Dehumanizing Marriage

Anytime a basic civil right, an inalienable right, whether enumerated in the U.S. Constitutional documents or not, is violated by a government, that government is dehumanized, the citizens participating in that government are dehumanized, and, of course, those having their constitutional liberties abridged are dehumanized. Consider the cases in Nazi Germany in which Jews were made to wear a yellow Star of David. The Nazi’s ignored the basic and self-evident equality among ethnicities in order to single Jews out as less human, deprived of the dignity of equality. The most devious of the Nazi aims, however, had to do with dehumanizing the populace of Germany itself. By refusing to stand up for their fellow humans, the people of German civil society became callus towards the Jews. Ultimately, the Nazi’s themselves became more and more unfeeling towards human life and the plight of their fellow man. Of course the dehumanization of the German Jew was exponentially quickened because essential religious freedom to worship was likewise stigmatized. Two sets of essential civil liberties were abridged by the Nazis at once. Yet, could the Jews have claimed to have been harmed by wearing the yellow star of David? Shouldn’t they have been proud of their religious background? The wearing of the star was the first of a continuing series of Nazi violations of civil liberties, but the dehumanization of the Jew was already complete before the clear harm began. This prima facia violation of human rights was the harm.

Likewise, no matter how one wants to interpret the odd wording of the 2nd amendment of the United States Constitution, humans in a state of nature, without government, have the right to take up arms and defend themselves. Although the choice is intimidating to some, it must be; for that is the essence of self defense. The right to defend oneself is a severe right that elevates all human life by its severity. The choice to bear arms or not to bear arms defines human character, but it is still a fundamental free choice, a liberty that is part of being human. Although, as the U. S. Supreme Court found, to protect the general welfare and to secure the blessings of all our liberties, the state, as authorized by the people, has the right to limit the liberty to bear arms, court or no court, court or no court the right to self defense must not be compromised.

The District of Columbia completely abridged the right to bear arms and the right of self defense thereby. Law abiding citizens, then, are completely reduced to dependency on government for their defense. They become no more than serfs of the Dark Ages dependent on their feudal lords for defense. They become the chattel of the state, the property of the state. Their humanity is compromised. The state too is dehumanized, for it becomes like a feudal lord, above those whom it exists solely to serve. Yet, how are those that were refused the right to bear arms for many years in DC harmed? There is only slight evidence of that harm. The NRA often points to the rise in violent crime in areas in which the right to bear arms is constrained severely. This may be simply the obvious result of the criminals being emboldened by an unarmed populace. However, it may be that the dehumanizing effects of the abridgement of the right to bear arms emboldens those who contemplate violence.

How do these tests of the abridgement of constitutional liberties relate to the recent ban on marriage in California? In both of these instances, laws abridging human rights have plainly existed without any clear harm initially being found. Both instances are also examples of the truth that any abridgement of a civil liberty dehumanizes the state and its citizens. In California there are no more marriages. Men and women cannot receive a marriage license that says “husband” and “wife”; instead, they become “Party A” and “Party B.” This language is plainly dehumanizing, and it is not the happenstance of nomenclature. The ruling of the Supreme Court of California and its accompanying opinion wreaks with violations of civil liberties and a callus, inhuman refusal to acknowledge the very essence of what it means for a man and woman to join in matrimony.

California’s Court has reduced marriage to only that over which the state has authority. It has looked at all the clothing of marriage and called these changing incidentals ‘marriage’; but the Court has ruled to ignore that unchanging reality of marriage that forms the basis of marriage as a constitutional liberty. In every case, a constitutional liberty is such because its reality is greater than man; its power is independent of governments. It is because of such fundamental liberties’ superiority and priority to government that good governments reside in harmony with these native, inborn rights natural to humanity. Good government perceives that these greater, natural, freedoms are the very blessings of liberty that governments exist, solely, to secure. Marriage is such a liberty because it is more than contracts and commitments conferred by the state. The duties of marriage proceed from the joining in marriage, not from government. This joining for which men and woman were designed (whether by natural selection of by the hand of the God of Nature Himself), this is the very essence of marriage the State refuses to acknowledge. Refusing the title of “husband” and “wife” is not the happenstance of nomenclature; it is evidence that the State of California refuses to acknowledge the essence of marriage, the joining in marriage, that is central to marriage as a constitutional liberty.

Because the state of California, through the voice of its Supreme Pontiffs, manifestly recognizes only those social rights involved in marriage, and because the essence of my marriage, my ‘right to marry,’ to join with my partner as husband and wife, is no longer recognized by California law, my constitutional right to marry is completely abridged. It is in the essence of humanity, male and female, to be able to freely join in marriage. California has a right to regulate marriage, even as the District of Columbia has a right to regulate the right to bear arms, but California does not have the right to legislate marriage out of existence, to deny its reality, and to ignore its core humanity. To designate marriage as a simple set of rights society chooses by tradition to assign dehumanizes us all.

A Genius Lives!

I am rendered speechless by this brilliant analysis:

Gay marriage: not legal in California...or anywhere!
"Gay Marriage" Is Not Legal in California or Anywhere Else in the United States!

by Gregg Jackson

Johnathan Rauch begins his article, "Why Gay Marriage is Good For America," (Opinion Page June 21, 2008) declaring: "By order of its state Supreme Court, California began legally marrying same-sex couples this week."

He is 100% incorrect. The fact of the matter is that "gay marriage" is not legal in California because the initiative marriage statute ratified by we, the sovereign people of California in 2000 (Prop 22), enshrined into statutory law that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in California," has not been changed. It remains the "law of the land."

The California Supreme Court merely issued a declaratory opinion that limiting marriage to one man and one woman was "discriminatory" and "unconstitutional." The court however, issued no valid or enforceable court order, as Mr. Rauch incorrectly asserts. Under the California Constitution, only the people can revoke or amend an initiative statute. None of the other three branches can revoke or amend one in any way unless the initiative measure itself so provides. Prop 22 contains no such provision as Judge Baxter clearly affirmed in his dissent.

The marriage certificates which have been illegally altered and issued in California with Governor Schwarzenegger's authorization remain as null and void as those illegally altered and issued by former Governor Romney in Massachusetts when he, like Governor Schwarzenegger, speciously claimed that the "court legalized same sex marriage" and that he was merely "enforcing the law."

Whether or not "gay marriage" is "good" for America is worthy of further debate.

As to whether it is "legal" in California, Massachusetts, or anywhere else in America is not.


Gregg Jackson

Los Angeles, CA

Gregg Jackson is the author of "Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies: Issue by Issue Responses to the Most Common Claims of the Left from A to Z" and talk radio show host on WRKO in Boston.

http://lgstarr.blogspot.com/2008/06/gay-marriage-not-legal-in-californiaor.html

Courts Ban Marriage in California

California will no longer recognize marriage. No man or woman may become "husband" and "wife" from July of 2008 until this tyranny is overthrown. I'd checked this web site more than once:

http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/news/Pages/Update05-08.aspx.

This link leads to copies of the new marriage certificates, now the only marriage certificates, issued in California.

Here are the specific links:
http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/news/Documents/Sample%20VS24C%20(6-08).pdf
http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/news/Documents/Sample%20VS123%20(6-08).pdf
http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/news/Documents/Sample%20VS%20117%20(6-08).pdf
http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/news/Documents/Sample%20V116%20(6-08).pdf
http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/news/Documents/Sample%20V115%20(6-08).pdf
http://www.cdph.ca.gov/HealthInfo/news/Documents/08-07%20Updated%20Marriage%20Forms%20ACL.pdf

I had to return several times because I continued to believe I misunderstood what I was reading. However, sadly, what I read the first time bore the test of further scrutiny. I decided that since I needed to view the site more than once, I ought to have the link available for those who suffer the same disbelief.

It is an interesting dishonesty. The government agencies were rearranged and then a new set of rules set in motion. No legislature was consulted. No new law was written. Apparently, one would have to guess, the Supremes, who spelled none of this out in their opinion, simply approved the proceedings. Otherwise, who has the authority to make this change? In truth the courts do not. This should be a constitutional quagmire.

Note #4 On the California Court's Opinion re Marriage

Madness as a Contagion

If nothing else, the California Court's opinion "re Marriage..." is an important piece of literature for the study of group delusion. As Note #3 below decried, the Supreme Court's 'logic' relating to the semantics of Proposition 22 seemed to have more in common with the ravings of an alcoholic than a legal dissertation. Finally, about page 32, we get this grudging admission about Proposition 22:

"Although we agree with plaintiffs that the principal motivating factor underlying Proposition 22 appears to have been to ensure that California would not recognize marriages of same-sex couples that might be validly entered into in another jurisdiction, we conclude the statutory provision proposed by this initiative measure and adopted by the voters — which, we note again, provides in full that “[o]nly marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California” — cannot properly be interpreted to apply only to marriages performed outside of California. "

At last, we think, the Court's delirium tremors are over; no more visions of pink elephants are forth coming. Not so... not exactly... Three pages later, on page 35, this court is still apologizing to the word twisters for not going along with their delusions in this instance. Its majority writes:

"Accordingly, it is appropriate to interpret the limitations imposed by section 308.5 as applicable to marriages performed in California as well as to out-of-state marriages, in order to avoid the serious federal constitutional questions that would be posed by a contrary interpretation."

To be fair, the legislature the people of California elected has twice tried to legislate same sex marriages in California, and, twice, this has been vetoed by the governor of California. It is likely, and important for future scientific study, that constant discussion and unimaginably comic interludes between such seriously stuffed shirts, might easily have affected the California Supremes. In fairness to all madmen, all madmen should be recalled from public office. At least in the case of the governor of California, his lunacy, as expressed below, will pass from the government by term limit. If the court’s paraphrase of the governor can be trusted, here is clear evidence of the communication of lunacy, not by microbe, but by the written word:

"In contrast to the position advanced by the Proposition 22 Legal Defense Fund and the Campaign, the Attorney General and the Governor recognize that the California Constitution does not define or limit the marriage relationship to a union of a man and a woman. (108)"

If in Perez the California Supreme Court found a 'right to marry' in the State Constitution, and if, as the statutes and history of this word in California make plain, marriage is a gender-positive institution, not a gender neutral one, then it is equally plain that any redefinition of marriage making it gender-neutral defrauds the people of California of the fundamental right to marry found in its constitution. Again, it must be of interest to those who study mass hallucinations and other such phenomenon, that the madness of the executive and legislative branches have contributed to the Court’s delusions. It is the kooky carryings on of these representatives of the people that provides the excuse for the court to run on in maniacal proclamations of its sole power. The Court’s opinion, with the passion of Dr. Frankenstein himself, lifts its voice to the heavens, yelling over and over again words about irrelevant civil rights cases that completely contrast to it own findings earlier in its own opinion:

“Although, as noted at the outset of this opinion (ante, at pp. 4-5), we agree with the Attorney General and the Governor that the separation-of-powers doctrine precludes a court from ‘redefining’ marriage on the basis of the court’s view that public policy or the public interest would be better served by such a revision, we disagree with the Attorney General and the Governor to the extent they suggest that the traditional or long-standing nature of the current statutory definition of marriage exempts the statutory provisions embodying that definition from the constraints imposed by the California Constitution, or that the separation-of-powers doctrine precludes a court from determining that constitutional question… (109).”

What separation of powers doctrine? Who cares? The court quotes the governor’s opinion about the Constitution, not case law, not precedent, not the constitution itself, as the basis for doing whatever the court feels like doing. Since this recitation of its own power to do whatsoever it wants in the name of civil rights goes on page after page after page, it is plain that this court’s madness is a communicable disease. Mobs inspire one another with paranoid delusions until they do violence. So this mobbed up court has been inspired to run riot, tearing our constitution to pieces and depriving Californians of its civil rights.

Note 3 On the California Supreme Court’s Opinion

The Ballot initiative embodied in Proposition 22 was almost as weak in its language as the opinion rendered on marriage in California by the appellate court (Note 2). Section 308.5, the initiative statute submitted to the voters of California as Proposition 22 at the March 7, 2000 reads: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” The voters of California and the authors of Proposition 22, however, have some excuse. The statue was designed not only to restate the definition of marriage for California, but also to repudiate the “so-called” marriages enacted in the state of Massachusetts. Moreover, no one wants to write definitions of marriage into the law that are so precise that when our sixth grade son proclaims the Constitution in the classroom we are sadly obliged to wash his mouth out with soap. Finally, the elegant simplicity of Prop. 22's language is exactly what is needed in a ballot initiative.

Nevertheless, it is important that we don’t encourage the madmen in their delusions. There is no such thing as a marriage that does not take place between a man and a woman, and California law, sadly, needs to say just this. How ridiculous that we must be drawn into such insanity by our highest state courts. How degrading that we must explain again and again the basic meanings of words to those who are supposed to exercise jurisprudence. It is a tragic day in America that we have come to such complete barbarism in the midst of a land of plenty and of blessing. Perhaps a simpler language might be best fitted to the people’s task as warders, unpaid warders, of the State Sanitarium: “Marriage only exists between a man and a woman, and California does not recognize the 'so-called' marriages enacted elswere.”

To add insult to insanity, California’s highest court had the temerity to go on record and argue that the voters of California had no idea what they were voting for. The court argues that it is rational to construe the language of Proposition 22 to apply only to marriages outside California (page 28, paragraph 1). There is abundant evidence of Proposition 22’s intent. The intent of the law, not the ability of men to defraud the voters by twisting words, is the exact purview of courts. To actually take the side of the word twisters, charlatans, and hucksters on our tax dime, to wrest this statute out of its plain context while pretending to wear the garb of justice is either the babblings of madmen, the height of arrogance, or outright criminal malfeasance.

Note #2 On the California Supreme Court's Opinion: the Appellate Court

The California Appellate Court did not seem to be forceful enough in the language of its opinion. This, in turn, left the Supreme Court a little wiggle room in which to continue its legal chicanery and "gottcha" word games. Here, from page 51 of the opinion (with my addendums and notes in parentheses):

“…the constitutional right to marry under the California Constitution properly should be interpreted to afford only a right to marry a person of the opposite sex,”

(These words ought to have been included for plainness: 'The constitutional right to marry, discovered by case law under the California Constitution, was surely in the mind of the framing court, a right for those who can marry to marry. There is no injury to the plaintiffs because they do not have the ability to be married to each other. Hence, their ability to marry a member of the opposite sex remains without offense...')

"...and that the constitutional right that plaintiffs actually are asking the court to recognize is a constitutional 'right to same-sex marriage.'”

(These words ought to have been redacted for accuracy: "same sex marriage". Instead, these words might have been more prudent: 'right to an imaginary kind of marriage that does not exist. Since there is no such thing, the plaintiffs might just as well complain that the Constitution of California has unjustly restricted their ability to freely speak with griffins.')

“In the absence of any historical or precedential support for such a right in this state, the Court of Appeal determined that plaintiffs’ claim of the denial of a fundamental right under the California Constitution must be rejected."

On this last paragraph, the appellate court cannot be undermined. However, they had already given the court some unintended leverage for its deceitful word game:

“— the (Supreme) court (in Perez -- about interracial marriage) did not characterize the constitutional right that the plaintiffs in that case sought to obtain as “a right to interracial marriage” and did not dismiss the plaintiffs’ constitutional challenge on the ground that such marriages never had been permitted in California.”

This is true, but the court in Perez did not have to look far for the definition of marriage. This was found in the entire history of the civilized world. In fact, no state, except those in these United States, may have ever been so backwards as to refuse the right to marry on the basis of race. The 1944 Perez decision was correct because the right to pursue happiness and liberty was not limited by race. The Court could find this right in Perez because a. Jefferson had slipped this right into the U.S. Constitution while those who ratified it were too stupid to notice or too greedy to care, and b. this fundamental human right was ordained by God for all people (The other rights unremunerated by the founding documents include all such God given abilities; however, it is the right of the people to convene conventions to describe these yet unremunerated rights, for they have not been relinquished by the people of These United States to the Federal Courts or to the Supreme Courts. These unremunerated rights may only be set forth in a constitutional convention.).

In this case the rights are not limited by race, by gender, or by religion. In fact, the “marriage” gay rights activists envision are limited because of the inability of same sex couples to enter into marriage. The court will seek to redefine marriage to seek an offense that can only be remedied by a redefinition of marriage.

Note #1 on California's Supreme Court's Decision

Here is where the majority opinion takes up its argument:

“First, we must determine the nature and scope of the “right to marry” — a right that past cases establish as one of the fundamental constitutional rights embodied in the California Constitution…” (page 5, 2nd paragraph)..

The ‘right to marry’ is a phrase that does not exist in any way, shape or form in the California Constitution. It is a right that other judges have read into the constitution. This is what the court's opinion is saying when it says, "a right that past cases establish..."

The phrase “fundamental right to marriage” does not sound terribly suspect, even removed from its specific historic context. The historic context of course is that Jefferson put words in the United States Constitution that he knew the current Americans were not living up to. Patriotically, and with great dignity, California put these same words, with some cool addendums, into its constitution. Years later, a wise judge pointed out the trick Jefferson had played on his fellow Americans and, with as much force as the court could muster, ordered his fellow Americans to live up to their own words. Californians could not make interracial marriage illegal without a significant degree of hypocrisy.

Certainly, there are fundamental rights such as the right to bear arms and the right to free speech that come with limitations relative to age and background. The idea of a right to marry certainly seems consistent with the right to the pursuit of happiness that is the staple of the American Constitution. Likewise, California’s declaration of rights, like the United States Constitution, suggests that it may not have enumerated all of the inalienable rights, and it also includes the right to pursue happiness: “All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.” Still, wresting anything from its context is suspect. One has the fundamental right to marry if one is not already married, if the spouse is not coerced in some manner, if one is not a minor and so on. Nonetheless, who can argue that governments should not refuse to allow consenting adults marry?

The problem is not that same sex couples cannot marry; they can marry any member of the opposite sex they choose. That’s not the issue. Ironically, as becomes evidenced by the later, finer print of this document, the court must “expand” (according to the court) the “definition” of marriage to produce a. an offense and b. a union that same sex couples can enter into. With amazing, unwitting irony, the court has chosen to site the exact decision that makes its own ruling unconstitutional, for the court does not expand the definition of marriage at all. Instead, it radically limits marriage by proclaiming all marriages civil unions. There are no more husbands. There are no more wives. There will be no more fatherhood, and motherhood is banished. By defining marriage as something marriage isn’t, this court has denied the very “right to marry” that was declared to exist in the California by a former court.