The following is a press release from SaveCalifornia.com issued on December 7.
Randy Thomassen of Save California offered four reasons why the Supreme Court should agree to review the decisions overturning Proposition 8, approved by California voters in 2008:
1. Marriage licenses are not in the Constitution, so this case never should have gotten into federal court in the first place.
2. Article IV, Section 4 guarantees to California and every other state “a republican form of government” — meaning 1) no monarchy and 2) no lawless mob rule, but a government of written laws representing the will of the people, who are sovereign. The California Constitution represents the people’s will on marriage and the United States Supreme Court should affirm that.
3. The 10th Amendment says powers that don’t belong to the federal government, or what the Constitution doesn’t prohibit among the states, are state powers. Therefore, marriage is under the states’ jurisdiction.
4. The 14th Amendment is one of three post-Civil War amendments and was about race — giving black former slaves the same legal rights of white freemen — not about marriage. The Amendment applied to the states what was already a federal right enshrined in the 5th Amendment — that no one should be killed (deprived of life), imprisoned or enslaved (deprived of liberty), or deprived of their property without a court order (due process of law).
Further, the Equal Protection Clause in no way requires the recognition of same-sex “marriages” because homosexual couples are not the same as heterosexual couples. They cannot have a conjugal union that produces children, and one of the primary purposes of marriage is to bind together fathers and mothers for the benefit of the children they bring into the world.
To read entire release, click here.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said that the west labors under the dulusion that simply because something can be done legally it is therefore automatically worthwhile. The technical equivalent of might makes right.
Will the arguments made before SCOTUS have anything to do with the real issue?
It’s really about the power of the state to dictate who are the parents of a child in defiance of the intact biological family.
“Every little child wants a married mommy and daddy.”
The true welfare of children appears nowhere in the court decisions.
“‘Gold standard’ study’s striking findings: children of heterosexual parents happier, healthier.” LifeSiteNews, June 11, 2012, Tags: Homosexuality, Mark Regnerus.
If you had actually read the decisions, especially Judge Walker’s District Court decision in the prop 8 case, you would see that the welfare of children was considered at trial and in the decision itself.
#3 above is wrong, and if marriage is destroyed by the judicial tyrants it will be because NOM and other marriage defenders chose this “state’s rights” falsehood as the basis of the defense.
Marriage *is certainly* a matter of Federal jurisdiction, since Federal benefits are involved in the definition of marriage.
It is completely absurd to suggest that every state ought to be able to define marriage as it pleases, because Federal benefits cannot be willy-nilly adjusted to the various definitions of the states.
I hope and pray that 5 justices will understand this.
If not we are done, and our nation will proceed to the destruction of families and the persecution of Christians.
I say again: the notion that the definition of marriage ought to be subject to the whims of all fifty states is absurd, and is quite possibly the absurdity which will lead to the destruction of marriage in the United States of America.
It just have been tempting to suppose that no states would vote against marriage.
But they did.
Perhaps we are beyond help now.
I shudder whenever anything is left up to the so called Supreme Court!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
“I shudder whenever anything is left up to the so called Supreme Court.”
Too bad you can’t go back in time and give the Founding Fathers a good talking-to. THEY’RE the ones to came up with that.
But they weren’t good orthodox Catholics, so we can’t expect them to know anything, can we?
Go back to National Fishwrap online Chucky boy…
As much as I admire and respect Randy Thomassen, I fear our corrupt Judiciary more!
Pray, maybe a miracle will happen.
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
FOUR REASONS WHY THIS POST IS WRONG ABOUT THE CONSTITUTION:
1) The post says that because marriages are not in the Constitution, the cases should “never have gotten into Federal court in the first place.” Well, the fact is that anything can get into Federal courts, but that misses the more important point that the Supreme Court has opined on marriage DOZENS of times before, not the least of which is Loving v Virginia, which required states to permit inter-racial marriages.
2) It is certainly true that the will of the people is to be sovereign. But the author of this post misses the fact that the will of the American people is expressed in the US Constitution, and that US law supersedes the laws of the states. If SCOTUS finds that the people of CA violated Federal law (as the Ninth circuit has already held), then SCOTUS is saying that the will of all the people of the US supersedes the will of the people of CA. That is the price we pay for our Union. This is why we no longer have slavery. This is why women have the right to vote. This is why, ultimately, marriage will extend to all the states of the US sooner or later.
3) Genrally this is correct. Marriage has been understood to be the domain of the States since the beginning of the Union. However, whenever states issued marriage rules in contradiction to more generic rules (ie equal protection), the Supreme Court has stepped in to ensure that laws apply equally to all citizens of the states.
4) The post is correct in situating the 14th Amendment in the context of post-slavery America. However, it was abundantly clear that any law that treated some citizens differently than other citizens for superficial reasons (race being the first on the mind at that moment), ought not be allowed to stand. If the USA stands for nothing else, it stands for liberty, and liberty is no more threatened when some citizens are treated differently than others. For the century and a half of our country, we have understood the 14th amendment to apply to all citizens, not just to citizens separated by race.
As we interpret the US constitution, we must remember that there are times when being faithful to it might be in conflict with teachings of the Church. Thus, we have a conflict. But when we VOTE as Citizens, we must uphold the Constitution. When we ACT, we must act in accordance with our conscience as formed by the Church.
” But when we VOTE as Citizens, we must uphold the Constitution. When we ACT, we must act in accordance with our conscience as formed by the Church.” I find this sentence incomprehensible. VOTING is certainly an ACT. Therefore I must, on the one hand, vote according to the constitution, and on the other hand, vote according to conscience as formed by the Church. What’s a poor guy to do, especially since our “fellow Catholic” has assured us that gay marriage stands under the purview of the 14th amendment?
Dan, it can be a dilemma! And it is for dilemmas such as these that conscience takes its primacy.
My Fellow Fallen Away Catholic,
Yes, indeed! There is a great challenge here. Are you up to the task? Twenty two years of enslavement does constitute a very serious spiritual dilemma. It is obvious that this is not about a struggle that will be viewed as a diagnosis of invincible ignorance. It is a different kind of struggle. Christ died on the Cross for each and every particular sin. Sanctifying grace helps to strengthen our resolve to be more pleasing to God. With God….”All things are possible.” When we truly love someone as Christ unselfishly and sacrificially loved us, we would never ever rationalize offending God by committing acts that would lead someone to hell. Christ said, “Love one another as I have loved you.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition
IV. ERRONEOUS JUDGMENT
1790 A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself. Yet it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed.
1791 This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility. This is the case when a man “takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin.” In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits.
1792 Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one’s passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church’s authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct.
I think it is insanely insulting to call a 22 year loving relationship to an enslavement. You do not know me. You have not witnessed our relationship. You have not even talked to people who know us and have witnessed first hand the fruits of our relationship.
You are in to position to describe my relationship in ANY terms, especially one so inflammatory and derogatory as “enslavement”. I hope every single African American — and anyone who sees how awful Catharine’s statement is — will speak up to Catherine and to Cal-Catholic.
Yes a properly formed conscience, why do you liberals ALWAYS leave that out??? remember your conscience is not God..
When we VOTE as citizens we must NEVER put civil law above our Faith.
“Fellow Catholic”, you are obviously not Catholic.
Just because something is legal in many jurisdictions such as ABORTION, HOMO-SEXUAL MARRIAGE (sodomy), EUTHANASIA, etc., does not make it TRUE or RIGHT.
Nor do these laws adhere to GOD’s laws.
God first. Then Family. Then Country.
Your first mistake is to argue from right reason and logic.Thr recent
razzle-dazzle by USSC Chief Justice in the Obamacare case should
dispel you of this line of reasoning.
While I have some hopes of a good outcome, we must recognize that no constitution can ever be written that is proof against widespread popular corruption (as I believe Hamilton noted in a Federalist paper somebody can look up). The gay-coupling juggernaut is driven by popular corruption, beginning with contraception. Anything other than a spiritual revolution is a delaying tactic: useful but not lasting.
Tom Byrne,
RIGHT ON!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
Before getting too exercised about the matter, this will be the same SCOTUS which blessed Obamacare.
Reason never prevails, politics does.
The U.S. Supreme Court will likely vote in favor of gay “marriage” because
Catholic Anthony Kennedy, formerly of Sacramento, will vote with the Leftist judges for a 5-4 decision.
Unquestionably, California’s Prop 8 should be upheld if the Supreme Court sticks to their own definition of a constitutional “fundamental right” which is a right “that fundamental to the concept of ordered liberty” & “deeply rooted in our nation’s history & traditions.” As we all know however, the 1970s both abortion & marriage were declared to fundamental rights as they fell under the zones of privacy supposedly protected by the substantive due process clause of the 14th amendment that they got out of the “penumbras” (shadow) of the bill of rights in the 1st, 4th & 9th amendments. These are legal fictions but are current case law. Unfortunately with homosexuality, Justice Kennedy has twice been the author of pro-homosexual decisions, one an equal protection in the 1990s in which the court overturned a Colorado constitutional amendment not allowing city ordinances from banning landlords from renting to gay & then of course famously Lawrence v. Texas where Justice Kennedy writing the opinion of the Court overturned a Texas law (& a Supreme Court decision 20 years earlier) which banned sodomy because Kennedy claimed homosexual sex fell under one of the zones of privacy of the due process clause. & So with homosexual acts being a fundamental rights under due process as well as marriage itself & with homosexuals largely protected by equal protection I think it’s likely, especially with the swing justice Kennedy being the author of the previous two homosexual rights decisions that the court takes the next step & declares homosexual marriage a fundamental right. That would mean homosexual marriage will be legal everywhere. Justice Scalia predicted this happening after Lawrence. A sad day for our country, but this is what happens when you have activist Supreme Courts & a country that is losing its morals.
Fellow Catholic,
In response to your Dec 11, 4:38 pm post…. “God enters into history to free humanity from the slavery of sin.” Pope Benedict XVI