Justice was not blind at the Supreme Court on Wednesday. It was deaf-deaf to the will of the people of California and the nation. With its decision in the Perry case, a majority of the Supreme Court abandoned the 7 million California voters who passed Proposition 8. And by overturning DOMA, the court subverted the will of Congress and the people who elected the senators and representatives who serve there.
To overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy invented a standard of “heightened scrutiny” for any law representing what he termed an “unusual deviation.” As he wrote: “DOMA’s unusual deviation from the usual tradition of recognizing and accepting state definitions of marriage here operates to deprive same-sex couples of the benefits and responsibilities that come with the federal recognition of their marriages.”
But that standard of deviation from “tradition” has never been applied to the many laws enacted by Congress that have affirmed new, leftist values.
Kennedy’s reasoning has little to do with the law; rather, he seems to be trying to write his own moral values into the Constitution. He may have seen himself as writing this generation’s Brown v. Board of Education. But in fact, his decision is much more likely to become the Roe v. Wade of this generation.
In the immediate aftermath of Roe, public support for abortion continued to surge, leading many to predict opposition to abortion would literally die off.
Instead, something unexpected happened.
Today, 40 years later, far from moribund, the pro-life movement is as vibrant and strong as it has ever been. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade not only didn’t settle the matter once and for all, it galvanized a movement of conscience that has continued to grow in strength and reach.
As with the decision written by Justice Harry Blackmun in Roe, Kennedy’s decision in the DOMA case served to disenfranchise millions of concerned voters and to tip the scale of justice in a liberal direction on a controversial moral issue.
But as we learned with Roe, deep moral questions can’t simply be ruled invalid.
President Barack Obama recently tried to use his eloquence to suggest that supporting gay marriage was virtually mandated by the Declaration of Independence: “If we truly are created equal,” he intoned, “then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”
Yes, all of us are created equal. All children are created equal. Every baby is equally entitled to life. And every baby is equally entitled to the love and care of the man and woman who made him or her.
Governments cannot always guarantee these rights. But the least it can do is not attempt to negate them with court rulings.
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Maggie Gallagher, the first president of the National Organization for Marriage, was a major fundraiser for the campaign to place Proposition 8 on the ballot. She is now a fellow at the American Principles Project.
Editorial, Pages 16 on 06/28/2013