Category Archives: morality

A Disgusting Court

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A while ago, I wrote about racism on the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court wrote in its DOMA ruling

What has been explained to this point should more than suffice to establish that the principal purpose and the necessary effect of this law are to demean those persons who are in a lawful same-sex marriage.

And

…no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect [of DOMA] to disparage and to injure….

And so on.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in dissent of this ruling [emphasis in the original],

At least without some more convincing evidence that the Act’s principal purpose was to codify malice, and that it furthered no legitimate government interests, I would not tar the political branches with the brush of bigotry.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his dissent [emphasis in the original, cites omitted],

[T]he majority says that the support­ers of this Act acted with malice—with the “purpose” “to disparage and to injure” same-sex couples.  It says that the motivation for DOMA was to “demean,” to “impose inequality,” to “impose…a stigma,” to deny people “equal dignity,” to brand gay people as “unworthy,” and to “humiliat[e]”their children, (emphasis added).

I am sure these accusations are quite untrue.  To be sure (as the majority points out), the legislation is called the Defense of Marriage Act.  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 con­demn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions.  To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution.

The Supreme Court wrote in its California Proposition 8 ruling that the private group bringing the case to the Court had no standing to do so, even though this is the group that was instrumental in getting Proposition 8 onto the ballot and passed in the first place.  Only State Government officials had standing to defend the proposition in court, and they had refused to mount a defense.

The Court thereby ruled that the people have no standing to defend their own voice, only the State can (not just may) do this.  The Court has thereby ruled that the people no longer are sovereign; Government is sovereign.

This is a disgusting Court, and Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia are justified in their seeming embarrassment.

Independence Day

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I posted this last year; it bears repeating.

On this day 236 years ago, a group of Americans got together and, pledging their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor to each other while relying on the protection of divine Providence, took our country free from tyranny and set us on a new, wholly experimental course.

These men openly acknowledged both our right and our duty to throw off any government that too badly violates its moral obligations to us sovereign citizens, that for too long abuses our liberties and our individual responsibilities.  At the same time, though, they acknowledged that routinely rebelling at every small offense was equally wrong: Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.  Yet those light and transient offenses want correction along with those abuses and moral failures.

And so, while fighting (and some dying) for our newly born nation and during the immediately ensuing years of a troubled peace, these men, with others from the newly independent and united States joining them, in a second phase of our experiment invented a wholly new form of government.  They created a government that would recognize the essential sovereignty of the members of a voluntarily formed social compact over our compact’s government, and they gave that government a structure and a strictly limited set of authorities designed to maximize our control of government and our ability to maintain that control.

They also invented a wholly new mechanism for throwing off an abusive government and replacing it with one more suited to our needs and to our control: a set of elections that would let us turn all the rascals out of one house of our legislative body every two years, that would let us depose the whole of the other house of our legislative body in sequential one-third increments every two years, and that would let us fire the chief executive of this government every four years— any and all whom we found wanting during their time in office.  This invention was accompanied by another invention of these men: a judiciary that sat, neither above nor below our executive and legislative, but equal to and separate from them—a third powerful check that granted stability to the whole.

We are here today arguing amongst ourselves, usually with great passion, over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Environmental Protection Agency, climate change, and a host of other things, too, both momentous and trivial.  And we could not be without the genius and the sacrifice of those men those 236 years ago.

As you sit around by your barbecue, or at the beach, or wherever you may be, hamburgers and hotdogs in hand, beer nearby, children screaming and yelling in their own happinesses, take a moment to think about that.

What He Said

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The following, via The Weekly Standard, is excerpted from Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in US v Windsor.

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Let the People Decide

By ANTONIN SCALIA, FOR THE EDITORS

This case is about power in several respects. It is about the power of our people to govern themselves, and the power of this Court to pronounce the law. Today’s opinion aggrandizes the latter, with the predictable consequence of diminishing the former….

[In its holding, the Court] accuses the Congress that enacted this law and the President who signed it of something much worse than, for example, having acted in excess of enumerated federal powers—or even having drawn distinctions that prove to be irrational. Those legal errors may be made in good faith, errors though they are. But the majority says that the supporters of this Act acted with malice—with the “purpose” “to disparage and to injure” same-sex couples. It says that the motivation for DOMA was to “demean,” to “impose inequality,” to “impose…a stigma,” to deny people “equal dignity,” to brand gay people as “unworthy,” and to “humiliat[e]” their children.

I am sure these accusations are quite untrue. To be sure (as the majority points out), the legislation is called the Defense of Marriage Act. 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 condemn, 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 “disparage,” “injure,” “degrade,” “demean,” and “humiliate” our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homosexual. 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….

By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition. Henceforth those challengers will lead with this Court’s declaration that there is “no legitimate purpose” served by such a law, and will claim that the traditional definition has “the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure” the “personhood and dignity” of same-sex couples. The majority’s limiting assurance will be meaningless in the face of language like that, as the majority well knows. That is why the language is there. The result will be a judicial distortion of our society’s debate over marriage—a debate that can seem in need of our clumsy “help” only to a member of this institution.

As to that debate: Few public controversies touch an institution so central to the lives of so many, and few inspire such attendant passion by good people on all sides. Few public controversies will ever demonstrate so vividly the beauty of what our Framers gave us, a gift the Court pawns today to buy its stolen moment in the spotlight: a system of government that permits us to rule ourselves. Since DOMA’s passage, citizens on all sides of the question have seen victories and they have seen defeats. There have been plebiscites, legislation, persuasion, and loud voices—in other words, democracy.

Victories in one place for some, see North Carolina Const., Amdt. 1 (providing that “[m]arriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State,” approved by a popular vote, 61% to 39% on May 8, 2012, are offset by victories in other places for others, see Maryland Question 6 (establishing “that Maryland’s civil marriage laws allow gay and lesbian couples to obtain a civil marriage license,” approved by a popular vote, 52% to 48%, on November 6, 2012). Even in a single State, the question has come out differently on different occasions. Compare Maine Question 1 (permitting “the State of Maine to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples,” approved by a popular vote, 53% to 47%, on November 6, 2012) with Maine Question 1 (rejecting “the new law that lets same-sex couples marry,” approved by a popular vote, 53% to 47%, on November 3, 2009).

In the majority’s telling, this story is black-and-white: Hate your neighbor or come along with us. The truth is more complicated. It is hard to admit that one’s political opponents are not monsters, especially in a struggle like this one, and the challenge in the end proves more than today’s Court can handle. Too bad. A reminder that disagreement over something so fundamental as marriage can still be politically legitimate would have been a fit task for what in earlier times was called the judicial temperament. We might have covered ourselves with honor today, by promising all sides of this debate that it was theirs to settle and that we would respect their resolution. We might have let the People decide.

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What he said.

Government and Privacy

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Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) signed a bill last week penalizing those who publish the names of individuals who own or have applied for a concealed handgun permit with potential jail sentences of six months and fines of $10,000.

An identity may only be released if a concealed handgun carrier is charged with a felony offense involving the use of a firearm.

The Advocate Editor Peter Kovacs doesn’t get it.   He insists there’s no place for such legislation; his protest is typical of the NLMSM.  Indeed, the NLMSM’s general condoning of The Journal News‘ publication of the names and addresses of New York area gun owners—mostly plainly demonstrated by NLMSM silence on the matter—demonstrates that the press generally cannot be trusted to respect individual privacy.

Jindal was clear in his defense of the law:

In the face of an administration in Washington that wants to take away the rights of law-abiding gun owners, we are standing up for the Second Amendment and the Constitution of the United States here in Louisiana.

We are building on the work we’ve done to protect the rights of Louisianians while also implementing common-sense gun safety measures[.]

The principle is plain and simple: nor government nor the press get to invade citizens’ privacy just because they’re curious or want to sell newspapers.  Only the self-serving and self-important have a problem here.

Mandates and Freedom

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Recall that HHS’ original rule regarding contraceptive coverage by “insurance” companies

exempted churches and other houses of worship, but required faith-affiliated charities, universities and other nonprofits to provide the coverage for their employees.

HHS’ finalized rule, which they claim is an outstanding compromise,

simplified the definition of religious organizations that are fully exempt from the requirement.  The change means a church that also ran a soup kitchen would not have to comply.

But “faith-affiliated charities, universities and other nonprofits” still are required to provide the contraceptive coverage.  Moreover,

religious nonprofits must notify their insurance company that they object to birth control coverage.  The insurer or administrator of the plan will then notify affected employees separately that coverage will be provided at no cost.  The insurers would be reimbursed by a credit against fees owed the government.

Of course, HHS omits to say to whom there is no cost.  It’s also unclear what happens in the event there are more credits than fees.  Who pays the difference?  In either event, it seems clear to me, it’s the taxpayers—and the “insurers’ ” customers—who pay.

Eric Rassbach, of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, has pointed out

As we said when the proposed rule was issued, this doesn’t solve the religious conscience problem because it still makes our non-profit clients the gatekeepers to abortion and provides no protection to religious businesses[.]

Michael Hash, Director of the HHS Office of Health Reform, demurs from that description.  Faith-based groups, says he, were given another reprieve, until 1 Jan, to comply.

But they still have to comply—screw ’em.

Here is an impact of capricious Federal regulation (apologies for the redundancy) on individual liberty.