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On Thursday, June 26, 2003, six people in black robes not only rewrote the Constitution, they changed the very philosophy on which America was founded. In a decision holding that the Constitution provides a right to engage in homosexual sex, the judges threw out the last remaining tie in American law to the Judeo-Christian moral principles our nation was founded upon. In its place, they substituted the idea that what is right or wrong is determined solely by consent. You might recognize the notion that morality is determined by consent as the basis of Libertarian philosophy. Libertarians believe that the law should not interfere with any conduct engaged in by two consenting adults. So, for example, if you want to sell drugs and I want to buy them, the law should not bust up our deal. If I want to be a prostitute and you want to pay me for sex, the law should not come between us. If you want to kill yourself and I offer to help you for a price, the law should view me as a good Samaritan, not a murderer. This is not the philosophy of the men who founded America. Our Founders believed that man lacked the moral authority to do many things that were otherwise in his power. Their moral philosophy came from the Bible. They understood that the Bible's moral rules - like don't kill and don't steal - were the true source of man's rights. The rule against killing gave rise to the Right to Life, the rule against stealing to the Right to Property. Taken as a whole, the Bible's set of moral rules created an entire set of human rights which, together, were called "Liberty". The opposite of the liberty that arose naturally from following God's moral rules was subjection to men who wanted to break those rules, what the Founders called dominion, like the dominion of an absolute king. More importantly, the Founders understood that God's moral rules applied not only between people but also to the self. The rule against killing meant that man lacked the moral authority to take his own life. The rule against stealing gave rise to the virtues of thrift and good stewardship, because by wasting his property a man actually steals from himself. Then, as now, there were people who disagreed with God's moral rules, particularly the rule that says that God created us and entrusted us with our lives for His purposes. This rule means that one man cannot "own" another and prohibits slavery, since another man cannot own us if we do not even own ourselves, we are simply entrusted with our lives by God. Eventually, the people who wanted to disobey this rule lost out, but not before the Supreme Court found a right to own a slave protected by the Constitution - the Dred Scott Case. America's Founders based our claim to freedom on these "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" in the Declaration of Independence. It is these laws that - alone - create the concept of "inalienable rights". If we do not own our lives, not only can another not take it away, we ourselves cannot take our own life. Likewise, since no man has the moral authority to break God's rules, nobody has the right to take away the set of rights called "liberty" those rules create. Nobody has the moral authority to take our rights and even we do not have the moral authority to give those rights away by allowing others to break God's laws - that's what makes the rights "inalienable". America's Founders realized that even government did not have the power to allow men to break God's rules. And since they understood that man can only be truly be happy if man follows God's moral rules they expressed the idea that government cannot forbid what God commands, or simply allows, nor can government command, or simply allow, what God forbids. The Founder's expressed this right with a phrase that, today, nobody understands - the "Right to the Pursuit of Happiness". When the Supreme Court "found" a right to break God's moral rules by engaging in homosexuality it allowed what God forbids, just as it has with murder in legalizing abortion and theft in legalizing taxes for programs that take property from one citizen to give it to another. Now that we have completely thrown God's rules to the wind, how can we expect God to bless America?  From Death to Marriage: Homosexuality Laws at the time
the Constitution was written New York 1798: That the detestable vice of buggery [sodomy]...shall be from henceforth judged a felony...and that every person being thereof convicted by verdict, confession, or outlawry [unlawful flight to avoid prosecution], shall be hanged by the neck until he or she shall be dead. Connecticut 1808: That if any man shall lie with mankind as he lieth with womankind, both of them have committed abomination; they both shall be put to death. Georgia 1822: Sodomy...shall be punished by imprisonment at hard labor in the penitentiary during the natural life or lives of the person or persons convicted of this detestable crime. Maine 1822: That if any man shall commit the crime against nature with a man or male child...every such offender, being duly convicted thereof in the Supreme Judicial Court, shall be punished by solitary imprisonment for such term not exceeding one year and by confinement afterwards to hard labor for such term not exceeding ten years. Pennsylvania 1801: That if any person or persons shall commit sodomy...he or they so offending or committing any of the said crimes within this province, their counsellors, aiders, comforters, and abettors, being convicted thereof as above said, shall suffer as felons. [And] shall forfeit to the Commonwealth all and singular the lands and tenements, goods and chattels, whereof he or she was seized or possessed at the time...at the discretion of the court passing the sentence, not exceeding ten years, in the public gaol or house of correction of the county or city in which the offence shall have been committed and be kept at such labor. South Carolina 1814: [The] detestable and abominable vice of buggery [sodomy] ... be from henceforth adjudged felony...and that the offenders being hereof convicted by verdict, confession, or outlawry [unlawful flight to avoid prosecution], shall suffer such pains of death and losses and penalties of their goods. Vermont 1791: That if any man lieth with mankind as he lieth with a woman, they both shall suffer death. There's a lesson here. Rights are simply conduct the law will protect. What determines the rights the law protects are simply what a majority of citizens believe is right or wrong. When the colonies became the United States, a majority of citizens believed in the moral ideas of the Bible. Today they do not. Where homosexuals were once put to death in Vermont, they can now legally form "partnerships" with almost all the rights of marriage. The true rules of right and wrong have not changed, people have just stopped believing in them. What were once self-evident truths are now lost in the moral fog. |
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