Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
Although 75 percent of voters in Kentucky opted to affirm the meaning of marriage–the union between one man and one woman–a federal judge ruled that their will doesn’t count. An excerpt:
“Assuring equal protection for same-sex couples does not diminish the freedom of others to any degree,” U.S. District Judge John G. Heyburn II wrote today in a 19-page ruling. “Hopefully, even those opposed to or uncertain about same-sex marriage will see it that way in the future.”
He admitted, “The Supreme Court has not yet indicated a willingness to take” the view that “the fundamental right to marry encompasses same-sex marriage,” and doing so would be “a dramatic step.” Therefore, he did not take it.
However, the Supreme Court has never held that homosexuals are a protected “suspect class,” but he ruled they constituted “quasi-suspect class.” Such a class must possess “immutable defining characteristics.” As a result the amendment had to face a higher legal standard of review, intermediate scrutiny.
The problem with such rulings, and redefining marriage in general, is that they render the word marriage meaningless. A marriage consists of a husband and wife–two sex-dependent words. And there is no fundamental right to marry just anybody. You can’t marry a minor. You can’t marry your brother or sister. You can’t marry your dog. And if you’re a man, you can’t marry a man. There’s no such thing as a marriage between two men or two women. That brings up another point. Why limit the union to two people? Why is there a fundamental right that two enter such a union? One day soon, the U.S. Supreme Court will either hear or deny a case that involves five people wanting to “marry” as a unit. Pure, unadorned mockery.
“Judge Heyburn’s contention that ‘serious people’ don’t support the definition of marriage that has existed for millenia, demonstrates a measure of contempt – for tens of millions of citizens – wholly unacceptable from someone on the bench,” the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg said in a press release. “On the contrary, it is those like Judge Heyburn, who can conceive of no ‘rational basis’ for distinguishing the type of relationship which reproduces the human race from all other types of relationship, who cannot be considered ‘serious people.'”
Photo credit: Star Parker – Facebook
