A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Two great opinions on the DOMA ruling June 26, 2013

I have read two great analyses of the DOMA ruling, and I haven’t seen if Michael Voris has put anything out yet, but I’ll check momentarily.  But for now, read Pat Archbold’s op-ed in the National Catholic Register and Justice Antonin Scalia’s blistering dissenting opinion.  Both are very fine, and show the decision for what it is: nothing but the perverted will of the sexular pagan agenda foisting illogical, morally bankrupt beliefs on the entire nation with the rule of law.

First up, Archbold:

Marriage, as the union of a man and woman for the purposes of raising  children and for mutual support as recognized in culture and law, has ceased to  exist. The only reason that marriage needs be recognized by law is that previous  generations understood its value and wished to confer certain legal and societal  privileges to it so as to encourage it. They rightly understood that marriage is  the cornerstone of a society.

Advocates have used those legal and societal privileges to beat, twist, and  deform the very meaning and purpose of marriage. We now view the purpose of  marriage solely as the conferring of these legal and societal privileges, and  thus they can be granted to anyone and anything.

While many states have sought to forestall the redefinition of marriage in  their states by statute or constitution, today’s ruling basically invalidates  their efforts and has opened the floodgate to approval of same sex marriage  across the nation with no reasonable recourse. Marriage as we knew it is  dead. [I agree, with this precedent, almost all state definitions of marriage as between one man and woman are essentially dead. We now know that Kennedy has completely swallowed the dominant leftist zeitgiest. See Scalia’s thundering commentary below]

With the universal legal recognition of same-sex marriage a fait accompli,  the next fight will on the Church doorstep. The next battle will be to force  Churches, most particularly the Catholic Church, to recognize and conduct  same-sex marriage. The refusal to do so will result in a series of escalating  legal and financial ramifications.

Eventually, becuase of its refusal to recognize immoral unions as marriage,  the state will refuse to recognize Church marriages. [We had better pray pray pray that is the case. I know some factions in the Church – possibly including certain bishops –  will advocate for a “truce” with the culture with consists of the Church creating “marriage under a different name” for homosexuals. Total opposition is not a foregone conclusion, look at many recent statements by European cardinals (CARDINALS!) like Daneels and Rivasi calling for “civil unions.”]As a result, more and more  people will bypass Church marriage altogether, further marginalizing faith in  this country. This effort is and has always been a war against religion and in  particular a war against the Catholic Church. Right now, it is a war we are  losing and after today, perhaps it is fair to say that we lost.

My emphasis throughout. Pat certainly got that last part right. The sexular pagan left has been waging an all out war against Christian morality for the last 60 years in this country, and we are approaching the end game. Pray that our bishops (and we, ourselves) remain strong under what is sure to be an unremitting onslaught of hostility and persecution in the coming years.  Prepare your children to exist in a culture where faithful Catholics will be pariahs, and even many of their self-described co-religionists will chastise them for their unyielding obstinacy and clinging to “old, outdated ideals.”  That will be the worst part of all.

Next up, Antonin Scalia’s devastating dissenting opinion. Just a bit now, read the whole thing here.

There are many remarkable things about the majority’s merits holding. The first is how rootless and shifting its justifications are. For example, the opinion starts with seven full pages about the traditional power of States to define domestic relations—initially fooling many readers, I am sure, into thinking that this is a federalism opinion. But we are eventually told that “it is unnecessary to decide whether this federal intrusion on state power is a violation of the Constitution,” and that “[t]he State’s power in defining the marital relation is of central relevance in this case quite apart from principles of federalism” be-cause “the State’s decision to give this class of persons the right to marry conferred upon them a dignity and status of immense import.” Ante, at 18. But no one questions the power of the States to define marriage (with the concomitant conferral of dignity and status), so what is the point of devoting seven pages to describing how long and well established that power is? [As I stated earlier today, the Supreme Court has now ruled that the federal government has all the right in the world to deny the 50 states the right to protect the lives of all its citizens, including the unborn, while it has also ruled that the federal government has no right to tell states who can and cannot legally marry in the eyes of the same government. There is absolutely no consistency]

However, even setting aside traditional moral disapproval of same-sex marriage (or indeed same-sex sex), there are many perfectly valid—indeed, downright boring—justifying rationales for this legislation. Their existence ought to be the end of this case. [Scalia repeatedly calls the majority in this case blithering idiots, though not in so many words]For they give the lie to the Court’s conclusion that only those with hateful hearts could have voted “aye” on this Act. And more importantly, they serve to make the contents of the legis-lators’ hearts quite irrelevant: “It is a familiar principle of constitutional law that this Court will not strike down an otherwise constitutional statute on the basis of an alleged illicit legislative motive.” United States v. O’Brien, 391 U. S. 367, 383 (1968). Or at least it was a familiar principle. By holding to the contrary, the majority has declared open season on any law that (in the opinion of the law’s opponents and any panel of like-minded federal judges) can be characterized as mean-spirited. [And the leftist sexular pagan zeitgiest triumphs again!]

But to defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those  who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to con- demn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions. To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution. In the majority’s judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement. To question its high-handed invalidation of a presumptively valid statute is to act (the majority is sure) with the purpose to “dis- parage,” “injure,” “degrade,” “demean,” and “humiliate” our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homo- sexual. All that, simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence— indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history. It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race.

Which gives this ruling all the validity of a Stalinist show trial. What Scalia is saying, in brief, is that these 5 justices, totally unelected and whose decisions have absolutely no recourse of appeal, have arrogated to themselves the right to make their personal opinions the law of the land, Constitution or no.  Thus the trend begun by the immoral William O. Douglas and Walter Brennan reaches its conclusion, the Supreme Court using the same reasoning it applied in Roe V. Wade to reach the opposite legal conclusion, but the point of it all is simply to enshrine the dominant cultural mores in invincible, constitutional “law.” But given how unprecedented all this is, how pathetic and full of holes the reasoning, how blatantly immoral and contrary to the natural law, and how totally disconnected from the words of the Constitution itself and the intent of the framers, I am left to conclude that the United States is now essentially lawless and all that matters now is will to power.  And we, my friends, ain’t got the power.