There's much being written on the gay marriage debate that's really not about gay marriage. Two pieces that caught my eye last night late and then this morning are worth your time and touch on what's being missed by too many.
The first, by Elizabeth Scalia, deals with Antonin Scalia's scathing dissent last week and the idiocy put forth by Justice Kennedy that in essence bigotry and hatred define opposition to gay marriage:
Why yes, that’s precisely why Justice Antonin Scalia, in a dissent that is being called “intemperate,” “blistering,” “flaming,” and “dripping with contempt and sarcasm,” wrote:
In the majority’s judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement. [It is to] “dis-parage,” “injure,” “degrade,” “demean,” and “humiliate” our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homo-sexual. All that, simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence—indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history. It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race.Scalia’s passionate opinions flow from his pen like lava, seemingly indiscriminate, but nevertheless
finding every curve and crevice of what lies before them. Often referred to as the “most conservative” of the Supreme Court jurists, Scalia spends part of his Windsor dissent arguing in defense of what used to be considered a most “liberal” notion: that human beings have a right to express their point of view without fear of reprisal; a right to dissent from conventional wisdom; a right, even, to be wrong. It is a sentiment that free-thinkers (of even the recent past) would often express by quoting Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s summary of Voltaire’s thinking: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Kennedy’s opinion makes it clear that the days of defending the freedom of others to think and speak outside of the ever-narrowing corridors of what is permissible are numbered; the line of delineation he sketches out is stark, bare, and singular: there will be one (correct) thought or there will be Bad People.
She's got more and c'mon, it's Elizabeth Scalia, you'd be a fool not to read the rest.
The second piece, written by Da Tech Guy, tells us more about Bob Schieffer than Bob Schieffer probably cares for us to know:
There was a moment during Sunday’s victory lap on the News shows for gay marriage and its media allies who support it that was very telling. Bob Schieffer the oldest and fairest (and that’s not saying much) of the Sunday Morning Hosts in the MSM had just finished speaking with Ted Olsen and brought on Tony Perkins of the Family Research Counsel to talk the Gay Marriage Issue.
TONY PERKINS: …We’re already seeing bakers and florists and photographers forced to participate in same-sex marriages under the threat of law and in some cases even jail. I can’t think of anything that’s more un-American than that. So I think as Americans see that there’s a lot more to same-sex marriage than simply two people who love each other that they’ll have time to reconsider this and– and– and decide whether or not we want to trade fundamental freedoms of speech and religion for the right of two people who love each other, which they can do now. They can live together, but can they redefine marriage in the rest of society with it?
Now to us in Massachusetts and who have been following the ride of the tolerance police, those sentences are nothing extraordinary but Bob Schieffer had no idea what Tony Perkins was talking about
BOB SCHIEFFER: How is it that bakers and florists are being forced to participate in this? I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here.
Perkins then educates him
TONY PERKINS: Well, we’re seeing in Washington State, Colorado, and some of the other states that have these anti– anti-discrimination statutes that are being imposed that when a same sex couple comes and says “I want you to take pictures of my wedding or I want you to bake a cake.” And they say, look, my religious convictions will not allow me participate in that, they’re literally being sued by the government, not the individuals, and they’ve even been adjudicated in such places as New Mexico. So we’re going to see a loss of religious freedom. There is no question about it. It’s already happening.
Schieffer seems to be totally caught off guard by this, as evidenced by his hesitation in the following question.
BOB SCHIEFFER: How many– how many lawsuits have been filed on that? Because I must say this is under my radar. I haven’t– I haven’t heard this.
Perkins educates him...
Let Perkins educate you and read the rest of that story.
The headlong rush this country is taking is not boding well for the future.
Unless of course you care little for freedom.
