SSM Decision: How the
Supreme Court Violated the Constitution
Written on Monday, July
6, 2015 by David L. Goetsch
No person living today should have been
surprised when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage in
Obergefell v. Hodges. At least five of the justices regularly ignore the
Constitution and legislate from the bench. In fact, with the current
composition of the Court the decision on SSM was a foregone conclusion the
minute the case was granted certiorari. Many Americans are upset and even angry
about the Court’s decision, but what is even more disappointing than the actual
decision is the fact that the Justices agreed to hear the case in the first
place. They never should have, and did only to press the personal agendas of
five of them.
The Court’s decision did not define
marriage, it re-defined marriage.
This is a key point. The Supreme Court
was not asked to define marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, it was asked to
re-define it. In doing so, the Justices violated the Constitution in three
ways. Specifically, the five Justices whose opinions prevailed violated: 1) the
moral law upon which the Constitution is based, 2) the concept of federalism
set forth in the Constitution, and 3) the requirement in the Constitution that
every state be guaranteed a Republican form of government. In addition to these
violations of the Constitution, the Supreme Court also violated the
long-honored tradition in the law of basing new decisions on legal precedents.
The concept is known in the language of legal scholars as Stare Decisis.
(Let stand what has been decided).
As to violating the moral law, the Supreme Court simply ignored the
fact that the framers of the Constitution were guided and informed by the words
of Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence when he wrote that America is
to be governed according to “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” The laws
of nature’s God clearly prohibit same-sex marriage—just compare the anatomies
of men and women—and so do the laws of God. Marriage as a concept was not
invented nor was it defined by man. It was defined by God when He created Adam
and then gave him Eve as his wife. Consequently, to attempt to redefine
marriage is to ignore the moral law upon which our nation was founded and our
Constitution written.
The Supreme Court also violated the
concept of federalism established in the Constitution. Federalism is a concept in which
government is limited and most of the enumerated duties of government are
assigned to the individual states as are any duties not specifically assigned
to the federal government. With federalism the national government’s powers are
purposefully limited. In fact, the enumerated powers of the federal government
described in the Constitution total only seventeen. There is nothing in the
Constitution about marriage, much less an enumerated power concerning marriage
given to the federal government. Consequently, the issue of same-sex marriage
is a state issue—not a federal issue. In other words, the Supreme Court should
never have agreed to hear Obergefell v. Hodges in the first place. By hearing the
case, the Justices unlawfully impinged on the prerogatives of the states and,
by doing so, violated the Constitution.
Article IV, Section 4 of the
Constitution reads in part: “The United States shall guarantee to every State
in this Union a republican form of government.” This means that the states are
empowered to elect public officials who, in turn, enact public policy for the
state. For the Supreme Court to over-rule these state-level policies is a
clear violation of a constitutional guarantee. Since 30 of the 50 states
has already passed legislation verifying that marriage is the union of one man
and one women, the Supreme Court violated the guarantee of federalism set forth
in Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution by ruling on Obergefell v. Hodges;
a case the Court should have refused to even hear.
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