Proposition 8, federalism, and freedom

I once discussed with a couple of law school buddies the episode of then Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore and Federal Judge Myron Thompson's brouhaha over Moore's Ten Commandments display in the Alabama courthouse.

They were giddy that Thompson had judicially thumped Moore by ordering the display removed on the threat of huge fines and, ostensibly, military action if Moore did not comply.

When I suggested (only partially tongue-in-cheek) that Moore resist the order and compel Thompson to send in the Green Berets to storm the courthouse and take the Ten Commandments by force, they looked at me as if I had just performed an alien mutilation on a local cow.

They had no concept that significant issues of state sovereignty, federalism, and religious freedom were at stake. They were only impressed with the power of the federal judiciary.

We are again impressed with the power of the federal judiciary, but not in an altogether favorable sense. A single federal judge, Vaughan R. Walker, struck down the will of the California populace to find a "right" to homosexual marriage in the U.S. Constitution.

As Albert Mohler expressed it: "Judge Walker’s decision is sweeping and comprehensive, basically affirming every argument and claim put forth by those demanding that California’s Proposition 8 be declared unconstitutional. That proposition, affirmed by a clear majority of California voters, amended the state’s constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. In one brazen act of judicial energy, California’s voters were told that they had no right to define marriage, and thousands of years of human wisdom were discarded as irrational."

This should come as no surprise, because all of government has come to signify the interest of a few, supposing that they are the brightest and wisest of the bunch, in controlling the lives of everyone else. From using Google Earth to find swimming pool criminals, to ordering every American to purchase health insurance, to requiring every religious objector to accept homosexual marriage, the trend is disturbingly definite.

Homosexual marriage, however, is a sort of piece de resistance: should its proponents succeed in making this the law of the land, it will have codified the underlying aim of homsexuality in general, which is to flout openly the Lordship of God in the world he created, and to revel in rebellion.