Michael McConnell: The Constitution and Same-Sex Marriage

[Valin]

WSJ:

Next week the Supreme Court will be asked to decide an issue in an area in which it has said it has no jurisdiction.

MICHAEL MCCONNELL

3/21/13

 

For most Americans, the Supreme Court cases being heard on Tuesday and Wednesday next week are about same-sex marriage. But the cases—Hollingsworth v. Perry (the Proposition 8 case from California) and U.S. v. Windsor (the Defense of Marriage Act case)—also are a test of the nation's democratic and decentralized constitutional structure. These cases thus are not just about marriage. They are about how we reach decisions regarding matters of deep moral significance in our federal republic.

 

We learned from Roe v. Wade that the Supreme Court endangers its own legitimacy and exacerbates social conflict when it seeks to resolve moral-legal questions on which the country is deeply divided without a strong basis in the text of the Constitution. The court sometimes intervenes when the legislatures of the 50 states are approaching a consensus. When it jumps into a live political controversy, the justices look like they are acting like legislators.

 

The system today, without the Supreme Court's intervention, is working as it should. Representatives of the people are deliberating. "We the People" are thinking. So far, nine states have extended marriage to same-sex couples; many others chosen to explicitly endorse traditional marriage. Those choices distress advocates on either side of the matter when their wishes have been disappointed.

 

(Snip)

 

 

Mr. McConnell, a former federal judge, is a law professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at the Stanford Law School, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

[Draggingtree]

Gay marriage further proves we are a nation that no longer fears God and are no longer a nation that is under God

 

By: RealQuiet (Diary) | March 22nd, 2013 at 01:02 AM

 

It would seem that America’s moral decline is now picking up in speed, exhibiting a parallel mirror to what our national debt that has been quickening as well. I don’t really find this to be a coincidence. I blame we more as apathetic, complacent, self-righteous Christians than those who engage in a rebellious lifestyle. It is not my place to condemn those that engage in that lifestyle and I certainly do not want to berate or demean them. Tolerance and compromise of sin is proving to be the undoing of our country which was once great. There are a number of reasons I believe this and I admit, it sometimes makes my head spin just how big our problems have become and how fast the country has gotten off track.

 

I readily admit that I have been apathetic, complacent, and self-righteous in my heart many times in my life. I have been more worried about my own problems rather than getting out there and deepening my friendships and be an example of Christ wherever I go and to anyone I meet. I along with a great many others have strayed down the path that if I just work harder, make more money, enlarge my bank account and get to “financial independence”, that my problems will go away and then I will do as I am commanded to do by my Lord. What a foolish and selfish mindset. Too many churches have fallen into the trap today of becoming Church, Inc., more worried about growing their churches and increasing their weekly collection of tithes than having a selfless, positive impact in their community. I guess you could say that the reason for where the country is today is for me to first look in the mirror and truly examine myself first.

NO, IT’S NOT OKAY ANYMORE

In previous posts,

http://www.redstate.com/realquiet/2013/03/22/gay-marriage-further-proves-we-are-a-nation-that-no-longer-fears-god-and-are-no-longer-a-nation-that-is-under-god/

[Valin]

Gay marriage further proves we are a nation that no longer fears God and are no longer a nation that is under God

 

By: RealQuiet (Diary) | March 22nd, 2013 at 01:02 AM

 

 

Well it's a good thing the writer is not engaging in hyperbole or anything.

 

Michael McConnell’s Inane WSJ Op-Ed on the Marriage Cases

Ed Whelan

3/23/13

 

I never imagined that I would write a post bearing this title. If you had shown me the text of this Wall Street Journal op-ed and asked me to guess the author, I never would have guessed Michael McConnell, the usually brilliant conservative law professor at Stanford.

 

Some comments:

 

1. McConnell’s op-ed is excellent for most of its first six paragraphs, which include these observations:

 

(Snip)

 

2. But McConnell then makes this strange pivot:

 

(Snip)

 

McConnell is a longstanding critic of Roe v. Wade. If his argument here were sound, would he also have opposed the Court’s ruling in a hypothetical anti-Roe that there is no constitutional right to abortion? That, after all, would have “impose[d] an answer of a sort” by reflecting the Court’s considered judgment that abortion may be treated differently from childbirth. And it would have deprived proponents of abortion of “one of their most potent moral claims in the political process—that the denial of abortion rights offends American values of equality.”

 

(Snip)