Same Sex Marriage at the Court

Allahpundit has a nice run down of early tea-leaf-reading regarding what the Court may do – some are arguing that the Court will just side-step the issue (which would have the effect of invalidating Prop 8 in California but not asserting a constitutional right to same sex marriage – a half victory and half loss for both sides), while others are still pretty certain that Roberts will ensure the Court comes down on the side of same sex marriage on the Ruling Class theory that its inevitable and thus the Court better not find itself in a Plessy situation.  This is the view I hold – while three of the Justices (Thomas, Scalia and Alito) actually understand the Constitution and law and other such trivialities, the other six to a greater or lesser degree are more influenced by what is fashionable and so will go with what they perceive elite opinion desires (yes, we may get on this – as we have on other issues – a ruling which merely ensures that a Justice won’t have to be embarrassed when asked a question at a DC cocktail party).  While there cannot be a right to marry – because marriage requires the voluntary consent of at least two people – I believe we’ll have a 6/3 ruling in favor of a constitutionally protected “right” to marry, which means all laws prohibiting same-sex marriage will be invalidated.  The people have voted and voted and voted and made their views clear – and 6 Justices will soon ignore all that and just do what the Ruling Class wants…and they’ll do it without even for a moment thinking of the ramifications of their action (two or three years from now we will start getting the cases where a man is suing to be able to marry his brother, etc).

But, what of it?  Its a Phyrrhic victory by a dying Ruling Class.  Yesterday I came across a quote attributed to the Prime Minister of Luxembourg regarding the ongoing financial crisis in Europe – in effect, the man was quoted as saying that of course everyone knows what to do, but none of them know how to get re-elected after they do it.  In other words, with the failure of the system already apparent and everyone already knowing what needs to be done, they still won’t do it because they don’t want to be booted out of office at the next election and lose their pathetic, little place at the public trough.  These are the people who are in charge all around the world – and they are finished.  Clinging to power like Bourbons or Romanovs, they will soon be swept away.  Here and everywhere around the world.

Why gay marriage?  Not because the people want it – their votes show otherwise.  Not because even most gay people want it.  No, its only wanted because it allows the twits who run our society to continue to view themselves as brave, advanced people who are taking on the corrupt Powers…namely, the Christian Church, which hasn’t had any real power in centuries.  Of course, none of these brave souls in favor of gay marriage will actually go out and try to stop Muslims from murdering gays…because that would take some genuine guts.   100 or so years from now, no one will be marrying people of the same sex – because only an irrational, dying society would allow such a thing…and by 100 years from now, this irrational society will be dead, and its replacement, being rational, won’t go in for such nonsense.

UPDATE:  Bit of a humorous note on the cowardly Senate Democrats who are “evolving” on gay marriage now that they don’t have to face their voters for 6 more years.  The first two were firm against it, back last fall when it could have cost them re-election…

UPDATE II:  And if we can get 10,000 people to march in favor of marriage when gay marriage is allegedly popular, then just wait and see what happens if the SC rams it down our throats…in a few years, we’ll get a million…

Can Gay Marriage be a Conservative Position?

Allahpundit notes a Supreme Court brief signed by a lot of Republicans urging the Court to affirm a right to same sex marriage – from the New York Times article, we get this quote:

“We are trying to say to the court that we are judicial and political conservatives, and it is consistent with our values and philosophy for you to overturn Proposition 8,” said Ken Mehlman, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, who came out as gay several years ago. He is on the board of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which brought the California suit, and has spent months in quiet conversations with fellow Republicans to gather signatures for the brief.

There are two issues here for me:

1.  Is there a right to marry?

2.  Would legalizing same-sex marriage strengthen the institution of marriage?

Gay Rights Activist: Dissenters Not Welcome in Chicago

That is the only way to read this – from the Chicago Tribune:

…Ald.Proco “Joe” Moreno announced this week that he will block Chick-fil-A’s effort to build its second Chicago store, which would be in the Logan Square neighborhood, following company President Dan Cathy’s remarks last week that he was “guilty as charged” for supporting the biblical definition of marriage as between a man and woman.

“If you are discriminating against a segment of the community, I don’t want you in the 1st Ward,” Moreno told the Tribune on Tuesday…

Thing is, Christians, orthodox Jews…even Muslims…are also “guilty as charged” in supporting the biblical definition of marriage.  If the standard for being allowed in to Chicago is “be in favor of gay marriage” then Chicago has just said that millions of people – especially believers in traditional religions – are not allowed in Chicago.  Want to build a new church in Chicago?  Don’t bother – you’re not welcome as you don’t fit in with Chicago values…which, I guess, revolve around gay marriage, political corruption and an amazingly high murder rate.

I’ve never eaten at  Chick-fil-A, but you can bet your bottom dollar that I will as soon as I can.  This is just a disgusting, fascist attempt to suppress people for merely dissenting.  You don’t see people on our side trying to stop a gay rights group from opening an office – even in heavily Christian areas.  Free speech is free speech – everyone is allowed to speak their mind and there’s no call for anyone to deny a person or group the right to operate simply because they have views one disagrees with.  But that is not how our liberal fascists operate:  so filled with hatred they demand that anyone who disagrees shut up and go away.

And they wonder why we don’t like them…wonder why we are working hard in 2012 to utterly crush liberalism at the polls.  We’re doing it to save America…if these fascist twits get their way, we’re all doomed.

UPDATE:  I edited this blog entry because I don’t want the argument to become about what is a Christian.  This case is a matter of a fascist attempt to suppress people for dissenting.

Cheapening The Institution Of Marriage

I really have no idea who Kim Kardashian is or why so many find who she is and what she does even remotely important.

Nevertheless, the reaction to her 72-day marriage has proponents of gay marriage using her as an example of how heterosexual on their own “cheapen the institution” of marriage more than legal gay marriage does.

So, can someone tell me, how this doesn’t cheapen the institution:

Conan O’Brien hosted his shows under a different moon this week, one hanging in the Beacon Theater. For his weeklong filming stint in New York, O’Brien packed his shows full of surprises culminating in an on-air wedding of his costume designer Scott Cronick and his partner David Gorshein, which the late show host officiated.

As the homosexual community pretends to be the new gatekeepers of the sanctity of the institution of marriage, I want to know how having your wedding on late night television, officiated by a media personality respected the sanctity of marriage.

This is hardly the only thing that bugs me. As homosexuals claim the higher ground on respecting the institution, I must ask how planning mass gay weddings doesn’t cheapen the institution.

The issue of who/what cheapens the institution of marriage is certainly up for discussion, and I would argue that short marriages, show weddings, etc. etc, are symptoms of the actual problem, which in my opinion is a cultural thing which likely comes from Hollywood. But, that’s a bigger topic for another time.

If homosexuals want to claim they do more to respect the institution of marriage than their heterosexual counterparts, the least they could do is take the institution seriously, and not treat gay marriage like a contest they’ve won, and find all sorts of ways to flaunt it, like the only reason they are getting married is to rub it in the faces of gay marriage opponents.

Is Tolerance an End, or a Means?

Lots of continuing commentary going on in the blogosphere, especially the Catholic part of it, regarding the Accepting Abundance “public morality” post we discussed here yesterday.  Over at Little Catholic Bubble, Leila posted an interesting quote:

We need to remember that tolerance is not a Christian virtue. Charity, justice, mercy, prudence, honesty — these are Christian virtues. And obviously, in a diverse community, tolerance is an important working principle. But it’s never an end itself. In fact, tolerating grave evil within a society is itself a form of serious evil. – Archbishop Chaput

The left long ago learned the trick of using a nice-sounding word to cover a wicked agenda.  The key is to find a word that is hard to argue against, claim that the word covers some desired, liberal goal and then say anyone who opposes this goal is opposed to the nice-sounding word.  “Tolerance” is one of those words being misused – like using “choice” for abortion; if you are opposed to abortion you are not opposed to murdering babies, you are opposed to people choosing, you see?  These days, the left uses the word “tolerance” as the nice-sounding word to cover the concept of homosexuality being morally the same as heterosexuality.

Just as the left would never get anywhere advocating for baby killing, so they wouldn’t get anywhere trying to convince common-sense people that gay and straight sex are morally the same…so, “choice” instead of “baby killing” and “tolerance” instead of “gay same as straight”.  And if you oppose the concept of homosexuality being morally the same as heterosexuality, then you are being intolerant…even though you’ve never said anything against gay people and, indeed, strongly advocate that every sign of unjust discrimination against them be removed (as all believing Catholics, for instance, hold).

We need to scrape away the lies which have grown up in our society -the various words and phrases the left has twisted to cover the bad and unpopular things they wish to impose on us.  Tolerance is a means, not an end – it is something we do because we wish to live in a peaceful, civil society…but it must not and cannot mean approval.  I am not being intolerant when I say that homosexual sex is inherently disordered…I am merely stating the truth as I understand it.  If the left wants to persist in using that word, then we have to force them to use it properly…and right now, if “tolerance” is the goal, then they’ve won…gay people are broadly tolerated in the American populace and none but a few kooks would dream of putting the slightest legal disability upon homosexuals (good to keep in mind, liberals, that I and plenty of other conservative Christians are, for instance, not opposed to openly gay people serving in the military…and until you went and tried to judicially impose gay marriage, most of us were in favor of some sort of civil union legislation). But that is as far as we can go – to go beyond that, especially for a Christian, is impossible.  We can’t say that what is wrong is right – we are, indeed, supposed to die rather than do any such thing.

Let us start having debates without lies – no more code words, twisted phrases or rhetorical misdirection.  Words mean what they mean, and we should use them as they were intended.  Truth is not subjective – what is right is not dependent upon the ideological viewpoint of the individual.  There is a truth to adhere to – to discover as best we can and then attempt to apply it as best we can in our lives.  To do otherwise is to sink in to a morass of dishonesty where reason cannot exist…and to play the liberals game of undermining us by the clever tricks of the propagandist.

A Spasm of Liberal-Fascist Hatred

Stacy Trasancos vented a bit on her blog, Accepting Abundance, the other day – while she mentioned specifically the actions of openly gay people engaging in public displays of affection in the local park, the clear issue was not whether or not two gay men will hold hands, but whether or not any part of the public square will be kept clear of the immorality of our age.  The natural reaction of our loving, tolerant liberals was best encapsulated in this comment:

…Your view of what is sinful, immoral, and the like are because of your own thought processes. YOUR definition of sin and immorality are not the universal definitions and immorality. How dare you be so arrogant as to believe that your opinions are higher than others’. F*** off you ugly Christian slut…

I’d have to say that better than 90% of the comments attacking Mrs. Trasancos are “anonymous”.  Which is probably a good thing because it would embarrass the authors if their names were known – hard to find such a collection of ignorance, hatred and misery in such a small area.  These people don’t understand what the article is about, they don’t know what a Catholic like Mrs. Trasancos believes and they don’t know what “tolerance” and “liberty” mean.  Their comments range from the mildly snarky to the crudely vulgar to the downright blasphemous.  At no point is there any attempt to engage Mrs. Trasancos as a human being – to try and see things from her point of view or show some respect for the fact that a fellow human being courageously put their name to an opinion in the public square.  Just anonymous, ignorant hatred is what she gets.

And why did she get this?  Because she dared to question the liberal party line on morality.  The liberal party line on morality is essentially negative in character – whatever breaks down the Judeo-Christian morality of Western Civilization is morally good, whatever upholds it is morally bad.  If you step outside those parameters, you are going to be attacked…and as Mrs. Trasancos found, attacked quite cruelly and nauseatingly by people who would never show the courage to stand up in public and actually proclaim their beliefs under their own name.

I greatly sympathize with Mrs. Trasancos as I have been on the receiving end of this sort of thing, too.  I’ve had my past dug in to, my car vandalized, I’ve been stalked at work, my computer has been hacked, people have tried to put a photo of my house in the web (and in their eagerness to harm me they actually put up a photo of a house belonging to a different Mark Noonan; there are several people with my name in Las Vegas).  I’ve had a radio host suggest that people beat me up and one kind liberal opined upon a time that I was a fit subject to be hanged from a lamp post with a meat hook.  And all of that just because I, too, dissent from the liberal orthodoxy.

Make no mistake about it, if the people who filled Mrs. Trasancos’ blog comments with filth and vituperation ever got the chance, they would imprison and kill people like myself and Mrs. Trasancos.  Plenty of liberals scream with anger when I used the term “liberal-fascist”, but I chose that phrase with care.  It is an exact description of that species of person who is liberal and demands that certain views be silenced in the public square – classified as “hate speech” and declared first out of bounds and, eventually, illegal.  Inside of every liberal there is an NKVD agent straining to break free.

Mrs. Trasancos has asserted that the hate won’t stop her – and I applaud her courage.  The one thing the left would really like is to just be able to shout down voices of reason.  It is hard, at times, to stand against the fury of people who will go straight to the lowest gutter hoping that by being vile, they can disgust decent people and convince them to leave the public square.  We dare not let them do this.  Firm in our faith, ready for whatever sacrifice we are called upon to make, we must remain in the world while never being of it.  Our duty – to God, ourselves and our fellows – is to do what is right, even if everyone disagrees and hates us for doing it (and Our Lord did warn us that we would be hated on account of Him).  This is just part of the task of a Christian; indeed, the task of anyone who really believes in God – and if we carry it out faithfully, then even our defeats are victories…but the really good thing is that when we do stand firm, we win far more than we lose.

The time is coming when one side or the other will prevail…and we on our side already know who the Victor is.

Changing the GOP Gay Debate

I didn’t watch the GOP debate – took the wife out to dinner and looked over ultra-sound photos of one of two coming grand children (one coming in September, another in February).  This seemed to me a better use of my time – I tend not to like debates, at all, because they run to the absurd…and when you’ve got more than two candidates up there, just more absurd.  A debate should be between two candidates who ask each other questions.

I’ve read some of the after-action reports and it looks like no one hit it out of the park – which is to be expected, as its impossible to score big when you’ve got that many people up there.  Bottom line for the GOP is that any of the candidates are vastly superior to Obama, if on nothing else than they are all, to greater or lesser degree, in touch with reality while Obama is waaaay the heck out there in liberal fantasy-land.  But one thing did interest me as I read the after-action reports – a linked article from NBC:

Santorum continues anti-gay rhetoric, takes shot at Bachmann, rest of field

Rick Santorum today finally wrapped up his 50-city tour de Iowa.

He continued to press anti-gay views, saying that calling same-sex marriage a marriage would be like calling a cup of tea a basketball.

He repeatedly quoted a study that families do better in heterosexual marriages. Though that study actually uses the phrase “nuclear” family, which can include same-sex couples…

This is what passes for a news report – pure, unadulterated editorializing.  It would pass entirely un-noticed had it been a Daily Kos entry.  But since it is an MSM report – and thus a DNC press release, as it were – it tells us what the MSM/DNC wants…a big debate about social issues, with the GOP cast in the usual role of bigots.

What the report calls “anti-gay” views by Santorum are, or course, just bedrock, Catholic/Christian views on sexual and marriage matters.  Any sex outside marriage is inherently disordered, and as marriage is meant for the formation of integral families with the potential for naturally born children, same sex couples cannot licitly participate in it.  You can disagree with these views, but to call them “anti-gay” is to be a liar.  This, of course, is something no person of the left has a problem with…using situational ethics, it is ok to lie as long as it advances your cause.  By calling them “anti-gay” and thus implying a nasty bigotry to Santorum – and, by extension, all conservative GOPers – the MSM/DNC is showings its hand…cook up a case of bigotry against the GOP, set GOPer against GOPer on the issue and then allow Obama to portray himself as the voice of reason (and remember, Obama will not jettison his official opposition to gay marriage until after the election…until then, he’s still opposed but is “growing” and “studying” and being just one heck of a reasonable guy).

The key for the GOP in defusing this and turning it to our advantage is not to engage directly on the gay marriage issue – or, indeed, any of the contentious, social issues.  Our job is to point out the general moral collapse in our society and lay the blame for it squarely where it belongs – on liberal Big Government.  The riots in Britain give us the perfect opportunity to turn this debate firmly our way – we can point out that decades of welfare, moral relativism and general societal disintegration have led Britain to a place where welfare bums riot, the police are scared to act and anyone who tries to defend his life and property is at risk of arrest.  This is where the liberals are leading us – and if we want to avoid this trap then we need a firm, moral leadership which will insist that everyone pull their weight, that everyone live up to their moral responsibilities and that we start putting pressure on the purveyors of filth to stop it.

Think about how it is now – we rat bastards in the GOP have to stand athwart that nice, gay couple the MSM/DNC will highlight.  We have to tell Jack and Fred, who have been in a relationship for 20 years, that we won’t allow them to marry…and the narrative will be that it’s just because we’re nasty and cruel.  The truth of the matter is that gay marriage is a symptom, not the bedrock problem.  The real problem is that we’ve got moral decay which has led us to the point it seems reasonable that gays should marry…just as it seems reasonable that millions of able bodied should be on disability; just as it seems reasonable that illegitimacy is common; just as it seems reasonable pornography is easily available…one bit of social decay after another, but each individually something which is hard to combat.  Lump them all together and demonstrate where they are leading us, and it becomes a clear problem and an issue we can win on.

Leave aside the details, deal with the broader issue.  Take on what is overwhelmingly wrong rather than trying to attack each separate manifestation of societal decay.  Remember, we need a revolution to fix America – its gone way past bit by bit reform.  The whole socio-politico-economic system needs to be revamped from top to bottom.  Getting tangled up in small time details just plays in to the left’s hands…it allow them to attack us as bigots while the truth is that they need to be condemned as destroyers of America.