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Marriage

We were all wrong about marriage since the beginning of time

The highest court in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in the case of Goodridge, declared a couple of interesting things. First, that the state treating marriage as, well, what it has always been, was “arbitrary and irrational.” It is significant when a court declares that all law and tradition that has existed in history up until that point is “arbitrary”. What then is not arbitrary? The Massachusetts court defined marriage as “exclusive and permanent commitment of marriage partners to each other.” So marriage is now defined as marriage partners committing. Judges are geniuses! Confused? So was the Massachusetts Senate, which asked for and received a clarification from the court. Some quotes from February of 2004:

“[We acknowledge that] many people hold deep-seated religious, moral, and ethical convictions that marriage should be limited to the union of one man and one woman, and that homosexual conduct is immoral. Many hold equally strong religious, moral, and ethical convictions that same-sex couples are entitled to be married, and that homosexual persons should be treated no differently than their heterosexual neighbors. [We] reaffirm that the State may not interfere with these convictions.”

The court chose one of those deep-seated views over the other, and thus “interfered with these convictions.” What one really ought to take away from these cases is not just that the word “marriage” now has no particular meaning, but that individual courts feel perfectly free to ignore governors, legislatures, and even the historic body of law issued by other judges. Now other courts, such as those in California, are pointedly declining to take the obvious steps of allowing anyone to enforce existing law with regard to marriage.

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