Bob Struble on homosexual "marriage" and Judicial Usurpation

Robert Struble is the author of the interactive book Treatise on Twelve Lights. Mr. Struble and I have had, since I first learned of his book a couple of years ago, several short email discussions, interrupted by long pauses in our communications, concerning his proposals for restoring the republic. A few days ago Mr. Struble interrupted the latest long pause in our communications sending me an email in which he asks that I take a look at his article concerning the recent CA Supreme Court ruling on homosexual marriage, and to "pass it on" if I am so inclined. Well, I am so inclined, so I excerpt a few passages from the article here:

Mr. Struble Writes:

In California the state Supreme Court has radically undermined a key support of public morality, marriage between man and woman. By a 4-3 vote, in a decree issued on the Ides of May, 2008, the judicial branch welded base metal into a crucial buttress of American culture. Together with a similar measure imposed by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, this dual challenge to our marriage laws is more dangerous and menacing by far than the temporary success in introducing harems into 19th century Utah.

This new adventure in judicial activism creates not just a moral calamity, but also a constitutional crisis in that it undermines the rule of law. I'm especially struck at how such legislation from the bench contradicts John Adams' famous definition of a republic as "a government of laws, not men." If four men, or rather two men and two women, can nullify established law and substitute their own preferences, then we no longer have a republic of laws. In his dissent to the ruling (pp. 1, 5-6 [127ff], concurred in by Justice Ming Chin), Justice Marvin Baxter wrote that the decision “violates the separation of powers, and thereby commits profound error.” Continued Justice Baxter:

… a bare majority of this court, not satisfied with the pace of democratic change, now abruptly forestalls that process and substitutes, by judicial fiat, its own social policy views for those expressed by the People themselves. Undeterred by the strong weight of state and federal law and authority, the majority invents a new constitutional right, immune from the ordinary process of legislative consideration. The majority finds that our Constitution suddenly demands no less than a permanent redefinition of marriage, regardless of the popular will.

In November, hopefully, the voters of California will get a chance to reverse “this exercise in legal jujitsu.” (Baxter, p. 7) If successful this effort would restore the definition of marriage in California law, as enacted by the Legislature in 1977. Almost a quarter century later, in the year 2000, California’s voters passed proposition 22 by the margin of 61-39%. Both forms of legislating, via the people and through the state legislature, had defined marriage as limited to unions between a man and a woman.

This latest case of amending the constitution by adjudication makes clear that the neo-pagan elites are not willing to let the American people have their way on basic social/moral issues. It is not us, the American citizens, but rather our cultural commissars who intend to decide such questions. Apparently their presiding paradigm is "democracy be damned if it gets in the way" of the social-engineering projects of their postmodernist revolution. Over 4.6 million voters approved Proposition 22, or 1.15 million times the number of oligarchs (four) who imposed same-sex marriage on the state. So much for “the consent of the governed” proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence.

The California case is more threatening to America’s moral integrity than the phenomenon in Massachusetts, in that residency is required to marry in the Bay State, but people from anywhere can marry in California. The newlyweds could then sue back in their home state to have their same-sex “marriages” validated under the full faith and credit clause.

What strikes me particularly is Justice Baxter's dissenting remarks excerpted above. I wrote about this fundamental change in the definition and conditions of marriage and thus to the marriage contract a few days ago in an entry at this blog. The term "marriage" has been redefined by this rogue court as a "long-term" union between "consenting adults". Thus the normal meaning of marriage as a binding contract between a man and a woman in which they pledge to each other (exclusive to all others) mutual affection and support, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in heath, till death parts them is disastrously undone by the court's introduction of new terms in the marriage contract which undermine and contradict the very basis on which the court depends for the validity of its articulation of the inestimable glories of the marriage institution. Thus apparently the court believes it can fundamentally alter (destroy) the meaning of the term marriage to admit homosexuals without destroying the glories, of which it writes in its opinion, of the marriage institution. I therefore declare this court to be collectively insane.

But anyway, with respect to Mr. Struble's book, I thought that some of you might want to check it out. If you're so inclined, you may connect to the ToTL main page via the link to Struble's article which I've provided above.