Obergefell V. Hodges Quotes

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. [Referring to pronouncement by Justice Anthony Kennedy in Obergefell v. Hodges: "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."]

A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy. Judges are selected precisely for their skill as lawyers; whether they reflect the policy views of a particular constituency is not (or should not be) relevant. Not surprisingly then, the Federal Judiciary is hardly a cross-section of America. Take, for example, this Court, which consists of only nine men and women, all of them successful lawyers[18] who studied at Harvard or Yale Law School. Four of the nine are natives of New York City. Eight of them grew up in east- and west-coast States. Only one hails from the vast expanse in-between. Not a single Southwesterner or even, to tell the truth, a genuine Westerner (California does not count). Not a single evangelical Christian (a group that comprises about one quarter of Americans[19]), or even a Protestant of any denomination. The strikingly unrepresentative character of the body voting on today’s social upheaval would be irrelevant if they were functioning as judges, answering the legal question whether the American people had ever ratified a constitutional provision that was understood to proscribe the traditional definition of marriage. But of course the Justices in today’s majority are not voting on that basis; they say they are not. And to allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.

Just before the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges to legalize same-sex marriage, Locke shot a selfie video, titled “I’m Coming Out of the Closet,” declaring Christianity to be under attack and encouraging believers to launch a counteroffensive.

Their obsession with repealing the Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges abortion and marriage equality rulings shows that they don’t believe in simply transforming hearts to bring social change. They absolutely do believe in advocating for laws—when those laws give them what they want.

An Ohio ACLU case, Obergefell v. Hodges, ultimately reached the Supreme Court. On June 26, 2015, in a 5–4 decision, the court ruled that “Baker v. Nelson must be and now is overruled,” referring to the failed marriage case of Jack Baker and Michael McConnell. Gay marriage became legal across the country.

The next time you hear someone say that Roe v. Wade or Obergefell v. Hodges are the law of the land, remind them that they are not; they are the opinions of the supreme Court just like Dred Scott v. Sanford (slaves are property) and Korematsu v. United States (Japanese internment during WWII). The court was wrong in the past, it is frequently wrong today, and will almost certainly be wrong in the future.

Homosexuality, pedophilia, and polygamy are in fact old practices; ancient. These practices fell under intense condemnation following the collapse of Rome and the rise of Christianity in the West. Only in the last generation has opinion been overturned. The landmark 2015 Supreme Court ruling on Obergefell v Hodges, codifying homosexual marriage into national law, was in hindsight a predictable conclusion to the dissipating trend of traditional Christian understanding of marriage, family, and life in America. Is collapse imminent, far off, or has it already happened? Looking at stock market rallies, technological breakthroughs, and ever-increasing material abundance, it would seem unlikely that collapse has already occurred. But material abundance, along with its sister decadence, is a lagging indicator. The institutions and social contracts that have supported our way of life for centuries—marriage, family, faith, community and morality—have been utterly decimated. While it is true modern efficiencies continue to increase, the stock that maintains it has been depleted. As Rod Dreher has said, The West has lost the golden thread that binds us to God, Creation, and each other. Unless we find it again, there is no hope of halting our dissolution. . . . The shadow of the Enlightenment’s failure to replace God with reason has