Liberty Counsel's Pro Marriage arguments failed to persuade Iowa's Supreme Court because of Americana's endless indulgence in the exaltation of equality above liberty. No social good can be greater than "equality," so Liberty Counsel's propositions about the public good of traditional marriage could not succeed. Why waste the ink? by Paul Benedict
(libertarian)
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit litigation, education and policy organization, filed a friend of the court brief in the recent Iowa gay marriage case. The people, represented by two assistant county attorneys, were appealing a lower court ruling overturning a 1999 Iowa State marriage law. Liberty Counsel's legal brief fell victim, like America itself, to America's overcompensation for the explicit and weighty errors of her past. America's inability to forgive her own past racial prejudices, despite the oceans of blood she has shed to shed her ignorance, has once again shown itself to be the twenty-first century's greatest single threat to our national liberties. Whether it is in the matter of government demanding, based on equal rights, that those that cannot receive loans, receive loans; or whether it is in holding that the equal rights among men and women must apply in combat, or whether it is saying, based on abstruse and strange arguments (see my previous article "Marriage is Not a School..."), that what can never be a marriage is a marriage: Americans are obsessed with "equality." Sadly, this is, most often, a cry for an equality of economic outcomes (communism) or for equality of access to government programs. Rarely is it a call for equality based on every human's inalienable rights to be left alone by government. Hence, there is no social good to be had if it cannot be wrapped with equality and tied with the red, white, and blue ribbons of social justice. That's why the Liberty Counsel's Amicus Brief walks right into the machine gun nests of the left when it appealed to Iowa precedents valuing marriage because of the social benefits a marriage produces.
For instance, when Liberty Counsel notes that in 1983, in Laws v. Griep, an Iowa court said, "The policy of this state is that the de jure family is the basic unit of social order. This policy is reflected in statutes governing the right to marry" (page 11) no one cared. A social order presupposes something other than equality. Likewise, Liberty Counsel sprung the claymores when it called concluded that "Marriage is not a lump of clay that is to be re-molded to fit every new cultural trend, but is the cornerstone upon which society has been built and upon which society's future depends" (page 6). By this the authors of the Liberty Counsel mean that, again, the gay rights movement is seeking to make marriage an institution that is merely a series of rights conferred by the state. This, of course, is undeniable, and so such comments were ignored by the court.
Nonetheless, for clarity's sake, this is no small matter. The Statists love this because with a definition of marriage that is amorphous legalese, the state has totalitarian control, complete and total authority, over what a family is or is not. This logic though, was not the error of Liberty Counsel's brief. No, the nest of vipers was beneath Liberty Counsel's next step: marriage is not just "the cornerstone of society"; it is far more. Marriage is based on the mutual exercise of the ability to join, in law and in common law, through sexual union (biologically). This then is an ability to choose, an ability found in the nature of man, a natural liberty, exercised by two people (yes, males and females both qualify equally) before the existence of a United States government, or any government, was ever imagined. Marriage is an inalienable right of contract available to every human. If all landed wealth is stolen by fierce landlords, the freely given consent to belong to one another as testified to by the act of marriage remains. Likewise, the marriage bond alone testifies, of itself, without government, of the right to own a joint future independent of governments. Marriage is the cornerstone of societies, but not because there were societies to endorse such things. Hence, as with the freedom of religion and of speech, it is the responsibility of responsible governments to recognize the marriages entered into by a free people. This is a simple human decency. A cluster of "privileges" in the context of society is an insufficient recognition of our essential humanity as Americans. For the same sex couple that is all the recognition their unions can ever have; for the Statist that is all the recognition the state requires. For a free person such a definition is a tyranny and an outrage to liberty.
In today's America, building society is not important at all, especially to the Statist plebian; he or she does not desire to build anything. That's too much work. The plebian Statist wants, or is more than willing to accept in return for some social program, an all powerful god-state that guides him from the womb to the tomb.
The Statist elite on the other hand, wants the window dressing of the overwhelming and overwhelmingly uniformed allegiance of the Statist plebian. Moreover, anyone who seeks to build, seeks change from the Statist status quo of "fairness." Such builders of society seek their own. They seek to be "unequal." Such builders are not good enough for legal recognition of their marriages and families. Hence, when the Liberty Counsel quotes an old Iowa State Court decision that pronounces boldly: "The integrity and permanence of the marital relation is of such vital importance to the welfare of society and to the public generally that the sovereignty or State has always deeply interested itself in all matters pertaining to the dissolution of that relation'" (10), no Iowa Supreme Court Justice schooled in Massachusetts cared to read that ruling in light of its contextual intent: the marriage of a man and a woman. The Liberty Counsel might as well save the ink.
Legal precedence and society itself be damnedequality is all! Why hasn't the Liberty Counsel learned this yet? Surely, they've been scheduled for the reeducation camps by now or was that what this little legal "exercise" in an Iowa country court really all about? Was the Supreme Court opinion simply a little reeducation camp tour for misguided judges and lawyers around the land? "If those wannabe country bumpkins in Iowa can get this, you would be Harvard Law graduates better pay attention NOW!" Is that the message we should draw from all of this?
Oh, and Vermont, you got what you paid for. You voted on a visceral hatred of war, and you got gay marriage. You are to be commended on your enlightened love of all things "equal." And to the reeducation camps with that cursed governor!
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do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates.
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Marraige is a religious construct and the government shouldn't be involved either way. I don't believe for a second that it is the government's place to decide what type of family makes for the best society. In fact, we should all be a little scared of that concept.
What is religious about having the ability to make a commitment based on biological, sexual unification?
Bruce,
The problem is that most guys, like dogs, don't know how to say "I do."
Hi Walt,
It's hard to tell what rights you feel should be equal. The ones I discuss are the inalienable rights given by God (or Nature for you Darwinist atheists out there), the rights not conferred by man or government that all humans receive in equal measure. Â Government's first responsibility is to honor, recognize, and protect the use of those rights.
Posted By: the original jason
Date: 2009-04-09 22:33:06
Paul,
the concept of marriage as an institution is a religious one. until someone up and decided to make "rules" about it, people just picked someone they liked and stayed with them until either they didn't like each other any more, or one of them died. religion accepts the initial choice and precludes any subsequent choices with the social stigma that separation is a bad thing.
until religion came along, it all came down to the individual choices made by the two involved.
There have been marriages in every society anthropologists have ever discovered. Which religion constructed marriage? Marriage is a human contract based on the sexual union of humans. The polygamy laws at least know what a marriage is. This element of our marriage laws rejecting polygamy ARE based on religious beliefs. Still, the obvious abuse and inequities built into such contracts make such laws defensible.
The freedom to worship is also an inalienable right. Likewise anthropologists have never (so far as I know) discovered an atheistic society.
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