Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   6/30/2015

     Our one-judge marriage tyranny

Many of you have received the so-called “Fire Tax” assessment in the mail. This resulted from an arguably illegal imposition of a “fee” on rural property owners for Cal Fire services. Tonight, State Board of Equalization member Jim Dahl will be the guest speaker at the Tehama County Tea Party Patriots to provide an update on that situation.

As the Supreme Court rendered its decisions, many aspects and perspectives can be easily lost on we, the “citizens,” lacking legal, constitutional sophistication. The decisions on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare, for short) and same sex marriage (also SSM or gay marriage) are far from the simplified themes found in news media coverage.

Soon after the decisions posted online, a multitude of opinion sources and links soon followed. The networks provided the least useful coverage of all, primarily cheerleading the circus-like parade of celebrating winners and advocates, with little analysis. I’m sure cable coverage followed form—Fox News being right-of-center, CNN being left-of-center and MSNBC (appropriate new home for former NBC anchor and serial fabulist, Brian Williams) occupying the left wing fringe.

Conservative talk radio provided a surprising array of opinions, as the essence of conservatism is the value accorded individual thought. The most informed and illuminating perspectives are found at National Review Online (nationalreview.com), Powerlineblog.com, The Weekly Standard (weeklystandard.com) and Realclearpolitics.com.

I found both decisions to border on preposterous. Widely circulated recordings of Jonathon Gruber, the ACA architect (a role first denied, now confirmed), revealed that Obamacare was formulated with incentives to place the maximum pressure on states to create their own Obamacare exchanges. The law repeatedly differentiates “the state” from the federal government, its bureaucracy, IRS or HHS; the latter have no exchange-creating permission. Gay marriage is a concept so utterly devoid of constitutional, historical or cultural rationalization that only intellectuals (or black-robed lawyers) could create a “right” out of legal thin air.

Here are some cogent, insightful bits of commentary (see donpolson.blogspot.com, “gay marriage” or “health care system,” links for many recent pieces): “In the matter of the so-called Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court ruled that the law must not say what it in fact does say because it would be better if it were not to say what it says and were to say something else instead. In the matter of same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court rules that the law must say what it does not say because it would be better if it were to say what it does not say instead of what it says (Italics in original)…It does not matter what the law says or does not say—what matters is what they (the majority of justices)) want…

“The legendary constitutional scholar Barack Obama failed to notice, until the day before yesterday, that the Constitution mandates the legalization of homosexual marriage from sea to shining sea…(however) the Constitution does not say one word about marriage, much less about the state-level codification of homosexual couplings being a fundamental federal right…It is not there. It is a fiction…” (Kevin D. Williamson, nationalreview.com)

“From Justice Scalia’s dissent” (searchable by title at Powerlineblog.com), in the gay marriage case, we find profound insights. Stating, “today’s decree is not of immense personal importance to me. The law can recognize as marriage whatever sexual attachments and living arrangements it wishes” together with civil, tax and inheritance consequences…such consequences have possible adverse social effects, “but no more adverse than the effects of many other controversial laws.

“So it is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact—and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court’s claimed power to create ‘liberties’ that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”

In “Judicial Activism from the Court on Marriage: Here’s How to Respond,” (searchable at nationalreview.com), Ryan T. Anderson adamantly urges restoring the constitutional authority to make marriage policy by citizens and elected officials, reflecting the truth about marriage.

“We the People must explain what marriage is, why marriage matters, and why redefining marriage is bad for society. For marriage policy to serve the common good, it must reflect the truth that marriage unites a man and a woman as husband and wife so that children will have both a mother and a father. Marriage is based on 1) the anthropological truth that men and woman are distinct and complementary, 2) the biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and 3) the social reality that children deserve a mother and a father…Marriage isn’t just a private affair; marriage is a matter of public policy, because marriage is society’s best way to ensure the well-being of children.”

That says it all for me, folks.