While it's true that democracy is not mob-ocracy, or that the majority does not determine justice or fairness, my question to you is what does determine justice or fairness?
If you say "the Supreme Court", on what basis should the Court determine justice or fairness? And fairness for whom? Fairness only for gay couples? What about fairness for business owners who don't want to facilitate gay weddings? What about the children who are now coming forward testifying to the harm they suffered from growing up with gay parents? Do their feelings matter, or do only the feelings of gay people matter?
Secondly, where in the Constitution is the Court given the role of arbiter of justice and fairness? Since the Court's exclusive purpose is to interpret the Constitution the justices cannot use extra Constitutional reasoning to make their case. Just as there is no "right to privacy" in the Constitution there is also no federal definition of marriage. Remember that conservatives were not asking the Court to mandate heterosexual marriage or impose a uniform definition of marriage on all 50 states. But this is exactly what the Court did. Rather than allowing states to decide the issue and leaving room for people with diverse opinions to peacefully coexist in the broader society the Court instead forced a one-size-fits-all policy on the entire nation. This is why people on both sides should be equally concerned about the problem of judicial activism. Imagine if the Court had decreed that heterosexual marriage, while not mentioned in the Constitution, must be the law of the land in all 50 states. Imagine the outcry. This is exactly what the Court did, in reverse. They did not simply allow gay marriage, they mandated it. I often hear liberals claim that conservatives and Christians want to impose their values on everyone else, but this is exactly what the Court is doing -- imposing liberal east & west coast values on a broader American population that does not embrace them. They have rights, too.
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I have news for you, only religious people are devout.
Ask, and ye shall receive:
Gay Marriage--Secular Reasons Against It
Here are 20 reasons which may help communicate to our secular friends that Gay Marriage is not only a moral issue for Christians, but a societal ill. All but a few of these reasons are secular rather than religious:
1. The whole fabric of gay rights disappears with this fact: There is no scientific evidence that people are born gay, and much evidence exists that proves the opposite. People leave the homosexual lifestyle and desire all the time. (See
http://www.faithfacts.org/christ-and-the-culture/gay-rights#born.)
2. Marriage is the fundamental building block of all human civilization, and has been across cultural and religious lines for 5000+ years. By encouraging the norms of marriage—monogamy, sexual exclusivity, and permanence—the state strengthens civil society. Society as a whole, not merely any given set of spouses, benefits from marriage. This is because traditional marriage helps to channel procreative love into a stable institution that provides for the orderly bearing and rearing of the next generation.
3. Contrary to the liberal and libertarian viewpoint, marriage is not merely an institution for the convenience of adults. It is about the rights of children. Marriage is society’s least restrictive means of ensuring the well-being of children. Every child has the right to a mom and a dad whenever possible. Numerous studies show that children do best with two biological parents. Here is just one study: Two Biological Parents.
4. Marriage benefits everyone because separating the bearing and rearing of children from marriage burdens innocent bystanders: not just children, but the whole community. History shows that no society long survives after a change that hurts the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman.
5. Law cannot be divorced from reality—from nature. The two sexes are complementary, not undifferentiated. This is a fact of nature, thus given by God. No government has the right to alter what is true by nature. (See America’s Declaration of Independence.)
6. Redefining marriage would diminish the social pressures and incentives for husbands to remain with their wives and BIOLOGICAL children, and for men and women to marry before having children.
7. The results of redefining marriage—parenting by single parents, divorced parents, remarried parents, cohabiting couples, and fragmented families of any kind—are demonstrably worse for children. According to the best available sociological evidence, children fare best on virtually every examined indicator when reared by their wedded biological parents. Studies that control for other factors, including poverty and even genetics, suggest that children reared in intact homes do best on educational achievement, emotional health, familial and sexual development, and delinquency and incarceration. In short, marriage unites a man and a woman holistically—emotionally and bodily, in acts of conjugal love and in the children such love brings forth—for the whole of life.
8. Studies show domestic violence is three times higher among homosexual partnerships, compared to heterosexual marriages. A large portion of murders, assaults, other crimes and various harms to children occur along with, or as a consequence of, domestic violence. Half of pedophilia attacks are homosexual, for example. Normalizing homosexual marriage also encourages non-marital homosexual activity, and thus the social pathologies associated with it.
9. Promiscuity is rampant among homosexuals, including those who are married. Various studies indicate that gays average somewhere between 10 and 110 different sex partners per year. The New York Times, among many other sources, reported the finding that exclusivity was not the norm among gay partners: “With straight people, it’s called affairs or cheating,” said Colleen Hoff, the study’s principal investigator, “but with gay people it does not have such negative connotations. ‘Openness’ and ‘flexibility’ of gay relationships are euphemisms for sexual infidelity.” One study showed that only 4.5% of homosexual males said they were faithful to their current partner, compared to 85% of heterosexual married women and 75.5% of heterosexual married men. Promiscuity is a destabilizing influence on society.
10. The confusion resulting from further delinking childbearing from marriage would force the state to intervene more often in family life and expand welfare programs. If marriage has no form and serves no social purpose, how will society protect the needs of children—the prime victim of our non-marital sexual culture—without government growing more intrusive and more expensive? Without healthy marriages, the community often must step in to provide (more or less directly) for their well-being and upbringing. Thus, by encouraging the norms of marriage—monogamy, sexual exclusivity, and permanence—the state strengthens civil society and reduces its own role. (Libertarians, do you see the importance of this? If you want the state to be less intrusive, get off the gay marriage idea!)
11. Promoting marriage does not ban any type of relationship: Adults are free to make choices about their relationships, and they do not need government sanction or license to do so. People are free to have contracts with each other. All Americans have the freedom to live as they choose, but no one has a right to redefine marriage for everyone else.
12. Law is a teacher. Just as many people, even some Christians, thought that slavery was okay when it was legal, will think that gay marriage is OK when it is legal.
13. Gay marriage is undeniably a step into other deviances. What will result are such things as plural marriages and polygamy. These things could not logically be turned back, and will initiate a further plunge of societal stability.
14. Only a small percentage of gays who are given the right to marry do so anyway (4% by one study). This proves that the gay marriage movement is not about marriage, but about affirmation.
15. Anal intercourse leads to numerous pathologies, obviously because the parts do not fit! Among items in a long list of problems listed by researcher and physician James Holsinger are these: enteric diseases (infections from a variety of viruses and bacteria including a very high incidence of amoebiasis, giardiasis, and hepatitis, etc.), trauma (fecal incontinence, anal fissure, rectosigmoid tears, chemical sinusitis, etc.), sexually transmitted diseases (AIDS, gonorrhea, simplex infections, genital warts, scabies, etc.). Anal cancer is only one of other medical problems higher in gay men that heterosexual men, especially monogamous heterosexual men. Society at large pays for these diseases. (Speaking to “Christian Libertarians,” unlike certain activities that also contribute to national health problems, such as obesity, homosexuality is morally wrong. Poor eating habits are not a moral issue; gluttony is not a sin.)
16. The ravages of the gay lifestyle are severe upon the gay community itself but also for society at large. The best available evidence shows that those practicing homosexual behavior have a 20% to 30% shorter life span. A much higher rate of alcoholism, drug abuse, sexually transmitted disease, domestic violence, child molestation and more occur in homosexual populations. (See
http://www.faithfacts.org/christ-and-the-culture/gay-rights#ravages.)
17. It is okay to discriminate. We discriminate all the time in our rules and laws. It is illegal to marry your parent. It is illegal to be a pedophile or a sociopath, no matter how strong the innate tendency might be.
18. Gay marriage and religious freedom are incompatible because it will marginalize those who affirm marriage as the union of a man and a woman. The First Amendment is at stake! This is already evident in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., among other locations. After Massachusetts redefined marriage to include same-sex relationships, Catholic Charities of Boston was forced to discontinue its adoption services rather than place children with same-sex couples against its principles. Massachusetts public schools began teaching grade-school students about same-sex marriage, defending their decision because they are “committed to teaching about the world they live in, and in Massachusetts same-sex marriage is legal.” A Massachusetts appellate court ruled that parents have no right to exempt their children from these classes. Businesses that refuse to accept gay marriage as a legitimate institution will be penalized. It is a certainty that the church will at some point, be unable to preach the full council of God. It will be considered hate speech to speak of traditional marriage as right. Churches will begin losing their tax exempt status. Individuals who speak out against gay marriage will be penalized. This is only the tip of the iceberg. (Speaking again to "Christian Libertarians” who are OK with gay marriage: Do you see the issue here? This is important! Legalizing gay marriage nationally will lead to an assault on religion.)
19. Homosexual practioners cost more than they contribute via disproportionate diseases and disasters such as HIV, hepatitis, herpes, mental illness, substance abuse, suicide, assault, etc. The Center for Disease Control estimates that each HIV infection ALONE generates $700,000 in direct and indirect costs. (Source: Family Research Report, April 2014)
20. Homosexual activity and marriage robs our future by: having fewer children, poorly socializing the children they raise, commit about half of all child molestations recorded in the news. (Source: Family Research Report, April 2014)
The question is asked, why shouldn't two people who love each other be allowed to get married? ANSWER: Marriage is not about love. In many countries around the world, marriages are arranged. Marriage is about the rights of children and thus is about supporting the next generation. Anything that weakens the institution of marriage is an injustice to children and a travesty to the culture.
