How Five Justices Made Marriage Unconstitutional

Guest Post By Political Sphere

The landmark decision of Obergefell v. Hodges redefined the governmental definition of “marriage” throughout the United States, ruling that all states must now recognize and promote “marriage” between two adults of the same sex as equal to marriage as it “has existed for centuries and millennia.”^[i] But redefining marriage so fundamentally produces a serious unintended consequence. With the stroke of a pen, five justices on the Supreme Court of the United States have rendered unconstitutional the government recognition of "the foundation ... of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress."^[ii]

Under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, when a state statute seeks to classify people, the classification is presumed to be valid, but will only be sustained if the classification drawn by the statute is rationally related to a legitimate government interest.^[iii] States are responsible for developing and implementing marriage laws, and the whole point of marriage laws is to classify certain types of relationships. Marriage laws grant rights and responsibilities to spouses that are not granted equally to live-in girlfriends/boyfriends or to polyamorous relationships. These rights and responsibilities bestowed upon married couples show that the government considers marital relationships as superior over other types of relationships in the eyes of society. Therefore, under the 14th amendment, the classification must be rationally related to a legitimate government interest.

What then is the legitimate government interest in classifying some people as married and others as unmarried? The majority opinion sets forth four principles and traditions explaining why marriage is fundamental under the constitution. While these are intended to show why the definition of marriage should be fundamentally changed to include homosexual unions, perhaps these will offer insight into the legitimate government interest supporting government recognition of this cornerstone of society.

The first premise is that “the right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy.”^[iv] In using this premise to justify fundamentally redefining marriage, the majority explains that the personal choice of who to marry is protected from government involvement just as other intimate choices that follow the Roe v. Wade line of cases.^[v] Therefore, this premise does not provide us with a legitimate government interest in classifying people as married or not, but rather a reason that the government is prohibited, or at least limited, from intruding on marriage.

The second premise is that the right to marry “supports a two-person union unlike any other in its importance to the committed individuals.”^[vi] The majority elaborates that “the right to marry dignifies couples who 'wish to define themselves by their commitment to each other.’”^[vii] And continues, “Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out to find no one there.”^[viii] While a government may have an interest in ensuring that people are more reliant on those they directly associate with than on the government when there are rough patches in their life, there must also be a rational relationship to this interest when classifying one set of roommates over another. So there must still be something more that provides the legitimate government interest for the classification of marriage over other relationships.

The third premise is that “It safeguards children and families and thus draws meaning from related rights of childrearing, procreation, and education.”^[ix] This is where we finally get a reason for the classification which is rationally related to a legitimate government interest.

The Chief Justice explains more fully in his dissent:

The premises supporting this concept of marriage are so fundamental that they rarely require articulation. The human race must procreate to survive. Procreation occurs through sexual relations between a man and a woman. When sexual relations result in the conception of a child, that child’s prospects are generally better if the [biological] mother and [biological] father stay together rather than going their separate ways. Therefore, for the good of children and society, sexual relations that can lead to procreation should occur only between a man and a woman committed to a lasting bond.

Society has recognized that bond as marriage. And by bestowing a respected status and material benefits on married couples, society encourages men and women to conduct sexual relations within marriage rather than without. As one prominent scholar put it, “Marriage is a socially arranged solution for the problem of getting people to stay together and care for children that the mere desire for children, and the sex that makes children possible does not solve.” J.Q. Wilson, The Marriage Problem 41 (2002).^[x]

Therefore, the government does have an interest in classifying marriage, but it is related to the procreation process. Introductory biology teaches that all organisms live, breed, and die. Thus, as a human race, we have a biologic requirement to procreate in order for our species to survive. Not only is procreation vital to the survival of the human race as a whole, but also to the individual state as a country which is declining in population is susceptible to being overthrown by more vibrant societies. Therefore, there is an interest for the government to encourage procreation in order to continue the state. And all of the rights and responsibilities associated with marriage appear to revolve around promoting procreation and the preference for biological parents to raise their children together.

But the majority states that “The constitutional marriage right has many aspects, of which childbearing is only one.”^{[xi] [xii]} So let us consider whether the final premise offers an additional rational basis, one that would also provide a rational basis for including a homosexual relationship.

The fourth premise is that tradition makes clear that marriage is a keystone of our social order.^[xiii] There are two problems with this premise. First, tradition is not a legitimate government interest that allows for classification. That is made clear by the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment. Traditionally, all people of color were treated as second-class citizens. But under the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment, that horrific tradition was abolished. Therefore, tradition is incapable of acting as a rational basis for a statutory classification under the equal protection clause.

The second problem is, while the definition of marriage has certainly had changes throughout the millennia it has existed, there has been only one common factor. Traditionally, marriage has always been limited to a union between man and woman. Even where polygamous marriage is and was allowed, all polygamous marriages have required at least one male and one female. As the Chief Justice noted in his dissent, both the majority opinion and the petitioners in the case had to concede that they are not aware of a single society which permitted homosexual “marriage” prior to 2001.^[xiv] Thus, tradition both cannot and should not be a rational basis for the classification of marriage as the Supreme Court has defined it.

In conclusion, the only rational basis for government recognition of the classification of marriage that may reasonably be argued is procreation and the raising of children by that child’s biological parents. By eliminating this requirement from the definition of marriage, the Court has eliminated the sole rational relation to a legitimate government interest in classifying people by marriage.

The Court has eliminated marriage as a government institution. Therefore, when a case arises where an official refuses to grant marriage licenses, as happened in Kentucky, that official should not be compelled to issue such licenses as they purport to classify people without any rational basis related to a legitimate government interest.

---

^[i] See Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015) (p. 3-4 of the Majority opinion, p.4 Roberts Dissent).

^[ii] Id. at 16 of the majority opinion quoting Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190, 211 (1888).

^[iii] Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U.S. 432, 439-40 (1985).

^[iv] Obergefell, majority opinion at 12

^[v] Id.

^[vi] Id. at 13

^[vii] Id. at 14 quoting Windsor v. U.S.

^[viii] Id.

^[ix] Id.

^[x] Id. at 5 of Roberts dissent.

^[xi] Id. at 16 of the majority opinion.

^[xii] The majority also states that “it cannot be said the Court or the States have conditioned the right to marry on the capacity or commitment to procreate.” However, until the Griswold v. Conn., Roe v. Wade, and Lawrence v. Tex. line of cases, the commitment to procreate was regularly required by the states. The capacity has always been presumed, through the fertile octogenarian rule which holds that every person is irrebuttably presumed fertile from birth until death.

^[xiii] Id.

^[xiv] Id. at 4 of Roberts dissent.

Fourteenth Amendment and Marriage, Part I

We’re within a month of hearing oral arguments before the Supreme Court regarding the question of re-defining marriage. On April 28, SCOTUS will be interested in arguments on two questions, related to several consolidated cases:

US Supreme Court
official photo, found on Wikipedia

1.      Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex?

2.      Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state?

So our first step ought to be to look at the Fourteenth Amendment. It has five sections; Section 1 is the relevant one. It reads:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The Fourteenth Amendment passed in 1868, as part of Reconstruction, after the Civil War and the freeing of slaves. The purpose was to make sure that newly freed slaves would receive full citizenship rights throughout the United States, disallowing particularly the southern former slave states from abrogating the rights to vote, own land, own businesses, and otherwise fully participate as citizens equal before the law.

There were nevertheless “Jim Crow” laws relegating anyone with “black” appearance or known blood relation to second-class status in many southern states. Those were wrong, and took the mainly non-southern, Republican support in hand with Martin Luther King and other southern blacks to push through Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, a full century after the passing of the Amendment XIV.

Neither the Fourteenth Amendment nor the Civil Rights movement would have been necessary if we had had a people committed from the beginning to the radical but self-evident truth that “all men are created equal,” as we declared in our Declaration of Independence. But, since it took a while to get a critical mass of racially neutral people, we had to restate the self-evident.

You may have noticed that the Fourteenth Amendment does not say, “All States shall be required to re-define marriage to include couples of the same sex.” What is being argued is that “couples” are being discriminated against because of their sexual orientation—and therefore the longstanding definition of marriage used in civilizations through the millennia of recorded history must be declared null and void and replaced with something new and more inclusive.

So first we need to ask, do all “couples” (or couplings, or joinings together) merit the same inalienable rights as individuals? And second, what new definition of marriage would be suggested to lead us further into civilization?

Are all couples (or combinations of two or more) created equal? Existing marriage laws say no. A couple eligible for marriage, traditionally and in written law, has been a man and a woman, of marriageable age or of an age that parental consent can be given lawfully (differing state to state), not too closely related (differing state to state), not married to any other person.

While that last one has differed from culture to culture, with some cultures allowing one man to marry more than one woman, each such marriage is between the man and the singular woman. And such marriages have never been allowed without full knowledge of the other marriages—marriage to another without knowledge is a deceit prosecuted as bigamy—nor have such marriages ever been legal in one of the United States. (Utah outlawed plural marriage in 1890, six years prior to gaining statehood.)

So, the standard definition of marriage has always required an eligible man and woman, joining together exclusively in a contract intended for life, consummated with a particular sex act that can lead to offspring—and offspring are a social good that society is interested in.

Marriage predates this nation’s laws, and any others’. Because it is a contract, we ask for enforcement and mediation, as we do for other contracts. As in any contract, terms have specific legal definitions. The purpose of the national DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act), signed by Pres. Clinton 1996, was to reinforce the definition that was commonly in use, to say that in contracts involving the Federal Government (some thousands at the time) would define marriage as between one man and one woman—as all the states up to that time did, with a temporary blip from Hawaii that was almost immediately reverted to the standard definition. But in 2013, the Supreme Court ruled (erroneously, in my opinion) that DOMA was unconstitutional because it had no rational basis except to discriminate.

DOMA did not discriminate; it reasonably defined a legal term commonly in use. But the ruling essentially made it so that there would be no definition of marriage in US law code; such definitions would come from whatever the states of particular citizens defined the term as.

It could be significant in the current cases that SCOTUS has already ruled that the federal government has no business either defining the term or forcing a federal government definition on the states.

The cases before the court now are related to federal circuit courts that have ruled that states do not have the right to define marriage—unless they change their definition to include same-sex couples. In other words, the courts have deemed it discriminatory for states to care about the forming of families as the best place for children to be raised by their mother and father in a permanent relationship. These courts have decided that states shouldn’t care about children, about permanence, about exclusivity, or even about the gender between those involved in producing children . But they think it is rational to force states to ignore all those things and define marriage as any sexual relationship between any two people who choose to announce their coupleness for the time being, whether or not it is exclusive or permanent, and with the certain knowledge that it cannot produce children, not for lack of fertility, but because of human biology.

The Fourteenth Amendment does require that the laws apply to all citizens equally. Persons with same-sex attraction are treated no differently under traditional marriage laws. There has never been a “ban” against homosexuals who choose to follow the law and marry. They can marry a person of the opposite sex, who is of age, who is not a close relative, who is not already married to someone else—the same as the rest of us. There is no discrimination.

When they want to “marry” someone who does not fit the requirements, they are requiring special treatment. They are claiming it is discrimination if all of society does not submit to changing the definition especially for them. How is their request different from someone who wants to marry someone who is already married? It’s love, they say. That’s what marriage is about! How can you be so cruel as to say no to people who love each other just because one of them (or both) is already married to someone else?

That won’t happen, you say? But it has. Have you heard the term “throuple”? It’s a “marriage” in which the number is not limited to two. Three homosexual men were “married” as a throuple in Thailand on Valentine’s Day. Not here, so not a worry? But it already happened here. In Massachusetts in August 2013. Two of the lesbian women were legally “married” two and a half years earlier. (Massachusetts was the first US state to recognize same-sex “marriage,” in 2004, when the state court imposed it.) Massachusetts does not recognize this new "marriage" form but will refrain from prosecution unless state benefits (taxes filed jointly, for example) are sought by the third woman. But this throuple had additional paperwork drawn up by a lawyer to equally divide their property, and one of them has since given birth to a child fathered by an anonymous sperm donor.

If a state cannot define the terms used in the contract, then it cannot be allowed to limit the number. It cannot limit the genetic relationship of the participants (i.e., you couldn’t prohibit a brother and sister from marrying). It might not be able to prohibit underage marriages. The Court would be saying you can’t discriminate against any persons who want to declare that their sexual relationship is a marriage. The definition would be new, unlimited, untried, and amorphous enough to be essentially meaningless.

So, the answer to SCOTUS’s first question should be no; the Fourteenth Amendment does not require the redefinition of marriage to suit the desires of people who do not meet the requirements of the contract.

That’s enough for one day. We’ll save the second question before the Court for Part II.

Court Collection

I recently did a new “Best of” update, relating to the political, economic, and social spheres and their interrelationships. In the past I’d also done topic collections related to the Defense of Marriage and Education.

I’ve noticed lately, as I write more on the Defense of Marriage, the pieces tie in with current court cases. These often relate to religious freedom as well. And I decided maybe a new collection relating to the courts was in order. Much of this list relates to the Supreme Court. But there’s also a fair amount related to circuit courts and state courts. The topics covered by the courts are fairly broad, but  it was surprising to me how much relates to the definition of marriage—and how much of that relates subsequently to freedom of religion issues. Also included in freedom of religion are cases related to the Obamacare mandate that employers have to pay for things that go against their religious beliefs.

We shouldn’t have to depend on protection from the courts, which was designed the weakest branch of government. Nevertheless, it helps in defense of the Constitution and our God-given rights when the courts understand and rule fairly on Constitutional issues.

SCOTUS is seasonal. They decide during the fall which cases to take on during a session. They hear arguments during winter and spring. And they rule in late spring through June 30^th. One thing we’ll be watching this session is the ruling on whether states have the right to define marriage. Oral arguments will be heard April 28. We can expect a ruling to come by late June. The battle won’t be over, no matter which way they rule. But a correct ruling would sure help in the fight for civilization.

So, below is the relatively comprehensive list of posts related to the courts, with links. They’re listed chronologically, with a brief topic statement. 

• The Law and the Nine 5-16-2011  Looking at the Court, and the book The Nine
• Constitutionality Questions 11-15-2011  Related to Obamacare
• One Small Victory  11-18-2011  Related to standing in Prop 8
• First Amendment Freedom of Religion vs. Obamacare  2-10-2012  Related to mandate to provide contraceptive coverage
• Unprecedented 2-13-2012  Related to so-called compromise over mandate to provide contraceptive coverage
• Oral Arguments  3-28-2012  Court hears oral arguments related to Obamacare mandate
• Supreme Court Voting Patterns 4-13-2012  Data on agreement on the Court
• Borderline Ruling  6-25-2012  Related to Arizona law on border enforcement
• Mandate Does Not Equal Freedom 6-27-2012  Prediction that the Obamacare mandate would be struck down
• The Day After Blog  6-29-2012  Debrief of the Obamacare mandate ruling
• Supreme Court and the Definition of Marriage  3-27-2013   Related to arguments on Prop 8 and DOMA
• SCOTUS on Marriage, Part II: The Gotcha Question 3-29-2013  Related to marriage definition arguments
• Supreme Court and Definition of Marriage Part III: Outcomes of the Cases  4-1-2013  Possible outcomes of the marriage cases
• On the Court  6-19-2013  Arizona voter ID law outcome and other cases
• The Marriage Rulings  Blog post 6-28-2013  Rulings on Prop 8 and DOMA
• SCOTUS 2012-2013 Voting Patterns Blog post 7-15-2013   A look at the data
• SCOTUS 2012-2013 Voting Patterns, Part II  7-17-2013
• SCOTUS 2012-2013 Voting Patterns, Part III  7-19-2013
• Texas Abortion Ruling 11-1-2013  Constitutionality of Texas HB2, related to abortion clinics
• Angels of Death  11-4-2013  Follow-up on HB2, and more on abortion
• Corporate Religious Freedom 12-6-2013  Related to Hobby Lobby case and Obamacare mandate
• Defining Marriage  1-20-2014  Upcoming arguments in marriage definition cases
• Essential Religious Freedom  2-6-2014  Religious freedom and the Hobby Lobby case
• Being Anti-Slavery Among Willing Enslavers  2-27-2014  Religious freedom and same-sex “marriage” discrimination cases, Arizona ruling
• Being Anti-Slavery Among Willing Enslavers, Part II  2-28-2014  More on same-sex “marriage” cases, Texas case
• Fractious Fractional Argument  3-24-2014   Related to Hobby Lobby freedom of religion case
• Court Kudos  4-3-2014   5^th Circuit ruling on Texas abortion law
• Supreme Court Sampler  6-26-2014  Various recent rulings
• A Good Day for Religious Freedom  6-30-2014   Ruling on Hobby Lobby case
• Case Studies on the Sphere  7-11-2014  Review of cases related to religious freedom and Obamacare mandate
• SCOTUS Annual Review  7-18-2014  Agreement and disagreement on the Court during 2013-2014 session
• Admitting Bias  8-7-2014   Related to Texas abortion clinics law
• Admitting Bias, Part II  8-11-2014   Related to Mississippi abortion clinic law
• Intolerance on Its Head  8-28-2014  New York judge forces couple to hold same-sex “marriage” in their home
• Bench Slap Needed  9-1-2014  Judge Yeakel interferes with implementation of Texas abortion clinic law yet again
• Supreme Disservice  10-9-2014  Supreme Court declines to take up same-sex “marriage” cases
• Houston’s LGBT Mayor Intolerant  10-16-2014  Houston restroom law and subpoena of sermons
• Splits  11-10-2014  6^th Circuit reverses lower court rulings requiring same-sex “marriage”
• Courts and Public Opinions  1-29-2015  Supreme Court takes up same-sex “marriage" issues
• Confusion among the Courts 2-12-2015   Federal courts clash with Alabama state courts on same-sex “marriage”
• This Is Not Tolerance  2-23-2015  Washington coerces floral service against religious rights
• The Free Exercise of Religion Clause  3-9-2015  Religious freedom, resisting federal rulings affecting religious freedom

Defining Marriage

A week ago the Indiana House Judiciary Committee met, discussing the state’s marriage law. Most of the day was spent talking about the emotional civil rights argument pressuring for “same-sex marriage.” Then the committee was schooled by a young man named Ryan Anderson. He’s the William E. Simon fellow at the Heritage Foundation, which is a non-partisan (but conservative) think tank in Washington, DC, which I often turn to for data and opinion. Anderson is also a doctoral candidate at the University of Notre Dame in political science. As an undergrad at Princeton, he co-authored a book—part of which was published as an article in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy—along with another undergrad and Constitutional Law professor Robert George. The title of the book/article is What Is Marriage? [I found a pdf here, 43 pages, so I think this is either the article or a summary of the book.]

Man/woman, exclusive, permanent marriage
is still a beautiful public good

His brief speech was organized with a lawyer’s mind, but with clarity for regular people. Most of his points are arguments I have made myself [see my Defense of Marriage collection], but I always admire someone who finds yet clearer ways to tell the truth. So today I’m going to just outline his speech, with occasional quotes.

The definition of marriage is necessary in the discussion:

Everyone in this room is in favor of marriage equality. The only way we can know whether or not any given state law is treating marriage equally or not is if we know what marriage is. Because every state law will draw lines between what is a marriage and what isn’t a marriage. If we want those lines to be drawn on principle, if we want those lines to be drawn on the truth, we have to know what sort of a relationship a marriage is as compared to other forms of consensual adult loving relationships.

He sets up the speech answering three questions:

•                      What is marriage?

•                      Why does marriage matter for public policy?

•                      What are the consequences of redefining marriage? 

His definition argument for defining marriage as the permanent commitment between a man and a woman keys on the biological fact of offspring.  

Whenever a child is born, a mother will always be close by. That’s a fact of biology. The question for culture, and the question for law is, Will a father be close by? And if so, for how long? Marriage is the institution that different cultures and societies across time and place developed to maximize the likelihood that that man commits to that woman, and then the two of them take responsibility to raise that child. 

He offers up just a sampling of social science data, of which there is a mountain, that children are most likely to have best outcomes when raised by a mother and a father—one of each gender, not interchangeable. He quotes President Obama, showing this is not dismissible as a conservative anachronism:

We know the statistics that children that grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of schools, and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.

So, if we start with the premise that procreating and raising children are important to society, and that it is valuable to have the mother and father who bring life to the child stay together to raise the child, then public policy should, at the very least, not interfere with that preferred condition, and would be better to encourage that condition.

He referred to the change in the out-of-wedlock birthrate over the past 50 years (which I noted last week as well): “At one point in America virtually every child was given the gift of a married mother and father. Those numbers right now—more than 50% of Hispanic children are born outside of wedlock; more than 70% of African-Americans are born outside of wedlock. And the consequences for those children are really serious.” There’s no way out of poverty without turning this trend around.

He uses the language of the opposition to address the policy:

So everything that you can care about if you’re someone who cares about social justice and limited government—if you care about freedom and liberty and you care about the poor—is better served by having the state define marriage correctly to ensure that men and women commit to each other and take responsibility for their children, while then leaving other consenting adults to live and to love how they choose, without redefining the institution—the fundamental institution of marriage.

Much of the rest of the speech addresses the results of redefining marriage, using not presupposition, but actual outcomes from changes that have happened.

First is the reorientation of “the institution of marriage away from the needs and rights of children and towards the desires of adults.”  This point ties back in to the social science argument: “If the biggest social problem we face right now in the United States is absentee dads, how will we insist that fathers are essential when the law redefines marriage to make fathers optional?” Redefining marriage would multiply the likelihood of fatherless children.

Second concerns the three basic components of the traditional definition: man/woman, exclusivity, and permanence. If you declare these three attributes of marriage to be “irrational,” what do you replace them with to delimit a definition?

He refers to three new words, invented to refer to sexual relationship combinations that are claiming comparable value.

·        Throuple—a three-person couple. If you remove the importance of the one man and one woman who come together to parent a child, then you remove the principle that limits the number of participants in the “marriage,” without adding anything of value to society.

·        Wedlease—a temporary arrangement, removing the permanence of the relationship that has been of value to children, who take a long time to raise to adulthood.

·        Monogamish—more or less retaining the two-person marriage, but removing the exclusivity, so that sex with partners outside the marriage is accepted as part of the marriage.

The third result of redefining marriage concerns liberty, specifically religious liberty. He points out that in Massachusetts, in Washington, DC, and in neighboring Illinois, Christian adoption agencies were forced to stop offering their services.

These agencies said, We have no problem with same-sex couples adopting from other agencies, but we only want to place our children with a married mom and a dad. We have religious liberty interests. We also have social science that suggests children do better with a married mom and a dad. In all three jurisdictions they were told they could not do that.

Because of the redefinition of marriage, it became illegal for anyone to purposely prefer to place orphans with a mother and father—the best situation those innocent, voiceless unfortunate could have had.

Additionally, there have been court cases against photographers, bakers, florists, and innkeepers—individuals who presumably still have their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion—who are coerced by activist judges to act against their conscience. In none of these cases have the accused attempted to deprive the plaintiffs of services; they have only reserved the right not to accept their business. Courts have ruled that they can and should be deprived of their religious liberty and be forced to take on business they find objectionable—or else close their businesses and serve no one.

This coercion can only happen in a tyranny. If such cases are allowed to stand, we no longer have Constitutional guarantees of freedom.

What we do not find is an example of a place where redefining marriage has not resulted in loss of religious liberty. So those who argue, “That would never happen here,” are either lying or blinded.

So, what do we get if we redefine marriage? A small segment of the population (of the approximately 3% of the population that is homosexual, the even smaller percentage who choose to commit to one other person) can call their romantic relationship equivalent to marriage, with no benefit to society as a whole.

What is the cost? Fatherhood and motherhood are declared irrelevant. Children are abandoned and left in poverty. People who for religious or social science reasons value man/woman parenting, permanence, and exclusivity are coerced by the brute force of government (not to mention a fair amount of media and peer bullying) to behave against their beliefs. By any measure, it’s not a fair exchange.

Here is the video, if you’d like to hear the whole speech.

 

Kleptomania Analogy

In Wednesday’s post we were talking about analogies that show the absurdity of claiming behavioral urges make a person “be” something, which leads to the assumption that the behavior should be accepted, even honored, so as not to offend the person. In passing I mentioned a piece I’d written some years ago, and I’m sharing that today. 

I wrote this in 2008, and shared it with people who were working on the Prop 8 campaign in California. But to my knowledge it was used as background, not published, so I hadn’t included it in my recent Defense of Marriage collection. The full piece begins with several paragraphs identifying the unique benefits of marriage to society: This covenant values exclusivity (so that inheritance rights are meaningful, and sexually transmitted diseases are not a threat), possibility of offspring, and permanence (so that offspring have a stable home in which to be raised). Despite Kennedy’s opinion in the Supreme Court ruling in Windsor a month ago that no one can have a rational reason for the traditional definition of marriage, these benefits are real, well documented and mounting in social science, and exemplified in some six millennia of human history.  

I have covered these reasons elsewhere in my writings, so for today I’ll mostly just include the analogy portion of the piece, meant to illustrate what happened 40 years ago to set in motion the propaganda that has been trying to control what the public “knows,” which doesn’t happen to be true.

_____________________________ 

Alternative Reality

Homosexuals are not prohibited from marrying a person of the opposite sex who is not a close relative, who is of legal age, and who is not already married to another person—the same criteria required of heterosexuals. 

But they can’t marry the person they would choose! Neither can heterosexuals who would choose someone too closely related, too young, or currently married, limitations that are intended to make marriage relationships most likely to be valuable to society rather than detrimental. So what homosexuals are saying, really, is that they want a change in the law to accommodate their particular desires, without showing that their relationship choices will be of value to society. 

If they were to get what they want, then society is deprived of a way to encourage permanent, faithful opposite-sex parents to maintain stable families in which to raise offspring—a way it has had for six thousand-plus years. And their reason for depriving society is just because they claim it’s unfair to them not to get their way. 

Their main argument presupposes that homosexuality is an innate quality, like race, inborn and immutable. But common sense tells us that behavior does not qualify as an inborn immutable quality; behavior is what we do, by choice (even if there doesn’t seem to be a lot of choice because the urge is strong, just as it is for a child rapist/murderer, which is, by the way, just another sexual orientation among a couple dozen). 

So how did we as a society come to believe that homosexuality was a trait, innate and unchangeable? By scientific study and discovery? Overwhelming evidence? Not exactly. 

To show you how it happened, it might help to look at an allegorical situation, a story: 

Once upon a time, in the early 1970s, there were certain members of the governing body of the American Psychiatric Association who had traits not common to the population at large. They had an alternative view of ownership, which led them, at times, to see the belongings of other people as their own. Previously among their colleagues there had been a term for this condition: kleptomania. It was considered a mental disorder that could be treated. There were studies about the condition, and new treatments being tried, to alter what was viewed as an unwanted, undesirable behavior problem. 

But these particular alternative-ownership perceivers didn’t think their problem should be treated. They liked perceiving other people’s belongings as their own. To them, it wasn’t harmful or undesirable. And they didn’t think it should be viewed as undesirable to their colleagues. Over several years, they combined together to build their political authority in the professional organization; also, they organized pressure groups from outside the organization to help them lobby. And they were able to proclaim that kleptomania was not a behavioral disorder. It was an inborn trait, a different ownership orientation, and was as valid as any other ownership orientation. It should not be treated. Studies should no longer be done in order to discover causes and cures.  

Instead, society should be persuaded to accept the differently ownership oriented. Anyone who refused to agree would be labeled kleptophobic. Presentations would be given in schools—first colleges, then high schools, and eventually elementary schools, to indoctrinate the public to accept this new view of kleptomania. Illustrated books would be written for school children: Mommy Found Yet Another Pair of Shoes, and You Might Be Differently Ownership Oriented; You Won’t Know until You Try. Laws were put before legislative bodies to declare it a crime to discriminate against someone just because they might be differently ownership oriented. Despite heavy lobbying against it from the greedy retail industry, many places did pass the legislation. Television began to put more and more differently ownership oriented persons in their programming, and began to portray them not as the butt of jokes, but as positive role models that simply suffered misunderstanding from a bigoted public. 

A few kleptomaniacs (pardon me, differently ownership oriented individuals) continued to seek treatment, although treatment was no longer sanctioned. They claimed the lifestyle made them suffer guilt, for taking things that didn’t belong to them. And it undermined trust, so that their relationships weren’t as intimate and lasting as they hoped for. And, despite the insistence that their behavioral urges were an innate trait, many were able to leave the lifestyle. Thousands, in fact. They were able to stop taking things that didn’t belong to them. Many were very nearly able to completely overcome the urge to take things. And these former kleptomaniacs held conferences to tell people there was hope for them, if they also wanted to change. But the supporters of the differently ownership oriented rallied against them, and often the six sign-holding protestors would be featured in news stories where the 2,000 conference goers’ views would not be considered newsworthy. 

[Forty] years of kleptomania acceptance indoctrination netted some results. It became popular for the elite to support the differently ownership oriented. It became shameful to say, in public, that you didn’t like it when differently ownership oriented people took your belongings. People publicly viewed kleptomania with acceptance, and many even encouraged the uncertainly oriented to give it a try.  

But the additional acceptance, for some reason, didn’t seem to benefit civilization.  

Traces of old paradigms remained. Still, people weren’t more likely to invite the differently ownership oriented to socialize with them in their homes. And there continued a serious prejudice against them in the retail workplace and among certain traditionalist religions which clung to the Ten Commandments as if they still mattered. Also, people tended to hold on more tightly than ever to their personal belongings when in public where they might unknowingly come in contact with the differently ownership oriented. People are, after all, naturally bigoted and hard to change. 

OK, so kleptomania didn’t get taken from the long (and almost inexhaustible) list of treatable behavioral problems. But in 1973 homosexuality did.[1] There were at that time some 600 ongoing studies into causes and treatments. There were thousands of people who had been successfully treated. But because of the political pressure from some few homosexual activists in the leadership of the American Psychological Association along with a few well-funded pressure groups, studies and treatments were axed.  

Those seeking treatment were turned away or told that “treatment” meant “accepting yourself as you are.”[2] Those who have found treatment despite its scarcity have a relatively high success rate, particularly when religion is a factor in the treatment (reference).  

But society is told this behavior problem is an innate immutable trait. Society has been lied to. 

Should society, based on the political pressure of a few behaviorally warped psychiatrists, throw out the institution of marriage in favor of honoring a behavior that does not benefit society and arguably harms the individual as well? No, it should not. 

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[1] A thorough retelling of the sequence of events is covered in Destructive Trends in MentalHealth, by Rogers H. Wright and Nicholas A. Cummings; see the chapter on this subject by William T. O'Donohue and Christine E. Caselles.

Also, United Families International includes this information in their Family Issues Guide—Sexual Orientation, p. 9:

Myth:  Homosexual behavior should be considered normal as a result of the decision made by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 1973 which removed homosexuality from its list of “disorders.”

Reality:  The decision to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) was made after APA leaders and members had endured several years of intense political pressure and disruptive lobbying efforts by militant homosexual activist groups. (Ronald Bayer, “Homosexuality and American Psychiatry:  The Politics of Diagnosis,” Princeton University Press, 1987.)  Homosexual activist groups pressured APA committees to remove homosexuality from the APA’s approved list of disorders. In spite of the long documented history showing that therapists have helped homosexual clients reduce and change their homosexual tendencies, professionals who persist in viewing and treating homosexuality as a changeable condition are labeled unenlightened, prejudiced, homophobic, and unethical. There is currently a movement within the APA to normalize pedophilia that appears to be following the same path to legitimization as homosexuality. See Fast Facts and Commentary #1-66, 90-97.

 

[2] In addition, there is pressure against psychology students to even question the dogma. A good illustration is a seven-part piece in 2007 by Mike Adams, “Of Mice and Mormons,” about a family therapy master’s degree student who asked his program supervisor where to refer a client who was asking for help with unwanted same-sex attraction; for asking the question, the student was persecuted: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII.

 

Defense of Marriage Collection

A couple of weeks ago, when the Spherical Model blog reached the 400^th post, I posted a “best of” list for three days, relating to the three spheres: Political, Economic, and Social/Civilization. However, there are some topics that I cover fairly frequently, and over time I intend to offer links to those collections. One of those is the collection of pieces I’ve written about defending marriage.

After last week’s Supreme Court ruling declaring a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional—the part that allows the federal government to define the term—the majority took the opportunity to defame the majority of humankind as “enemies of the human race.” They include me in that definition.

Personally, I believe anything that sets out to undermine the basic unit of society is an enemy of the human race. But, while I think their ideas have that savagery-inducing effect, the people themselves are not de facto subhuman—just wrong. They’re deceived in the way the Old Testament prophet Isaiah predicted:

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!—Isaiah 5:20

While I still have the freedom of speech to express these ideas (a freedom which tends to become illegal wherever same-sex “marriage” becomes the law), I offer examples of what I believe is both a logical and humanity-loving point of view. These examples are more or less limited to the definition of marriage, so there’s a lot about motherhood, fatherhood, population decline, and family that I’m not including in this list. (In other words, as long as this list is, it could be longer.) I did include two on the Boy Scouts, related to the homosexual agenda but not specifically to same-sex “marriage.”

·         My Rational Belief in Traditional Marriage, June 24, 2011

·         New York—If Only You’d Asked, We Have Answers, June 27, 2011

·         Devaluing Marriage and Family = Decay of Civilization: Part I—Vico and Unwin, June30, 2011

·         Devaluing Marriage: Part II—Death of Marriage in Scandinavia, July 1, 2011

·         Devaluing Marriage: Part III—Decay of Civilization, July 7, 2011

·         Speaking Up, August 31, 2011

·         One Small Victory, November 18, 2011

·         War against Women and Children, March 19, 2012

·         In Defense of Marriage, reprint, April 25, 2012

·         Defining Marriage and Making Cream Sauce, reprint, April 30, 2012

·         Controversy Still (The Gay Marriage Fantasy, reprint), May 4, 2012

·         Why Protect Marriage (Why Texans Will Vote Yes to Protect Marriage, reprint), May 8, 2012 

·         Loving and Logical, May 14, 2012

·         Tolerance—You Keep Using That Word, May 16, 2012

·         Remembering Richard Wilkins, November 30, 2012

·         Each Life That Touches Ours for Good (Remembering Richard Wilkins, Part II), December3, 2012

·         Defending the Boy Scouts, Part I, February 11, 2013

·         Defending the Boy Scouts, Part II, February 14, 2013

·         Supreme Court and the Definition of Marriage, March 27, 2013 

·         SCOTUS on Marriage, Part II: The Gotcha Question, March 29, 2013

·         SCOTUS on Marriage, Part III: Outcomes of the Cases, April 1, 2013

·         Marriage Rulings, June 28, 2013