thomas joined Scalia in this dissent.
“Until the courts put a stop to it, public debate over same-sex marriage displayed American democracy at its best,” Scalia wrote. “But the Court ends this debate, in an opinion lacking even a thin veneer of law.”
Scalia stated he wanted to write a separate dissent “to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy.” He attacked his colleagues’ opinion writing: “The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic.” He further wrote, “One would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie.”
True, Scalia points out that this is not a law that forbids same-sex intimacy. It was Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), where the United States Supreme Court decision upheld, in a 5–4 ruling, the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law criminalizing oral and anal sex in private between consenting adults when applied to homosexuals. The Bowers decision was overruled by Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) which was a landmark decision in the 6–3 ruling where the Court struck down the sodomy law in Texas and, by extension, invalidated sodomy laws in 13 other states, making same-sex sexual activity legal in every U.S. state and territory.
Given the fact that both Bowers and the Lawrence decisions were delivered by the Supreme Court, it is hard to buy the argument that this somehow was a case that defeated democracy and should have remained in the states. The precedents up to now show this has been an issue the Supreme Court has dealt with directly before.
YOU CANNOT DENY ANY GROUP EQUAL RIGHTS WITHOUT THREATENING YOUR OWN. What if Muslims become the majority? They could then make it a criminal act not to have four wives. Religion does not belong in law. It is way too threatening and it defeats the entire right of Freedom of Religion, which has to include the freedom from religion as well or nothing works.
