The recent Supreme Court decision in US v. Windsor denies that marriage is a natural institution and redefines it as an artificial construct – by Robert R. Reilly

In MercatorNet

In the just-decided United States v. Windsor case, Justice Anthony Kennedy delivered the opinion of the court that the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman, is unconstitutional.

Within hours, the decision began rippling through the Federal government, as it affects more than 1,000 Federal statutes and the whole realm of Federal regulations. "The Department of Defense welcomes the Supreme Court's decision today on the Defense of Marriage Act," said an eager Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. "The department will immediately begin the process of implementing the Supreme Court's decision in consultation with the Department of Justice and other executive branch agencies. The Department of Defense intends to make the same benefits available to all military spouses – regardless of sexual orientation – as soon as possible. That is now the law and it is the right thing to do".

Right, as in the “moral” thing to do? Let us consider.

In the history of the United States, only heterosexual married couples have ever received Federal marriage benefits. In 1996, confirming what had always been the practice, Congress passed DOMA to provide a formal definition of “marriage” and “spouse” for the purposes of all acts of Congress and any Federal regulations.

How did this become a problem?

In 2009, Edith Windsor, who had “married” her lesbian partner in Ontario, Canada, in 2007, sought to claim the Federal estate tax exemption for surviving spouses when her partner died. In compliance with DOMA, the Internal Revenue Service denied the exemption for the US$363,053 that she was required to pay. Windsor, a New York resident, sued, contending that the principles of equal protection incorporated in the Fifth Amendment were violated since her marriage had been recognized by the state of New York.

The Federal District Court found in her favor, as did the Second Circuit Court. The House of Representatives was allowed to intervene in the case to defend the constitutionality of DOMA when the Obama administration withdrew its defense of the law. Thus, the case arrived at the Supreme Court in the spring of 2013.

The Windsor decision, delivered on June 26, 2013, the 10th anniversary of the Lawrence v. Texas decision, was every bit as bad as one would expect from its predecessors. It simply followed their logic. In fact, it was so predictable as to make specious Justice Kennedy’s preceding claim in Lawrence that that decision “does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter”.

Of course it did.

In retrospect, his remark sounds almost hilariously naïve or disingenuous. In fact, in certain aspects, the Windsor case reads as if Justice Kennedy is having a conversation with himself over the span of a decade. Finally, 10 years after Lawrence, he closes the loop. He even quotes himself. “Private, consensual sexual intimacy between two adult persons of the same sex may not be punished by the State,” he said, “and it can form ‘but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring’".( Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U. S. 558, 567 (2003)). That’s the setup. Then Justice Kennedy closes the loop:

“By its recognition of the validity of same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions and then by authorizing same-sex unions and same-sex marriages, New York sought to give further protection and dignity to that bond. For same-sex couples who wished to be married, the State acted to give their lawful conduct a lawful status. This status is a far-reaching legal acknowledgment of the intimate relationship between two people, a relationship deemed by the State worthy of dignity in the community equal with all other marriages”.

That bridge from “lawful conduct” to “lawful status”, conferring equal dignity upon same-sex marriage, had been there to cross ever since Justice Kennedy lifted the starting gate in Lawrence. Once he and his confrères had found a constitutional right to sodomy, there was almost no way to stop enshrining the act as the basis for “marriage”. All the preceding judicial groundwork is brought to fruition here, though it leaves one step yet remaining – to declare unconstitutional all remaining state laws that restrict marriage to a man and a woman.

In his dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia predicted that this will be the next shoe to drop, just as he predicted this decision in his Lawrence dissent. In fact, he brilliantly illustrates how this will happen by taking several paragraphs of the Windsor decision and simply substituting the words “this state law” for “DOMA”. Voilà, there is the case ready-made for voiding all state prohibitions of same-sex marriage. He also stated that:

“By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority arms well every challenger to 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”.

In Windsor, we see nearly complete the results of the denial of marriage as a fundamental institution natural to man, and the redefinition of it as an artificial construction, à la Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that can be remolded to his will and whim. "The Federal statute is invalid,” Kennedy wrote, “for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the state, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity".

If marriage is an artificial fabrication, Justice Kennedy is right. The state can redefine the convention of marriage and assign it to whom it will, and no one can gainsay it. In fact, to deny marriage to anyone would seem to be arbitrary.

Yet this is not what the Supreme Court said in the past. Recall that in 1885, the Murphy v. Ramsey ruling declared that, “For certainly no legislation can be supposed more wholesome and necessary in the founding of a free, self-governing commonwealth, fit to take rank as one of the coordinate states of the Union, than that which seeks to establish it on the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guarantee of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement…”

This seems a rather eloquent enunciation of a “legitimate purpose” in the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, one that Aristotle would easily recognize. How could it not have occurred to Justice Kennedy, who seemed completely unaware of it – to the point that he dismisses its possible existence as a legitimate purpose?

Another interesting point is the repeated emphasis in Windsor on the authority of state law to define marriage. Indeed, no constitutional scholar would dispute this authority. But does it include the power to define it as anything? The Murphy ruling did not hold so. In Reynolds v. United States (1878), the Court also did not consider that it included polygamy because, in part, “polygamy leads to the patriarchal principle… which, when applied to large communities, fetters the people in stationary despotism, while that principle cannot long exist in connection with monogamy”.

Apparently, there is a relationship between the sort of marriage you allow and the freedom you exercise. Was Justice Kennedy aware of this consideration? Also, did not the prohibition of polygamy have “the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure” those who practiced it? Justice Kennedy said that DOMA’s message to “married” homosexuals and lesbians was “that their marriage is less worthy than the marriages of others" and imposed "a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex marriages". If that was his main objection, when Justice Kennedy is confronted with cases of polygamy or polyandry, as surely he will be if he lives long enough, what criteria has he left in place to object to them?

What DOMA did was refuse to subsidize the redefinition of marriage in those states that chose to redefine it by refusing Federal benefits to same-sex couples. This, of course, was completely within the legitimate power of Congress to do, and did not in any way constitutionally impinge upon the power of the states. The Windsor decision proposes the novel notion that definitions in state law preempt definitions in Federal law that concern Federal law.

Since when?

The philosophical and moral nub of the matter was reached with Justice Kennedy’s statement that, “What the State of New York treats as alike the Federal law deems unlike by a law designed to injure the same class the State seeks to protect”. In other words, are heterosexual marriages like or unlike same-sex “marriages”? Are sodomitical “marriages”, as Windsor asserts, “equal with all other marriages”? And, therefore, was the problem with DOMA that it strove to take what was equal and “make them unequal”, and that its “principal purpose is to impose inequality”? Was DOMA imposing inequality or simply recognizing it? Is sodomy really the same as conjugal coition?

Obviously, the Windsor ruling rests upon the extraordinary proposition that marriage, as it has been understood throughout recorded history, is the same as sodomitical “marriage”, which was unheard of until the Netherlands introduced it in 2000.

To claim that homosexual marriage is equivalent to the family, the sine qua non of the enduring existence of any political order, is to deny the foundations of society. To claim that a type of behavior on which the polis is founded is equivalent to a type of behavior inimical to a polity’s foundation is to deny the principle of non-contradiction. Homosexuals want their marriages to be recognized as a part of the social order, and the Supreme Court has bestowed it.

However, it has been clear since at least Aristotle that the interest of the state in marriage is in its essential role for the propagation of society. Homosexual “marriages” play no such part in society, as they are neither unitive nor procreative; so what would be the interest of the state in recognizing them? Why is homosexual marriage morally or politically worthy of institutional protection? The price for providing it is to remove both the unitive and procreative aspects essential to marriage, thus evacuating it of meaning and replacing it with “pretend” marriage. So as not to hurt the feelings of homosexuals, let them pretend they are married. In fact, let’s pretend with them. Even more, we will make everyone pretend together. Then no one will be hurt.

Alas, the price for this embrace of unreality is too high. It is a betrayal of the nuptial meaning of the body. Sodomy is an act opposed to the good of marriage. How, then, can it be its foundation? Something cannot be its opposite. But the Supreme Court has just said that it can, and that the Federal government and we as taxpayers must agree. “Thinking against nature”, wrote Irenaeus in Against Heresies (180 AD), “you will become foolish. And if you persist you will fall into insanity”. QED.

In the just-decided United States v. Windsor case, Justice Anthony Kennedy delivered the opinion of the court that the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman, is unconstitutional.

Within hours, the decision began rippling through the Federal government, as it affects more than 1,000 Federal statutes and the whole realm of Federal regulations. "The Department of Defense welcomes the Supreme Court's decision today on the Defense of Marriage Act," said an eager Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. "The department will immediately begin the process of implementing the Supreme Court's decision in consultation with the Department of Justice and other executive branch agencies. The Department of Defense intends to make the same benefits available to all military spouses – regardless of sexual orientation – as soon as possible. That is now the law and it is the right thing to do".
Right, as in the “moral” thing to do? Let us consider.
In the history of the United States, only heterosexual married couples have ever received Federal marriage benefits. In 1996, confirming what had always been the practice, Congress passed DOMA to provide a formal definition of “marriage” and “spouse” for the purposes of all acts of Congress and any Federal regulations.
How did this become a problem?
In 2009, Edith Windsor, who had “married” her lesbian partner in Ontario, Canada, in 2007, sought to claim the Federal estate tax exemption for surviving spouses when her partner died. In compliance with DOMA, the Internal Revenue Service denied the exemption for the US$363,053 that she was required to pay. Windsor, a New York resident, sued, contending that the principles of equal protection incorporated in the Fifth Amendment were violated since her marriage had been recognized by the state of New York.
The Federal District Court found in her favor, as did the Second Circuit Court. The House of Representatives was allowed to intervene in the case to defend the constitutionality of DOMA when the Obama administration withdrew its defense of the law. Thus, the case arrived at the Supreme Court in the spring of 2013.
The Windsor decision, delivered on June 26, 2013, the 10th anniversary of the Lawrence v. Texas decision, was every bit as bad as one would expect from its predecessors. It simply followed their logic. In fact, it was so predictable as to make specious Justice Kennedy’s preceding claim in Lawrence that that decision “does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter”.
Of course it did.
In retrospect, his remark sounds almost hilariously naïve or disingenuous. In fact, in certain aspects, the Windsor case reads as if Justice Kennedy is having a conversation with himself over the span of a decade. Finally, 10 years after Lawrence, he closes the loop. He even quotes himself. “Private, consensual sexual intimacy between two adult persons of the same sex may not be punished by the State,” he said, “and it can form ‘but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring’".( Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U. S. 558, 567 (2003)). That’s the setup. Then Justice Kennedy closes the loop:

“By its recognition of the validity of same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions and then by authorizing same-sex unions and same-sex marriages, New York sought to give further protection and dignity to that bond. For same-sex couples who wished to be married, the State acted to give their lawful conduct a lawful status. This status is a far-reaching legal acknowledgment of the intimate relationship between two people, a relationship deemed by the State worthy of dignity in the community equal with all other marriages”.

That bridge from “lawful conduct” to “lawful status”, conferring equal dignity upon same-sex marriage, had been there to cross ever since Justice Kennedy lifted the starting gate in Lawrence. Once he and his confrères had found a constitutional right to sodomy, there was almost no way to stop enshrining the act as the basis for “marriage”. All the preceding judicial groundwork is brought to fruition here, though it leaves one step yet remaining – to declare unconstitutional all remaining state laws that restrict marriage to a man and a woman.
In his dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia predicted that this will be the next shoe to drop, just as he predicted this decision in his Lawrence dissent. In fact, he brilliantly illustrates how this will happen by taking several paragraphs of the Windsor decision and simply substituting the words “this state law” for “DOMA”. Voilà, there is the case ready-made for voiding all state prohibitions of same-sex marriage. He also stated that:

“By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority arms well every challenger to 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”.

In Windsor, we see nearly complete the results of the denial of marriage as a fundamental institution natural to man, and the redefinition of it as an artificial construction, à la Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that can be remolded to his will and whim. "The Federal statute is invalid,” Kennedy wrote, “for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the state, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity".
If marriage is an artificial fabrication, Justice Kennedy is right. The state can redefine the convention of marriage and assign it to whom it will, and no one can gainsay it. In fact, to deny marriage to anyone would seem to be arbitrary.
Yet this is not what the Supreme Court said in the past. Recall that in 1885, the Murphy v. Ramsey ruling declared that, “For certainly no legislation can be supposed more wholesome and necessary in the founding of a free, self-governing commonwealth, fit to take rank as one of the coordinate states of the Union, than that which seeks to establish it on the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guarantee of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement…”
This seems a rather eloquent enunciation of a “legitimate purpose” in the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, one that Aristotle would easily recognize. How could it not have occurred to Justice Kennedy, who seemed completely unaware of it – to the point that he dismisses its possible existence as a legitimate purpose?
Another interesting point is the repeated emphasis in Windsor on the authority of state law to define marriage. Indeed, no constitutional scholar would dispute this authority. But does it include the power to define it as anything? The Murphy ruling did not hold so. In Reynolds v. United States (1878), the Court also did not consider that it included polygamy because, in part, “polygamy leads to the patriarchal principle… which, when applied to large communities, fetters the people in stationary despotism, while that principle cannot long exist in connection with monogamy”.
Apparently, there is a relationship between the sort of marriage you allow and the freedom you exercise. Was Justice Kennedy aware of this consideration? Also, did not the prohibition of polygamy have “the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure” those who practiced it? Justice Kennedy said that DOMA’s message to “married” homosexuals and lesbians was “that their marriage is less worthy than the marriages of others" and imposed "a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex marriages". If that was his main objection, when Justice Kennedy is confronted with cases of polygamy or polyandry, as surely he will be if he lives long enough, what criteria has he left in place to object to them?
What DOMA did was refuse to subsidize the redefinition of marriage in those states that chose to redefine it by refusing Federal benefits to same-sex couples. This, of course, was completely within the legitimate power of Congress to do, and did not in any way constitutionally impinge upon the power of the states. The Windsor decision proposes the novel notion that definitions in state law preempt definitions in Federal law that concern Federal law.
Since when?
The philosophical and moral nub of the matter was reached with Justice Kennedy’s statement that, “What the State of New York treats as alike the Federal law deems unlike by a law designed to injure the same class the State seeks to protect”. In other words, are heterosexual marriages like or unlike same-sex “marriages”? Are sodomitical “marriages”, as Windsor asserts, “equal with all other marriages”? And, therefore, was the problem with DOMA that it strove to take what was equal and “make them unequal”, and that its “principal purpose is to impose inequality”? Was DOMA imposing inequality or simply recognizing it? Is sodomy really the same as conjugal coition?
Obviously, the Windsor ruling rests upon the extraordinary proposition that marriage, as it has been understood throughout recorded history, is the same as sodomitical “marriage”, which was unheard of until the Netherlands introduced it in 2000.
To claim that homosexual marriage is equivalent to the family, the sine qua non of the enduring existence of any political order, is to deny the foundations of society. To claim that a type of behavior on which the polis is founded is equivalent to a type of behavior inimical to a polity’s foundation is to deny the principle of non-contradiction. Homosexuals want their marriages to be recognized as a part of the social order, and the Supreme Court has bestowed it.
However, it has been clear since at least Aristotle that the interest of the state in marriage is in its essential role for the propagation of society. Homosexual “marriages” play no such part in society, as they are neither unitive nor procreative; so what would be the interest of the state in recognizing them? Why is homosexual marriage morally or politically worthy of institutional protection? The price for providing it is to remove both the unitive and procreative aspects essential to marriage, thus evacuating it of meaning and replacing it with “pretend” marriage. So as not to hurt the feelings of homosexuals, let them pretend they are married. In fact, let’s pretend with them. Even more, we will make everyone pretend together. Then no one will be hurt.
Alas, the price for this embrace of unreality is too high. It is a betrayal of the nuptial meaning of the body. Sodomy is an act opposed to the good of marriage. How, then, can it be its foundation? Something cannot be its opposite. But the Supreme Court has just said that it can, and that the Federal government and we as taxpayers must agree. “Thinking against nature”, wrote Irenaeus in Against Heresies (180 AD), “you will become foolish. And if you persist you will fall into insanity”. QED.
- See more at: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/whats_next_for_the_holy_estate_of_matrimony#sthash.atVI8E2J.dpuf

The surest way to persecution is to say, 'It can't happen here.' - by Fr. George W. Rutler

In CERC  

Our parish is blessed with a shrine to Saint Thomas More.

 

The young artist who painted it after Holbein was a refugee from communist Eastern Europe.  He did such a good job that Cardinal Egan, dedicating it, said that he would not be surprised if this were the original. 

 

We recently celebrated the joint feasts of Thomas More, who was Chancellor of England, and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester.  Their personalities were different in many ways, and it was almost a miracle that an Oxford man and a Cambridge man got on so well and eventually were canonized together.  

The Act of Succession and the Act of Supremacy were the challenges that King Henry VIII threw at them, and the saints returned the challenge.  The issues were rooted in natural law:  the meaning of marriage and the claims of government.  These are the same issues that loom large today.  

Whatever our courts of law may decide about these matters, Saint Thomas says:  "I am not bound, my lord, to conform my conscience to the council of one realm against the General Council of Christendom."  In 1919, G. K. Chesterton predicted with powerful precision that great as More's witness was then, "he is not quite so important as he will be in a hundred years' time." 

For every courageous saint back then, there were many who instead took the safe path of complacency.  More's own family begged him to find some loophole, and — after the sudden deaths of eight other bishops — Fisher was the only one left who acted like an apostle.  Those who opted for comfort and wove the lies of their world into a simulation of truth had a banal and shallow faith that Pope Francis has called "rose water."  It is a good image, for rose water is not blood and cannot wash away sin.  

The "Man for All Seasons" wrote to his beloved Margaret from his cell in the Tower of London:  "And, therefore, my own good daughter, do not let your mind be troubled over anything that shall happen to me in this world.  Nothing can come but what God wills.  And I am very sure that whatever that be, however bad it may seem, it shall indeed be the best." 

The "Fortnight for Freedom" extended from the vigil of the feasts of Fisher and More to July 4, but its prayers continue, as the Church's many charitable and evangelical works are threatened by our present government's disdain for the religious conscience, most immediately evident in the Health and Human Services mandate and the redefinition of marriage.  In 1534 Henry VIII's arrogation of authority over the Church was quickly followed by a Treasons Act which made it a high crime to criticize the King.  In contemporary America as in Tudor England, the surest way to let that happen is to say, "It can't happen here."
 

The Court and Marriage: The Culture War Deepens - by Hadley Arkes

In The Catholic Think 

The Week of Waiting:  I had spent the first three mornings this week at the Supreme Court, bracing myself for what the Court would deliver on the issue of marriage. And by this time, people know that the decisions Wednesday marked a turn in the culture war. 

Mark Twain said of Wagner’s music that, “it isn’t as bad as it sounds.” But these decisions were worse than they sounded. Some of our friends have sought gamely to pretend that the political contest will go on, contesting marriage state-by-state. And indeed it must. But we will have to summon our genius to find different paths.  

The Court did not exactly produce a Roe v. Wade for marriage. It did not, in one stroke, sweep away all laws that refused to permit same-sex marriage. But the judges put in place the premises that are sufficiently decisive, and all it requires now are the litigants sure to come forward to complete the work.    

They will challenge the laws that make no provision for homosexual marriages and the constitutions that forbid them. They will need only to cite the charged language of Justice Anthony Kennedy in U.S. v. Windsor, striking down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) of 1996. And that will supply a sufficient ground for sweeping away any lingering barriers to same-sex marriage.

In Section 3 of DOMA, the Congress stipulated that “marriage” would refer only to “a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.” But to Justice Kennedy this affirmation of the meaning of marriage bristled with hatred and condemnation. In affirming marriage as the relation of a man and woman, Congress showed a disposition to “disparage” and “demean” gays and lesbians, to deny their “equal dignity” and affect them with a “stigma.” 

As Justice Scalia pointed out, Kennedy was essentially charging with bigotry the people who had drafted this bill, but also the 85 Senators and 347 congressmen who voted for it, along with the president (Clinton) who had signed it. Hate-mongers all.

As it turned out, I was one of the architects of DOMA, and I had led the testimony for the bill in the Judiciary Committee of the House in May 1996. Justice Kennedy’s scathing remarks on the mind that brought forth DOMA seemed to stop just short of attaching my name.  

But it’s worth recalling what brought some of us then to press for DOMA. The Supreme Court of Hawaii had installed same-sex marriage in that state. The question was whether couples could marry in Hawaii, and then, through the Full Faith & Credit Clause of the Constitution, bring their marriages back home to other states. In this way, one state could in effect “nationalize” same-sex marriage. 

A state could refuse to honor marriages coming in from other states if it bore a moral objection, registered in its laws, to those forms of marriage (say, of persons below a certain age). But coming soon was the decision of the Court in Romer v. Evans, which threatened to knock out that prop of authority for the states. Sure enough it came, with the key lines from Justice Kennedy.  

He famously held there that the moral aversion to the homosexual life “seems inexplicable by anything but animus toward the class it affects; it lacks a rational relationship to legitimate state interests.” Centuries of Jewish and Catholic teaching could be reduced then to an “irrational” passion, an “animus.” No law that cast an adverse judgment, then, on the homosexual relation could find a reasoned ground of justification. And therefore a state could not incorporate any longer in its laws an adverse judgment on the homosexual life.

If that were the case, a state could not refuse to honor a same-sex marriage coming in from another state. That is what brought the need for DOMA. The Congress would give guidance to the courts and support the authority of the states in refusing to credit those marriages.   

The Court on Wednesday affected not to touch this part of DOMA. But Justice Kennedy’s premise surely will, for it is the premise that has worked its way through all of the litigation since then.  In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), Justice Kennedy held that the state could not justify laws on sodomy because there was no rational ground on which to condemn the homosexual relations that people pursued in their private lives.  

He insisted at the time that this judgment entailed no “formal recognition” of any other relation – namely, “marriage.” To which Justice Scalia famously said, “Do not believe it.” 

Only five months later, the Supreme Judicial Council of Massachusetts invoked Kennedy’s words in the Lawrence case in striking down the laws on marriage in the Commonwealth and installing same-sex marriage. And Kennedy invoked Lawrence again in striking down DOMA on Wednesday. As Justice Scalia remarked, we are simply waiting for the “second shoe to drop.”   

The activists will come forward to test the laws in the various states, including the laws that offer no recognition of same-sex marriage. And all that a judge needs to do now is invoke Kennedy’s overheated language in U.S. v Windsor. To use an old line, discussing marriage now without Justice Kennedy is. . .like playing Hamlet without the first grave-digger.  

And this is the work of a Catholic jurist.  On all of this, more later.

Supreme Court Justice Scalia: ‘jawdropping’ decision declares traditional marriage supporters ‘enemies of the human race’ - by John Jalsevac

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 26, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a scathing dissenting opinion released yesterday, Justice Antonin Scalia lambasted his fellow Supreme Court Justices for striking down a critical part of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and predicted that it will only be a matter of time before the court finds a Constitutional right to gay “marriage.”

Scalia labeled Wednesday’s decision “jaw-dropping,” calling it “an assertion of judicial supremacy over the people’s Representatives in Congress and the Executive.”

He said that the founding fathers created a judiciary with limited power in order to guard the people's "right to self-rule against the black-robed supremacy that today’s majority finds so attractive.” 

In the majority decision, authored by Justice Kennedy, the Court struck down the provision in the Clinton-era DOMA that prohibited the federal government from providing the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples who had been “married” in a state where gay “marriage” is legal. 

Justice Kennedy wrote that DOMA in “invalid” because “no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.” 

Justice Scalia slammed the clear implication that the mere act of believing in traditional marriage means someone is driven by a desire to “disparage” or “injure” homosexuals. 

“[T]o defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements,” he wrote, “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,” he continued. “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," his dissent continued. "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.” 

Scalia accused the majority of making the issue one of “black and white”: “Hate your neighbor, or come along with us.”

Click "like" if you support TRADITIONAL marriage.

“The truth,” he said, “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.

The famously conservative associate justice also ridiculed the majority’s promises that the DOMA decision was not making any statement about the constitutionality of gay “marriage” itself. 

“It takes real cheek for today's majority to assure us, as it is going out the door, that a constitutional requirement to give formal recognition to same-sex marriage is not at issue here,” he said, “when what has preceded that assurance is a lecture on how superior the majority's moral judgment in favor of same-sex marriage is to the Congress's hateful moral judgment against it.” 

“I promise you this,” he declared. “The only thing that will ‘confine’ the Court's holding is its sense of what it can get away with.” 

Scalia also lambasted the majority for even daring to issue a decision at all, let alone a decision striking down the federal statute. 

“We have no power to decide this case,” Scalia wrote. “And even if we did, we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation. The Court’s errors on both points spring forth from the same diseased root: an exalted conception of the role of this institution in America.” 

“The Court is eager — hungry — to tell everyone its view of the legal question at the heart of this case,” he stated. 

By weighing in on the hot button issue, said Scalia, the court “has cheated both sides, robbing the winners of an honest victory, and the losers of the peace that comes from a fair defeat. We owed both of them better.” 

“I dissent," he wrote.

«Leggi contro natura, dove sono i laici cattolici?» - Intervista all' Arcivescovo Giampaolo Crepaldi - di Stefano Fontana

In NBQ

Pubblichiamo l'intervista a monsignor Giampaolo Crepaldi, arcivescovo di Trieste, che esce oggi sul settimanale diocesano Vita Nuova, in cui offre un giudizio sulla realtà presente del laicato cattolico e il suo impegno nel sociale e nel politico.

Eccellenza, nella sua omelia per la chiusura della processione del Corpus Domini di domenica 2 giugno, lei ha avuto parole dure circa l’approvazione di leggi che possono «compromettere i capisaldi del nostro vivere umano: la vita, la famiglia e la nostra libertà». Ora, proprio quello dovrebbe essere il campo dell’impegno dei fedeli laici. Il suo discorso era un richiamo anche a loro?
Non c’è dubbio che questa dovrebbe essere l’ora del laicato. Ma purtroppo il laicato cattolico non si fa sentire. Magari lamentando poi che i Vescovi parlano troppo.

Perché, secondo lei, questa è l’ora del laicato?
Certamente ogni ora è l’ora del laicato, perché non c’è un momento in cui il laico non tragga dal suo battesimo il compito di ordinare a Dio le cose temporali. Però questa è l’ora del laicato in modo particolare. La politica e le leggi stanno mettendo mano all’ordine della creazione, alla natura della famiglia e alle relazioni naturali di base, quella tra padre e madre e tra genitori e figli. Si tratta di qualcosa di inedito e sconvolgente che  richiede una presenza particolarmente convinta ed attiva.

Perché dice che il laicato cattolico non si fa sentire?
Sono molti i laici cattolici che nella famiglia, nel lavoro, nella società incarnano con fedeltà la propria fede cristiana. Ciò avviene però soprattutto nella quotidianità. Ciò che manca in modo evidente è una presenza unitaria e coordinata nella società civile e una testimonianza chiara e coerente a livello politico, legislativo e dentro le pubbliche istituzioni.

Eppure esistono vari organismi di rete tra cattolici e in passato sono stati in grado di portare in piazza con il Family Day moltissime persone. Non ci sono più?
Ci sono ancora, però bisogna prendere atto di alcuni mutamenti. Intanto alcune di queste reti si sono costituite ma non si sono consolidate, sono rimaste tali a livello formale di vertice e più di qualche convegno non potranno fare. In secondo luogo, mi sembra che alcune reti un tempo molto attive su questi temi – penso per esempio a Scienza e Vita oppure al Forum delle Associazioni familiari – abbiano un po’ allentato la presa, dirottando l’attenzione verso altre tematiche a mio avviso meno importanti. Infine, vorrei notare che anche dentro le singole associazioni e i singoli movimenti la presa di posizione sui temi che ho sopra richiamato è scarsa sia in sede nazionale che in sede locale.

Può spiegare meglio cosa intende quando parla di “testimonianza coerente a livello politico, legislativo e dentro le pubbliche istituzioni”?.
Nelle amministrazioni pubbliche ci sono cattolici dichiaratamente tali. Ma quando si tratta di affrontare questi temi, essi utilizzano le categorie mentali di tutti gli altri e si fanno scudo della laicità della politica per non prendere una posizione che certamente costerebbe loro sul piano politico, ma che io vedrei come coerente sul piano umano con la fede professata.

Una delle storiche associazioni di fedeli laici è l’Azione cattolica. Cosa mi può dire a riguardo?
Prendo spunto da un recente libro di Luigi Alici dal titolo “I cattolici e il paese. Provocazioni per la politica” edito da La Scuola.

Ma Luigi Alici non è più presidente dell’Azione cattolica…
Però lo è stato a lungo e può dirsi un intellettuale fortemente impegnato nell’associazionismo del laicato cattolico. Recentemente egli ha girato tutta l’Italia – è stato anche in Friuli Venezia Giulia ed anche a Trieste. Certo il suo libro non rappresenta l’Azione cattolica, però può essere indicativo di un modo di pensare, diffuso anche dentro l’associazione.

Cosa l’ha maggiormente colpita nel libro?
Il suo appartenere alla categoria dei libri “Sì, ma …”: affermare i principi nello stesso momento in cui si aprono fessure per non rispettarli. Ho cercato in questo libro le affermazioni di fedeltà al magistero e di adesione ai principi della tutela della vita o della famiglia: li ho trovati. Però l’esposizione è sempre volutamente ambigua, dice, ma nega ed è piena di “tuttavia”.

Può fare un esempio?
Alici ha parole molto belle sulla famiglia, ma poi si dice a favore del riconoscimento delle convivenze tra omosessuali. Si rifà al cardinale Martini, ma non ai Vescovi italiani che, in una Nota del 2007, hanno chiarito la questione. I diritti per le persone omosessuali vanno affrontati sul piano del diritto privato. Il riconoscimento della convivenza in quanto tale non è accettabile né per le cosiddette coppie di fatto eterosessuali né per quelle omosessuali. Manca il requisito della valenza pubblica.

Quali sono gli argomenti di Luigi Alici a proposito?
Quello della gradualità dei diritti. Secondo lui una coppia di omosessuali non ha diritto ad essere considerata famiglia in quanto non lo è, ma ha diritto ad essere considerata qualcosa di più di due studenti che condividono lo stesso appartamento. Una simile argomentazione non è accettabile: ciò che è sbagliato non può essere fonte di diritti pubblicamente riconosciuti, e non può esserci per esso nessuna gradualità.

Cosa significa questo?
Credo che questo libro esprima bene una certa cultura dentro il mondo cattolico. I laici che vi si ispirano sposteranno sempre più in avanti l’asticella del “non possumus”, adeguandosi al mondo.

Nel libro di Alici c'è il continuo rifarsi al “paradosso” cristiano che farebbe del fedele laico una persona continuamente combattuta al proprio interno e a cui solo la risposta della propria coscienza potrà indicare la via.
Il paradosso cristiano non va interpretato come un'insanabile contraddizione interna del cristiano, perché la fede e la ragione, come ci insegna la dottrina, vanno insieme e solo il peccato introduce la divisione. Quello di Alici è un modo per far sì che l’agire dei cattolici nella società e nella politica sia lasciato unicamente alla loro autonoma coscienza.

Alici sostiene che c’è un ambito di partecipazione politica non direttamente partitica in cui dovrebbe valere la collaborazione dei cattolici con tutti gli altri e un ambito strettamente partitico in cui vale la competizione. E’ d’accordo?
Non solo tra i partiti, ma anche nella società ci sono oggi antropologie in conflitto. Anzi, oggi si assiste alla competizione tra chi dice che non c’è una antropologia, una vera visione dell’uomo, e chi invece dice che c’è. In questi campi – penso alla cultura, all’animazione sociale, alla formazione dei giovani, alla comunicazione - non può esserci solo collaborazione. Smettiamola una buona volta di continuare a illuderci e a illudere su questo punto. Dialogo e rispetto non devono mancare mai, ma la collaborazione la si fa sulla verità.

Da cosa dipende tutto ciò?
Credo dipenda dall’aver cambiato lo scopo della presenza dei laici cristiani nel mondo. I laici hanno come scopo di ordinare a Dio l’ordine temporale – come dice il Concilio – o, in altre parole, di costruire la società secondo il progetto di Dio. Invece, lo scopo dei fedeli laici è stato ridotto a conseguire il bene comune, a costruire la democrazia, a realizzare la Costituzione, a far funzionare le istituzioni.

Perché l’obiettivo del bene comune non va bene?
Va bene, a patto però che in esso si faccia rientrare anche il rispetto dell’ordine del creato e il benessere spirituale e religioso delle persone. Non c’è vero bene comune quando Dio viene messo tra parentesi e quando a Dio non è riconosciuto un posto nel mondo.

L’Azione cattolica ha avuto una lunga storia. Qual è stato il suo momento critico secondo lei?
Lascio questo compito agli storici. Posso solo tentare qualche ipotesi. La cosiddetta “scelta religiosa” fu interpretata dagli uomini di Azione cattolica in modo ambiguo. Doveva comportare il concentrarsi sul proprium dell’Azione cattolica, quello che Benedetto XVI ha poi chiamato “il posto di Dio nel mondo”. E’ stata invece vissuta come un apparente disimpegno rispetto ad una presenza visibile e organizzata condannata troppo frettolosamente come preconciliare. Dico “apparente” perché – strano a dirsi! – da allora moltissimi dirigenti dell’Azione cattolica si impegnarono direttamente in politica, prevalentemente nei partiti di sinistra. Ultimo esempio è stato Ernesto Preziosi alle recenti elezioni politiche.

Allora a lei l’Azione Cattolica non va bene?
Io credo nell’Azione Cattolica, continuo ad esserne un sostenitore convinto e, a parte qualcuno e qualcuna, sono assai grato a quella diocesana per quello che fa e nutro grandi aspettative verso di essa. Credo però che l’Azione cattolica - sto parlando in termini generali - oggi abbia bisogno di riconsiderare la propria linea e il proprio ruolo. Ciò sarebbe di grande vantaggio non solo per la missione pastorale delle nostre Diocesi, ma anche per le altre forme di associazionismo dei fedeli laici.

In che modo?
Si tratta di essere fedeli, in maniera integrale e con generosità spirituale, all’insegnamento del Concilio Vaticano II: essere laici nel mondo per ordinarlo a Dio, mettendo in primo piano l'esigenza e l'urgenza dell'ordinarlo a Dio. Per l'Azione cattolica significa: recuperare la sostanza del proprio passato, anche di quello che oggi si ricorda con un certo inspiegabile disprezzo; recuperare la dottrina sociale della Chiesa in tutti i suoi sostanziali collegamenti con la dottrina cristiana; intendere la laicità nel modo che ci ha insegnato Benedetto XVI, cioè pensare che al mondo non bisogna solo adeguarsi se si vuole veramente servirlo; superare una visione inadeguata del Concilio, recuperandone tutto l’insegnamento dentro la tradizione della Chiesa e non le solite due o tre frasi adoperate in modo retorico; non minimizzare gli attacchi che oggi vengono portati alla natura umana e alla fede cristiana, accusando quanti cercano di reagire di voler ristabilire uno schema mentale integralista proprio del passato. La Chiesa ha un bisogno immenso di un'Azione cattolica così, che riprenda a formare laici capaci di costruire la società secondo il cuore e il progetto di Dio. Per questo continuo a pregare e a sperare...

How John Paul II discovered and fought the international population controllers: Cardinal Sgreccia - by Hilary White

ROME, June 26, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The first motivation for Pope John Paul to produce the landmark encyclical Evangelium Vitae, was a scholarly paper revealing the extent and brutality of the global population control movement. Evangelium Vitae was intended by Pope John Paul as a weapon against the international population control movement, “to oppose the economically stronger nations and powerful international lobbies.”

In an extensive interview with Lorenzo Schoepflin at the Rome-based newspaper Il Foglio, Cardinal Elio Sgreccia, the now-retired head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, has described the history of the one of the most important intellectual tools of the global pro-life movement. Sgreccia assisted Pope John Paul II in every step of the encyclical’s preparation.

Having been known as a strong opponent of Communism, the pope was now standing against the Western democracies that were moving towards dictatorship, “because when you split love and life, life and with it the man himself become the object of domination,” said the cardinal.

Sgreccia said that in Evangelium Vitae, “Pope John Paul II has codified absolute and irreformable moral principles, the heritage of the ancient tradition of the Church. We must not forget that the condemnation of abortion is done, and I quote, ‘with the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, in communion with the bishops’.” This places it at the highest level of doctrinal authority, to be accepted and affirmed by all who want to call themselves Catholic.

Asked whether it is still in force under the new pope, Sgreccia said, “The media, not without reductionism of various types, likes to describe the movement from Pope Benedict XVI to Bergoglio as a transition from a ‘doctrinal pope’ to a ‘pastoral pope’.

“But this cannot in any way constitute a door to possible discontinuities of these basic materials. Let us remember that Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, once said that ‘abortar es matar,’ abortion is murder. That is what is stated in the encyclical.”

Sgreccia, was described by Italian jurist Francesco D’Agostino as “the greatest Catholic bioethicist” and the scholar who embodies in the most accurate, consistent and systematic official positions of the Church today in the field of bioethics. His two-volume “Manual of Bioethics,” is thought to be the authoritative guide to Church positions in the field. In his 80s, he continues to write and was named Honorary President of the National Bioethics Committee, of which he is a founding member. He is currently working on the sixth volume of the “Encyclopedia of bioethics and legal science”.

Sgreccia noted that internal dissent from the Church’s teaching on life issues, even at the highest levels of the Church, is a longstanding problem. “We all know the initial dissent which met Humanae Vitae of Pope Paul VI [on contraception] and then the silence that fell on the encyclical.”

“For Evangelium Vitae that did not happen,” he said. But there has been a similar problem within the clergy, whom he addressed directly: “Often you do not know bioethics and you consider its arguments too specialized, and do not always take into account the domain that modern science has on human life.”

In the 90s Sgreccia discovered first hand the true extent of the ruthlessness and brutality of the international population control movement. At a conference in a hospital in Mexico City, while giving a paper on the ethics of sterilization, he said, “While I was speaking of the distinction between therapeutic sterilization and contraceptive sterilization, the [doctors] told me that they had received orders to close the fallopian tubes of one in five women, even without their consent.”

This order, he was told, had come from a “pact” between the national government and the World Bank, as a condition of Mexico receiving international economic aid.

“Even in Italy,” he said, “parties were funding anti-life policies and cultural centers to spread these kinds of ideas. And the rich West, though they do not need to limit births, had to lead by example: the fewer children the better.”

The impulse to control global population came after the Second World War, he said, based on the now discredited theories of Thomas Malthus about the “balance” of global food and natural resources. “After every war we witness a boom in population growth, which is then followed by a natural adjustment. Nevertheless, the world powers were concerned for the balance of the planet and set in motion the birth control using contraception, sterilization and abortion.”

The paper, “Abortion and Politics,” that had alarmed the pope was by Belgian political philospher Michel Schooyans and described the extent and origins of the international population control movement, and their tactics.

After reading Schooyans’ book, John Paul convened a series of meetings with international leaders to find out the real extent of the movement. “The Pope wanted to know how many abortions there were worldwide. I found in the library of the Catholic University the proceedings of a conference of the International Society of Forensic Medicine, which provided data still considered valid: between 45 and 50 million per year of registered abortions,” Sgreccia said.

The encyclical grew out of a meeting of key curial cardinals; “The cardinals themselves asked for a document of the highest authority, that is, an encyclical… to speak out about the seriousness of abortion and decisively assert the identity of the unborn.” The encyclical went through three drafts and was then put aside for three years. In the meantime, Pope John Paul established the Pontifical Academy for Life, a consultory body that would examine bioethical issues and offer information and advice to the pope.

Sgreccia particularly addressed the notorious problem of the “lesser evil” argument that has been used by politicians to justify passing laws that condone or allow abortion. The Encyclical specifically addresses this in the famous section 73, which many have used as an excuse to support permissive legislation. Sgreccia was clear that this was an improper use of the encyclical, and not the intention of the pope.

Section 73 starts by stating, “Abortion and euthanasia are thus crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize.” It goes on to identify “a particular problem of conscience” in the case of a legislative vote on “a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on”.

It instructs politicians, saying, “when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality.

“This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.”

Sgreccia commented that “not all theologians agreed” with the inclusion of this passage. So the pope clarified, “that it was not here to approve a lesser evil, but to limit damage produced by others”.

Pope John Paul, Sgreccia said, “Believed strongly in the ability of such a text to stop the mad rush of the world towards population control, driven by international authorities.” And yet, he added, it has not stopped. “The cultural influence of the Magisterium in this area was silenced.”

And so the damage continues to grow as more and more people are eliminated from the drama of human life. Sgreccia cited the work of Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker who has said that “the lack of human capital” is a serious injury that creates poverty. “Fewer men does not mean more resources are available,” he said, “as erroneously assumed by Malthus. And to repair that damage takes periods of time that are measured in generations.”

In a time of a “suffocating” and apparently insoluble economic crisis, Sgreccia noted, “Evangelium vitae reveals itself in many ways, prophetic”. The crisis, he said, has served as a shock that has in some cases awakened conscience. He quoted Benedict XVI saying in Caritas in Veritate that “openness to life is at the center of true development,” highlighting the “unbreakable bond” between socio-economic issues and anthropological and bioethical issues.

“The Church is the critical conscience of humanity,” he said, “and often plays a prophetic role. Man must touch bottom to go back, but history teaches us that there are regrets, albeit late, which bring him back on track. This time it was the economic crisis, the rude awakening” Cardinal Sgreccia said.