Disappointed, but Not Surprised: Aleteia Experts React to Supreme Court Marriage Rulings

"The Supreme Court ruled that the proponents of Prop 8 had no standing to defend it in federal court.

"I was a spokeswoman for Prop 8. We spent $40 million on it. We had 70,000 individual contributors from all walks of life and all income levels. We had 100,000 volunteers, from across the religious spectrum. Our masters in Sacramento don’t agree with our views. So, when some Hollywood leftists invent absurd legal challenges to Prop 8, our masters in Sacramento refuse to defend it. Surprise, surprise.

"And now the Supreme Court tells us to sit down and shut up.

"I do not plan to be silent. The scorched earth tactics of the Sexual Revolutionaries are now taking down democracy itself. This is too high a price to pay for the supposed benefits of sexual ‘freedom.’"

"The Supreme Court did not outrightly claim that there is a constitutional right to same-sex "marriage," which is what many of those pressing these cases sought. They made the one decision on procedural grounds, and the other (supposedly ) on federalism grounds. Still, it is a portent for the future, because the majority in one of the cases seemed to adopt the mind-set of the secular left and the homosexualist movement that the denial of same-sex "marriage" is somehow malicious against a particular group (I should comment that it is a group only because the homosexualist movement and its promoters in the opinion-making strata of American life have made it out to be). All this suggests to me that those opposed to the full-scale assault on nature that is what is represented by those who want to view homosexual activity as normal and seek acceptance of same-sex "marriage" need to assert themselves more visibly, vocally, and insistently. They need to make the case more vigorously and continuously about what is wrong with these notions and the profound consequences that American culture–and American liberty–will face if they are allowed to prevail."

"I actually think there are reasonable people on both sides of the same-sex marriage debate. Finally, the biggest thing wrong with Kennedy’s opinion is that its unhinged moralism–based as it is on a conception of dignity or personhood that’s has no real constitutional anchor–might make solid citizens believe that those who disagree with him–including the overwhelming majority of members of our Congress who voted for the DOMA–are hatefully evil, so evil that their opinions deserve no place under our law or our Constitution. Talk about a “conversation stopper,” not to mention a civic-engagement stopper. Consider the conclusion of Justice Scalia’s “cheeky” dissent:

"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. But that the majority will not do. Some will rejoice in today’s decision, and some will despair at it; that is the nature of a controversy that matters so much to so many. But 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."

"The good news is that the Supreme Court did not find a right to same-sex "marriage" in the U.S. Constitution as it did with abortion in 1973. The bad news is that the Court said the dozen states that have same-sex "marriage" can impose their definition of marriage on the federal government. It is especially outrageous that Connecticut’s same-sex "marriage" law can be imposed on the federal government because that law was not even enacted by the people of Connecticut or our elected representatives but by a 4-3 decision of our state supreme court. The fight for traditional marriage is, if anything, only beginning. It will only be further energized by today’s rulings."

"They are profoundly wrong and wrong-headed decisions. And it is deeply depressing that in each decision a Catholic justice was the swing vote. There is a twofold problem that underlies both decisions: 1) That issues of such fundamental significance for society should be decided by a single, unelected person. That’s what happens when there is a 5-4 decision. 2) That the judges of the Supreme Court who ought to be exemplary for their wisdom as well as their technical knowledge of the law can be completely blind to the obvious: this is not an issue of equality at all. Same sex unions are not in any way equivalent to marital unions.

"Justice Kennedy wrote: "The federal statute is invalid, 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." This is only slightly less outrageously self-contradictory than his famous “mystery” utterance: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” If you can define your own concept of meaning, well, I suppose you can play Alice in Wonderland with any concept you want, including marriage. So at least Justice Kennedy is consistent in his self-contradiction, and this decision is simply a consequence of the earlier principle. However, he even goes farther here and apparently can read hearts, since he claims that the “purpose” is to “disparage and to injure”. So one man sets himself against the wisdom of all recorded history which recognizes the obvious: a marital union can do what no other union can; further it is not only a benefit to the state, but the state cannot exist without it. Giving it special status and protection does not disparage or injure anyone; it simply recognizes an empirical fact that only the willfully blind can fail to see.

"Chief Justice Roberts wrote: “"We have never before upheld the standing of a private party to defend the constitutionality of a state statute when state officials have chosen not to. We decline to do so for the first time here," Chief Justice Roberts said, alluding to the state of California’s decision not to defend Proposition 8 in court.” By that principle the Supreme Court should have never made any decisions, since each new decision was a “first time”.

"So we have the sad parody of one Catholic judge being so liberal that even the meaning of meaning isn’t fixed. And another Catholic judge so conservative that he can’t recognize the need for an unprecedented decision when there is an unprecedented set of facts.

"People, myself included, lament the moral decline of America. Without this stunning intellectual decline—where one can claim that an unborn baby is not a human person and that man-to-man copulation is equivalent to marital union—we could not have sunk so low. With this decision we are about to sink even lower. God help us.

"I’m not a prophet. But it is certainly going to make it far more difficult for those who defend marriage.

"[The Church] will call forth saints and scholars who will “shine like the stars in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation”. They will also be humiliated and very likely, in time, persecuted. Welcome to the Brave New World."

"The two narrow decisions (5-4) of the Supreme Court today ruling that DOMA is unconstitutional and dismissing Proposition 8 are as unjust and unwise as the Supreme Court decision of 1992 in the case of Planned Parenthood vs. Governor Casey.  That decision did not make abortion moral and the two decisions today will not make homosexual marriage moral. 

"A proper response to such dictatorial decisions has been provided by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae I-II, 95, 2: 
As Augustine says (De Lib. Arb. i, 5) "that which is not just seems to be no law at all": wherefore the force of a law depends on the extent of its justice. Now in human affairs a thing is said to be just, from being right, according to the rule of reason. But the first rule of reason is the law of nature, as is clear from what has been stated above (91, 2, ad 2). Consequently every human law has just so much of the nature of law, as it is derived from thelaw of nature. But if in any point it deflects from the law of nature, it is no longer a law but a perversion of law.

"Fundamental to these issues is the need for twenty-first century scholars to recover the understanding of legislation as primarily an act of intelligence and reason.  As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI pointed out, a dictatorship of relativism has resulted from the nominalist voluntarism that devalued legislation into acts of will severed from intelligence and reason.  It is indeed unreasonable to be shouting out the fiction that homosexuals can be properly married, thereby severing the nature of marriage from the procreation and education of children, at the very time that the so-called advanced societies are dying out.  I recommend a reading of Jonathan Last’s recent book
What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: The Coming American Demographic Disaster."

Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute

Fr. Gerald E. Murray, J.C.D., pastor of Holy Family parish in New York.