Quote:
Originally Posted by Nebe
Sorry. Im sporting a mild beer buzz.
My point is that the scotus voted to ensure personal freedoms. Up next... Marijuana legalization on a national level.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
|
No it didn't ensure personal freedoms. Gays were already free to "marry."
Justice Kennedy, writing on behalf of the court, said the hope of gay people intending to marry "is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right."
The "oldest institution" Kennedy refers to was defined as being between men and women, not between same sexes. But he thinks (or more properly he FEELS) as a judge, he has the authority to change the definition. That is how rule of law is destroyed and transformed into rule by personal opinion. And that is the simplest definition of tyranny, not an assurance of freedom.
A judge's role is to apply the law, not to redefine words in order to make the law fit his personal preference. When it is left to a judge, or a government in general, to treat the laws as tinker toys to be disassembled and reformed into constructions of their own making without assent of the governed and against the legal compact which bind judges and government, that does not ensure personal freedom. It puts that freedom in danger. That such a tinker toy construction makes you feel good blinds you to the precedent set forth which can later impose another construction which will outrage you and make you feel less than free.
And beyond his tinkering with definitions, he errs by the typical ploy of progressive jurisprudence. He "interprets" something into the Constitution which is not there . The notion of "equal dignity in the eyes of the law." Neither the Constitution nor the Declaration speak of legal dignity. I think it was Justice Brennan who inserted dignity as some inalienable right. He omitted the unalienable right to property and slipped in its place the "right" to dignity in, I believe, an essay on constitutional jurisprudence or something of the sort.
Dignity is a rather useless word in applications of the law. Just about every instance of a violation of someone else's dignity is also a violation of something else which is more tangible or definable as a "right." And when it isn't, it is usually a violation of one's dignity resulting from one's own actions. But it is useful as a something which sounds or feels like some inherent right in and of itself which must not be violated by others. Ergo it becomes a useful word or tool for fuzzy progressive judicial tinkering.
Further, it is moronic to say that someone, gay or otherwise, is "condemned to live in loneliness" if he/she is not married. And it is beyond idiotic for a Supreme Court Justice to not only create rather than interpret law, but to create law which ameliorates or prohibits loneliness.
Lastly, your thoughts on freedom, as in previous discussions on gay rights and wedding cakes, are one-sided. You say:
"Freedom is not oppressing someone. Freedom is being free to do what YOU BELIEVEis right. Freedom is not oppressing someone else with your beliefs.
That's my thoughts on freedom."
If gays marry as a government prescribed and sanctioned right rather than as an act of mere personal preference, doesn't that bring in the eventual hassles of requiring others who oppose, or would rather not participate in gay marriage, to do so, such as the cakes and photos, etc.? And would that not, contrary to your thoughts on freedom, deny their right to be free to do what they believe is right?