{"id":965,"date":"2015-09-08T19:38:55","date_gmt":"2015-09-08T19:38:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/?p=965"},"modified":"2015-09-09T08:59:14","modified_gmt":"2015-09-09T08:59:14","slug":"scotus-gay-marriage-ruling-excerpts-from-the-dissents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/?p=965","title":{"rendered":"SCOTUS Gay Marriage Ruling: Excerpts from the Dissents"},"content":{"rendered":"

SCOTUS Gay Marriage Ruling: Excerpts from the Dissents;\u00a0Chief\u00a0Justice John\u00a0Roberts, Justice\u00a0Clarence\u00a0Thomas, and Justice Anthony Scalia.<\/strong><\/p>\n

(The full opinion and dissents can be read at http:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/14pdf\/14-556_3204.pdf)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is my strong opinion that Christians should vote.\u00a0 In order to do so, they must develop a world view, and be informed about candidates and issues.\u00a0 Christians should also be informed about other matters that have the potential to immediately or\u00a0later affect\u00a0Christian liberty.<\/p>\n

The recent SCOTUS ruling has already begun to affect Christian liberty.\u00a0 When rights are given to people\u00a0for the purpose\u00a0of practicing what God’s word calls sin, and Christians are forced to violate their faith to facilitate those rights, it is a serious issue.\u00a0 The effects on Christian liberty are immediate, and will no doubt affect our Children and grandchildren.\u00a0 It is every citizen’s responsibility to discover how that process\u00a0conducted and completed.<\/p>\n

These three\u00a0Dissents reveal not only how the process was erroneous, but that the outcome is harmful.\u00a0 Further, it reveals that a law was pretentiously established illegally, subordinating the Constitution and illegally circumventing Congress.\u00a0 They reveal that the SCOTUS has activist judges who committed moral turpitude in their\u00a0opinion and ruling, ignored precedent of the court and law, and\u00a0rejected the will of the people, in favor of their own whims.<\/p>\n

Their decision does not measure up to the quality one would expect in SCOTUS justices, but rather what one would expect in a foreign nation\u00a0reeking with corruption, dishonesty, and where authority can be perverted\u00a0by mere whim of a dictator.\u00a0 Our nation has a Constitution to prevent that, but it was ignored.\u00a0 The ramifications for this new precedent-setting action for Christians\u00a0will be harsh.\u00a0 If our fragile liberties are now in the hands of people who will violate all ethics and decency to get what they want, and if what they want is completely minimalized Christianity, what is there left to stop them from legislating Christianity out of existence.\u201d – C. H. Fisher<\/p>\n

Justice Roberts Dissent: (excerpts)\u00a0 “The majority\u2019s decision is an act of will, not legal judgment. The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or this Court\u2019s precedent.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

But this Court is not a legislature. Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us. Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be. The people who ratified the Constitution authorized courts to exercise \u201cneither force nor will but merely judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, however, the Court takes the extraordinary step of ordering every State to license and recognize same-sex marriage. Many people will rejoice at this decision, and I begrudge none their celebration. But for those who believe in a government of laws, not of men, the majority\u2019s approach is deeply disheartening. Supporters of same-sex marriage have achieved considerable success persuading their fellow citizens\u2014through the democratic process\u2014to adopt their view. That ends today. Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law. Stealing this issue from the people will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage, making a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept.<\/p>\n

The majority\u2019s decision is an act of will, not legal judgment. The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or this Court\u2019s precedent. The majority expressly disclaims judicial \u201ccaution\u201d and omits even a pretense of humility, openly relying on its desire to remake society according to its own \u201cnew insight\u201d into the \u201cnature of injustice.\u201d \u00a0As a result, the Court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half the States and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs. Just who do we think we are?<\/p>\n

The majority purports to identify four \u201cprinciples and traditions\u201d in this Court\u2019s due process precedents that support a fundamental right for same-sex couples to marry. In reality, however, the majority\u2019s approach has no basis in principle or tradition, except for the unprincipled tradition of judicial policymaking that characterized discredited decisions such as Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S. 45. Stripped of its shiny rhetorical gloss, the majority\u2019s argument is that the Due Process Clause gives same-sex couples a fundamental right to marry because it will be good for them and for society. If I were a legislator, I would certainly consider that view as a matter of social policy. But as a judge, I find the majority\u2019s position indefensible as a matter of constitutional law.<\/p>\n

Eventually, the Court recognized its error and vowed not to repeat it. \u201cThe doctrine that . . . due process authorizes courts to hold laws unconstitutional when they believe the legislature has acted unwisely,\u201d we later explained, \u201chas long since been discarded. We have returned to the original constitutional proposition that courts do not substitute their social and economic beliefs for the judgment of legislative bodies, who are elected to pass laws.\u201d Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U. S. 726, 730 (1963); see DayBrite Lighting, Inc. v. Missouri, 342 U. S. 421, 423 (1952) (\u201cwe do not sit as a super-legislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation\u201d). Thus, it has become an accepted rule that the Court will not hold laws unconstitutional simply because we find them \u201cunwise, improvident, or out of harmony with a particular school of thought.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is important to note with precision which laws petitioners have challenged. Although they discuss some of the ancillary legal benefits that accompany marriage, such as hospital visitation rights and recognition of spousal status on official documents, petitioners\u2019 lawsuits target the laws defining marriage generally rather than those allocating benefits specifically. The equal protection analysis might be different, in my view, if we were confronted with a more focused challenge to the denial of certain tangible benefits. Of course, those more selective claims will not arise now that the Court has taken the drastic step of requiring every State to license and recognize marriages between same-sex couples.<\/p>\n

Those who founded our country would not recognize the majority\u2019s conception of the judicial role. They after all risked their lives and fortunes for the precious right to govern themselves. They would never have imagined yielding that right on a question of social policy to unaccountable and unelected judges. And they certainly would not have been satisfied by a system empowering judges to override policy judgments so long as they do so after \u201ca quite extensive discussion.\u201d Ante, at 8. In our democracy, debate about the content of the law is not an exhaustion requirement to be checked off before courts can impose their will. \u201cSurely the Constitution does not put either the legislative branch or the executive branch in the position of a television quiz show contestant so that when a given period of time has elapsed and a problem remains unresolved by them, the federal judiciary may press a buzzer and take its turn at fashioning a solution.\u201d Rehnquist, The Notion of a Living Constitution, 54 Texas L. Rev. 693, 700 (1976). \u00a0As a plurality of this Court explained just last year, \u201cIt is demeaning to the democratic process to presume that voters are not capable of deciding an issue of this sensitivity on decent and rational grounds.\u201d Schuette v. BAMN, 572 U. S. ___, ___ \u2013___ (2014) (slip op., at 16\u2013 17).<\/p>\n

When decisions are reached through democratic means, some people will inevitably be disappointed with the results. But those whose views do not prevail at least know that they have had their say, and accordingly are\u2014in the tradition of our political culture\u2014reconciled to the result of a fair and honest debate. In addition, they can gear up to raise the issue later, hoping to persuade enough on the winning side to think again. \u201cThat is exactly how our system of government is supposed to work.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0But today the Court puts a stop to all that. By deciding this question under the Constitution, the Court removes it from the realm of democratic decision. There will be consequences to shutting down the political process on an issue of such profound public significance. Closing debate tends to close minds. People denied a voice are less likely to accept the ruling of a court on an issue that does not seem to be the sort of thing courts usually decide.<\/p>\n

If you are among the many Americans\u2014of whatever sexual orientation\u2014who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today\u2019s decision. Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner. \u00a0Celebrate the availability of new benefits. \u00a0But do not celebrate the Constitution. \u00a0It had nothing to do with it. \u00a0I respectfully dissent.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Justice Thomas\u2019 Dissent:\u00a0 (Excerpts)\u00a0 “Instead, the majority\u2019s decision short-circuits that process, with potentially ruinous consequences for religious liberty.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Court\u2019s decision today is at odds not only with the Constitution, but with the principles upon which our Nation was built. Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits. The Framers created our Constitution to preserve that understanding of liberty. Yet the majority invokes our Constitution in the name of a \u201cliberty\u201d that the Framers would not have recognized, to the detriment of the liberty they sought to protect. Along the way, it rejects the idea\u2014captured in our Declaration of Independence\u2014that human dignity is innate and suggests instead that it comes from the Government. This distortion of our Constitution not only ignores the text, it inverts the relationship between the individual and the state in our Republic. I cannot agree with it.<\/p>\n

By straying from the text of the Constitution, substantive due process exalts judges at the expense of the People from whom they derive their authority. Petitioners argue that by enshrining the traditional definition of marriage in their State Constitutions through voter-approved amendments, the States have put the issue \u201cbeyond the reach of the normal democratic process.\u201d Brief for Petitioners in No. 14\u2013562, p. 54. But the result petitioners seek is far less democratic. They ask nine judges on this Court to enshrine their definition of marriage in the Federal Constitution and thus put it beyond the reach of the normal democratic process for the entire Nation. That a \u201cbare majority\u201d of this Court, ante, at 25, is able to grant this wish, wiping out with a stroke of the keyboard the results of the political process in over 30 States, based on a provision that guarantees only \u201cdue process\u201d is but further evidence of the danger of substantive due process.1<\/p>\n

The majority\u2019s inversion of the original meaning of liberty will likely cause collateral damage to other aspects of our constitutional order that protect liberty.<\/p>\n

The majority apparently disregards the political process as a protection for liberty.\u00a0 To protect that liberty from arbitrary interference, they establish a process by which that society can 14 OBERGEFELL v. HODGES THOMAS, J., dissenting adopt and enforce its laws. In our country, that process is primarily representative government at the state level, with the Federal Constitution serving as a backstop for that process. As a general matter, when the States act through their representative governments or by popular vote, the liberty of their residents is fully vindicated. This is no less true when some residents disagree with the result; indeed, it seems difficult to imagine any law on which all residents of a State would agree. See Locke \u00a798, at 49 (suggesting that society would cease to function if it required unanimous consent to laws). What matters is that the process established by those who created the society has been honored. That process has been honored here.<\/p>\n

Although our Constitution provides some protection against such governmental restrictions on religious practices, the People have long elected to afford broader protections than this Court\u2019s constitutional precedents mandate. Had the majority allowed the definition of marriage to be left to the political process\u2014as the Constitution requires\u2014the People could have considered the religious liberty implications of deviating from the traditional definition as part of their deliberative process. Instead, the majority\u2019s decision short-circuits that process, with potentially ruinous consequences for religious liberty.<\/p>\n

Our Constitution\u2014like the Declaration of Independence before it\u2014was predicated on a simple truth: One\u2019s liberty, not to mention one\u2019s dignity, was something to be shielded from\u2014not provided by\u2014the State. Today\u2019s decision casts that truth aside. In its haste to reach a desired result, the majority misapplies a clause focused on \u201cdue process\u201d to afford substantive rights, disregards the most plausible, dissenting understanding of the \u201cliberty\u201d protected by that clause, and distorts the principles on which this Nation was founded. Its decision will have inestimable consequences for our Constitution and our society. I respectfully dissent.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Justice Scalia\u2019s Dissent:\u00a0 (excerpts)\u00a0 “This is a naked judicial claim to legislative\u2014indeed, super-legislative\u2014power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Those civil consequences\u2014and the public approval that conferring the name of marriage evidences\u2014can perhaps have adverse social effects, but no more adverse than the effects of many other controversial laws. So it is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today\u2019s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact\u2014 and the furthest extension one can even imagine\u2014of the Court\u2019s claimed power to create \u201cliberties\u201d that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.<\/p>\n

We have no basis for striking down a practice that is not expressly prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment\u2019s text, and that bears the endorsement of a long tradition of open, widespread, and unchallenged use dating back to the Amendment\u2019s ratification.<\/p>\n

The Constitution places some constraints on self-rule\u2014 constraints adopted by the People themselves when they ratified the Constitution and its Amendments. Forbidden are laws \u201cimpairing the Obligation of Contracts,\u201d denying \u201cFull Faith and Credit\u201d to the \u201cpublic Acts\u201d of other States, prohibiting the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing the right to keep and bear arms, authorizing unreasonable searches and seizures, and so forth. Aside from these limitations, those powers \u201creserved to the States respectively, or to the people\u201d can be exercised as the States or the People desire. These cases ask us to decide whether the Fourteenth Amendment contains a limitation that requires the States to license and recognize marriages between two people of the same sex. Does it remove that issue from the political process?<\/p>\n

Of course not. It would be surprising to find a prescription regarding marriage in the Federal Constitution since, as the author of today\u2019s opinion reminded us only two years ago (in an opinion joined by the same Justices who join him today):<\/p>\n

\u201c[R]egulation of domestic relations is an area that has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c[T]he Federal Government, through our history, has deferred to state-law policy decisions with respect to domestic relations.\u201d<\/p>\n

But we need not speculate. When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, every State limited marriage to one man and one woman, and no one doubted the constitutionality of doing so. That resolves these cases. When it comes to determining the meaning of a vague constitutional provision\u2014such as \u201cdue process of law\u201d or \u201cequal protection of the laws\u201d\u2014it is unquestionable that the People who ratified that provision did not understand it to prohibit a practice that remained both universal and uncontroversial in the years after ratification. We have no basis for striking down a practice that is not expressly prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment\u2019s text, and that bears the endorsement of a long tradition of open, widespread, and unchallenged use dating back to the Amendment\u2019s ratification. Since there is no doubt whatever that the People never decided to prohibit the limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples, the public debate over same-sex marriage must be allowed to continue.<\/p>\n

But the Court ends this debate, in an opinion lacking even a thin veneer of law.<\/p>\n

This is a naked judicial claim to legislative\u2014indeed, super-legislative\u2014power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government. Except as limited by a constitutional prohibition agreed to by the People, the States are free to adopt whatever laws they like, even those that offend the esteemed Justices\u2019 \u201creasoned judgment.\u201d A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.<\/p>\n

Judges are selected precisely for their skill as lawyers; whether they reflect the policy views of a particular constituency is not (or should not be) relevant. Not surprisingly then, the Federal Judiciary is hardly a cross-section of America. Take, for example, this Court, which consists of only nine men and women, all of them successful lawyers who studied at Harvard or Yale Law School. Four of the nine are natives of New York City. Eight of them grew up in east- and west-coast States. Only one hails from the vast expanse in-between. Not a single Southwesterner or even, to tell the truth, a genuine Westerner (California does not count). Not a single evangelical Christian (a group that comprises about one quarter of Americans), or even a Protestant of any denomination. The strikingly unrepresentative character of the body voting on today\u2019s social upheaval would be irrelevant if they were functioning as judges, answering the legal question whether the American people had ever ratified a constitutional provision that was understood to proscribe the traditional definition of marriage. But of course the Justices in today\u2019s majority are not voting on that basis; they say they are not. And to allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.<\/p>\n

Hubris is sometimes defined as o\u2019erweening pride; and pride, we know, goeth before a fall. The Judiciary is the \u201cleast dangerous\u201d of the federal branches because it has \u201cneither Force nor Will, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm\u201d and the States, \u201ceven for the efficacy of its judgments.\u201d With each decision of ours that takes from the People a question properly left to them\u2014with each decision that is unabashedly based not on law, but on the \u201creasoned judgment\u201d of a bare majority of this Court\u2014we move one step closer to being reminded of our impotence.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SCOTUS Gay Marriage Ruling: Excerpts from the Dissents;\u00a0Chief\u00a0Justice John\u00a0Roberts, Justice\u00a0Clarence\u00a0Thomas, and Justice Anthony Scalia. (The full opinion and dissents can be read at http:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/14pdf\/14-556_3204.pdf) \u201cIt is my strong opinion that Christians should vote.\u00a0 In order to do so, they must develop a world view, and be informed about candidates and issues.\u00a0 Christians should also be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paIm2N-fz","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=965"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":973,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965\/revisions\/973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}