Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Mr. Justice Scalia Dissents
Mr. Justice Scalia, dissenting:
Published in General, Law, MarriageIf, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: “The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,” I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.
The bottom line is this, a healthy marriage culture is essential to a healthy society. If people having children aren’t living with and supporting their parenting partner at least through the time their children leave the house, then awful things result for a society. Even if only a quarter of people having children don’t do this we have massive problems. So, how do we encourage everyone having kids to marry?
Tommy thinks in an ever secularized society that just leaving the encouragement to the churches will work. He also thinks once the state is no longer involved in marriage that non-religious people will continue marrying. What he thinks will encourage these people to adopt the traditional model of commitment when there isn’t even a civil form of marriage for them to adopt, I have no idea.
But one need not look far to notice that is a pipe dream. Fewer and fewer people are getting married. More and more kids are being born to single mothers. This is a nightmare. How was this avoided in the past, back before civil marriage, the time when Tommy thinks marriage looked like it should?
1/2
2/2
In the era before civil marriage, a strong culture of marriage was created through virtually universal religious observance, backed by the common belief that disobeying christian morality, thereby getting oneself ostracized by the church and it’s community, was a ticket to eternal hell-fire. Oh, and the threat of death at the hands of the state for heresy was used to motivate fidelity and proper religiosity, as well. There was also no welfare for single mothers and their illegitimate children save the institution of the church, which, along with the charity, would also reiterate and reinforce the importance of marriage to the unwed mothers in need. Tommy believes that situation, de facto state enforced religious practice and forcing unwed mothers to either beg in the street or go hat in hand to the church, looked more like freedom than what we have today.
Maybe he’s right, I don’t think we’ll rekindle that, though. If he doesn’t think that was more free or the right way to recreate a culture of sexual responsibility and commitment, how does he propose we do it?
I am not sure if you were affirming or denying what I said. Do you believe marriage is nothing more than a religious practice?
Let me phrase the question another way. Do you believe that slaves were misinformed to desire marriage licenses once the Civil War was over? Same with interracial couples who wanted to marry before Loving: were they misinformed to want the state to recognize their marriages? Should SCOTUS have outlawed all “straight” marriages with Loving, instead of requiring states to recognize ALL “straight” marriages?
Regardless, I encourage you to research the Left’s historical stance towards marriage and the natural family. It appears to me that we are in the midst of a Trotsky-type revolution wrt the family, but it will, eventually, fail since it confronts nature head on.