The homosexual lobby has bullied people into believing that we are denying homosexuals a constitutional right by allowing states to regulate marriage. This is a modern legal fiction, just as
Roe v. Wade was.
As I stated before, states have always had the ability to regulate the “safety, health, welfare, and
morals” of its citizens. This is truly a constitutional right.
See 10th Amendment (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states,
are reserved to the States respectively, or to
the people.”). Unless prohibited by the Constitution, the PEOPLE have the right to regulate marriage.
Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 7 (1967) (“The state court is no doubt correct in asserting that marriage is a social relation subject to the State’s police power.”). The citizens of Utah have defined marriage as between a man and a woman. That was their choice. If you don’t like it, lobby the legislature to change it or petition for a state or federal constitutional amendment or move to a state that allows homosexual marriage.
The
Loving case has been thrown around on this thread time and again. As I stated above, the Loving case reaffirmed that states have the right to regulate marriage per their police power.
Loving said that under the Equal Protection Clause, states could not bar interracial couples from marrying. This was because the very purpose of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution was to remove state racial discrimination. “The clear and central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to eliminate all official state sources of invidious racial discrimination.”
Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 10 (1967).
Regardless of how you feel about the issue of same sex marriage, when the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, no one thought that it would prohibit states from banning Same Sex Marriage, no one. When the
Loving decision was decided in 1967, no one thought that it would mean states had to allow Same Sex Marriage. For example, anti-discrimination measures for the disabled had to be passed legislatively (ADA). The Constitution was silent on the issue.
In fact, in 1986 the Supreme Court specifically affirm that states had the right to criminalize sodomy. “It is obvious to us that neither of these formulations would extend a fundamental right to homosexuals to engage in acts of consensual sodomy. Proscriptions against that conduct have ancient roots.”
Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186, 192 (1986).
As the Supreme Court further said in Bowers:
This case does not require a judgment on whether laws against sodomy between consenting adults in general, or between homosexuals in particular, are wise or desirable. It raises no question about the right or propriety of state legislative decisions to repeal their laws that criminalize homosexual sodomy, or of state-court decisions invalidating those laws on state constitutional grounds. The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy and hence invalidates the laws of the many States that still make such conduct illegal and have done so for a very long time.
In 2003, in
Lawrence v. Texas the Supreme Court reversed
Bowers. As I noted previously, Justice Scalia issued a prophetic warning in his strong dissent in Lawrence:
State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of Bowers’ validation of laws based on moral choices. Every single one of these laws is called into question by today’s decision; the Court makes no effort to cabin the scope of its decision to exclude them from its holding…The impossibility of distinguishing homosexuality from other traditional “morals” offenses is precisely why Bowers rejected the rational-basis challenge. “The law,” it said, “is constantly based on notions of morality, and if all laws representing essentially moral choices are to be invalidated under the Due Process Clause, the courts will be very busy indeed. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 590 (2003)
If you think same sex marriage should be legal, pass a law. You say we are forcing our view of marriage on you. I say we are a nation of laws and have the right to define marriage as our legislatures see fit. You don’t have to like it, but you can work through the normal channels of government to change it.
The truth is you are the ones forcing your morality on us. It is no different than when the Constitution was used to force the slaughter of 50 million innocent children.
Roe v. Wade used the Constitution in the same way, invention of a right that did not exist. As a people, we adopted the Christian world view for a reason. I love the words of C.S. Lewis on the regulation of societal morality.
C.S. Lewis:
They tell you sex has become a mess because it was hushed up. But for the last twenty years it has not been hushed up. It has been chattered about all day long. Yet it is still in a mess. If hushing up had been the cause of the trouble, ventilation would have set it right. But it has not. I think it is the other way round. I think the human race originally hushed it up because it had become such a mess.
When the Supreme Court removes the right of the People to regulate marriage and morality, as Justice Scalia said, there will be no end to it.
Please read through the whole thread.