Let’s kick God off the Court: Marriage isn’t the only place where the law has been infected by relig

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http://www.salon.com/2015/07/05/lets_kick_god_off_the_court_marriage_isnt_the_only_place_where_the_law_has_been_infected_by_religion/

SUNDAY, JUL 5, 2015 06:00 AM EDT
It will take generations to do what Pat Buchanan fears: Purge the nation's birth faith of power. It's a worthy goal

JEFFREY TAYLER



Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia (Credit: AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Jeff Malet Photography, maletphoto.com/photo collage by Salon)

A poll conducted a couple of years ago showed that 41 percent of American adults believed the End Times were upon us. Now, that same segment of our fellow citizens – those who have surrendered their common sense to stubborn faith in a cock-and-bull collection of ancient scribblements (i.e., the Bible) — must feel triumphantly, even gleefully, vindicated. The Supreme Court’s recent 5-to-4 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges in favor of same-sex marriage surely affirms we’re living through a rerun of the “days of Noah” (times of widespread fornication and sodomy) that are supposed to precede the Apocalypse. The seventh trumpet, as they would have it, is a-blowin’, the Rapture nigh.

The Court found that the 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection of the law to all; hence, all states have to recognize same-sex marriages. In the opinion explaining the decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy sounds fair-minded enough. Aware of the controversy to come, he displays magnanimity toward the faithful, recognizing that “religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate, with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned.” However, he goes on to say, “[T]he Constitution . . . does not permit the State to bar same-sex couples from marriage on the same terms as accorded to couples of the opposite sex.” Churches and other religious institutions may refuse to wed gay people; states must not.

The dissenters, led by Justice John Roberts, presented their counter-argument. Roberts worried that “stealing this issue from the people will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage, making a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept.” This could be true. Obergefell v. Hodges might well end up outraging the religious right for a long time to come, just as Roe v. Wade still does, 42 years after it made abortion the law of the land. And Roberts expressed another concern: “why would there be any less dignity in the bond between three people, who, in exercising their autonomy, seek to make the profound choice to marry?” He actually has a point. If society, through reasoning, debate and consensus, someday arrives at the conclusion that polyamorous unions should be made licit, then what, theoretically, would be wrong with that? Laws, made by man, come and go. Things change.

Justice Antonin Scalia, a hard-line Roman Catholic, joined Roberts in objecting to the ruling. In his telling, “The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.” Well, to a rationalist, talismanic reverence for his cult’s holy book looks a lot like belief in fortune cookies. No one should take either seriously.

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