Truth and Perception

What is truth? Is it real? Or is it relative—whatever each different person perceives it to be?

I’m a believer that there is a truth; it exists outside of ourselves. Our perceptions of it may be different, but if we are seekers of truth, we question our perceptions, and look for what is real.

sketch of a Grecian Urn,
by John Keats, who wrote the poem
"Ode on a Grecian Urn," which makes
the claim "Beauty is truth, truth beauty"
image from Wikipedia

There is a contingent of modern thinkers who claim that truth is relative. You can have your truth; I can have mine. We must accept that what may be true for you, might not be true for your neighbor.

This sounds open-minded and tolerant. But there are problems that come up when you can’t agree on “what is is.” How do we live together with irreconcilable differences on certain things?

For example, if I believe I own a piece of property, and you come along and decide you own that same piece of property, who gets to enjoy the benefits of property ownership? In the non-philosophical world, where we have laws to settle just such disagreements, it would be the person with the deed to the property. The deed is a proof, or evidence of a truth: right of ownership.

Suppose you believe that marriage is a certain thing—a permanent contract between a man and a woman, obligating them to one another, forming a permanent family in which to bring up their offspring, and to financially and socially sustain one another. Suppose someone else believes marriage is any two people announcing they are in a sexual relationship for the time being. Those are not the same things. It is possible for two people to define a word differently, but the thing they define can’t be the two incompatible different things at the same time.

Can the two people hold these different views at the same time and go their separate ways? That was what the Supreme Court ruling in 2015 claimed they could do. But they have not been allowed to. Believers in the permanent-contract-between-a-man-and-a-woman have been told they must accept the any-two-people-in-a-current-relationship as equivalent, even when theirs is a deeply held religious belief. And thus we have bakers, florists, and photographers being coerced to use their artistic skills for purposes that, to them, deny truth.

Suppose you believe that male and female are the only two sexes for human beings, and that your DNA and physiology define which one you are. This has been the truth for all of the millennia of human history. But there are others in our time who believe that there is a plethora of sexes for human beings, and that a person is whatever the individual decides to be, regardless of physiology.

Can the two different people hold these different views at the same time and let the other live their own way? In a tolerant world that could happen. But there is a huge amount of pressure right now to enforce a belief that doesn’t coincide with reality, science, truth as we have historically known it, or as nearly all of us can perceive it to be.

We’re seeing this enforcement of “my relative truth is the one you have to believe” play out with the militantly dogmatic LGBT community (add letters at will to LGBT). But it also exists in politics, economics, academia, entertainment, and just about everywhere you look.

It isn’t actually true that the earth would be better off without humans on it, and that we ought to return to pre-industrial-age technology to atone for being here. Nor is it true that you love pollution if you don’t buy into that humans-are-evil perception.

It isn’t actually true that setting a higher minimum wage for low-skilled workers will make the lives of enter-level workers better. It is more likely to prevent entry-level workers from getting the first jobs that give them experience along with a little bit of income.

It isn’t actually true that government intervention shows that government cares. Government can’t actually care at all; it is simply power. What is actually true is that government interference causes unintended consequences, usually exactly the opposite of the stated goal of the interference. By the way, it isn’t true that government-require purchased health insurance means better health care for all; in the real world it means higher costs and lower quality health care for all.

It isn’t actually true that abstract art, or pushing the envelope, leads to more beauty. Art within constraints has always led to more beauty and innovation than meaningless shapes or purposely vile depictions.

It isn’t actually true that Democrats are the good guys to minorities, especially Blacks. In the provable reality, Democrats have historically been anti-Black, and their policies have proven harmful to Blacks more so other demographics. But perception has overridden verifiable reality for over 90% of Black voters.

It isn’t actually true that centrally standardized government institutional education means better education; in the real world this often means education is deficient for all but the few whose needs match up with the factory-style approach. Maybe not even for them. But even bringing up the idea of alternative choices leads to a howling about not caring about children.

Here’s the problem I see with the philosophical belief that truth is relative: those who claim to believe this are the least likely to tolerate differences from their view of truth. If truth is relative, then the rule must be that you cannot impose your truth on someone else. So there should be zero pressure on the population to conform to their alternative, personal “truths.”

In a world where reality, like gravity, is not to be ignored, we are better off doing certain things:

·         Be open to new information, in case your perception of what is true isn’t accurate.

·         Be tolerant of others who have different beliefs; give the benefit of the doubt that they are searching for truth just as you are. You might just be at a different place in the truth search journey right now.

·         But when you have enough data to be quite sure of a truth, and the other side has no convincing evidence on their side, don’t let them bully you into submission. Stand firm even when the pressure is huge, and growing, and intimidating. Maybe especially then.

Maybe this is why Captain America is my
favorite Marvel superhero.
image from here

Millennia of Marriage, Part III

Justices Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor
at oral arguments April 28, 2015
photo from here

Did so very much really go on during last week’s SCOTUS oral arguments?

We may not know right away. But possibly the most important case before the Court this year is Obergefell v. Hodges, on the definition of marriage. So we're giving it a careful look.

In two parts we covered Question 1, with Part I looking at the point that for millennia marriage has been fundamentally the joining of a man and woman, including in cultures where there was no animus toward homosexuals, so there are other rational purposes for man-woman marriage.

Part II covered several other points, and the defense. One of the main questions was, what is the justification for changing the definition to include same-sex couples but to then deny other variations? And a big takeaway of the day was that religious people could lose significant freedom to believe in the sacred nature of real marriage, and business people could be coerced to provide services against their beliefs.

In Part III we’re moving on to Question 2. Just as a reminder, here are the two questions, sometimes referred to as the marriage question and the recognition question:

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

Question 2: Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex that was legally licensed and performed in another state?

So, Question 2 is asked to consider what happens if Question 1 is answered no; states are not required by the 14^th Amendment to change the definition of marriage to include people of the same sex. In other words, if the states win on question 1, and keep their original definitions, then what? That assumption that the defense has won on Question 1 is important, and the plaintiffs’ counsel had difficulty grasping it.

The first few minutes reveal the basic problem. The plaintiffs’ counsel for this question is Douglas Hallward-Driemeier. (I'll mostly refer to him as counsel, because of the length of that name.) 

MR HALLWARD-DRIEMEIER: A State should not be allowed to effectively dissolve that marriage without a sufficiently important justification to do so….

JUSTICE ALITO: I was somewhat surprised by the arguments you made in your brief because they are largely a repetition of the arguments that we just heard with respect to Question 1. I thought the point of Question 2 was whether there would be an obligation to recognize a same-sex marriage entered into in another State where that is lawful even if the State itself, constitutionally, does not recognize same-sex marriage. I thought that's the question in Question 2.

That’s the first reminder of the assumption with this question. Notice that counsel makes the extraordinary claim that non-recognition equals dissolution of a relationship.

MR. HALLWARD-DRIEMEIER: …This Court's decisions establish that there is not only a right to be married, but a right to remain married; that there is a protected liberty interest in the status of one's marriage once it has been established under law.

The justices pretty much ignore that claim and continue dealing with recognition. Justice Scalia compares the question to how polygamy from foreign countries is treated:

JUSTICE SCALIA: Suppose, well, let's say someone gets married in a country that permits polygamy. Does a State have to acknowledge that marriage?

The answer is no. It brings out a good point: we don’t have the institution.

MR. HALLWARD-DRIEMEIER: Well, of course, the State could assert justifications for not doing so, and I think there would be justifications…for not recognizing such….I think that the justification would be that the State doesn't have such an institution….

JUSTICE SCALIA: Well, it would be the same argument. We don't have such an institution. Our marriage in this State, which we constitutionally can have because the second question assumes that the first question comes out the way the United States does not want it to come out; the State says we only have the institution of heterosexual marriage. We don't have the institution of same-sex marriage.

There’s no refutation. And this is the second reminder that Question 2 assumes Question 1 was settled in favor of the States.

Counsel tries to explain that the difference is a mere change in gender pronouns for same-sex “marriage,” but more involved for polygamy. So Justice Alito offers another possible difference in marriage laws from state-to-state:

JUSTICE ALITO: What if it's not a plural relationship? What if one State says that individuals can marry at the age of puberty? So a 12-year-old female can marry. Would a State would another State be obligated to recognize that marriage?

MR. HALLWARD-DRIEMEIER: I think probably not.

Counsel tries to make the point that, when the state has an interest, it can decline to accept other states’ marriages, but he’s assuming everyone agrees that no such interest precludes same-sex “marriage.”

Justice Sotomayor asks about consanguinity. Most states recognize married cousins, but at least one state does not. And, while that has been historically rare, it doesn’t seem at all against the Constitution for a state to make that choice.

Then counsel gets another reminder (#3).

JUSTICE KENNEDY: But Justice Alito's question points out, the assumption of his hypothetical is, and of the way these cases are presented, is that the State does have a sufficient interest so that you need not allow the marriages in that State. So there is a sufficient interest, under our arguendo assumption here, to say that this is not a fundamental right. But then suddenly, if you're out of State it's different. Why should the State have to yield?

The answer? A state has to have a good enough reason. Counsel mischaracterizes Kentucky’s reason as wanting a higher birthrate, adding, “which I daresay is not a rational justification, much less a sufficiently important one.”

Justice Scalia clarifies Kentucky’s statement, which counsel says is nevertheless reasoning rejected in the Loving case. Which brings another reminder (#4):

JUSTICE SCALIA: But we will not have rejected it if we come out the way this question presented assumes we have come out. …Mainly, saying that it's okay for a State not to permit same-sex marriage.

Counsel tries again, but he’s equating non-recognition to dissolution again, which the justices yet again ignore, and that brings another reminder (#5):

MR. HALLWARD-DRIEMEIER: The State asserts that it has an interest in the stability that marriage provides for children. That interest does not justify extinguishing marriages that already exist.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: May we clear this one thing. If the Petitioner prevails in the first case, then the argument is moot; right?

In an attempt to show that states traditionally accept one another’s marriages, counsel lists five instances in the three states involved in the suit failed to recognize a marriage from out of state that would not have been lawful in those states—including incest, an archaic refusal to allow remarriage after divorce. I think his point is that those reasons are not valid today. He gets another reminder (#6).

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Yes. But, again, I think you're avoiding the presumption on which we're starting, on the assumption, which is that the State's policy for refusing to support same-sex marriage is sufficiently strong, that they can, as a matter of public policy, prohibit that in their own State. And yet you're saying it's somehow so much weaker when you're talking about marriages from other States.

Counsel tries to say that the failure to recognize illegal marriages would go against long-standing tradition. But he doesn’t address the elephant-in-the-room question, so Chief Justice Roberts spells that out:

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: It certainly undermines the State interest that we would, assuming arguendo, have recognized in the first case, to say that they must welcome in their borders people who have been married elsewhere. It'd simply be a matter of time until they would, in effect, be recognizing that within the State…. Because we live in a very mobile society, and people move all the time….In other words… one State would basically set the policy for the entire nation.

That is the basic reason for asking this question. States saw it coming. They reasserted their state sovereignty by enacting Defense of Marriage laws, and then following up even more strongly places the traditional definition of marriage in their state constitution.

Next comes some discussion, for comparison, of other types of differences in marriage law. This comes to low age of marriage, and whether that would be about consent, or other interests, or how they would be handled case-by-case. And counsel says again that most of the time states accept one another’s marriages. Which brings out some of the twisted logic involved here:

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: I think your argument is pretty much the exact opposite of the argument of the Petitioners in the prior case. The argument that was presented against them is, you can't do this; we've never done this before, recognized same-sex marriage. And now you're saying, well, they can't not recognize same-sex marriages because they've never not recognized marriages before that were lawfully performed in other States….

Counsel tries claiming that marriage is a fundamental right, and it has to be accepted. That brings on another reminder (#7):

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: And maybe…I'm just repeating myself, but we only get to the second question if you've lost on that point already, if we've said States do not have to recognize same-sex marriage as a marriage. So assuming you've lost on that, I don't see how your argument gets--you can't say that they are not treating the marriage as a marriage when they don't have to do that in the first place.

It’s all so unfair, counsel bemoans. He tries to say the cases shouldn’t be decided separately, because you “would forever relegate those marriages to second class status….” Justice Scalia says, “You’re rearguing Question 1 now?” which is almost another reminder, but we won’t count it.

Again, counsel equates non-recognition with dissolution. Again it doesn’t convince.

He thinks he’ll make progress with an actual example from among the plaintiffs:

MR. HALLWARD-DRIEMEIER: Mr. Matthew Mansell and Johno Espejo married in California in 2008. In 2009, they adopted two children. Now, in reliance on the protection that is afforded by marriage, Mr. Espejo was willing to give up his job to give the primary caregiver of their children. Mr. Mansell is the primary breadwinner. His job in an international law firm was transferred from California to Tennessee, and the cost of that transfer for that job for them was the destruction of their family relationships, all that they had relied on in building their lives together. 

And in support of that, the States offer exactly nothing. There is no reason that the State needs to disregard that marriage. No reason the State needs to destroy the reliance that Mr. Espejo has had in giving up his career to look after their children.

There are several things wrong here. Most obvious should be that, if the relationship is permanent, as the couple claims, there is nothing in Tennessee law that destroys their family relationships. They are not prevented from living together; Mr. Espejo isn't forced to go to work. State law doesn’t prevent companies from offering insurance and other common spousal benefits; an international company probably would not change the insurance after such a transfer. Whatever was arranged for Social Security is unlikely to change, so that is not an issue. Tennessee doesn’t declare they are divorced when they enter the state; it declares nothing, but simply accepts that they are two people living together not recognized as a married couple.

So, what exactly destroys the family arrangement of Mr. Espejo staying home? I think the answer is, they would “feel” less connected if the state of Tennessee doesn’t recognize them. And, more importantly, Tennessee wouldn’t treat them as a married couple when they (inevitably?) divorce. Division of property would be dealt with in civil court, rather than family court.

Justice Scalia responds to the case with another reminder (#8):

JUSTICE SCALIA: It would have been the argument made with respect to the first question.

So, in summary of the plaintiffs'  (pro-same-sex “marriage” side), same-sex couples deserve to be married, even if states aren’t required to allow that (which can’t be an argument on this question), and states shouldn’t be allowed to terminate marriages without good reason (even though non-recognition is not the same as dissolving). It was pretty weak.

Now we get to defense. And here the constitutional question of the “full faith and credit” clause comes up. Justice Scalia brings it up, to get down to business. So, here is Article IV, Section 1:

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.

The defense counsel for Question 2 is Joseph F. Whalen, who is, I believe, Assistant Solicitor General of the State of Tennessee. As with Question 1, defense counselor is well-prepared.

MR. WHALEN: Your Honor, this Court's cases have made clear that the Court draws a distinction between judgments between States and the laws of each State. And the reason in part that the Court's decisions have said that is that otherwise, each State would be able to essentially legislate for every other State.

So, then, the discussion must clarify definitions of public acts, records, and judicial proceedings, as opposed to laws and other things. For career justices, you think that would be almost automatic.

There’s an amusing discussion about what would happen if a state chose never to acknowledge marriages from other states. They clarify that, if the two states have the same laws, they will recognize, but if they do not agree, a state doesn’t have to recognize. Mr. Whalen references Nevada v. Hall as clarifying the issue. And he explains the underlying principle:

MR. WHALEN: I think the underlying focus is not just that there's a policy, but that there's a legitimate policy. And as this Court's questions earlier indicated, I proceed now on the assumption that the Court has decided the first question in the State's favor, and is determined that, indeed, the State's policy to maintain a traditional man-woman definition of marriage is, indeed, legitimate, and we obviously agree that it is, and the Court should so decide.

In other words, he doesn’t need a reminder about how Question 1 is assumed to be decided, when they come to this question.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: You're making a distinction between judgments--full faith and credit applies to judgments. You can't reject a judgment from a sister State because you find it offensive to your policy, but… full faith and credit has never been interpreted to apply to choice of law.

MR. WHALEN: Yes, Your Honor….And so, in in essence, by deciding whether or not to recognize another State's marriage, the State is deciding whether or not to recognize the other State's law under which that marriage was performed.

That is, in essence, what this question covers. And, the way Mr. Whalen puts it is very convincing; the law uses specific definitions of terms. There is history and precedent in how those terms are used. It’s a relatively simple question.

But Justice Ginsburg doesn’t like the simplicity. She tries to clarify a difference between licensing a marriage and recognizing a marriage.

MR. WHALEN: It goes, Your Honor, to the essence of what I think, in fact, both questions before the Court today get at. And that is that the fundamental notion of what marriage is.

He reminds the Court that the way states have historically recognized marriages from other states cannot be applied here, because the fundamental understanding of what marriage is was essentially the same before, but now marriage laws are not the same.

Mr. Whalen also successfully explains why marriage is more law than judgment:

MR. WHALEN: I think that the performing of a marriage is closer to law is because, in essence, when the marriage is performed, all the rights that flow from that State's laws evolve to that couple. And it's different than judgments and so does not deserve the same kind of treatment that judgments would, under the full faith and credit jurisprudence, because of the reason that this Court has drawn that distinction.

He refers, particularly for Justice Sotomayor (and kudos to him for doing so respectfully) to do some reading up on terminology, to Joseph Story's Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws.

There is a discussion of whether there is some middle ground; could a state not license a same-sex “marriage” but still not be so strongly against it that it can recognize such a thing from another state? A state could, of course, but the point is, it shouldn’t be forced to. Otherwise, people just go out of state to get “married,” and then come back to their state; the state wouldn’t have an enforceable policy.

Mr. Whalen makes a good point about who is doing what:

MR. WHALEN: The difference here, I think, is the landscape that we find ourselves in. Tennessee, Ohio, Kentucky, and other States with a traditional definition of marriage have done nothing here but stand pat. They have maintained the status quo. And yet other States have made the decision, and it certainly is their right and prerogative to do so, to expand the definition, to redefine the definition. And then to suggest that other States that have done nothing but stand pat now must recognize those marriages imposes a substantial burden on the State's ability to self-govern…. It would allow one State initially literally one State, and now, a minority of States, to legislate fundamental State concern about marriage for every other State quite literally. That's an enormous imposition and an intrusion upon the State's ability to decide for itself important public policy questions, and to maintain, particularly when you're talking about recognition.

He gives an example of the type of public policy that would be affected. Parenting, in Tennessee has always been gender based, because of man-woman marriage. A child can’t have two fathers or two mothers, for example. Removing gender terms would affect many aspects of public policy. Why should a state be forced to make such a drastic change, just because some other state chooses to?

If you have read this far, congratulations. This three-part series has probably been longer than anything written on the oral arguments other than the transcript. I’ve gone through this exercise to thoroughly understand, myself. And also to have a good record of what went on, and what it meant.

I don’t know how the Court will rule by the end of June. If they go by the Constitution, the law, the will of the people, and common sense, they will sustain the right of states to define marriage as it always has—a bonding of a man and a woman. But if they listen to the gay mafia, the media pressure, and the whining about “fairness”—that all have no place in ruling on what the law is—then we could lose some significant freedoms. Eventually that could include the ability to write a blog like this without it erroneously being deemed hate speech.

I’m praying particularly for Justice Kennedy. The family, which is the basic unit of civilization, is balanced on the knife edge of his personal understanding of the law. We’re in a precarious place indeed.

Millennia of Marriage, Part II

In Millennia of Marriage, Part I, we covered the first several points of Question 1, of oral arguments before the Supreme Court last Tuesday. The main concern was whether the many nations and cultures that have defined marriage as between a man and a woman did so out of animus toward homosexuals or because of some other rational reason.

The answer was clear that there are rational reasons for limiting the definition of marriage to man-woman relationships.

That question covered most of Ms. Bonauto’s portion, but not US Solicitor General Verrilli’s portion, nor the defense. So the rest of today’s post will cover those portions. It may take a third post to cover Question 2. 

Starting where we left off, the next question is brought up by Justice Alito:

JUSTICE ALITO: Suppose we rule in your favor in this case and then after that, a group consisting of two men and two women apply for a marriage license. Would there be any ground for denying them a license?

The point here is that, if a marriage is just a governmental recognition of any two people who love each other, then how can you limit the criteria to two people, or any of the other limitations? In all the debates on this I’ve heard over the years, the same-sex “marriage” advocates always avoid this question. They say, “we’re not talking about polygamy,” or whatever. No, they’re not talking about it, because they have no answer.

Ms. Bonauto says it’s questionable whether a state would even call that a marriage. Hmm.

Polygamy, she claims, brings up all kinds of questions about consent and deceit. Justice Alito presses her, with good humor:

JUSTICE ALITO: Well, what if these are 4 people, 2 men and 2 women; It's not the sort of polygamous relationship, polygamous marriages that existed in other societies and still exist in some societies today. And let's say they're all consenting adults, highly educated. They're all lawyers. (Laughter.) What would be the ground under the logic of the decision you would like us to hand down in this case? What would be the logic of denying them the same right?

She steps into the trap. She claims that the number two is fundamental to marriage. She offers her personal opinions on the disruption to family that could be caused. But she has nothing to explain why the number two must be fundamental to marriage but the combination of man and woman is not.

Questions about the social science. Concerning same-sex parenting, she claims it’s all settled:

MS. BONAUTO: These issues have been aired repeatedly, and there is, as you all have heard, a social science consensus that there's nothing about the sex or sexual orientation of the parent, is it is going to affect child outcomes?

Not so. This statement is repeated later by General Verrilli:

GENERAL VERRILLI: Right now, today, hundreds of thousands of children are being raised in same-sex households. That number is only going to grow. All of the evidence so far shows you that there isn't a problem, and what the and the States' argument really is quite ironic in this respect that it's going to deny marriage, the State…  I think all of the leading organizations that have filed briefs have said to you that there is a consensus in that, and

JUSTICE SCALIA: Well, I think some of the some of the briefs contradicted that.

It is the purpose of the plaintiffs—and the federal government in defending circuit court rulings—to shut down debate by claiming there is consensus. That all the social science of, what, almost a decade in a few places that have had same-sex “marriage” for that long, agree forevermore that children’s outcomes show no differences. And yet the briefs clearly show that consensus is not the case. In fact, the most recent, and mounting, evidence shows a number of negatives for children raised by same-sex parents.[i]

Back to Ms. Bonauto’s testimony, Chief Justice Roberts points out that the length of time for study has been very short, and, “closing of debate can close minds.”

Justice Scalia then expressed concern with declaring something constitutional law, when there’s a lot of disagreement, including for religious reasons. When states form the laws, they can carve out exceptions, but once something is declared a constitutional right, there are no exceptions. What would happen to ministers who perform marriages? Ms. Bonauto said no state forces clergy to perform marriages against their conscience. But that’s the point; state law is able to allow exceptions, while constitutional law cannot.

Furthering this discussion, it was admitted that, while a clergyperson couldn’t be required to perform such a marriage, refusal to do so could lead to government refusing to grant him marrying authority altogether. And justices of the peace or other officials with marrying authority would not be granted religious freedom exemptions.

This issue is bigger than it was made at this point in the discussion. Justice Sotomayor claimed that the First Amendment would protect religious freedom. But it already hasn’t. Everywhere same-sex “marriage” has been imposed, religious freedom has been abrogated. Small business owners have been the most common target. The persecution has been vicious.

This same question arises again during General Verrilli’s testimony. And this was one of the more newsworthy moments of the day.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: We have a concession from your friend that clergy will not be required to perform same-sex marriage, but there are going to be harder questions. Would a religious school that has married housing be required to afford such housing to same-sex couples?...

GENERAL VERRILLI: The first [point] is, of course, this Court's ruling addresses what the States must do under the Fourteenth Amendment. And the second point is that when you get to a question like the one Your Honor asked, that is going to depend on how States work out the balance between their civil rights laws, whether they decide that there's going to be civil rights enforcement of discrimination based on sexual orientation or not, and how they decide what kinds of accommodations they are going to allow under State law. And they could well you know, different states could strike different balances.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: What about Federal? It's a Federal question if we make it a matter of constitutional law.

GENERAL VERRILLI: But the question of what how States use their enforcement power is up to the States.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, you have enforcement power, too.

GENERAL VERRILLI: Right. And, well, that's certainly true, but there is no Federal law now generally banning discrimination based on sexual orientation, and that's where those issues are going to have to be worked out. And I guess the third point I would make, Your Honor, is that these issues are going to arise no matter which way you decide this case, because these questions of accommodation are going to arise in situations in States where there is no same-sex marriage, where there are and, in fact, they have arisen many times. There are these commitment ceremonies. For example, in the New Mexico case in which this Court denied cert just a few months back, that did not arise out of a marriage. That arose out of a commitment ceremony, and these, you know, commitment ceremonies are going to need florists and caterers.

JUSTICE ALITO: Well, in the Bob Jones case, the Court held that a college was not entitled to tax-exempt status if it opposed interracial marriage or interracial dating. So would the same apply to a university or a college if it opposed same-sex marriage?

GENERAL VERRILLI: You know, I don't think I can answer that question without knowing more specifics, but it's certainly going to be an issue. I don't deny that. I don't deny that, Justice Alito. It is it is going to be an issue.

Let me summarize that: Clergymen might lose their right to marry if they are unwilling treat same-sex couples the same as man-woman couples, regardless of their religious beliefs. People in service industries related to weddings can be forced to offer their services, regardless of their religious beliefs—and possibly regardless of whether or not same-sex marriage is called constitutional. And religious schools will be affected—lose tax-exempt status, lose accreditation, etc.— if they teach their religious beliefs about marriage.

If you're wondering how granting same-sex "marriage" affects me, there it is.

Is there any possibility that anyone thinks the founders who wrote the First Amendment expected that amendment to be thrown out because same-sex couples want to change the definition of marriage?

The two sides define what marriage is differently. Ms. Bonauto referred to “intimate and committed relationships” to “provide mutual support.” Justice Alito asks for a definition directly from General Verrilli:

JUSTICE ALITO: What do you think are the essential elements of marriage as it exists today?

GENERAL VERRILLI: Well, I think the essential elements of marriage are the ones that are that the the obligations of mutual support and responsibility and the benefits surrounding marriage that State law provides to ensure that there is an enduring bond, that enduring bond that continues over time and lasts, hopefully, till death do us part, through the end of life. And that and with and and, certainly, childrearing is bound up in that.

So, it’s a relationship of mutual enduring support. And, as an afterthought, the two people might rear children that don’t necessarily result from the relationship—and in the case of same-sex couples absolutely cannot result from the relationship.

Justice Alito challenges this assertion with a situation that seems to strike the Solicitor General as random and unrelated, even though it’s right to the point:

 JUSTICE ALITO: Well, let's think about two groups of two people. The first is the same-sex couple who have been together for 25 years, and they get married either as a result of a change in State law or as a result of a Court decision. The second two people are unmarried siblings. They've lived together for 25 years. Their financial relationship is the same as the same-sex couple. They share household expenses and household chores in the same way. They care for each other in the same way. Is there any reason why the law should treat the two groups differently?

This question came up some years back when some states were considering civil unions; some people on the side of preserving real marriage were willing to compromise on civil unions—provided that elderly siblings and other non-sexual unions could be included. But General Verrilli has some internal definition of what marriage is supposed to be that wouldn’t allow it:

GENERAL VERRILLI: But, of course, marriage is something more fundamental than that. It is an enduring bond between two people.

He doesn’t answer what the difference is. But what he’s avoiding saying is, you can’t have marriage without a sexual relationship—and we’re all going to ignore the fact that it’s a different sexual act that separates real marriage from same-sex “marriage.”

The defense counsel was John J. Bursch. He pointed out that there is this difference in definition.

MR. BURSCH: The marriage institution did not develop to deny dignity or to give second class status to anyone. It developed to serve purposes that, by their nature, arise from biology…Now, the marriage view on the other side here is that marriage is all about love and commitment. And as a society, we can agree that that's important, but the State doesn't have any interest in that. If we're trying to solve that social problem I just described, where there's no marriage, we wouldn't solve it by saying, well, let's have people identify who they are emotionally committed to and recognize those relationships.

Marriage, then, is a social institution intended to bind mothers and fathers to each other so that they will be bound to their offspring.

Most of the interrogation of Mr. Bursch related to how laws deal with procreation. What several of the justices seem to be unaware of is the way courts have historically dealt with fertility. It has always been the assumption of the state that a man and woman who marry may be fertile.  The women on the court seemed especially unable to grasp the concept that if you change what marriage is, you change the outcome to society.

MR. BURSCH: Justice Kagan and Justice Ginsburg, it has to do with the societal understanding of what marriage means. This is a much bigger idea than any particular couple and what a marriage might mean to them or to their children. And when you change the definition of marriage to delink the idea that we're binding children with their biological mom and dad, that has consequences….   

Justice Sotomayor was too obtuse to grasp the connection. Traditional marriages end, and some parents leave their children; therefore there is no connection created by marriage between mothers, fathers, and their children. He tried again:

MR. BURSCH: Justice Sotomayor, there's all kinds of societal pressures that are already delinking that reason that the State, again, is for marriage, keeping kids and their biological moms and dads together whenever possible.

That last point was something he does not need to prove, Justice Scalia reminds us. The side of traditional marriage does not need to prove there is harm by allowing same-sex couples to “marry”; they prevail if they show they have a rational basis for the definition of marriage.

Mr. Bursch drew this connection between mothers, fathers, and children again and again. And the justices kept asking questions about fertility—ignoring that individual homosexuals are not typically infertile; it is their coupling that is infertile. Biology makes the difference.

When talking about the long-term consequences of changing the definition, he gave this clear explanation:

MR. BURSCH: I want you to think about two couples that are identically situated. They've been married for five years, and they each have a 3-year-old child. One grows up believing that marriage is about keeping that couple bound to that child forever. The other couple believes that that marriage is more about their emotional commitment to each other, and if that commitment fades, then they may not stay together.

A reasonable voter, which is what we're talking about here, could believe that there would be a different outcome if those two marriages were influenced by those two different belief systems.

Mr. Bursch refers to the argument as a rational basis for keeping the definition, which is the requirement of the case. But that’s not what Justice Sotomayor is going to judge on. She says,

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: But the problem is that even under a rational basis standard, do we accept a feeling? I mean, why is why as and I think Justice Kagan put the argument quite clearly, with something as fundamental as marriage, why would that feeling, which doesn't make any logical sense, control our decision-making?

She seems ignorant of the fact that she is considering imposing same-sex “marriage” on the entire country based on her feeling that it’s more fair to honor homosexual couples’ feelings, rather than the rational basis standard.

The weirdest line of questioning came from Justice Kagan, about the possibility that a state could limit licenses to only those couples who will procreate.

JUSTICE KAGAN: Suppose that there's a State with a very procreation centered view of marriage of the kind that you're talking about. And it you know, so emotional commitment and support, all of these, the State thinks are not the purpose of marriage and they want their marriage licenses to be addressed only to the things which serve this procreation purpose. And so they say, Well, we're not giving marriage licenses to any to anybody who doesn't want children. So when people come in and ask for a marriage license, they just ask a simple question: Do you want children? And if the answer is no, the State says, no marriage license for you. Would that be constitutional?...

MR. BURSCH: Would it be constitutional?... I think it would be an unconstitutional invasion of privacy to ask the question.

Justice Kagan seemed shocked.

JUSTICE KAGAN: To ask if you want children is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy?

These are your justices, unaware of the assumption of fertility in marriage law, but thinking it must be constitutional to ask questions about not only fertility, but intent to procreate—in granting licenses And add in maybe judging whether someone is too old to procreate. But they think it’s definitely wrong not to alter the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples.

I wonder how they’d feel about asking the question of whether the couple plans to engage in the male-female sex act that can result in marriage. Because that is an assumption that applies to actual marriage. If one of the couple comes back later and says, “My spouse refuses to engage in marital relations with me,” that is cause for annulment.

Getting into some of the nitty-gritty, about fundamental rights, and how the Windsor case dealt with them, Mr. Bursch reminds Justice Breyer what his ruling said:

MR. BURSCH: In Windsor, this Court said that the limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples has always been thought to be fundamental.

Mr. Bursch was well-prepared and fended off the often oddball questions admirably. There were things he was prevented from saying, because of previous rulings of this Court. The Court previously bestowed upon us this unlaw-like and irrational standard: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”[ii] So, if a person wants to define homosexual behavior as meaningful, the rest of us are required to go along? Who gets to determine that my “concept of existence,” and so forth is not valid? It’s not a very exact standard.

I would have liked for Mr. Bursch to point out that no homosexuals are prevented from marrying. The closest he was able to come was to say that sexual orientation isn’t mentioned in marriage law. The basic fact is, homosexuals can marry—a person of the opposite sex, not already married, not too close a relative, and who is of the age of consent—just like the rest of us.

The plaintiffs are twisting facts when they say homosexuals are prohibited from marrying; they are not. They keep saying homosexual couples are prevented from marrying; that is so. Already married people are also prevented from marrying, and the plaintiffs seem perfectly content to discriminate against those possibly “bonded and mutually supportive” people.

It seemed to me that the plaintiffs’ counsel and the Solicitor General were unprepared for the questions that came to them. It’s possible that they live insular lives, surrounded by people who agree with them. All they would have needed was to read an article or two by Ryan Anderson[iii]; the arguments are well covered. Yet they seemed surprised by them. They thought they could get by with, gay couples have a right to marry, because, um, because they, um, want to marry, and they should get what they want.

The defense is required only to show that there is a rational basis for defining marriage as it has been done for millennia. The defense of marriage was strong, and clear, and fully aware of the law. Nevertheless, some of the justices seem to be unaware of their job, unaware of current marriage laws, and unaware of the very real dangers to society and religious freedom if they capriciously invent a new constitutional “right.”

If they paid attention, they must allow real marriage to prevail. But, while I was given hope by the oral arguments, I cannot predict what they will rule.

Question 2 assumes that the right to traditional marriage is upheld. Then what happens across state lines? We’ll look at that in Part III.

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[i] Citations related to same-sex parents and children’s outcome:

• Parliamentary Report on the Family and the Rights of Children, January 2006.

• Douglas Allen, “Review of the Economics of the Household,” October 2013, described in “A Married Mom and Dad Really Do Matter: New Evidence from Canada,” by Mark Regnerus: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/10/10996/ 

• Loren Marks, “Same-sex parenting and children’s outcomes: A closer examination of the American psychological association’s brief on lesbian and gay parenting,” Social Science Research, Volume 4, Issue 41, [  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0049089X/41/4     ] July 2012, pp. 735-751.

• Mark Regnerus, “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study,” Social Science Research, Volume 41, Issue 4, July 2012, Pages 752–770.

• Ana Samuel, “The Kids Aren’t All Right: New Family Structures and the ‘No Differences’ Claim,” The Witherspoon Institute, June 14, 2012, http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/06/5640/#_edn1. [See the footnotes as well.]

• Ann Bailey, “How do children fare when reared by same-sex couples?” United Families International Blog, June 11, 2012 [has an excellent graphic]: https://unitedfamiliesinternational.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/how-do-children-fare-when-reared-by-same-sex-couples/

[ii] 505 U.S. 833, 851 (1992) (plurality opinion of O’Connor, Kennedy and Souter, J.J.).

[iii] Here is Ryan Anderson testifying in Indiana last year: https://youtu.be/3TNmKo5KcMY

Millennia of Marriage, Part I

For those who consider listening to Supreme Court oral arguments a good way to spend an afternoon, Tuesday was particularly good.

This was the day of oral arguments on Obergefell v. Hodges and the consolidated cases related to same-sex “marriage.” As we reviewed recently, [here and here] they covered two questions. The first is whether the 14^th Amendment requires all states to license same-sex “marriages.” The second assumes that question 1 is answered no, and then asked whether all states are required to recognize same-sex “marriages” licensed in any other state.

As I understand it, the way the Supreme Court works is, each justice studies the case individually, reads the briefs associated with the case, and develops an opinion. Quite likely those opinions are fairly well settled by the time of oral arguments.

But that is not to say the arguments are irrelevant. The arguments are intended to give each side the opportunity to voice its strongest points, and also to respond to questions the justices have—which might be intended to either show weakness in the arguments, or bolster those points with added clarity. And court watchers look at the questions and comments from the justices to give some idea about the way they’re leaning.

Our current Court is relatively set on divisive issues—as this is. We have four justices who generally read the Constitution as written and judge based on the written law; and we have four who generally look at cases according to their own personal views and then look for ways to construe those opinions as if they adhered to the Constitution. And then we have one justice, Kennedy, who is unpredictable. That means the future of marriage in the United States rests on the counsels’ ability to persuade one unelected man.

Justice Kennedy during oral arguments April 28, 2015
photo found here

I and others who know the value of real marriage have been justifiably worried about the possible outcome. While there was nothing too definitive on Tuesday, there was an awful lot that gives hope. So it surprised me when I read Wednesday’s Houston Chronicle and they (Adam Liptak of the New York Times wrote the story) seemed to have observed different oral arguments. Their news story ignored what I’m about to cover below, and opined, “On the evidence of his words, he seemed torn about what to do. But Kennedy’s tone was more emotional and emphatic when he made the case for same-sex marriage. That, coupled with his earlier judicial opinions, gave gay rights advocates reason for optimism.”

I’m doing this review to see if there’s something I missed. Buckle up. This will definitely take more than just today’s post.

Question 1

As soon as counsel for the plaintiffs, Mary Bonauto, began her introductory speech, Justice Ginsburg interrupted:

JUSTICE GINSBURG: What do you do with the Windsor case where the court stressed the Federal government's historic deference to States when it comes to matters of domestic relations?

Good question. Because, in Windsor, the Court declared that the federal government could not have a definition of marriage (despite the thousands of places in law where marriage relates to federal law and thus requires a definition) because it had to defer to states, who might have different definitions. OK, so the federal government cannot prescribe a definition because of federalism—separate sovereign states. Yet now they are being asked to force a definition on all states because of the 14^th Amendment equal protection clause.

MS. BONAUTO: And here we have a whole class of people who are denied the equal right to be able to join in this very extensive government institution that provides protection for families.

Justice Roberts then pointed out that, according to longstanding definition, these people were not joining the institution, but changing it.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Every definition that I looked up, prior to about a dozen years ago, defined marriage as unity between a man and a woman as husband and wife. Obviously, if you succeed, that core definition will no longer be operable.

Ms. Bonauto went on autopilot, repeating the claim that state laws are preventing a class of people from participating in the institution, rather than biology and choices. Justice Roberts made sure she understood:

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: No. My question is you're not seeking to join the institution; you're seeking to change what the institution is. The fundamental core of the institution is the opposite-sex relationship and you want to introduce into it a same-sex relationship.

It wasn’t spelled out, but it was clear to me that there is a difference between preventing a person from marrying because of their belonging to a class (homosexuals) and preventing couples. There is nothing in the law related to sexual orientation (which counsel for the defense did say); homosexuals are not prevented from marrying. But that doesn’t mean they can “marry” someone who does not qualify as being a person of the opposite sex, not married to someone else, not too close a relative, or not of age to consent—the same law that applies to everyone else.

Ms. Bonauto tried to claim that the male-female relationship isn’t fundamental, and that ideas change. I get the feeling she’s not used to being challenged on her talking points. At this juncture, Justice Kennedy stepped in with what is likely to be a quoted point going forward:

JUSTICE KENNEDY: One of the problems is when you think about these cases you think about words or cases, and the word that keeps coming back to me in this case is millennia, plus time. First of all, there has not been really time, so the Respondents say, for the Federal system to engage in this debate, the separate States. But on a larger scale, it's been it was about the same time between Brown and Loving as between Lawrence and this case. It's about 10 years. And so there's time for the scholars and the commentators and the bar and the public to engage in it. But still, 10 years is I don't even know how to count the decimals when we talk about millennia. This definition has been with us for millennia. And it's very difficult for the Court to say, oh, well, we know better.

Indeed. If there is a theme for the day, that is it.

Justice Alito brings up the next point, about intent of traditional marriage laws.

JUSTICE ALITO: You argue in your brief that the primary purpose of the Michigan law limiting marriage to a man and a woman was to demean gay people; is that correct?

That is indeed the claim. Therefore, they must prove that the people of Michigan had no other purpose than to demean homosexuals when they enacted the law. That is a high bar, and unreachable.

MS. BONAUTO: The Michigan statute and amendment certainly went out of their way to say that gay people were in some sense antithetical to the good of society.

JUSTICE ALITO: And did you say in your brief that the primary purpose of that was to demean gay people?

MS. BONAUTO: I think it has that effect, Your Honor. I do. Now, at the same time

JUSTICE ALITO: Is that true just in Michigan or is that true of every other State that has a similar definition of marriage?

She had to admit that maybe not all had the precise intention, but…

MS. BONAUTO: But even if there's not a purpose to demean, I think the common commonality among all of the statutes, whether they were enacted long ago or more recently, is that they encompass moral judgments and stereotypes about gay people. Even if you think about something 100 years ago, gay people were not worthy of the concern of the government and the and and moral judgments about

JUSTICE ALITO: Well, how do you account for the fact that, as far as I'm aware, until the end of the 20th century, there never was a nation or a culture that recognized marriage between two people of the same sex? Now, can we infer from that that those nations and those cultures all thought that there was some rational, practical purpose for defining marriage in that way, or is it your argument that they were all operating independently based solely on irrational stereotypes and prejudice?

I like it when thinking people ask questions that get to the germ of an issue. He’s going to make her prove that, not only the current specific Michigan law exists only to express animus toward a class, but that the antecedents to such laws, the definition used over time and cultures, all were intended to demean homosexuals. She begins to look foolish. She stammers that, “Times can blind.” And, you know, discrimination against women, and blacks, and….

Justice Ginsburg tried to help by muddying the waters with the idea of dominant-subordinate relationships in ancient marriage. Justice Roberts halted that analogy as not useful here. Ms. Bonauto added in questions about mixed-race marriages. Justice Scalia squelched that:

JUSTICE SCALIA: Well, not all societies banned mixed-race marriages. In fact, not even all States in this country banned. But I don't know of any—do you know of any society, prior to the Netherlands in 2001, that permitted same-sex marriage?

He’s continuing his point about her insistence that all these cultures were bigoted:

JUSTICE SCALIA: For millennia, not a single other society until the Netherlands in 2001, and you're telling me they were all—I don't know what.

And then he tries to bring us back to the clarity of the question to be settled:

JUSTICE SCALIA: Well, the issue, of course, is not whether there should be same-sex marriage, but who should decide the point.

I’m pretty sure Justice Sotomayor is pro-same-sex “marriage,” but she's not done with the intent question, and introduces a question on historic discrimination that only strengthens Justice Scalia’s point:

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Now, counselor, in terms of this millennium, what's been the status or the view of gay people in most of those countries? Have they been subject to the kinds of discrimination that they were subject to here? Were they welcomed into the worldwide community? Was it free of discrimination?

Ms. Bonauto says some irrelevant things about whether they had constitutional protections like ours. And then Justice Alito gives a little history lesson:

JUSTICE ALITO: But there have been cultures that did not frown on homosexuality. That is not a universal opinion throughout history and across all cultures. Ancient Greece is an example. It was well accepted within certain bounds. But did they have same-sex marriage in ancient Greece?

He summarizes: they had marriage; they had same-sex relationships that even received a fair amount of cultural approval. But they did not have same-sex marriage. So…

JUSTICE ALITO: So their limiting marriage to couples of the opposite sex was not based on prejudice against gay people, was it?

She seems flustered. And then, surprisingly, it is Justice Breyer (another I would have assumed favored same-sex “marriage”) who nails the point:

JUSTICE BREYER: And to me, it takes the form, the opposite view has been the law everywhere for thousands of years among people who were not discriminating even against gay people, and suddenly you want nine people outside the ballot box to require States that don't want to do it to change what you've heard is, change what marriage is to include gay people. Why cannot those States at least wait and see whether in fact doing so in the other States is or is not harmful to marriage?

It must be a daunting thing to face the Supreme Court—especially when you’re in the wrong. And not very well prepared for the inevitable questions.

So far we’ve looked at the likelihood that real marriage requires a man and a woman for reasons other than bigotry. We’re still in the middle of question 1 arguments. So coming up next we’ll look at rationale for changing marriage to include same-sex couples, but not include any other changes in the definition.

Bigness

Big Government. Big Business. Big Media. Big Law.

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.

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[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/.