The judge who said NO - to homosexual marriage
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| photograph of the justices, cropped to show Justice Scalia (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Scalia’s significance lies in his commitment to
originalism, also known as textualism — the belief that the Constitution of the
United States is to be read and understood and applied in keeping with the
language, syntax, and vocabulary of its text as understood to be intended by
the framers.
This was how the Supreme Court had operated for decades, without
even having to express originalism as a method. All that changed in modern
decades as the Court and the nation’s liberal legal culture adopted an
understanding of the Constitution as an evolving document that was to be
interpreted in light of current social needs — even if this required the
abandonment of the Constitution as a regulative document."
But much of the torrential outpouring of acid hatred over the
past weekend is by activists who still sting from Justice Scalia’s dissent from the Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalizing
gay marriage. Scalia not only eviscerated every argument in favor of
gay marriage, he pointed out what is growing increasingly obvious to
Christians--that the decision was a tyrannical one:
It is not of special importance to me what the law
says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that
rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million
Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The
opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact—and the furthest
extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create
‘liberties’ that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This
practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always
accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People
of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence
and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”
In his prophetic opinion, Scalia did not even spare his fellow
justices, calling attention to their towering arrogance. “These Justices know
that limiting marriage to one man and one woman is contrary to reason,” he
wrote scornfully. “They know that an institution as old as government
itself, and accepted by every nation in history until 15 years ago, cannot
possibly be supported by anything other than ignorance or bigotry. And they are
willing to say that any citizen who does not agree with that, who adheres to
what was, until 15 years ago, the unanimous judgment of all generations and all
societies, stands against the Constitution.”
The future looks bleaker without Scalia sitting stolidly between
the Sexual Revolution and the Constitution, and standing athwart History, as
Buckley once put it, “yelling Stop! at a time when no one is inclined to do so
or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” The already chaotic
politics of 2016 have been rocked once again, and the presidential race has
become all the more consequential.
