Jello Jigglers: the Law in Chaos

The law is in chaos.  Judge Andrew Hartman ruled yesterday that it’s permissible for Boulder Colorado County Clerk and Recorder Hillary Hall to break the law. It is Judge Hartman’s job to require Hall to obey the law, not second her right to break it.

Colorado’s same sex marriage ban is on hold, by federal order, while the case makes its way to the Supreme Court. Hall, from Boulder’s “Berkeley of the West”,  has been violating the law by issuing marriage licenses anyway--more than 100 of them since the stay was put in place. The State Attorney General has sued her, saying that her actions are causing “legal chaos”, but Hall continues. According to the Associated Press, she insists the marriage ban violates the Constitution; that “an unjust law is not law at all” and she is justified in disregarding it. At this hour, two other county recorders have followed suit.

Judge Hartman has patted her on the head gently, saying it’s OK—she isn’t harming anyone by her actions.

They must be kidding. It doesn’t harm anyone for a government official to disobey the law and for a judge to tell her she doesn’t have to obey it?  It doesn’t harm anyone if they turn the legal system upside down? Law governs our world; it keeps us safe. If law doesn’t count, there is no safety.

If Hall says the marriage ban violates the Constitution she obviously hasn’t read it. The judge must not have, either, for that matter. Try to find marriage in the federal Constitution. It isn’t there; it never mentions marriage. Liberals who insist gay marriage is a constitutional right invented it. Its bogus—a total fabrication rising from a new, radical definition of equality.

Marriage is a state matter and Hall, as a state official, is under oath to obey state law.  It is not the responsibility of a county official to decide this matter. As they say in the military, this is above her pay grade. Hall’s stand—that she is acting on moral law and justice—is skewed. Gay marriage denies rights to the next generation—the right of each child to have a father and a mother. Rights and equality are not a one-generation matter. We respect the rights of all, including future generations: the right of children to have both a father and a mother.

Hall and her cronies believe their wants should be rights. What happens when other groups do the same—when the National Association of Bank Robbers, for instance, decides they don’t have to obey the law to not rob banks? Will Judge Hartman tell them it’s OK? How about the Association for the Advancement of Pedophilia—can they get a waiver, as well? Or, consider the illegals swarming across the border. Will Judge Hartman give them your house if they want it? If one law is to be ignored, these laws can be ignored, also. But, you say, this won’t happen; everybody knows robbing banks, pedophilia and taking away your house are wrong. Think again; we once thought homosexuality was wrong. With time and the right media campaign these illegalities can become rights, as well.

The issue here is not gay marriage, it’s insubordination, violation of the oath of office, and destruction of the Rule of Law. At stake is every law in the United States and your safety. Laws were not designed to be Jello Jigglers, they were written to be firm and obeyed. Clerk Hall should be removed and Judge Hartman should be impeached—now.

Gay Marriage and Life in a Lawless Society

We have a national law to keep us safe from government power gone mad. It’s called the U. S. Constitution.

Enemies are demolishing it. One major attack is coming through the federal court system. The epicenter is gay marriage. Regardless of your beliefs on same-sex unions, you cannot approve this lawlessness. When law is destroyed, everyone loses.

The core issue is: who makes the decisions about government? The Constitution has an answer, no matter what the question is. It clearly tells us what all our governing bodies can and cannot do: Congress, the president and the states.

Congress is in charge of 20 things—a postal system, national navy, bankruptcies and immigration, and such—anything the states must be uniform in. (Article I section 8 of the Constitution)

The president is in charge of 6 things, all involve getting along with other countries, or preventing conflict between states. Some of these duties deal with treaties with foreign powers, commanding the military, and granting pardons. (Article II, section 2 )

There are decisions the states cannot make. (Article I, section 10) They cannot draft foreign treaties, raise their own armies, or develop separate money systems, for instance.

Anything else—anything—falls to the the states and the people. Any power not specifically given or forbidden, belongs to them. Those matters are none of the federal government’s business. The Constitution says this and the 10^th Amendment nails it down. We have no uncertainty about who can and cannot decide what.

So, about gay marriage—the Constitution is silent on marriage; nary a word on the topic. Who, then, decides? The states and the people do. It’s not a matter for federal courts; it’s none of their business. Thus, it is an unconstitutional, make that illegal, act for federal judges to rule on this matter.

But, wait: marriage wasn’t an issue 227 years ago when the Founders wrote the Constitution! Correct, but that’s the beauty of the Constitution: it adapts to every new situation. New technologies and ideas still fit within the powers assigned by the Constitution, and the pattern still works. Under that pattern, the states and the people make the decision about gay marriage.

So the people of Utah amended their constitution in 2003 to make marriage a male/female thing for their state. This was their duty/right.  A federal judge has cancelled it. That’s against the law, and he knows it; he has no authority there. Now other federal judges, emboldened by his misconduct, are doing the same and Congress and the president are silent.

Judges have the job to uphold the law. They are deliberately breaking it. Our law has become lawless.   

Some who want gay marriage are giddy. Are they thinking? If this law can be cancelled and Utah’s rights erased, anyone’s can be—any right, any protection: your right to own a car and house, to choose your job, to raise your children, to do what you like—all are based on law. The respect for your life is based on law. Take away the responsibility to abide by law and you take away rights and safety.

You do not want to live in a nation that ignores the law.

This is serious. Regardless of your beliefs on gay marriage, you want the right of states to make their own decisions to stand. It’s the law; it keeps you safe.

Culture reroute: 9.0 on the Richter Scale

One of the current culture deceptions is the belief that legalizing gay marriage will not affect traditional families. Facts and common sense say the effects will be huge. It’s not about "equality"; this is a fundamental social reroute.

The question of “How much change and what kind?” revolves around this: Will legal and social acceptance of same-sex marriage increase the practice? The evidence from past social changes — no-fault divorce and abortion -- says yes.
Within 15 years of no-fault divorce laws, marriage breakups went from 20 percent to 50 percent. The rate of couples living together without marriage rose by 1,400 percent; sociologists say marriage no longer matters. The Guttmacher Institutie now estimates one woman in three will have an abortion in her lifetime. A recent Associated Press article on related transgender issues says "the trend is likely to accelerate." Gay rights activists are on most college campuses with the message: “Just try it.” The Gay Pride Leadership Academy holds summer camps, and groups like the American Association of College Professors encourage gay activism. These facts all suggest that homosexuality will surge.
What are the potential results for society and traditional families?

We can expect major cultural change. Advertising, movies, music and TV will increasingly bring homosexuality before the public eye, and public schools will encourage its acceptance; they are doing so now. Same-sex couples divorce more often; only 15 percent of homosexual couples are together after 12 years, says the 2004 Gay/Lesbian Consumer Online Census. Higher divorce rates will add to cultural breakdown and leave more children afloat, so government welfare, with its bureaucracy and added costs, would be expected to expand to provide care.
The worrisome drop in population numbers would increase, with more marriages that biologically cannot reproduce. Demographic and economic growth always parallel each other, so the economy would continue to decline, as stated in USA Today, Feb. 13, 2013: "There are no cases of peace and prosperity in the face of declining populations." This makes sense; fewer people to produce and consume. The eventual cost to the nation would be dramatic over time.
Safety could become a concern. Every child in a same-sex home is raised by a step-parent, and child abuse is far greater from a step-parent. Daly and Wilson of McMaster University call this "discriminative parental solicitude" — people naturally give the best care to children they create to protect their "parental investment." Under this "Cinderella effect," small children are 100 times more likely to die from abuse by a step-parent than a biological parent. In addition, 31 percent of lesbians are physically abused by partners (Journal of Interpersonal Violence), and domestic abuse among gays is double that of heterosexual couples (Island and Letellier). We should brace for increased domestic violence.
Experts on all sides say that if the protective walls around traditional child-bearing families are breached, other alternative sexual practices are inevitable. This has begun; Newsweek reports 500,000 American households now living in polyamory — group marriage of three or more people. Polygamy is considered inevitable. United Nations agendas, which steer U.S. agendas, now advocate sanitized pedophilia: the legalization of prostitution, including child prostitution (Bali Youth Declaration), sexual rights for children and the teaching of questionable sexuality to children without parental knowledge or consent (UN Committee, Rights of the Child).
Through government’s forced acceptance of homosexuality, Christian religions, which define biblical right and wrong, will be silenced. The Constitution’s protection of religious freedom will be hobbled with this precedent-setting religious control. "The free exercise of religion obviously involves both the right to choose religious beliefs and affiliations and the right to ‘exercise’ or practice those beliefs" (Dallin Oaks, former Utah State Supreme Court justice). Moral objections to homosexuality are being classified as hate speech worthy of prosecution. In the aftermath, Christian morality could all but disappear, except as found in the hearts of believers.
The media and those who push the gay agenda are not reporting these facts and many other negative side effects of gay marriage. This is an earthquake—9.0 on the social Richter scale. Few things of this magnitude have struck our society. Our first obligation is to protect our children and our culture. Let all live and love as they choose, but don’t legalize gay marriage.

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A Senator's Remarks: Gay Marriage Trend Inevitable?

Utah’s senator Orrin Hatch did the traditional family no favor when he announced, ahead of the anticipated federal court ruling on gay marriage, that legalization of the practice was inevitable. The headline on our local paper today, May 29, read “Hatch: Gay Marriage will become law”.

Two reasons why he should have held his tongue come to mind. The first is based on the principle of hope: the belief we all need to carry with us that right will come to pass. We never give up hope. As the saying goes, it’s never over until the lady sings. We always give room for the belief that ultimately morality will prevail. I personally resent this hopeless philosophy.

The second, and more serious reason, is the message that this opinion sends to judges, who rule too often on what people expect and supposedly want, rather than on what is correct.

The replacement of our law with humanist ideas has been gradual but unrelenting for nearly two centuries. Originally the law, as judged by the Supreme Court, was determined by our founding document, the Constitution. The courts, however, no longer use the Constitution as the basis to validate law. That appropriate legal standard was abandoned long ago, much to our detriment and sadness.

Precedent law, which took the place of constitutional law, was the standard for a century or more. It was based on what other judges had ruled. All that was needed to begin the “kill” of a freedom or right was one judge and one ruling. That ruling then became the precedent for more. This was a serious “hit” on our rights and freedoms.

Today, we don’t even go by precedent law. Judges rule on political agendas and cronyism—according to the way society is going at the moment. What’s popular? What does it appear that everyone wants? How can I push the social agenda? That puts us at the mercy of every wretched, inappropriate, uneducaated whim of the public.

That’s why Senator Hatch’s remarks are so damaging—he is, in effect, telling judges what society expects. He’s saying, “Hey, we know we’re going to get this; we expect it.”

Senator Hatch is irresponsible and I am offended by his ”reality”. I’ve been angry at his progressive ideas for the last 20 years, and this one doesn’t help. He doesn’t represent me, or most of those I know and care about. He doesn’t represent my politics or morality or work ethic or integrity base or……I could go on.

 

He defends the judges who kicked Utah in the stomach over the marriage issue. Of course he does….he recommended both men for the judgeship. 

Hatch says the judges had to rule in favor of gay marriage because of the Supreme Court ruling. Did he miss something? The court ruled that marriage is a state matter. And that makes it OK for a federal judge to wipe out our state’s constitutional amendment? Where have you been, Senator?

We need our congressional representatives to stick with the state and its laws and rights. The judges who ruled against our amendment to protect the family were outside their boundaries and cannot cancel state amendments. That’s against the Constitution. Defend it, Hatch!

The Best Society for Children

Every culture stays alive by protecting its young. Without a stable next generation, a society crumbles. It must perpetuate itself to create a future.

The argument that should be center stage in Utah’s marriage debate is this: What is in the best interests of children? This question, answered in every era and civilization, says a child’s best chance for a secure, productive life comes when their father and mother marry, give birth to and raise them, and remain together in marriage. Any other lifestyle dims their chance for stability, and society’s as well. While unforeseen events can alter a child’s circumstances, a responsible society never deliberately and willfully erases this standard.
With this principle as a guide, the arguments for same-sex marriage fade. Proponents argue that same gender couples deserve the benefits given to marriage partners. They omit the fact that those advantages were specifically given to benefit children from the union. They say gay parents can love a child as well as can heterosexual parents. That is not the point. Many can and do love a child, but he needs the specific love of united biological parents in his home for his best advantage. Some compare same-sex marriage bans to past prejudices against interracial marriage, but interracial marriages give both mother and father to children.
Homosexual marriage-devotees claim that traditional marriage policies interfere with their right to love each other. Marriage is not permission to love another. Love and marriage are not glued together, and they are not synonyms. Two people in love can live together openly in all 50 states. Proponents say divorce has already damaged marriage, suggesting that this in some way invalidates the union of husband and wife. Marriage has been harmed, but should we damage it further? If one hand gets caught in the lawnmower, do you stick the other one in, as well? We need to fix marriage, not dismantle it.
Those who innocently buy into the modern marriage rhetoric say their position is the true pro-family stance. Are we acting in the best interest of families if marriage is no longer about children, but is, instead, about adult desires? A true pro-family stance always puts children first, and it never robs a child of one of his parents. Proponents claim that, because some couples cannot or do not have children, the well-being of children is somehow moot. Why? Society sets its standards by the norm, not the exceptions. While every couple may not have children, every child has, and needs, both a father and a mother.

Some think same-gender marriages will not affect traditional families. Mat Staver of Liberty Council points out the fundamental damage from a society which distorts male/female roles to make gender irrelevant, and which declares that children are no longer its priority. We see the chaos of our previous social experiment with no-fault divorce in “The Evolution of Divorce” by W. Bradford Wilcox. After we embraced throw-away marriage, divorce rates skyrocketed from 20 percent to 50 percent, and the number of couples living together outside of marriage increased by 1400 percent in little more than a decade. We now entertain another social experiment of volcanic proportions. Should we force those risks on our children?

Many believe government should get out of marriage. Think again. It is government’s job to create a safe umbrella under which we work and live. Intact, enduring marriages with a father, mother and children have been the foundation of every stable society in world history. It is the duty of government to encourage and protect such families. Marriage is also our best guarantee of the limited government of our Constitution. When families fracture, government steps in with welfare to become the provident “daddy.” Taxes and bureaucracies balloon, and freedoms disappear under government giveaways.
Marriage is between a man and woman who live together, and commit to each other and their offspring. Any other union is not marriage. Is any supposed social benefit touted by the new “equality” worth hurting our children? We must preserve our national culture of marriage between one man and one woman, as father and mother, who raise children in enduring families.

Get it Right: Nature says so vs. “We say so”

Our state legislature is now in session, with 500-plus new bills under consideration. What will they pass, and how many of them do we actually need?
We are awash in laws. Every excursion from home crosses hundreds of them. While many are well-intentioned, others are inane. Law figures prominently into two current issues: the clash on same-sex marriage and so-called anti-discrimination legislation.
Not all "law" is logical or good. Some laws are obvious; they defy argument because everyone accepts them as wise and necessary. Others are arbitrarily forced on us by authorities that demand obedience "because we say so."
Natural laws deal with what is true in any timeframe, circumstance and culture. They condemn actions such as theft, murder and rape. Logic and reason tell every culture that these things are wrong. Natural laws give us freedom by telling us what is universally unacceptable. We then have liberty in all else, providing we do not infringe on the rights of others. Serious consequences result if natural laws are violated.
Natural laws apply to everyone; their built-in supremacy clause trumps all man-made laws.

Prominent Founder James Wilson explained, "The Law of Nature is immutable ... because it has its foundation in the natural constitution and mutual relations of men and things."
These moral forces are the "self-evident truths" Thomas Jefferson recorded in the Declaration of Independence.
Natural laws are as old as time. The great Roman statesman, Cicero, circa 100 BC, explained: "True law is right reason in agreement with nature ... it is of universal application ... [and] is impossible to abolish."
John Locke, whose "Second Treatise of Government" has inspired freedom planners for ages, taught natural law as the foundation of universal morality. Through the centuries, other great minds -- Aquinas in Italy, Grotius in Holland, Suarez in Spain, Hobbes in England--have agreed.
The opposite of natural law is posit law, written by governments because they want to, and presented as arbitrary. Examples include zoning requirements, license laws and property controls. These laws assume we are incompetent, and they stem from man-made authority that requires obedience.
While natural law gets its authority from God, posit law is backed by force and threatened punishment. Natural laws freely invite acceptance and practice; posit laws need a bureaucracy for enforcement.

Natural law is self-limiting, while posit law usurps and is greedy: the more it has, the more it wants. Posit laws may ignore reason; natural laws cannot. They can criminalize what is not criminal, condemn what may not deserve condemnation, and regulate by requiring government permission to proceed.
While posit law is not always bad, it can be unnecessary, costly, burdensome and frustrating. Carry it too far and you dance with Lenin's definition of communism: "[P]ower based upon force and limited to nothing, by no kind of law and absolutely no set rule."
These two forms of law surround both same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination legislation, which forces our property use and business practices. Both practices violate natural law; both are enveloped by posit law. Heterosexual marriage -- the marriage of natural law -- has been practiced by every culture, in every timeframe and in every national circumstance. If not so, we would not have survived, as heterosexual unions are mandatory to continue every animal species.
Heterosexuality is the pattern for our planet. Also inherent in natural law are the rights violated by anti-discrimination legislation: the freedom to express ourselves, believe what we choose, determine with whom we will and will not do business and how we will control our property.
Only posit law forces unnatural regulations and relationships on society and demands that we service them. Natural laws -- laws that are "right reason in agreement with nature" -- prevent harm; they do not cause it by forcing acceptance and association. There are some things that cannot yield to posit law. Our lawmakers need to know that the two above mentioned items are among them. Please tell them so.

Same-sex Marriage: Equality for whom?

With the same-sex marriage issue forefront in the news, it seems a lesser thing to write on any other topic. With good reason; this movement will reposition our culture, and it therefore requires a clear public airing of the facts. Many mistakenly assume this issue will have little impact on traditional families. Not so. Any movement that can fundamentally change society will fundamentally affect us all.

We are bombarded with opinions that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, that our national commitment to equality requires us to accept homosexual unions. This is untrue; there is no constitutional right to marriage. The United States Constitution is silent on the topic. By default, then, the matter becomes a state prerogative, according to the 10th Amendment, "The powers not delegated to the United States (the federal government) by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Restated, each state, and its voters, set its marriage laws.
The federal government has no say in any part of the marriage issue. The actions, decisions and manipulations by the federal government, its judges and courts, concerning marriage are unconstitutional; make that illegal. That position was reiterated by the Supreme Court's DOMA decision in June, 2013 that said that the states set marriage rights. This issue comes home to Utahns after Judge Shelby's illegal ruling against Utah's marriage amendment a few weeks ago. State Representative LaVar Christensen, attorney, author and sponsor of Utah's marriage-between-a-man-and-a-woman amendment to the Utah Constitution, which passed with 66 percent approval in 2004, says there is no established, recognized, legal federal authority that can legitimately overturn Utah's marriage law. Period.

Throughout history, marriage has been not only a continuing institution, but a contract issued to those whose lifestyle is likely to promote the culture's well-being. We encourage what benefits us. Heterosexual marriage is history's norm. It has to be; posterity must continue if the culture is to continue. Gay rights activists call this a "myth." Hardly, few facts are more biologically unarguable than this: no male and female union = no baby; no babies = no continuing society.
Another aspect of the equality issue needs to be addressed. If equality is just for our generation, we abandon the future. We have to ask, "Equality for whom?" The media and the same-sex culture define equality as the right of homosexuals to marry. That limited application leaves out future generations. What about equality for them? Is gay marriage in the best interest of generations that follow ours?
A mountain of research and recently accumulated information from areas where gay marriage has been legal for the last decade -- Massachusetts, for example -- clearly shows why history sanctions heterosexual unions. More detail and public discussion is needed on this topic, but in short, children need both father and mother. Their differing styles of love create wholeness for the child. Accumulating statistics from research, such as the New Family Structure Study by Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas at Austin, show that children from heterosexual marriages fare far better in almost every social context. They are much more likely to make better grades and stay in school, have fewer mental health issues, fewer out-of-wedlock babies and fewer problems with the law. The domestic violence and child abuse rates are lower in traditional families, children are much less likely to experience sexual abuse, and children from heterosexual marriages are much less likely to receive government welfare.
As we in Utah are pressed into making decisions about same sex marriage, we must address the issue of "Equality for whom?" The right of gay and lesbian couples to partner and build a life together is indisputable and is not the issue; legalization of that bond is. It is not discrimination that drives the discussion, but the best interests of society and our future generations. We cannot forget that.