Watching The Cultural Gatekeepers Go Mad

The defenders of homosexual marriage continue to equate it with interracial marriage.

Here is a blurb from an exchange between Justice Scalia and Ted Olson:

JUSTICE SCALIA: I’m curious, when—when did — when did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted? Sometimes — some time after Baker, where we said it didn’t even raise a substantial Federal question? When — when — when did the law become this?

MR. OLSON: When — may I answer this in the form of a rhetorical question? When did it become unconstitutional to prohibit interracial marriages? When did it become unconstitutional to assign children to separate schools.

JUSTICE SCALIA: It’s an easy question, I think, for that one. At — at the time that the Equal Protection Clause was adopted. That’s absolutely true. But don’t give me a question to my question. When do you think it became unconstitutional? Has it always been unconstitutional? . . .

MR. OLSON: It was constitutional when we as a culture determined that sexual orientation is a characteristic of individuals that they cannot control, and that that -­

JUSTICE SCALIA: I see. When did that happen? When did that happen?

MR. OLSON: There’s no specific date in time. This is an evolutionary cycle.

1.) Inasmuch as Scalia agrees concerning the evolution of interracial marriage from illegality to legality I’m not sure how Scalia can disagree that social evolution continues so as to include sodomite marriage. I mean, if the 14th amendment made a illegality a legality why can it not be determined that the 14th amendment also allows for the next step forward in the evolutionary cycle?

2.) Note that Olson’s invoking of the “evolutionary cycle” as a grounds for ever changing law reminds us that, it is the case now in the West, that law has no stable meaning. Law is no longer a transcendent category that is to be only recognized but never invented. This admission by Olson is a explicit embrace of the idea that we are ruled by men and not by laws.

3.) In the area of Law men like Christopher Columbus Langdell, Roscoe Pound, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Benjamin Cardozo moved the discipline of law away from its Biblical moorings evinced in Puritan Commonwealth documents like “Abstract of the Laws of New England,” towards standards that evinced a humanistic, evolutionary, naturalistic and Statist paradigm. In the late 1800’s Langdell did yeoman’s work moving law training away from a century of Lawyers in America concentrating on what the Constitution said to Darwinian inspired notions of where the law was perceived to be moving (case law training). By Langdell’s work the Constitution came to be seen to be evolving under the guidance of an imperial judiciary.

4.) With the law ever moving in a “evolutionary cycle” this means that yesterday’s criminals are tomorrow’s innovators in the law. In this worldview criminals are only those who are now where the rest of society will one day be.  Criminals are the moral and legal harbingers of the next evolutionary cycle in the law.

In another exchange we hear Justice Roberts,

“Counsel, I’m not sure it’s necessary to get into sexual orientation to resolve the case. I mean, if Sue loves Joe and Tom loves Joe, Sue can marry him and Tom can’t. And the difference is based upon their different sex. Why isn’t that a straightforward question of sexual discrimination?”

To which we would answer,

Your Honor, it is only sexual discrimination if you think the definition of Marriage as between one man and one woman is itself discriminatory.  But, I would add, your Honor, that should we conclude that Marriage is discriminatory because it allows only for one man and one woman, we have needs likewise conclude that the fact that only a man can impregnate a woman is discriminatory against women and the fact that only women can conceive children is discriminatory against men.

 

Taking On Ruth Bader Ginsburg & Her Hobby Lobby Dissent

“The reason why is hardly obscure. Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community. Indeed, by law, no religion-based criterion can restrict the work force of for-profit corporations…The distinction between a community made up of believers in the same religion and one embracing persons of diverse beliefs, clear as it is, constantly escapes the Court’s attention. One can only wonder why the Court shuts this key difference from sight.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Associate Justice — Supreme Court
Dissent to Hobby Lobby case

1.) So according to Ginsburg when you start a for profit corporation you lose all your religious rights in relation to the company.

2.) It is true that “Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith,” as those persons subscribe to the interests of the God of their religious faith, but it is not true that for-profit organizations do not exist to foster those same interests. For-profit corporations do exist to foster the interests of persons who own the corporation. The corporation does not exist primarily either for the employees nor for the consumers, the corporation exists for those who own the corporation and so are subscribes to the same religious purpose; to wit, making a profit.

3.) If workers for a corporation don’t like the policy of a particular corporation there is alway the option of leaving the corporation they don’t like in order to get abortifacients as part of their health care package at another corporation.

4.) Neither religious organizations nor business ultimately exist for the membership or the workforce. Both exist for the ownership. Religious organizations exist to advance the cause of the God of their faith system and corporations exist to advance the profit of the owners of the corporation. In both cases neither the membership or a religious organization nor the workforce for a corporation has the place to advance their interests over the interests of the God of the religious organization or the owners of the corporation. Ginsburg’s mistake is to think that the corporation exists for the workforce and their needs as opposed to what the situation really is and that is the fact that the workforce exists for the corporation and its needs.

4.) This woman is so twisted in her reasoning she would try to make a case that Cow’s milk is really Cow urine. After all … it is liquid and it comes from a Cow and it is a byproduct.

The Basis Of Our Political & Legislative Positions … McAtee contra DeYoung

“”That is to say, our political and legislative positions cannot be determined simply by noting that the Bible calls something a sin and therefore that sin should be illegal. Further considerations about the common good, natural law, human rights, the unfolding of redemptive history, and the nature and scope of the state must come into play. I do not think the state should recognize gay marriage (so called), but my justification for this position goes deeper than merely asserting that homosexual behavior is ethically wrong.”

– Rev. Kevin DeYoung

1.) It is true that not all sins are crimes or should be legislated against as crimes but unfortunately Rev. DeYoung does not articulate that distinction which leaves his assertion confusing and open to the misinterpretation that would allow someone to suggest that all because the Scripture teaches that something is a crime that does not therefore mean that it is a crime for today. Rev. DeYoung’s statement is open to the accusation that he is saying that Scripture alone is not sufficient to define crime as crime.

2.) By what standard will Rev. DeYoung and the rest of us determine the Common good if not by God’s standard as found in the Bible? John Stuart Mill, would argue that the Common good is arrived at by pragmatism but of course Christians are not pragmatists.

3.) Rev. DeYoung invokes Human Right but Humans have no rights. Humans have only duties. Only God has rights. The whole notion of “Human Rights” as they have been sold since the Enlightenment is a complete creation by Humanist categories. I would encourage Rev. DeYoung to read “What’s wrong with human rights,” by T. Robert Ingram. All ministers need to think twice about willy nilly invoking this human rights language. It may be possible for Christians to use “Human Rights” language but the usage of it by Christians would be something completely different then what we find in a Biblical Worldview.

4.) If Nature is fallen, why should we look to Natural Law? Besides, presuppositionalism has completely destroyed the whole Natural Law position. Natural law posits a reading of reality by way of neutrality. There is not such thing as neutrality.

5.) How do we know what the nature and scope of the State should be without consulting God’s Word?

All of these other considerations invoked by Rev. DeYoung are non-sequiturs.

6.) “My justification for this position goes deeper than merely asserting that homosexual behavior is ethically wrong.” Rev. DeYoung’s justification goes deeper then the reality of relying on God’s word for what is ethically wrong?

That is a stupendous and curious statement.

The Brilliance Of Kagan?

In this piece,

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/05/us-usa-court-kagan-idUSBRE83410E20120405

Justice Elena Kagan is trumpeted as the second coming of Oliver Wendell Holmes on SCOTUS.

However, it strikes me that Reuters has not looked closely enough. Reuters zeroes in on this exchange as proof of the brilliance and tenacity of Justice Kagan. In this exchange with Paul D. Clement, a lawyer representing 26 states who have filed suit against Obamacare we see Kagan at her supposed best. In this exchange Clement vs. Kagan are debating whether the authority the federal government is assuming in Obama death care is coercive. Kagan thinks that it is not, because the federal government is giving states, in Kagan’s paralance, “a boatload of federal money for you to take and spend on poor people’s healthcare.” Clement counters that this boatload of federal money comes laden with coercive conditions, invoking the old, “he who takes the king’s coin is the king’s man” argument. Kagan then presents a hypothetical to Clement which leads to the exchange that Reuters finds brilliant,

JUSTICE KAGAN: Now, suppose I’m an employer, and I see somebody I really like, and I want to hire that person. And I say, I’m going to give you $10 million a year to come work for me. And the person says, well, I–you know, I’ve never been offered anywhere approaching $10 million a year. Of course, I’m going to say yes to that. Now we would both be agreed that that’s not coercive, right?

MR. CLEMENT: Well, I guess I would want to know where the money came from. And if the money came from–

JUSTICE KAGAN: Wow. Wow. I’m offering you $10 million a year to come work for me, and you are saying that this is anything but a great choice?

MR. CLEMENT: Sure, if I told you, actually, it came from my own bank account. And that’s what’s really going on here, in part.

1.) I’m not sure how this is brilliant since Kagan has sailed (keeping with her boat language) right past the fact that the Federal government has no money that it does not first confiscate from the citizenry. Kagan is creating a analogical scenario where someone is offered $10 million dollars a year of stolen money to be commissioned to do something that the prospective employer is not legally allowed to commission. The US Constitution does not allow the Federal Government to hire the States to taken confiscated tax dollars to run a death care program.

2.) Clements response was good but it could have been even better. He could have said,

“Thank you for your question Your Honor, however your analogy does not hold and is really an equivocation on what is being proposed here by the Obama Administration. What the Obama administration is proposing is to force, as contradictory as such a notion is, on the American citizenry a involuntary contract where they are forced to pay for something that they may not want. This is hardly parallel to the employee / employer potential relationship that you describe where the contract entered into has the voluntary character of all genuine contracts. You can not successfully analogize a voluntary contract of employee / employer with a involuntary coercive contract where the force of the State is binding the citizens.”

3.) Kagan’s analogy looks only at the side of the people being advantaged and so with her faulty analogy insists that there is nothing coercive in the arrangement. To look at the coercive side we might draw this similar analogy,

“Now, suppose I’m a Mafia thug, and I see somebody I really dislike, and I want to hurt that person. And I say, I’m going to take from you $10 million a year so somebody who has chosen to not work can come work for me. And the person says, well, I–you know, I’ve never had anyone offer to take that kind of money from me before. Of course, I’m going to say “no” to that. Now we would both be agreed that that’s coercive, right?”

If someone as dense as me, can see through the thickness of Kagan, I’m not sure why Reuters is arguing her brilliance.