Some of the salient points of Card's commentary with comments of my own.
State job is not to redefine marriage
By Orson Scott Card
Published: Thursday, Jul. 24, 2008
The first and greatest threat from court decisions in California and Massachusetts, giving legal recognition to "gay marriage," is that it marks the end of democracy in America.
While this one decision clearly does not pose us with such a mark, the decision itslef, based on nothing actually appearing in the California state constitution or the constitution of the United States, is another in a long line of such decisions that will eventually, it is true, reach a "tipping point". The phenomena of judicial usurpation of legislative perogatives is a deadly threat to deliberative democracy, however, and in this Card is surely correct.
These judges are making new law without any democratic process; in fact, their decisions are striking down laws enacted by majority vote.
True as stated.
The pretext is that state constitutions require it -- but it is absurd to claim that these constitutions require marriage to be defined in ways that were unthinkable through all of human history until the past 15 years. And it is offensive to expect us to believe this obvious fiction.
It is such an obvious overreach by judges, far beyond any rational definition of their authority, that even those who support the outcome of the decisions should be horrified by the means.
We already know where these decisions lead. We have seen it with the court decisions legalizing abortion. At first, it was only early abortions; within a few years, though, any abortion up to the killing of a viable baby in mid-birth was made legal.
Not only that, but the courts upheld obviously unconstitutional limitations on free speech and public assembly: It is now illegal even to kneel and pray in front of a clinic that performs abortions.
Do not suppose for a moment that the "gay marriage" diktats will not be supported by methods just as undemocratic, unconstitutional and intolerant.
Already in several states, there are textbooks for children in the earliest grades that show "gay marriages" as normal. How long do you think it will be before such textbooks become mandatory -- and parents have no way to opt out of having their children taught from them?
And if you choose to home-school your children so they are not propagandized with the "normality" of "gay marriage," you will find more states trying to do as California is doing -- making it illegal to take your children out of the propaganda mill that our schools are rapidly becoming.
How dangerous is this, politically? Please remember that for the mildest of comments critical of the political agenda of homosexual activists, I have been called a "homophobe" for years.
Welcome to the club Orson
This is a term that was invented to describe people with a pathological fear of homosexuals -- the kind of people who engage in acts of violence against gays. But the term was immediately extended to apply to anyone who opposed the homosexual activist agenda in any way.
Solid and accurate social and political history.
A term that has mental-health implications (homophobe) is now routinely applied to anyone who deviates from the politically correct line. How long before opposing gay marriage, or refusing to recognize it, gets you officially classified as "mentally ill"?
Not long, if Ray and many of the liberals here and in the society at large have their way about it.
Here's the irony: There is no branch of government with the authority to redefine marriage.
Correct, this is wholly outside the prerogatives and scope of the state, independent of the will of the people, in a free society. If a majority of the people wish to do so, at the state level, through referenda or legislation through accountable representatives, they may do so, but the redefinition itself cannot be done in a fit of ideological pique by the political class or the judiciary.
No matter how sexually attracted a man might be toward other men, or a woman toward other women, and no matter how close the bonds of affection and friendship might be within same-sex couples, there is no act of court or Congress that can make these relationships the same as the coupling between a man and a woman.
This is a permanent fact of nature.
Correct. Legislatures cannot create and extend "rights". Rights either exist or they do not, and if they do, they preexist the state and the body politic itself. That which the state can create it can take away, and the implication for the concept of "rights" itself; that rights are a purely human creation, implies within itself the negation of all rights.
Because when government is the enemy of marriage, then the people who are actually creating successful marriages have no choice but to change governments, by whatever means is made possible or necessary.
This idea of changing government when that government becomes intolerably tyrannical by any means necessary is a fundamental constitutional principle, and elucidated by some of the Founders in their political writings pursuant to the constitution. Anyone here disagree with this in principle?
Society gains no benefit whatsoever (except for a momentary warm feeling about how "fair" and "compassionate" we are) from renaming homosexual liaisons and friendships as marriage.
Precisely. Thomas Sowell has termed leftist governmental policy of this kind as "self congratulation as a basis for social policy".
If America becomes a place where our children are taken from us by law and forced to attend schools where they are taught that cohabitation is as good as marriage, that motherhood doesn't require a husband or father, and that homosexuality is as valid a choice as heterosexuality for their future lives, then why in the world should married people continue to accept the authority of such a government?
Good question (unless one is a "liberal" for whom there is no such thing as right and wrong, moral or immoral, or any way to come to any sound conclusions as to which is which).
What these dictator-judges do not seem to understand is that their authority extends only as far as people choose to obey them.
Why, what a quaint thought...
How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy.[i] I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.
I see no support for any other interpretation here then that Card means political activism.