 |
| Tom Hanks movie Big, which other than bigness, has nothing to do with today's post |
The bigness of it
sounds ominous. Probably for good reason. Without the “big” adjective, they’re
just things. Segments of society. Elements that carry out certain duties and practices,
purportedly for the good of society. But the bigness means there’s an overabundance
of power that they yield, whether real or simply perceived.
What happens when two bigs
get together? Scary amounts of power. Making it much harder for smalls, like the rest of us, to get
heard, to influence, to be free to pursue what we want to do. The collusion of
the bigs, the elite powerful, is
called cronyism.
When Big Government and Big Business collude, that’s crony
capitalism—which is very different from free market economics. When Big Media
colludes with Big Government, that’s propaganda and disinformation.
Of the various bigs,
I hadn’t really thought about Big Law before. But earlier this week I read apiece by Ryan Anderson,
the brilliant crusader for real
marriage with the Heritage Foundation, in which he discussed the effects of Big
Law on the current culture. He began by referring to a New York Times piece. This is quoting NYT reporter Adam
Liptak: “In dozens of interviews, lawyers and law professors said the imbalance
in legal firepower in the same-sex marriage cases resulted from a conviction
among many lawyers that opposition to such unions is bigotry akin to racism.”
Liptak says he found that no major law firms—that’s zero—offered
amicus briefs defending marriage. As he puts it,
Leading law firms are willing to represent tobacco companies
accused of lying about their deadly products, factories that spew pollution,
and corporations said to be complicit in torture and murder abroad. But
standing up for traditional marriage has turned out to be too much for the
elite bar.
There are equal stacks of briefs, as many pro-traditional-marriage
as pro-same-sex-“marriage.” So there are good lawyers out there. But the elites—the
ones in the big firms, commanding the big money, and wielding influence galore—have
the mistaken and narrow belief, relatively new in culture and certainly without
evidence—that to support traditional marriage is equivalent to hating a segment
of society because of accident of birth. And, as Michael W. McConnell, a former federal appeals
court judge who teaches law at Stanford, said, “The level of sheer desire to
crush dissent is pretty unprecedented.”
Ryan Anderson’s piece conveniently links to yet another
piece, “7 Reasons Why the Current Marriage Debate Is Nothing Like the Debate on Interracial Marriage,” which he wrote in August 2014. So, I’m interrupting the
discussion of the elites for a moment to recount the list:
1.
Support for marriage as the union of man and
woman has been a near human universal.
2.
Bans on interracial marriage and Jim Crow laws,
by contrast, were historical anomalies.
3.
Great thinkers—including champions of human
rights—knew that gender matters for marriage, and none thought that race does.
4.
Even cultures that embraced same-sex
relationships did not treat them as marriages. [I think he may be referring to
the Roman and Greek empires during their decaying years, when homoeroticism was
acceptable, but calling it marriage would have been laughable.]
5.
Marriage must be color-blind, but it cannot be
gender-blind.… Men and women regardless of their race can unite in marriage,
and children regardless of their race deserve moms and dads. To acknowledge
such facts requires an understanding of what marriage is.
6.
Jim Crow laws were meant to divide the races,
but marriage law unites men to women and children to their parents. Marriage
has everything to do with uniting the two halves of humanity—men and women, as
husbands and wives and as fathers and mothers—so that any children born of
their union will know and be loved by the man and woman who gave them life.
7.
The Supreme Court was correct in striking down
bans on interracial marriage but it should not redefine marriage…. [Earlier in
the summer of 2014, in regard to the Loving
v. Virginia case] Judge Paul Niemeyer of the 4th Circuit Court explained
that “Loving simply held that race, which is completely unrelated to the
institution of marriage, could not be the basis of marital restrictions.” But
this does not require redefining marriage.
Anderson didn’t include, but there are amicus briefs making
the point,[i]
that, while race is innate and immutable, sexual orientation is not. The
homosexual lobby claims that sexual orientation is the way they’re born and
unchangeable—which is why they ignore (or attack) significant and growing
evidence that there is no significant genetic component, and many, even
thousands, have left the lifestyle, and some have entered into heterosexual marriage
and find it satisfying. Sexual orientation simply isn’t like race.
The point is, to anyone who knows the definition of marriage,
it’s clear that a male and a female are required. Whatever same-sex couples
have (even if they were to be loving, committed, exclusive, and permanent—which
is almost without example), it cannot be marriage. Homosexuals are not banned
from marrying a person of the opposite sex who is eligible according to law to
marry. Nor is there a ban on homosexuals living with the person of their choice.
They aren’t asking for “fairness”; they are insisting loudly
on throwing out the purpose of marriage, its relationship to procreation, the
terms mother and father, the worldwide religious belief that real marriage is a
moral good ordained of God. Throw out what family is, and you throw out
civilization and bring on
savagery. That’s not just speculation; it’s what we’re watching wherever
same-sex marriage has been embraced.
But Big Law, the elites—not necessarily the first we’d turn
to for morality lessons—are certain it is immoral to keep the longstanding
definition of marriage. And they claim morality requires that we accept
same-sex relationships as if they were marriage. Evan Wolfson, president of
Freedom to Marry, made the claim: “It’s so clear that there are no good arguments
against marriage equality. Lawyers can see the truth.”
What do ordinary, non-elite Americans think? Probably a wide
variety of things, in both directions on the marriage issue—thanks to confusing
help from Big Media. But mainly the smalls
don’t think that everyone must be forced to believe some specific thing passed
down from the elites above. As Anderson describes it:
Ordinary Americans—whether they are in favor of same-sex
marriage or opposed—agree that the government shouldn’t penalize their
neighbors. Ordinary Americans—even those in favor of same-sex marriage—do not
view their neighbors as bigots.
But our governing elites do. So people who believe the truth
about marriage need to equip ourselves, because our opponents want to see the
law treat all citizens who believe marriage is the union of husband and wife as
if they are racists.
If Big Law, in collusion with Big Government and Big Media
(and lately with support from Big Business[ii]),
holds a particular belief, what is the likelihood they will defend the rights
of those whose beliefs they consider on par with racial bigotry?
Anderson asks some important questions:
Will the right to dissent be protected? Will the right of
Americans to speak and act in accord with what the United States had always
believed about marriage—that it’s a union of husband and wife—be tolerated?
When people ask how same-sex “marriage” can harm me, they
are apparently ignorant of the onslaught of religious freedom attacks, and the “gay
mafia” tactics to put ordinary minding-their-own-business believers in marriage
out of work, out of business, and silenced.
If you were uncertain about which side was right, or which
was more moral, consider which is tolerant and which is coercive.
No matter the smallness
of our non-elite voices, we need to speak. While we can.
[i] This is one example: Brief
of Texas Values as Amicus Curiae in Support of Respondents, http://www.jaredwoodfill.net/files/DeBoer_Amicus_Brief_3.31.15.pdf.
[ii] Tim Cook, Apple CEO,
stopped short of boycotting the state, but declaimed the law; other CEOs
boycotted: http://fortune.com/2015/03/27/apple-indiana-gay-law/.
