Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent lends a voice to
those of us who are concerned about the implications of the Supreme Courts
activism, particularly the imposition of gay marriage and the consequences that
has on our federalist system.
Here is an excerpt:
I
write separately to call attention to this Court’s threat to American
democracy.
The
substance of 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, and can accord them favorable civil consequences, from tax treatment
to rights of inheritance.
Those
civil consequences—and the public approval that conferring the name of marriage
evidences—can perhaps have 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.
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