I Suppose I Should Notice This

A group of "Christians" have declared themselves to be above the law. Again.

Experience and history have shown us that if the government redefines marriage to grant a legal equivalency to same-sex couples, that same government will then enforce such an action with the police power of the State. This will bring about an inevitable collision with religious freedom and conscience rights. We cannot and will not allow this to occur on our watch. Religious freedom is the first freedom in the American experiment for good reason.

The Supreme Court has no authority to redefine marriage and thereby weaken both the family and society. Unlike the Legislative Branch that has the power of the purse and the Executive Branch which has the figurative power of the sword, the Judicial Branch has neither. It must depend upon the Executive Branch for the enforcement of its decisions.

As Christians united together in defense of marriage, we pray that this will not happen. But, make no mistake about our resolve. While there are many things we can endure, redefining marriage is so fundamental to the natural order and the true common good that this is the line we must draw and one we cannot and will not cross.

It's easy to take this as empty rhetoric, which it mostly is. I'm not going to bother to parse it -- that's being done all over the place, and it's really too easy to waste pixels on it. Aside from the sheer, unadulterated hubris of a statement like this -- they "will not allow" marriage equality to become the law of the land? By what authority? -- it's really nothing more than a temper tantrum.

John Aravosis, in his post on this at AmericaBlog, made a point that I want to reinforce. Since I'm feeling lazy this morning, I'm just going to repost the comment I left there:

A point that John made that I think needs to be emphasized:

". . . religious right leaders admitting publicly that they do not believe in democracy in general, and in America’s democracy and our system of governance as laid out in the Constitution, in particular. . ."

The revolutionary concept in the creation of the United States was the idea that society would be ruled by laws created by the people through their elected representatives, measured against the Constitution, and not the will of kings or oligarchs. Here we have a group of religious fanatics (well, some of them -- most of them, as far as I can tell, are just con artists, but I suspect all of them are sociopaths), who regularly don the mantle of "real Americans," proclaiming that they are above the law.

That's the issue, not the particulars of how they intend to disobey a court decision they don't like -- that part is just empty rhetoric, nothing more. That's the point that needs to be made, loudly and publicly: they are opposed to the fundamental principles of American society. We need to brand them as anti-American, again and again and again, until it sticks.

There are lots of ways to dress this up, all of which point out the fundamental dishonesty of the statement and the signatories' complete disdain for the principles that they so loudly claim -- just for starters, what about the religious freedom of Quakers, the Unitarian Universalists, the UCC, Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Judaism, Pagans, etc.? If the law precludes same-sex marriage, their freedom to conduct such marriages in accordance with their beliefs is being denied.

What they're doing is attempting to stir up backlash -- but don't expect them to take any responsibility for any injuries or deaths that result from anti-gay hate attacks. They all belong to the party of (everyone else's) personal responsibility.

By way of antidote, here's HuffPo's list of the eight best marriage ads, starting with one of my favorites.

Here's another of my favorites, that didn't make HuffPo's list:

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Now that you're all sniffly and have forgotten the religious freaks, check out the ad post -- there are a couple more links in the comments.