What happens When Judges Decree Instead Of Deliberate

From The Washington Examiner and Alliance Defense Fund:


Robert P. George: What happens when judges decree instead of deliberate

By: Robert P. George

OpEd Contributor

August 6, 2010 Two federal judges who have recently issued rulings adverse to the historic definition of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife show what results-oriented jurisprudence is all about.



One judge claimed to base part of his ruling on a federal constitutional requirement that Congress yield to the states on their definition of marriage. The other judge ruled that the constitution requires that a state’s democratically enacted definition of marriage be struck down.



Confusing? Not if one realizes that the judges in these cases had a common purpose and theme. Their aim was to redefine marriage and label those who hold to the historic understanding of marriage—whether they be the 7 million California voters who approved Proposition 8 or the 427 members of Congress who approved the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996—as “irrational” bigots.



Judge Joseph Tauro in the DOMA case was more explicit than Judge Vaughn Walker in California, writing that the bipartisan Congressional majorities for DOMA—as well as, presumably, President Clinton, who signed the bill into law—could only have been motivated by “animus” against homosexuals. But both men wrote with, well, sheer animus against people who disagree with them.



The charge of bigotry is basically a cease-and-desist order. It is meant not to explain or illuminate an issue, but to intimidate opponents into silence. It may have lost some of its political potency recently because of overuse, but it still stings.



Liberal critics say that Tea Party members are racists; opponents of health care reform are racists; even African-Americans who support traditional marriage are the equivalent of racists. And on and on it goes.



Judge Walker’s rhetorical assault on his opponents went Judge Tauro’s one better, however. Walker’s voluminous opinion laid out what he dubiously labeled as “findings of fact” that purported to undergird his decision to redefine marriage.



In addition to lodging the charge of prejudice, he pronounced as “fact” that the legal equality of male and female spouses means that we are past the time “when the genders [are] seen as having distinct roles in society and in marriage.” The days of conjugality—the complementarity of the sexes—are behind us, by judicial fiat.



Men and women are not merely equal, Walker implies, they are interchangeable, like identical wheel covers rolling off an assembly line. Because of this, he states in another “finding of fact,” there is no increased “likelihood that a child will be well-adjusted” if she has a male and a female parent.



And why stop there? There is no meaningful benefit in having a “genetic tie” to the people who parent you, he surmises. (Tell that to inner-city residents of the nation’s capital who have bravely endured this summer’s record wave of murderous criminality inflicted by boys from fatherless homes.)



But Judge Walker is just getting started. He pulls onstage another “finding of fact” that takes aim at religious ideas per se. He writes that religious teachings about the morality of homosexual conduct are a source of prejudice that has done “harm” to gay people.



He does not then cite examples of religious speakers who have incited harsh treatment of homosexual persons. No, he quotes the moral teachings of various religions on homosexual conduct, including, oddly, an oblique reference to African-American churchgoers in California who backed both Barack Obama and Proposition 8.



In this judicial Olympics of offensive statements, it is hard to pick a gold medalist, though this last bit of religion-bashing might take the prize. The religions Walker cites with such animus are precisely those whose doctrines of sin are inextricably tied with doctrines of forgiveness and redemption.



They are also religions that teach, as doctrine, that every individual is made in the image and likeness of God and that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” They demand of the believer not only a hatred of the sin, but a sincere and ungrudging love for the sinner.



For these and many other reasons, the latest federal court decisions on marriage are more than merely misguided; they are deeply insulting to millions of the judges’ fellow citizens.



It is the judges themselves who should lay aside their biases and show a little respect for the constitutionally prescribed principles of republican government by which We the People deliberate and decide questions that the Constitution leaves in our hands—questions such as whether the conjugal definition of marriage should be retained or abandoned.



Robert P. George is founder of American Principles Project, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, and a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University







Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/Robert-P-George-What-happens-when-judges-decree-instead-of-deliberate-100136169.html#ixzz0vt2Cevdp