Trump Drops a Flurry of Nominees to Head FDA, OMB, CDC, and HUD
We Might Have a Problem With Trump's Labor Secretary Nominee
Trump Makes His Pick for Treasury Secretary
The Press Delivers a Fake News Trump Health Crisis, and the Bad Week...
Wisdom From the Founders: Madison and 'Gradual and Silent Encroachments'
CFPB Director Exemplifies the Worst of Washington Hypocrisy
Trump Victory: From Neocons to Americons
It’s Time to Make Healthcare Great Again
Deportation Is Necessary to Undo Harm Done at the Border
Do You Know Where the Migrant Children Are? Why States Can't Wait for...
Biden’s Union-Based Concerns Undercut U.S. Security and Jeopardize Steel Production
Joy Reid Spews Hate Toward Trump Supporters Once Again
America's National Debt Just Hit a New Record
The View Forced to Read Three Legal Notes Within Minutes of One Another...
Watch This ABC Reporter Goes on Massive Tangent Blaming Trump for Laken Riley's...
OPINION

The California Supreme Court Versus Reality

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement

Marriage isn't just the chief underpinning of society or, for that matter, a raunchy comedy routine. In the minds of easily the great majority of Americans, marriage is an institution reflective of divine intent concerning human relationships and duties.

Advertisement

Well, never mind. The California Supreme Court doesn't seem to mind, having ruled by the margin of a single vote that California can't constitutionally ban same-sex marriage.

Um ... Can't? Can't affirm, in a judicial finding, the large, historic, profoundly rooted beliefs of the human race? Seemingly not.

Only in California. Or Massachusetts. Or certain other cutting-edge American addresses not worth the trouble of naming. There's a tendency to laugh aloud at the sheer presumption of people with law school educations in lecturing fellow citizens on their outmoded modes of belief, and, correspondingly, on the need -- NOW! NO BACK TALK!! -- to get with the new program.

If no judicial decree can make marriage anything other than an institution reflective of the large realities in which humans participate, there's no cause for alarm. Two people of the same sex holding hands before a judge or clergyman is ... two people holding hands before a judge or clergyman, nothing more.

Marriage it ain't. That's between people of opposite but complementary attributes and physiologies. The merger, so to speak, of those attributes and physiologies is what we call marriage. Flap your arms and attempt to try an aerial passage across the Grand Canyon: You'll have as much luck at that as at same-sex marriage. Can't do it. Period.

The problem, in California, isn't that you can't do it. The problem is that the state's highest court has attempted this metaphysical heavy lifting in defiance both of logic and popular sentiment.

Advertisement

As one dissenting justice, Marvin R. Baxter, wrote in the gay marriage case, "[A] bare majority of this court, not satisfied with the pace of democratic change, now abruptly forestalls that process and substitutes, by judicial fiat, its own social policy views for those expressed by the People themselves."

It's what they do in North Korea and Iran, in case we've forgotten: Decide in the People's name what the People need -- then give it to them, to choke on, as often as not.

I can't forbear from noting that John McCain promised, if elected president, to put on the federal bench judges unwilling to torture constitutional or statutory language to secure particular outcomes. California's high court, though not a federal venue, demonstrates what he means. .

The California majority said prohibition of same-sex marriage constitutes unconstitutional discrimination. Shocking that no one had noticed before. All this time, the assumption that men and women had been created for each other, not least in order to procreate -- and no one raised a finger. Not the old guys in the Bible. Not Plato. Not Aquinas. Not even Norman Mailer! Up pops the California, Supreme Court -- I mean, its four-judge majority -- to explain what forevermore had been said and thought and believed and practiced. Gosh -- aren't judges something?

Well, they are. Which is why Californians are being asked in November to amend their constitution and so prohibit as a legal matter marriages between Californians of the same sex. California's highest court is causing Californians a lot of unnecessary bother and expense, while stirring up intramural ill will and setting an unwholesome example of judicial arrogance and intellectual disconnectedness.

Advertisement

Sad. Not prejudicial, ipso facto (in legalspeak) to the reality of marriage -- which, as I say, is beyond reach -- but sad. That's because the California Supreme Court's imprimatur will convince various folks that A is B and up is down. Some of these folks, newly convinced or reinforced in what they believed already, will then operate on those assumptions, with possibly tragic consequences.

Why don't judges get it? Legislators write law. Judges interpret what others have written. Anyway, national election coming up. The California Supreme Court, without knowing it, just put on a heck of a fundraiser for John McCain.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Recommended

Trending on Townhall Videos