This week the the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) heard cases regarding what marriage is and some of the commentary in the media has been excellent. All issues must be throught through carefully if we’re to avoid creating more messes than are already with us due to idiotic government policy. For anyone with the time to read some of the analysis this week the opportunity has certainly been there to learn “what marriage is.” Here are excerpts from Rush Limbaugh’s broadcast yesterday:
I’ve had a chance now to look at some of the oral arguments, and some of the liberal justices had some of the most penetrating, sensible questions yesterday. Like the wise Latina, the Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
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She made more sense than Ted Olson made. She said, “Given the way you are selling this –” this is my word, not hers ” — given the way you are selling this, how are there any limits on this behavior, as long as this is a right. Where are there any limits on this in terms of who can marry who and how many times and so forth.” And Olson started arguing (paraphrasing), “Well, it’s a right based on behavior.” And that caused her to, well, not flip her wig, but she nailed the guy. I mean, it was classic. Here it is. Judge, Justice Sotomayor: “Mr. Olson, the bottom line that you’re being asked — and it is one that I’m interested in the answer: If you say that marriage is a fundamental right, what state restrictions could ever exist?” And the wise Latina is right, at least on this one implied point. If this restriction is unconstitutional, what restrictions are not unconstitutional?
For example, marriage, you look it up in the dictionary. It’s a union of a man and a woman. But, all of a sudden, it isn’t going to be. It’s going to be a union and a man and a man, a woman and a woman, or — that’s her point — where are the restrictions. If marriage no longer means what it means, what state restrictions with respect to the number of people? This is the liberal justice asking this question: “What state restrictions with respect to the number of people that could get married, the incest laws, the mother and child, assuming that they are the age — I can accept that the state has probably an overbearing interest on protecting a child until they’re of age to marry, but what’s left?”
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Now, these are the kinds of questions that courts used to use to establish that somebody’s a lunatic, because everybody agreed they were crazy ideas. Now they’re being asked seriously, with the request carrying a desire for an intellectual answer, when it used to be thought of as absolute wacko to even consider this stuff. Now the proponents are being asked, “Well, where are the limits? If you say that marriage is a fundamental right, what state restrictions could ever exist?”See, one of the problems that has… Well, that’s not the correct way to phrase this because most people don’t even have a problem with this, but it still is a problem. One of the problems with this is the total ignorance — or if not ignorance, the willful ignoring — of the fact that rights don’t come from courts and that rights don’t come from other people and that rights don’t come from governments.
Whether Justice Sotomayor knows it or not, that really is the root of her question when she says, “If you say that marriage is a fundamental right, what state restrictions could ever exist?” There really can’t be any state restrictions on a right. A right comes from God. A right is natural law. There’s a right to be free, the natural yearning of the human spirit as established in our founding documents. Rights are not laws created by government. Rights are deduced by natural existence, natural law.
That’s been totally lost. As far as the low-information crowd’s concerned, rights come from law, from government, from your side winning and giving you permission to do stuff.
