First Scalia, then Higgins.
A writer at the National Journal said it this way:
Scalia: ‘High-Handed’ Kennedy Has Declared Us ‘Enemies of the Human Race’
Dissenting from this morning’s opinion on the Defense of Marriage Act, Justice Antonin Scalia – as expected – holds nothing back.
In a ripping dissent, Scalia says that Justice Anthony Kennedy and his colleagues in the majority have resorted to calling opponents of gay marriage “enemies of the human race.”
Here are the excerpts from Scalia:
But to defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to con- demn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions. To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution. In the majority’s judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement. To question its high-handed invalidation of a presumptively valid statute is to act (the majority is sure) with the purpose to “dis- parage,” “injure,” “degrade,” “demean,” and “humiliate” our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homo- sexual. All that, simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence— indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history. It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race.
[…]
It takes real cheek for today’s majority to assure us, as it is going out the door, that a constitutional requirement to give formal recognition to same-sex marriage is not at issue here—when what has preceded that assurance is a lecture on how superior the majority’s moral judgment in favor of same-sex marriage is to the Congress’s hateful moral judgment against it. I promise you this: The only thing that will “confine” the Court’s holding is its sense of what it can get away with.
[…]
In the majority’s telling, this story is black-and-white: Hate your neighbor or come along with us. The truth is more complicated. It is hard to admit that one’s political opponents are not monsters, especially in a struggle like this one, and the challenge in the end proves more than today’s Court can handle. Too bad. A reminder that disagreement over something so fundamental as marriage can still be politically legitimate would have been a fit task for what in earlier times was called the judicial temperament. We might have covered ourselves with honor today, by promising all sides of this debate that it was theirs to settle and that we would respect their resolution. We might have let the People decide.
But that the majority will not do. Some will rejoice in today’s decision, and some will despair at it; that is the nature of a controversy that matters so much to so many. But the Court has cheated both sides, robbing the winners of an honest victory, and the losers of the peace that comes from a fair defeat. We owed both of them better. I dissent.
Here’s an excerpt from what the Illinois Family Institute’s Laurie Higgins had to say:
Alarming Supreme Court Marriage Decisions
Today’s decisions will not contribute to a strengthening of marriage or an advance for equality or movement toward smaller government or a victory for justice or increased protection for children. Quite the opposite.
And while the red cape of this decision is fluttered in front of the charging marriage-destruction bull, Americans will continue to avert their gaze from the essential questions of whether homosexuality is really analogous to race; whether same-sex marriage is really analogous to interracial marriage; why marriage should be limited to two people; why the government is involved in marriage; and whether children have an inherent right to be raised by a mother and father, particularly their own their biological mother and father.
Marriage has a nature that the government merely recognizes and regulates. The state does not create something called “marriage” out of whole cloth. And the reason the state is involved in marriage is to protect the needs and rights of any children that may result from the particular type of sexual union that is marriage.
If marriage is solely constituted by intense loving feelings with no connection to sexual complementarity or procreative potential, there is no reason to prohibit government recognition of plural unions as marriages and, indeed, no reason for government involvement at all.
These are two more sustenance tubes yanked from the dying body that is marriage in America. It’s truly a sad day for America, and most especially America’s children.
