…because when we speak of equal rights, that doesn’t mean you fit square pegs into round holes:
Yet a pair of young women conntected to those two Virginia GOP mainstays appear more open to relationship equality, according to some recent social media posts they made this week as the issue came before the U.S Supreme Court.
A frontline employee of McDonnell political action committee took to Facebook to make the case that equal rights is a Republican principle
One of Allen’s daughters, likewise, posted an image and message supportive of gay rights demonstrators outside the high court.
In her post, Alex Stanley of McDonnell’s Opportunity Virginia PAC quoted from the Virginia Republican Party creed, punctuating it with the the “(=)” symbol synonymous with the gay rights movement.
“That ALL individuals are entitled to EQUAL rights, justice and opportunities and should assume their responsibilities as citizens in a free society,” she wrote.
Reached by e-mail, Stanley said messages on her Facebook page reflect her personal views.
The very fact this comes from Alex Stanley — who is about as kind a person as you’d want to meet — and Tyler Allen (whose politics I suspect are a tad bit different than her father’s) is a simple foible of the modern age. McDonnell can handle his own staff, I’m quite sure.
Yet the question continues. Justice Scalia’s forbearance on this question was truly epic:
“We don’t prescribe law for the future,” Scalia said. “We decide what the law is. I’m curious, when did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868? When the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted?”
Olson countered that with a question of his own, bringing up two past high-profile cases involving discrimination.
“When did it become unconstitutional to prohibit interracial marriages? When did it become unconstitutional to assign children to separate schools?” Olson asked.
The two went back and forth, with Scalia repeatedly questioning when, specifically, it became unconstitutional to bar gay couples from marrying. Olson argued back, but ended up conceding that there was no specific date.
“Well, how am I supposed to how to decide a case, then, if you can’t give me a date when the Constitution changes?” Scalia said.
Of course, this is where we start getting into Bush v. Gore territory, where every ballot loss suffered by the extreme left gets challenged in a courtroom. Clearly yesterday, the Supreme Court is getting a bit tired of the tactic.
Here’s the essence of this argument. Equality isn’t granted by government, it’s established by a condition of nature.
Expecting it to come from government belies a certain sickness of culture, and arrogating this “right” through judicial fiat belies a fanaticism that — at least as it has manifested itself in Canada — is more about attacking the institution of marriage and changing culture through the force of the government rather than “equality” or anything even close.
But let’s be honest. Liberals need the artificial construct of government to prop up their entire belief system. Without this imprimatur from “society” (as leftist constantly confuse society and government, much as they confuse morals and ethics) the entire system dries up.
Didn’t always used to be that way folks.
Yet isn’t that what we’ve become? Consider that we’ve become a society where we expect another to do everything: churches for salvation, schools to educate, government to subsidize. Since when was it anyone else’s job to raise children but a mother and a father?
It’s amazing individuals ever create anything at all independent of society… and yet, in only one circumstance and condition, humans can.
And that is worth protecting.
Purveyors of the word “equality” don’t care that words mean things. Equality just becomes a byword for “getting what I want” at the end of the day.
True equality is a government that respects natural law.
True equality doesn’t manufacture rights.
True equality doesn’t seek to use government force to abolish marriage.
…because at the end of the day that’s where we’re at, folks.
Upon marriage rests the cornerstone of family; upon family rests the cornerstone of society. Natural law establishes it this way. Study after study demonstrates that children thrive in environments where they have one mother, one father. There’s a reason why the leftists of the world want to destroy marriage at all costs… and there’s a countering reason why government has a vested interest in protecting and defending this institution.
So when the RPV Creed speaks to “equal rights, justice, and opportunities” this is not an argument for license. It is an argument for liberty. In essence, the freedom to be free. That’s where the other half of the statement — “assuming their responsibilities as citizens in a free society” comes into play… and is ignored because some don’t read creeds or ideas as a corpus.
Just in snips.
And when we twist things to serve our own appetites, we do the precise counter to what Aristotle would have identified as the hallmark of an educated soul.
Marriage deserves the defense of society, most certainly. Whether government has a vested interest in the defense of marriage and family depends on the government — yet in a republican form, if we are to insist that society and government are two separate functions, then the basic units of society must remain robust and intact, preserving the ideal and accommodating the exceptions.
That institution begins with marriage, and there’s a reason why it’s under siege.
UPDATE: Matt Lewis adds to the discussion:
Of course, there has always been a tension between virtue and liberty. But at some point, America ceased emphasizing community values and began valuing extreme individualism. More and more, Americans — including many conservatives — now believe that individuals should do whatever they want so long as it isn’t hurting anybody else.
But the cultural conservative says that there is a “tragedy of the commons” problem with this — that the “if it feels right, do it” mentality will eventually hurt society collectively.
And while social conservatives attempt to argue this point on purely secular grounds, the truth is that it makes little sense without God. As Dr. Benjamin Wiker writes in his new book,Worshipping The State, “For liberalism to make sense, we would have to live in a world without ends — to put it in technical philosophical terms, in a non-teleological universe (telos means “goal” or “end in Greek), where, since there are no ends written into nature (including human nature) by God, we are free to create them ourselves.”
Worthwhile point on why the deck seems to be stacked against cultural conservatives. Read on.
