Bob Maistros

How prescient am I.

It's over.

It seems just yesterday that that I was writing how the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision legalizing “gay marriage” (a term I consider an oxymoron, with the emphasis on “moron”) in the Hawkeye state marked the End of Democracy – and that even legislative enactments of same-sex matrimony were Killing the Republic.

It was bad enough that unelected judges have been willy-nilly upending the actions of elected legislatures.   Now we have a single federal judge huffing and puffing and blowing down the expressed will of an entire electorate – that of the largest jurisdiction in the nation, no less – along with the long-held tradition that states set marriage policy.

Tenth Amendment?  So 18^th century.

Clearly, these judges were absent the day they taught civics in civics class.  But that minor omission of the “consent of the governed” hasn’t even been the worst part of the wave of decisions radically redefining marriage that culminated in yesterday’s ruling.

Worse yet is the parallel trend of jurists across America – including and especially the U.S. Supremes – granting behaviors that everyone and his sister were brought up to recognize as  wrongs the status of rights.

Converting wrongs into rights corrodes democracy in any number of ways.  First, it turns on its head the very purpose of government – to promote good behavior and deter bad stuff.  By promoting and even sanctioning wrongdoing, judges are unleashing social pathologies – disease, crime, single parenthood, cable television – that in turn provide the basis for Obamism:  society is so broken that you need the Nanny State (and a wide range of look-alike nanny scolds from Kathleen Sibelius to Carol Browner to Mary Shapiro) to restore order.

Having philosopher-kings suddenly decide that wrongs are rights also pulls the rug out from under the civil institutions – churches, schools, communities, businesses, and, duh, real families – that actually make society work.

Most important, unilaterally decreeing that wrongs are now rights transforms types like you and me – folks who actually know right from wrong and behave accordingly – from virtuous citizens into enemies of the state.  Planning to “do the right thing?”  Hah.  Ask abortion protesters, conscience-driven medical professionals, religious institutions who wanted to engage in the public service of facilitating adoptions and the operators of eHarmony how that’s working out for them.

This reversal is much worse than moral relativism – all that does is place right and wrong on a level footing, giving proponents of appropriate behavior at least a fighting chance.

Which brings us to yesterday’s ruling and a little noticed line in Judge Vaughn Walker’s opinion.   Walker points out that in Lawrence v. Texas (which struck down laws outlawing homosexual activity), ‘the Court asked whether a majority of citizens could use the power of the state to enforce ‘profound and deep convictions accepted as ethical and moral principles’ through the criminal code.”

Decrees Walker, “The question here is whether California voters can enforce those same principles through regulation of marriage licenses. They cannot.”

Oh.

There go centuries of law – not to mention our entire criminal justice system – in one fell swoop.  If a majority, and their elected representatives, can’t enforce moral principles, it’s Katie-bar-the-door.  What’s to stop someone from deciding on his own that fraud … or rape … or even axe murder involves a moral judgment and any attempt to stop it amounts a “majority of citizens” using “the power of the state to enforce profound and deep convictions accepted as ethical and moral principles?”

Look out, Brother Hobbes.  Life is about to get very nasty, brutish and short.

End of Democracy?  The Prop 8 case, if extended to its logical extremes, portends the End of Society.  It’s every man (and woman and whatever in between) for himself.

13 Responses to “The Prop 8 Ruling: The End of Democracy, Part II”