Since the unconstitutional Roe v. Wade was overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, leftists have been roiling in rage at the thought that states are now free to enact the will of their voters with regard to killing humans in the womb. In his concurrence, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas argued that three other Supreme Court cases should be revisited in that they too lacked constitutional grounding—an argument made also by the esteemed Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork.

One of the decisions Thomas believes should be revisited is the Obergefell decision that imposed same-sex “marriage” on the entire country, robbing states—that is, the people—of their right to decide if intrinsically non-marital relationships should be legally recognized as marriages.

And so, leftists, livid at the prospect of states one day being free to enact marriage laws in accordance with the will of their voters, are trying to take that right away preemptively through federal legislation.

On July 19, 2022 the U.S. House of Representatives passed the absurdly named “Respect for Marriage Act” (H.R. 8404)—a bill that doesn’t merely disrespect marriage; it is hostile to marriage. The bill, which would overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), next goes to the U.S. Senate.

On September 15, seven weeks before the mid-term elections, the Senate announced plans to delay a vote on the controversial bill until after the elections. According to CBS news, “GOP negotiators” who are “involved in the talks over a bipartisan plan” believe this will help increase Republican support.

Who are these GOP Senators? They are RINO Susan Collins, Rob Portman who began supporting all things homosexual after his son announced his sexual attraction to men, and Thom Tillis, who the day after the House passed H.R. 8404 announced he would “probably” support it when it comes to the Senate for a vote. I think this “bipartisan collaboration” is bipartisan in name only.

DOMA, which was passed and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996, explicitly defines marriage:

In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any
ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative
bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word ‘marriage’ means
only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife,
and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is
a husband or a wife. (emphasis added) 

Forty-seven Republicans voted for the dis-Respect for Marriage Act, including Adam Kinzinger, Rodney Davis, Liz Cheney, Tom Emmer (chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee), Darrell Issa, Elise Stefanik (U.S. House Republican Conference chair), Lee Zeldin (who was recently defeated in the New York race for U.S. Senate), and Florida Representatives Michael Waltz and Brian Mast.

Any Republican who doesn’t understand the essential role of the nuclear family—that is, mother, father, and children—to the health and future of any society doesn’t deserve to serve in government. The same applies to any Republican who votes for a bill that robs states of the right to pass laws regulating marriage.

DOMA, which all U.S. House Democrats and 47 “Republicans” oppose, defines marriage in federal law “as between a man and a woman and spouse as a person of the opposite sex.” In contrast, the dis-Respect for Marriage Act recognizes in federal law “any marriage that is valid under state law.”

Again, while DOMA has a provision requiring states to recognize marriages from other states, that provision specifically limits the type of marriages that must be recognized to those composed of two people. No such limit is placed on the federal government in the dis-Respect for Marriage Act.

This means that once Utah, California, Massachusetts, Illinois, or any other nutty state recognizes plural/poly unions as marriages, the federal government will be forced to recognize plural/poly unions as marriages. And once the federal government recognizes plural/poly unions as legal marriages, all states will be forced to recognize those marriages as well.

While some naïve or gullible voters view the absence of language defining marriage as the union of two people in the dis-Respect for Marriage Act as an oversight, others see it correctly as intentional—an interim step to the compulsory legal recognition of plural/poly unions from sea to darkening sea.

Take ACTION: H.R. 8404 may be taken up in the U.S. Senate soon. Please take a moment to urge our two U.S. Senators to vote to protect the Defense of Marriage Act by voting NO to H.R. 8404. Remind them, “The government has no interest in inherently non-reproductive types of relationships. The government has no more vested interest in recognizing and regulating inherently non-reproductive erotic relationships than it does in platonic friendships.”

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin
https://www.durbin.senate.gov/contact/email
Phone: (202) 224-2152

U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth
https://www.duckworth.senate.gov/connect/email-tammy
Phone: (202) 224-2854

Please send a message and then follow up with a phone call this week.

Since the unconstitutional Roe was overturned, leftists have been roiling in rage at the thought that states are now free to enact the will of the people with regard to killing humans in the womb. In his concurrence, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas argued that three other Supreme Court cases should be revisited in that they too lacked constitutional grounding—an argument made also by the esteemed Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork.

One of the decisions Thomas believes should be revisited is the Obergefell decision that imposed same-sex “marriage” on the entire country, robbing states—that is, the people—of their right to decide if intrinsically non-marital relationships should be legally recognized as marriages. And so, leftists livid at the prospect of diverse states one day being free to enact marriage laws in accordance with the will of the people, are trying to take that right away preemptively through federal legislation.

This week the U.S. House of Representatives passed the laughably named “Respect for Marriage Act” (H.R. 8404)—a bill that doesn’t merely disrespect marriage; it is hostile to marriage. The bill, which would overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, now goes to the U.S. Senate.

Forty-seven Republicans voted for it, including Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, Rodney Davis, Tom Emmer (chair of National Republican Congressional Committee), Darrell Issa, Elise Stefanik (U.S. House Republican Conference chair), and Lee Zeldin. Any Republican who doesn’t understand the essential role of the nuclear family—that is, mother, father, and children—to the health and future of any society doesn’t deserve to serve in government.

The Defense of Marriage Act—which all U.S. House Democrats and 47 “Republicans” detest—defines marriage in federal law “as between a man and a woman and spouse as a person of the opposite sex.” In contrast, the Disrespect for Marriage Act recognizes in federal law “any marriage that is valid under state law.”

Note that this means that once Utah, California, Massachusetts, Illinois, or any other nutty state recognizes plural unions as marriages, the federal government will be forced to recognize plural unions as marriages.

While there is a provision requiring states to recognize marriages from other states, that provision specifically limits the type of marriages that must be recognized to those composed of two people. No such limit is placed on the federal government in the Disrespect for Marriage Act.

While some naïfs among us may view this as an oversight, others see it as intentional—an interim step to the legal recognition of plural unions from sea to darkening sea.

Marriage is something. It has a nature. And words have meanings.

As I wrote four years ago, let’s try a little thought experiment. Let’s imagine that now, after legally recognizing intrinsically non-marital same-sex unions as “marriages,” society notices that there remains a unique type of relationship that is identified by the following features: it is composed of two people of major age who are not closely related by blood, are of opposite sexes, and engage in the only kind of sexual act that is naturally procreative. We decide that as language-users there must be a term to identify this particular, commonplace, and cross-cultural type of relationship. Let’s call it “huwelijk.”

In this thought experiment in which the term “marriage” would denote the union of two people of the same sex and “huwelijk” would denote the union of two people of opposite sexes—both of which provide the same legal protections, benefits, and obligations—does anyone believe that homosexuals would accept such a distinction?

Homosexuals would not accept such a linguistic distinction. They would not accept it even if they enjoyed all the practical benefits society historically accorded to sexually complementary couples and even if their unions were legally recognized as marriages.

Homosexuals would not tolerate such a legal distinction because their tyrannical quest for universal approval of homoerotic relationships cannot be achieved unless they obliterate all distinctions—including linguistic distinctions—between homosexual unions and heterosexual unions. Homosexuals—whose unions are naturally sterile—would not tolerate any term that signifies the naturally procreative union between one man and one woman.

Severing marriage from both biological sex and reproductive potential renders marriage irrelevant as a public institution. The most salient aspects of marriage as an institution sanctioned by the government are not subjective feelings of affection and sexual attraction. The government has no vested interest in the private subjective feelings of marriage partners.

The government has a vested interest in the public good. What serves the public good is the welfare of future generations. And what best serves future generations is providing for the needs and protecting the rights of children, which includes their right to be raised by a mother and father, preferably their own biological parents.

If marriage were solely a private institution concerned only with emotional attachments and sexual desire, as homosexuals claim it is, then there would be no reason for the government to be involved. There would be no more justification for government regulation of marriage than there is for government regulation of platonic friendships. And there would be no legitimate reason to prohibit plural marriages.

If the claim of homosexuals that marriage has no intrinsic, necessary, and rational connection to the biological sex of partners or to reproductive potential are true, then there remains no rational basis for the belief that marriage has anything to do with romantic or erotic feelings.

Why is marriage any longer conceived of as a romantic and erotic union? If marriage is severed from biological sex and from reproductive potential and if love is love, then why can’t a loving platonic relationship between three BFF’s be recognized as a marriage? Why can’t the platonic relationship between a 40-year-old soccer coach and his 13-year-old soccer star be deemed a marriage? If “progressives” can jettison the single most enduring and cross-cultural feature of marriage—sexual differentiation—then on what basis can they conceptually retain any other feature, including the notion that marriage is a romantic/erotic union? While eroticism may be important to intimate partners, of what relevance is naturally sterile erotic activity to the government’s interest in marriage as now construed?

When Leftists assert that “love is love,” they really mean that the moral status of erotic activity between two men or two women is no different from the moral status of sexual activity between a man and a woman. If the claim that “love is love,” is true, then there is no rational basis for thinking that there exist types of relationships in which eroticism has no legitimate place. If that’s the case, then why isn’t it morally permissible for all types of relationships to include erotic activity? If all loving relationships are identical (i.e., “love is love”), then why can’t all loving relationships include erotic activity? And if love is love, and marriage has no intrinsic nature, then it’s anything. And if it’s anything, it’s nothing.

If, however, there are different forms of love, some of which ought not include erotic activity, how do leftists determine when love ought not be eroticized?

Marriage is in tatters, but leftists want those tatters torched. Next up from “progressive” pyros: “eliminating the binary”—of marriage. Polyamorists are on the move. “Progressives” just love the smell of napalm all day long.

Take ACTION: H.R. 8404 may be taken up in the U.S. Senate soon**. Please take a moment to speak out to our two U.S. Senators to ask them to vote to protect the Defense of Marriage Act and vote NO to H.R. 8404. Remind them, “The government has no interest in inherently non-reproductive types of relationships. The government has no more interest in inherently non-reproductive erotic relationships than it does in platonic friendships.”

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin
https://www.durbin.senate.gov/contact/email
Phone: (202) 224-2152

U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth
https://www.duckworth.senate.gov/connect/email-tammy
Phone: (202) 224-2854

Please send a message and then follow up with a phone call early next week.

**UPDATE: According to various news sources, the U.S. Senate vote on H.R. 8404 has been pushed back to September.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Unprincipled-Republicans-Vote-for-the-Disrespect-for-Marriage-Act.mp3

Today we give thanks to God for the wisdom and courage of U.S Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito,  Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett for holding that the “Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey are overruled; [and] the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

The syllabus (i.e., summary) in Dobbs v. the Jackson Women’s Health Organization outlines the major arguments addressed by the majority:

• Without any grounding in the constitutional text, history, or precedent, Roe imposed on the entire country a detailed set of rules for pregnancy divided into trimesters much like those that one might expect to find in a statute or regulation.

• Until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. No state constitutional provision had recognized such a right. Until a few years before Roe, no federal or state court had recognized such a right. Nor had any scholarly treatise. Indeed, abortion had long been a crime in every single State.

• Attempts to justify abortion through appeals to a broader right to autonomy and to define one’s “concept of existence” prove too much. … Those criteria, at a high level of generality, could license fundamental rights to illicit drug use, prostitution, and the like. What sharply distinguishes the abortion right from the rights recognized in the cases on which Roe and Casey rely is something that both those decisions acknowledged: Abortion is different because it destroys what Roe termed “potential life” and what the law challenged in this case calls an “unborn human being.” None of the other decisions cited by Roe and Casey involved the critical moral question posed by abortion.

• [T]he Court cannot allow its decisions to be affected by such extraneous concerns [i.e., stare decisis/precedent]. A precedent of this Court is subject to the usual principles of stare decisis under which adherence to precedent is the norm but not an inexorable command. If the rule were otherwise, erroneous decisions like Plessy would still be the law.

Writing for the Court, Justice Alito made mincemeat of the lousy arguments proffered in Roe and Casey, but the political invertebrate Chief Justice John Roberts did what he does best. He tried to swim smack dab down the middle of this roaring river. Hard to do without a spine. The political Roberts voted with the majority but refused to overturn Roe and Casey despite numerous leftist legal scholars acknowledging for decades that Roe lacked any grounding in the U.S. Constitution.

Justice Thomas again renewed his quest to revisit “substantive due process” jurisprudence, which he argues “has harmed our country in many ways,” and, therefore, “we should eliminate it from our jurisprudence at the earliest opportunity.” He shares this view with Justices Antonin Scalia and Hugo Black as well as Robert Bork and many other legal scholars.

Thomas has long argued that because of the “erroneous” nature of substantive due process jurisprudence, “in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”

Those cases addressed, respectively, the purported constitutional right to access contraception, the purported constitutional right to engage in homosexual sodomy, and the purported constitutional right of two people of the same sex to marry.

To be clear, Thomas’ argument regarding substantive due process jurisprudence has nothing to do with his moral view of contraception, sodomy, or marriage. Rather, he is making an argument about the constitutional basis—or lack thereof—of substantive due process doctrine, which Justice Antonin Scalia too criticized:

The entire practice of using the Due Process Clause to add judicially favored rights to the limitations upon democracy set forth in the Bill of Rights (usually under the rubric of so-called “substantive due process”) is in my view judicial usurpation.

Justice Hugo Black was similarly critical of substantive due process doctrine in Griswold:

[T]here is no provision of the Constitution which either expressly or impliedly vests power in this Court to sit as a supervisory agency over acts of duly constituted legislative bodies and set aside their laws because of the Court’s belief that the legislative policies adopted are unreasonable, unwise, arbitrary, capricious or irrational. The adoption of such a loose, flexible, uncontrolled standard for holding laws unconstitutional, if ever it is finally achieved, will amount to a great unconstitutional shift of power to the courts which I believe and am constrained to say will be bad for the courts and worse for the country. Subjecting federal and state laws to such an unrestrained and unrestrainable judicial control as to the wisdom of legislative enactments would, I fear, jeopardize the separation of governmental powers that the Framers set up and at the same time threaten to take away much of the power of States to govern themselves which the Constitution plainly intended them to have.

Leftists mock Thomas for his substantive critique of substantive due process mischief. They do so because they fear losing the power of the Court to act as a supreme law-making body. Well, they did fear that while they controlled the Court.

But Thomas’ critique is not a fringe critique, and he may have at least one ally on the Court: Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Now, the arduous work of changing hearts and minds that have been corrupted by nearly fifty years of leftist propaganda becomes even more urgent.

We need to donate more money to crisis pregnancy centers, both to help mothers who are considering abortion and to repair damage from domestic terrorists like Jane’s Revenge that promises violence to organizations that seek to protect children in their mothers’ wombs.

We need to pour money into creative, compelling public service/social media campaigns and the arts in order to elicit support for protecting preborn babies.

We need to elect wise, courageous state leaders who stand boldly for the sanctity of lives that pro-abortion activists deem unworthy of life.

We need to pass fiscal and social policies that end—rather than create—poverty, and we need to create a culture that doesn’t think a solution to poverty is baby sacrifice.

And we need to educate our children in places that teach that humans in their mothers’ wombs are sacred and that neither their developmental status, nor their convenience for others, nor their imperfections grant to their mothers the moral right to have them killed.

And we need to pray ceaselessly for the least of these. We must pray that incipient human lives are able to survive the dangerous waters of their mothers’ wombs.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/The-Nightmare-of-Roe-Ends.mp3

While a number of cases have reached the U.S. Supreme Court challenging government pandemic restrictions that limit churches’ and members free exercise of religion, Elim Romanian Pentecostal Church v. Pritzker presents direct legal conflict between jurisdictions (traditionally the primary basis for Supreme Court hearing) and raises crucial additional questions that need resolution by the U.S. Supreme Court, to re-protect and strengthen our first and most important liberty.

For these reasons, IFI has joined an Amicus Brief in support of Elim Romanian.

Until 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court had rightly afforded the highest level of protection to our first freedom, the free exercise of religion.  In order for actions of government to restrict free exercise of religion, the U.S. Supreme Court applied a standard called strict scrutiny, under which the government had to prove: 1) a compelling state interest, and 2) that any restriction was narrowly tailored to actually accomplish that interest.

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports.  In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens.  ~George Washington.

In addition to other law, such as tax exemption, and housing allowance for “ministers of the gospel”, the Church’s freedom to gather and worship is protected no less than four times in the First Amendment alone, forbidding government from: establishment of religion, and prohibition of free exercise, speech and assembly.

However, in its decision in Employment Division v. Smith, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the Constitution meant something different than it had for over a century, and reduced the standard to “facially neutral and generally applied,” which demoted free exercise of religion to the same level as any other government restriction on freedom.

In response, Congress and 21 states including Illinois (but not California, Nevada or New York, the subjects of the cases related to Elim) passed Religious Freedom Restoration Acts to restore the strict scrutiny standard.  In the following 30 years, these laws have been challenged and weakened, and the Church in 29 other states has gone without this important extra protection.

Several Justices; a potential majority, have recently signaled the desire to correct this error. Elim is the best current vehicle for the Court to restore this most important freedom.

Earlier in the pandemic, a number of challenges to government restriction on free exercise rights were presented in multiple federal circuits, and largely rejected (e.g., Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley, Nevada v. Sisolak).  Unwilling to intervene the U.S. Supreme Court denied appeals, even in an earlier version of Elim v. Pritzker (which has been renewed in this case).

“…this Court, which consists of only nine men and women, all of them successful lawyers who studied at Harvard or Yale Law School…Not a single evangelical Christian (a group that comprises about one quarter of Americans), or even a Protestant of any denomination.”  ~Justice Antonin Scalia, Dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges

The make-up of the High Court has changed for the better since Justice Scalia’s assertion that there was “not a single evangelical Christian,” (including himself), and even since this recent unwillingness to defend the Church’s Constitutional liberty amidst often onerous COVID restrictions.  To God’s glory, President Donald J. Trump was able to make 3 apparently sound appointments, including one protestant (Gorsuch, Episcopal – replacing Scalia) and possibly even an evangelical Catholic, in Justice Amy Barrett.

Accordingly, the U.S. Supreme Court has changed course in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn vs. Cuomo and Southbay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, from owing “significant deference to politically accountable officials,” to now even Chief Justice John Roberts (for a 6-3 majority in Southbay) conceding that such “deference, though broad, has its limits.”

This change creates a conflict between rulings and federal jurisdictions, which is one of the primary reasons for the U.S. Supreme Court to grant a hearing (the request for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case is called a “Writ of Certiorari”).

The amicus meaning “friend,” (of the court) brief IFI has joined, encourages a ruling on several additional key issues, including:

• Religious liberty should be applied to the community, or the Church corporately, not just to individuals. This element of religious exercise has greatly eroded to the extent that the Court has been unwilling to even define “religion.”
• Churches must have the same exceptions as “essential” services.
• Exceptions to restrictions, even with a compelling interest (i.e., reducing COVID spread), must be no worse for religious practice and organizations than for comparable “secular” ones. (Really, such exceptions should be even greater for First Amendment protected classes. One might say that the U.S. Constitution has pre-determined them to be “essential.”)
• Limits on religious practices and institutions should require the least restrictive means possible, and that means should be rationally calculated to actually achieve the compelling state interest. This is a request to return completely to the strict scrutiny test.

In the more recent COVID cases, the majority signaled a potential return to the historic strict scrutiny standard (maximum Constitutional protection) for free exercise of religion, requiring that New York and California prove their regulations, which obviously target religion for differential treatment, are narrowly tailored to achieving a compelling government interest (reducing COVID spread).

When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice;
but when a wicked man rules, the people groan. ~Proverbs 29:2

While the 6-3 majority coalition in Southbay is very fragmented, with five different opinions on the outcome (4 separate concurrences from the majority: Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, and one dissent by the usual liberal justices: Kagan, Sotomayor, and Breyer), it appears that 5 to 6 Justices may favor a return to the strict scrutiny standard. 

In this case, these new Justices have already established a desperately needed check upon the ultra-liberal extremist control in the executive and legislative branches.  Also encouraging is the Chief Justice’s affirmation of his loyalty to the Constitutional text in refusal to preside over a proceeding to remove a former president from his former office.

Nonetheless, all but two of the members of this same Court have also shown a willingness to punt the Constitution in the face of pressure in the Texas v. Pennsylvania election challenge.

The Governor, using Illinois taxpayer dollars (i.e., the Attorney General’s office – they should be defending the people) to defend his restriction of their rights, has stalled this case at every turn by:

• delaying response until the last possible deadline (i.e., at 10:00 p.m. on the night before the Supreme Court was to rule on Elim Pentecostal Church’s emergency appeal to open for Easter)
• not responding to Elim’s petition for Certiorari, until the Court ordered him to file a response
• re-using arguments of mootness already rejected by the Court in Roman Catholic Diocese (the Governor changed his Executive Order at the last moment and then responded that Elim was no longer being harmed).

There will no doubt be numerous other attacks, both philosophical and political, every step of the way, against this Court, with a majority who has expressed a philosophy of solid textual interpretation of the Constitution, compatible with this Nation’s historic religious heritage.

This is major progress, but there is yet a long way to go for a Court which has for the past 48 (out of 245) years enshrined a right to murder children before they are born.

We must, must, must constantly uphold them in prayer.

Pray every day that:

• God will change the hearts of those Justices who have been unwilling to protect and defend the broad freedom of religion clearly given in the First Amendment,
• He will influence changes of bad legal reasoning,
• He will give great courage to stand to those on the Court who already agree,
• Elim will become the ultimate Religious Freedom Restoration Act, correcting previous wrong denial of freedom by the Court, and
• Such a reversal will lead to other reversals of bad law, such as Roe v. Wade.

Please consider supporting the good work of Illinois Family Institute.

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.

Still reaching for peak absurdity with ever more zeal, elements of the radical left are now smearing an honest interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and those who support it as “racist,” “sexist,” “homophobic,” and more. In fact, those are the exact words used by U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) to describe originalism — the widely accepted judicial doctrine holding that the words in the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted and understood as intended by the authors and ratifiers. The revolutionary view offered by Markey and others like him is a threat to America and every single American, fellow lawmakers warned.

Amid the nasty confirmation fight over U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Sen. Markey unleashed vitriolic and hateful comments against her “originalist” view on interpreting the U.S. Constitution. “Originalism is racist. Originalism is sexist. Originalism is homophobic. Originalism is just a fancy word for discrimination,” Markey claimed in an October 26 Tweet, essentially smearing as racist, sexist, “homophobic,” and discriminatory ACB and the tens or even hundreds of millions of Americans who believe the words in the Constitution mean what they say. Originalism now joins math, objectivity, individualism, milk, lower taxes, babies, Star Wars, and more in being called “racist” by the far left.

In comments made on the U.S. Senate floor, Senator Markey echoed that bizarre view after noting that Amy Coney Barrett proclaimed that her judicial philosophy was the same as the late Justice Antonin Scalia‘s view, originalism. “As Judge Barrett described so-called originalism, it means she is supposed to interpret the U.S. Constitution’s text to have the meaning it had when the U.S. Constitution was ratified,” Markey said, falsely claiming that various categories of people such as women and homosexuals had “no rights” when the U.S. Constitution was ratified, and omitting the fact that the Constitution has been amended repeatedly since then.

Markey’s summary of what originalism means is relatively accurate. The elected representatives who wrote and voted to ratify that governing document delegating “few and defined” powers to the federal government did so with the understanding that the text meant what it said. No sane or sensible person would ever vote to empower a government, with all its dangerous and coercive powers, under a Constitution in which the words had fluid meaning — or no meaning at all. It would be the equivalent of handing that government a blank check with unlimited power over life, liberty, property, and more — something only a fool or a suicidal madman would even consider.

And yet, this is obviously how U.S. Senator Markey and other leftwing extremists seeking control over Americans believe the U.S. Constitution ought to be understood. Common sense and basic decency would dictate that if Sen. Markey and his far-left allies would like to change the U.S. Constitution, they should do so honestly, using the amendment process outlined in the document itself. They could then make their case to the American people. Then, the people, acting through their elected representatives, could decide for themselves whether they wished to change, re-structure, or further empower their federal government with new authorities.

But Markey and others know that Americans would never willingly tolerate many of the changes that “progressives” would like to bring about. And so, like communists and revolutionaries have done for generations, Senator Markey proceeded to accuse originalists of exactly what progressives have been doing for decades. “Originalam — originalism — is just a fancy word for discrimination,” Markey claimed on the U.S. Senate floor. “It has become a hazy smokescreen for judicial activism by so-called conservatives to achieve from the bench what they cannot accomplish through the ballot box.”

Of course, in reality, the exact opposite is true. For instance, much of Markey’s bizarre rant centered on “LGBT” issues and the supposed right to a homosexual so-called “marriage.” And yet, it was only through judicial activism that this mockery of the people’s wishes and God’s design for marriage could be implemented. Indeed, even in California, perhaps the most liberal state in America, voters rejected so-called “gay marriage” when given the opportunity at the ballot box. In states like Alabama, over 8 in 10 voters supported real marriage. Only through the rogue U.S. Supreme Court were “progressives” able to defy the will of the people and impose faux marriage on America. The same is true with legalizing the murder of unborn babies euphemistically referred to as “abortion.”

Fellow U.S. lawmakers expressed outrage and shock over Markey’s words. “Of all the irresponsible and inflammatory statements I’ve heard over the last few weeks, and I’ve heard some doozies, this might well be the worst,” U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), a former clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, said on Fox & Friends in response to his Democrat colleague’s accusations. “I hope, expect, and demand that Senator Markey retract his statement. It is irresponsible; he can’t defend that.” Despite having sworn an oath to the U.S. Constitution, Markey has so far refused to apologize.

Senator Lee, among the most faithful members of the U.S. Congress when it comes to respecting his oath of office, also highlighted the implications of Markey’s dangerous narrative. “If you think about what he is really saying there, Senator Markey has essentially said that our Constitution is racist, and [that] an effort to understand it, understand its words at the time they were written, is itself racist and bigoted,” Lee noted. “I can’t think of a statement that has a greater tendency to undermine the foundation of our constitutional republic.” Perhaps that was the goal.

The reason why Markey and others are so triggered by originalism is clear, too. “They don’t want the courts to be limited to judging institutions; they want them to be institutions of social change, of social policy, they want them to take debatable matters beyond debate and, so, that is why this isn’t satisfying to them,” Lee explained, adding that they want to go far outside the bounds of what the U.S. Constitution allows without having to get the consent of Americans through the amendment process. “Justice Barrett sees the elegant simplicity of the fact that you want judges to interpret the law based on what it says.”

Interestingly, pinned at the top of his Twitter page, Sen. Markey has an article promoting universal dependence on the federal government through monthly payments to every American. The propaganda comes from the fringe leftwing “Jabobin” magazine. That magazine is named after the monstrous revolutionaries known for their “Reign of Terror” during the French Revolution — a murderous orgy of violence that resulted in mass murder, tens of thousands of beheadings, savage persecution of Christians, destruction of civilization, and other bloody horrors from which France never fully recovered.

HELP: Our get-out-the-vote campaign is up and running. 

We are distributing the IFI Voter Guide to hundreds of churches and civic groups throughout the state..
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Written by Calley Mangum

Last Saturday, President Trump nominated U.S. Circuit Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the seat held by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court. Barrett, 48, has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit since October 2017. While there may be much dissent across political lines over the confirmation of Judge Barrett for the U.S. Supreme Court, the facts of her extensive qualifications speak for themselves.

Amy Coney Barrett is a married mother of seven children, five biological and two adopted from Haiti. She grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana and graduated from Rhodes College magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. She then attended Notre Dame Law School, where she was the executive editor of the Notre Dame Law Review. Barrett graduated summa cum laude in 1997, and she clerked from 1998-99 for the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

“That is trial by fire,” Barrett said in an interview with The Heritage Foundation. “The way Justice Scalia ran his chambers is we all had to be prepared to discuss all the cases […] Justice Scalia, obviously very quick witted, brilliant, and he didn’t want you to agree with him. He wanted you to say what you thought. And so disagreeing with him as I sometimes did and pushing back with someone like Justice Scalia really taught me a lot.”

After clerking for Justice Scalia, Barrett worked a few years in private practice before returning to Notre Dame Law School in 2002 to teach. She remained at Notre Dame until President Trump nominated her for the 7^th Circuit in 2017. When she was nominated, every clerk who served with Barrett at the U.S. Supreme Court from 1998-99 wrote a letter to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee recommending Barrett for the 7^th Circuit seat.

During her 7th Circuit confirmation hearing, Barrett was subjected to continued questions regarding her Catholic faith and its influence on her role as a judge, questions that many argue violated the U.S. Constitution’s No Religious Tests Clause.

“I don’t think that faith should influence the way a judge decides cases at all,” said Barrett in her interview with Heritage. And she said the same to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee during her hearing. “Somehow people seem to think that I said the opposite of what I said, but I think that one of the most important responsibilities of a judge is to put their personal preferences and their personal beliefs aside because our responsibility is to adhere to the rule of law.”

Barrett’s record while on the 7^th Circuit reflects this dedication to the law, including the U.S. Constitution. (Read Heritage’s article for more details on Barrett’s rulings while on the 7^th Circuit.) Barrett has said her judicial approach falls under “original public meaning originalism,” or that “the meaning of the words at the time they were ratified is the same as their meaning today.”

The confirmation hearings for Judge Barrett in the U.S. Senate are scheduled to start Monday, October 12.

This article was originally published by NCFamily.org.

In a blistering must-see address on the U.S. Senate floor, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), the youngest member of the U.S. Senate, condemned Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia. Writing for the Majority, Gorsuch essentially legislated from the bench, changing duly passed federal law with far-reaching and destructive consequences for all Americans, especially religious Americans.

Hawley argued that religious conservatives have been sold a bill of goods. They have been commanded for years to shut up and the recompense for their dutiful silence would be judges like Antonin Scalia who adhere to the judicial philosophies of textualism and originalism that ensure judges don’t legislate. Hawley sarcastically points out that in Gorsuch, religious conservatives were duped. Hawley said, “it’s time for religious conservatives to stand up and to speak out.”

Please watch the entirety of Hawley’s compelling address and share it widely. (It is only 13 minutes long.)

U.S. Senator Hawley—a Christian and Harvard University and Yale School graduate who worked for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty—is  exactly the kind of leader religious conservatives have been praying for: wise, brilliant, and bold.

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The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has garnered less attention than usual lately with COVID-19 monopolizing headlines. However, with the Court’s term ending in June, some of the most controversial decisions are expected to be released any day now. Among the most notable are three cases involving Title VII of the landmark Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of sex. The question is whether Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination also includes decisions based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The cases are Altitude Express, Inc. v. Zarda, Bostock v. Clayton County, and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Zarda and Bostock involve gay men suing their employers, alleging that they were fired because of their sexual orientation. Harris Funeral Homes involves a transgender employee who formerly worked in a Christian-owned funeral home in Michigan and claims to have been illegally fired after coming out as a transgender woman and starting to wear women’s clothing.

It should be noted that twenty-two states, Illinois included, already prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Thus, the Court’s decision will not change employment decisions for nearly half the country. However, the cases are yet another instance of the Federal courts delving into a contentious cultural issue.

Title VII prohibits employment decisions based on certain protected attributes like race, religion, and sex. Yet there has been a push in recent years to interpret Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination as including sexual orientation and gender identity. The cases have significant cultural, theological, and moral underpinnings; however, the main question for the U.S. Supreme Court is one of statutory interpretation. Here is how the pertinent part of Title VII reads:

“It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employment agency to fail or refuse to refer for employment, or otherwise to discriminate against, any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”

No mention of “gender identity” or “sexual orientation.” Case closed—right? Not necessarily. The Federal courts of appeal have reached different conclusions based on their method of statutory interpretation. The methods have largely centered on “textualism” and “originalism.”

Textualism holds that the plain meaning of the legal text is the only thing you look at in interpreting, with no consideration given to any non-textual sources. Instead of considering the overall purpose of the law, legislative history, or policy arguments, a textualist approach only looks to the four corners of the paper on which the law is written, considering nothing besides the apparent meaning of the text. Textualism has long been heralded by justices like the late Justice Antonin Scalia and Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch.

One would think that since Title VII’s text does not mention “sexual orientation” or “gender identity,” a textualist approach would be an automatically mean excluding these statuses. However, several courts have used a textualist approach to come to the opposite conclusion. No one disputes that Title VII bans sex discrimination—it says so in the text. But LGBT proponents have developed a clever textualist approach to argue that sex discrimination also includes discrimination based on a LGBT status.

The argument goes that by discriminating based on one’s sexual orientation, you are inevitably discriminating based on his or her sex. For example, imagine that there are two employees: one heterosexual man dating a woman and the other a homosexual woman dating a woman. If the homosexual woman is fired for dating another woman and the man is not, the only reason the woman is fired is because of her sex. Both employees are participating in the same activity (dating a woman); the only difference is that one employee is a woman and the other is man—thus, sex discriminati0n. The argument goes that since Title VII bans sex discrimination, the law also necessarily bans discrimination based on sexual orientation. In the same way, a biological man who is wearing woman’s clothing and using the women’s restroom would not be fired if it were a biological woman doing those same things. LGBT advocates claim that this also is sex discrimination.

There are several weaknesses with this argument. In the first example, the primary reason the employee is fired is her sexual orientation, not her biological sex. Title VII’s inclusion of the term “sex” means just that and nothing more. In this case, sex may be a factor, but it is not the primary reason for the firing. Sex and sexual orientation are different concepts. Sex has to do with one’s genetic makeup and reproductive abilities while sexual orientation is based on one’s sexual attraction to others, and gender identity has to do with whether one’s expression or behavior corresponds with his or her biological sex.

A more compelling reason to reject this argument is that by reading sexual orientation or gender identity into Title VII, courts would essentially be acting as policy-makers. For over fifty years, Title VII has never been understood to include sexual orientation or gender identity. In voting for Title VII in 1964, no member of Congress could have imagined that the word sex would also include gender identity and sexual orientation, which have only recently entered the modern vernacular. The courts would simply be reading modern notions of sexuality into a law that was never intended to be used that way.

For years, LGBT lobbying efforts have tried to pass the Equality Act, which, among other things, would add sexual orientation and gender identity to Title VII’s list of protected classes. The bill has been introduced in Congress for years yet has never been enacted. The U.S. Supreme Court would essentially be adopting a policy that Congress has deliberately decided not to pursue.

There is another form of statutory interpretation called originalism, which some courts have used to come to the conclusion that “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” are excluded from Title VII’s protection. Originalism still focuses on the text of the statute, but a word’s meaning is frozen in time. Instead of incorporating changing meanings of words, as may be allowed under a broader view of textualism, originalism says that a word’s meaning is to be taken from the original public understanding of the text from the time the text was enacted. In other words, if a text was passed in 1950, a court ought to look at what the word meant in 1950–not what it means today.

The wisdom of originalism acknowledges that words change meaning over time, but to ensure a fixed meaning in law, the only meaning that a court will consider is what the public understood the words to mean when it was enacted. This approach is taken in order to avoid changing the law from its intended purpose. In this case, no one seriously argues that Congress or the general public would have understood the term “sex” to include “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.”

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for these cases in October, and the decisions are expected to come down any day over the coming weeks. Some observers believe Justice Neil Gorsuch to be the swing vote. Justice Gorsuch admitted that the issue was very close in his mind during oral arguments. Congress, the people’s representative, has so far refused to add gender identity or sexual orientation to Title VII by refusing to enact the Equality Act. Yet the Court may choose to bypass the democratic process and adopt this new reading of Title VII.

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Written by Pastor Scott Lively

What we call the pro-family movement is a component of the larger conservative movement and deals with matters of sexuality and the natural family. Its American roots are in the cultural backlash to the Marxist revolution of the 1960s that turned family-centered society on its head and swapped the Judeo-Christian morality of our founding for Soviet-style “political correctness.”

Before the 1960s there wasn’t any need for a “pro-family” movement because family values had been the overwhelming consensus of the western world for centuries. Indeed, so surprised were Americans about the cultural revolution that it took nearly twenty years for the conservatives to mount a truly effective response to it. That came under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

The 60’s revolution was not grounded in the Marxist orthodoxy of Lenin and Stalin, but the Cultural Marxism of Herbert Marcuse’s Frankfort School, which envisioned sexual anarchy, not a “workers revolt,” as the key to dismantling Judeo-Christian civilization. The natural core constituency for this ideology was the underground “gay” movement whose dream of social acceptance was not possible without a complete transformation of American sexual morality. Thus, beginning in the late 1940s, Marxist organizer Harry Hay, so-called “father of the American gay movement” was also “father” of the (then hidden) army of “gay” activists most responsible for the “culture war” that exploded in the 60’s and continues today.

America’s Marxist revolution was therefore a “sexual revolution” whose overwhelming success vindicated Marcuse’s destructive vision and became the primary tool of the one-world government elites for softening resistance to their domination by breaking the family-centered society which is every nation’s greatest source of strength, stability and self-sufficiency.

Importantly, though primarily driven behind the scenes by “gays,” the first goal was not legitimization of homosexual sodomy but the normalization of heterosexual promiscuity. This was the motive and strategy that drove “closeted” 1940s and 50s homosexual activist Alfred Kinsey’s fraudulent “science” attacking the marriage-based sexual ethic as “repressive” and socially harmful. It also drove the launch of the modern porn industry, beginning with Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Magazine (Hefner called himself “Kinsey’s pamphleteer”). It drove and defined the battles in the courts where sexual morality was systematically “reformed” by Cultural Marxist elites on the U.S. Supreme Court: contraception on demand to facilitate “fornication without consequences” (Griswold v Connecticut 1966), abortion on demand as the backup system to failed contraception (Roe v Wade 1973), and finally legalization of homosexual sodomy (Lawrence v Texas 2003).

Note the thirty year gap between Roe v Wade and Lawrence v Texas. That major delay in the Marxist agenda was achieved by the election of Ronald Reagan, under whom the pro-family movement became a major political force. That gap also highlights a critical fact: that “street activism” may be essential to any political cause but the real key to the culture war is the U.S. Supreme Court. By 1981 when Ronald Reagan took power the Marxists had nearly succeeded in collapsing the nation’s family and economic infrastructure and the LGBT juggernaut had come completely out of the shadows and taken its place at the head of the cultural blitzkrieg it had been steering from the beginning. Reagan stopped that juggernaut by putting Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court, the lion of constitutional originalism who wrote the majority opinion in Bowers v Hardwick (1986) which affirmed (not created) the constitutional right of states to criminalize homosexual sodomy and other harmful sexual conduct in the public interest.

Reagan and Scalia stopped the sexual revolution in its tracks and made it possible for the pro-family movement to begin restoring family values in society, which we strove diligently to do. I got my start in Christian social activism in those heady days and served as State Communications Director for the No Special Rights Act in Oregon in 1992 which forbade the granting of civil rights minority status based on sexual conduct. We fell short in Oregon but a Colorado version of our bill passed the same year. We had in essence won the culture war with that victory given that the Supreme Court had previously ruled that minority status designation required three things: a history of discrimination, political powerlessness, and immutable (unchangeable) status (such as skin color). We had a slam-dunk win on at least two of the three criteria and it would have been just a matter of time before we passed the No Special Rights law from coast to coast.

However, Reagan had been prevented by the elites from putting a second Scalia on the court in the person of Robert Bork, and was forced by the unprecedented political “borking” of Mr. Bork to accept their man Anthony Kennedy to fill the seat instead. Just ten years later, Kennedy served his function by writing the majority opinion killing the Colorado law in Romer v Evans (1996), audaciously declaring that the court didn’t need to apply its three-part constitution test to the No Special Rights Act because it was motivated by “animus” (hate) and thus did not represent a legitimate exercise of the state’s regulatory authority. The ruling was all the more outrageous given that it was only possibly through a blatant abuse of the court’s own judicial authority. Kennedy’s “disapproval = hate” lie set the tone for the political left from that point forward.

In Lawrence v Texas, Kennedy delivered the coup-de-grace to Justice Scalia by striking down Bowers v Hardwick and brazenly ruling that “public morality” cannot be the basis for law. Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority in all five SCOTUS opinions that have, in essence, established homosexual cultural supremacy in America, including the infamous and utterly unconstitutional Obergefell v Hodges (2015) “gay marriage” decision. He is, in my opinion, the worst and most culturally destructive jurist in the history of the court: the culprit (among many villainous candidates) most responsible for the current dysfunctional state of the family in America.

So where’s the “bright future” amidst this lamentation? It’s in the promise made and so-far kept by President Donald Trump to appoint only constitutional originalists to the supreme court. It is in the pleasantly surprising discovery that his first pick, Neil Gorsuch, seems from his first comments as a “supreme” to be a perfect choice to fill the “Scalia seat” on the court. It is in the hopeful rumors that Anthony Kennedy is about to retire, and the simple fact that ultra-hard leftist Ruth Bader Ginsberg and leftist Steven Broyer are of an age that their seats could at any time be vacated by voluntary or involuntary retirement.

In short, the bright future of the pro-family movement is in the hands of the man we hired to drain the swamp in Washington DC, and who hasn’t yet backed down in that fight despite the remarkable scorched-earth campaign of destruction and discreditation being waged against him by the establishment elites of both parties, Hollywood and the media.

I must admit that after Obergefell I began to think that the pro-family movement had lost the culture war, but I now believe there is real hope, not just for reclaiming some lost ground, but possibly of reversing all of the “gains” of the hard left over the past half century. A solid majority of true constitutional originalists could actually restore the legal primacy of the natural family in America fairly quickly, and our cultural healing could quickly follow.

As the leftist elites and street activists continue their all-hands-on-deck attempted “borking” of President Trump, let’s not forget why they’re doing it. His political survival means the end of theirs. I can’t think of a brighter future than that for our nation.

This article was originally posted at ScottLively.net

In what is already a controversial session due to the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on many cases in the upcoming months that will have wide-reaching effects in American life. Here are three decisions that Christians should know about.

Health Standards: Protecting or Burdening Women?

Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt (formerly v. Cole) 

Pro-lifers across the country will want to pay close attention to this case arising out of Texas. In light of the haunting Kermit Gosnell story in 2013, the Texas state legislature enacted safety measures for abortion clinics. The law would require abortion clinics to adhere to the same standards as outpatient surgical centers and would require abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles in case health complications for the mother arise. If enforced, approximately three quarters of Texas abortion clinics now in operation would close.

Abortion advocates say this law violates the “undue burden” standard of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a doctrine which says any law that places a substantial obstacle to abortion is unconstitutional. In contrast, Texas argues that these are commonsense health regulations and that women are not burdened because the remaining abortion facilities are within reasonable driving distances throughout the state.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Texas law saying that it is not the role of the judiciary to consider the extent a state’s health laws have on restricting abortion access. The Supreme Court will now determine whether the Fifth Circuit properly used the “undue burden” standard in making its decision.

Of Nuns and Birth Control

Zubik v. Burwell 

What wins? Freedom of conscience or government interests? In Zubik v. Burwell, religious employers, such as Christian universities and Little Sisters of the Poor, are fighting Obamacare’s HHS mandate which requires them to cover the costs of “all FDA-approved contraceptives,” including abortion-inducing drugs, for their employees.

This may sound similar to last year’s Hobby Lobby case where the Court ruled the government cannot force employers with longstanding religious beliefs to pay for coverage that violates their conscience. To comply with Hobby Lobby, the Obama administration created an exception for religious employers that excludes the objectionable content from their insurance plans.

However, the federal government is still forcing the employers’ insurance companies and other third-party administrators to cover the costs of their employees who seek to obtain abortion pills. This means employers are still actively involved in providing drugs in their healthcare plans that violate their conscience.

The Court will weigh whether Obamacare’s HHS mandate and its “accommodation” violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The Court’s decision will depend on whether the government can prove that this is the least restrictive way of advancing a compelling public interest.

A Separation between State and Playgrounds

Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Pauley

The state of Missouri prevented pre-school and daycare centers from using a government program that provides recycled tires for safer playground surfaces. The reason? The pre-school is run by a church. Missouri claims that allowing the program to serve a church-run daycare will violate the principle of separation of church and state.

The Court will determine whether excluding churches from an otherwise neutral government program constitutes a violation of the Free Exercise and Equal Protection Clauses.

This article was originally posted at Mauck & Baker, LLC.

“All of life is partisan.” ~ Saul Alinsky

In the 24 hours since Josh Earnest announced that President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle would not attend the funeral of renowned U.S. Supreme Court Justice, much virtual ink has been spilled about the appropriateness of this choice. Even a number of liberals have expressed puzzlement and disappointment. In light of the ceremonial duties that Obama has performed, including pardoning turkeys, throwing baseballs, and visiting dictators, it is passing strange that he won’t attend Justice Antonin Scalia’s funeral.

Obama sought and won—twice—the highest office in the greatest nation in history and then spurns the funeral of arguably one of the greatest legal minds ever to grace the U.S. Supreme Court—a claim that even Justice Scalia’s ideological foes acknowledge. Justice Scalia’s public service did not begin with his appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. He also served another ten years in various governmental positions. Not even forty years of highly esteemed public service merits Obama’s presence at his funeral. As many times as President Cool has exposed the depth of his contempt for his ideological opponents, for convention, and for true principles, he manages to dig a little deeper, confounding even his allies.

A Leftist writer tried futilely to defend Obama’s indefensible, childish, and partisan decision by saying Obama’s presence would be a distraction. Isn’t a world leader’s presence at funerals always a distraction? Wasn’t it a distraction when Obama appeared at Former U.S. House Speaker Tom Foley’s funeral, or U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye’s, or U.S. Senator Robert Byrd’s, or U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy’s, or Walter Kronkite’s?

In light of Obama’s divers dubious actions, including this most recent egregious symbolic insult, surely Obama can’t expect Americans to believe these statements of his:

• We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.
• What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility—a recognition on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept, but rather seize gladly.
• Let us remember we are all part of one American family. We are united in common values.
• Those of us who have the privilege to serve this country have an obligation to do our job as best we can. We come from different parties, but we are Americans first.
• What the American people hope—what they deserve—is for all of us, Democrats and Republicans, to work through our differences; to overcome the numbing weight of our politics.
• We want everybody to act like adults, quit playing games, realize that it’s not just my way or the highway.

Perhaps his light-hearted quip most truly reveals his political philosophy:

That’s the good thing about being president. I can do whatever I want.

I am reminded of a recent Chicago Tribune front-page headline that read: “Politics imperils court’s prestige.” Perhaps it should be rewritten: “Politics imperils presidential prestige.”

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Written by Mark. J. Fitzgibbons

The importance of Justice Antonin Scalia, who passed away this past weekend, is based not just in what he said in his U.S. Supreme Court opinions, but how he said it.

Famous for his biting and even entertaining dissents, Scalia at times (and usually the right ones) expressed a common sense moral outrage at both his liberal and less consistent conservative colleagues. He was the ‘everyman’ in his outrage, saying what we might want to say about their departures from sound constitutional jurisprudence, but far more gifted with a legal genius shaped by an originalist view of the Constitution — and a wittiness that made conservatives smile and chuckle.

His flamboyant style of writing legal opinions made him what marketing guru Seth Godin calls a “purple cow.” He stood out in a field of more common brown cows. But more than that, it was the boldness of his style that made him an intellectual leader for originalism. In a city and system of institutions that tend to stifle and hold back the candid, he made candor about the original intent of the Constitution his brand.

He gave conservatives hope that the Constitution would not be lost for a lack of honesty or standing by principle, the shortage of which are trademarks of Washington and government.

Scalia understood that American constitutional law is based in the morality that civil society should be structured such that we should do no harm to others. The “we” includes government. The Constitution is structured to limit government’s harm to individuals and our God-given rights. Scalia understood the need for judicial fidelity to that structure.

This rule of law over government itself is a key to originalism, and creates a bright-line contrast with the progressive view that the ends of those in government are at least almost always what are best for the rest of us despite transgressing the Constitution. The Founders understood both the perpetual necessity and dangers of government, and therefore structured the governing law over government — the Constitution — to limit the dangers.

Scalia was criticized by liberals in the legal profession, particularly academicians, for his famously biting opinions. Some claimed Scalia’s ‘zingers’ created contempt for the courts. To the contrary, it was Scalia’s deep and passionate respect for the role of the courts in our constitutional structure that led to his judicial poking at how some judges have an inflated and faulty sense of their authority.

In his dissent to the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision recognizing a constitutional right to gay marriage, for example, he wrote this about the majority opinion: “I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of [founding-era Supreme Court Justices] John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.”

Justice Scalia was certainly not above growing in his understanding of the Bill of Rights. Known to many as a law-and-order conservative, Scalia nevertheless wrote one of the most important decisions in recent decades about the protections guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment for searches and seizures.

His majority opinion in U.S. v. Jones from 2012 brought the Fourth Amendment back to its roots in concepts of “trespass.” His opinion countered a dangerous neglect of property rights by progressives who, not fond of property rights, favored a less comprehensive “privacy” focus, which had controlled Fourth Amendment jurisprudence for some decades to the exclusion of a property rights approach.

Scalia wrote,

[F]or most of our history the Fourth Amendment was understood to embody a particular concern for government trespass upon the areas (“persons, houses, papers, and effects”) it enumerates . . . But as we have discussed, the . . . reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test has been added to, not substituted for, the common-law trespassory test.

Scalia led for civil liberties by returning to this originalist understanding of the Fourth Amendment, which mentions property but not privacy. The common law concepts of trespass on our persons and property, and our rights in their security vis-a-vis others who seek to intrude on that security, are broader that mere privacy. Scalia recognized in this opinion that to prevent harm — but only after following basic procedures or protocols designed to limit abuses by government — may searches and seizures occur. When government neglects the notions of trespass inherent in the Fourth Amendment, even our privacy is threatened.

Scalia also became more of a First Amendment champion. His disappointing dissent in McIntryre v. Ohio Election Commission from 1995 about anonymous political speech was countered by Justice Clarence Thomas in a short treatise on the subject in the form of a concurring opinion.

Scalia would later become one of the most reliable justices on the First Amendment. In expressly targeting the “dangerous dissent” by Justice Stevens in the Citizens United case, Scalia exposed Stevens’ poor attempt to come across as using an originalist approach against the First Amendment. Stevens, no originalist, was throttled by Scalia’s scathing concurring opinion:

The Framers didn’t like corporations, the [Stevens] dissent concludes, and therefore it follows (as night the day) that corporations had no rights of free speech. Of course the Framers’ personal affection or disaffection for corporations is relevant only insofar as it can be thought to be reflected in the understood meaning of the text they enacted—not, as the dissent suggests, as a freestanding substitute for that text. But the dissent’s distortion of proper analysis is even worse than that. Though faced with a constitutional text that makes no distinction between types of speakers, the dissent feels no necessity to provide even an isolated statement from the founding era to the effect that corporations are not covered, but places the burden on petitioners to bring forward statements showing that they are (“there is not a scintilla of evidence to support the notion that anyone believed [the First Amendment ] would preclude regulatory distinctions based on the corporate form.”

As the life and work of Justice Scalia are honored and remembered, conservatives would do well to be grateful for his bold leadership on behalf of the originalist moorings of constitutional jurisprudence.

This article was originally posted at AmericanThinker.com

Written by Chris Walker

This past Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments for Obergefell v. Hodges in what is shaping up to be a landmark case in the national marriage debate. At issue are the questions of whether the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to license marriages between two people of the same sex and whether the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to recognize marriages between two people of the same sex licensed and performed out-of-state.

By now, conservatives should be very familiar with an influential organization that has carried the banner for same-sex marriage advocacy, the Human Rights Campaign. However, many may be unaware of the powerful network of corporations that are involved with HRC’s longstanding push to overturn marriage laws in America.

2nd Vote has compiled a resource page that list the companies involved with HRC, as well as the companies advocating against traditional marriage laws. This page also includes a list of all the signers of the amicus brief and links to the language contained in the brief.

CLICK HERE to see the list of corporate sponsors.

In dissent of Windsor, Justice Antonin Scalia appears to have been eerily prescient in his criticism of the majority’s ruling when he wrote: By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition. Indeed, the ruling in Windsor gave groups like HRC a valuable rhetorical tool to enlist the support of major corporations to fund their agenda.

However, that agenda that we actually fund by doing business with many of these companies goes against our values on several levels. Recently, we have seen major corporations in Indiana eagerly joining the campaign to spread disinformation on laws protecting religious liberty. Perhaps just as concerning, we see the business alliance with HRC pushing for judicial activism that could threaten the very tenets of the legislative process and federalism.

Conservatives should inform themselves on the potential ramifications of Obergefell and hold these companies accountable for their advocacy that benefits their own self-interest, which the evidence shows is not constitutionalism, nor is it the defense of our most sacred social unit.

Chris Walker is the Executive Director of 2nd Vote, a conservative shopper app. To find out more, download the free app or visit 2ndVote.com. Originally posted at Redstate.com.

A Sad Milestone for Marriage and Morality

A giant milestone in the moral revolution passed this week when the U.S. Supreme Court turned down every single appeal from several states on the issue of same-sex marriage. This decision not to take at least one case under consideration stunned both sides in the same-sex marriage battle. Last weekend’s edition of USA Today featured a front-page story that declared the virtual certainty that the Court would take at least one of the cases and declared same-sex marriage to be “a cause whose time has come.”

Well, same-sex marriage may well be an issue whose time has come in the culture, due to the massive moral shift that has taken place over the last few decades, but the nation’s highest court has decided that now is not the time for it to take up such a case. Faced with the opportunity either to stop same-sex marriage in its tracks or to hand down a sweeping decision tantamount to a new Roe v. Wade, the Court took a pass.

Some will argue that the Court’s decision was a strategic choice intended to preserve its dignity and stature. Already, many defenders of natural marriage are doing their best to argue that the Court’s refusal to take a case is better for the cause of marriage than a sweeping decision in favor of same-sex marriage. The proponents of same-sex marriage had hoped for just such a decision, and attorneys were jockeying for position, wanting to be the lead counsel for the “gay marriage Roe decision.” But make no mistake, the proponents of same-sex marriage won this round, and they won big. They did not get the sweeping coast to coast ruling they wanted, but what they got was an even faster track to the same result.

Had the Court taken one of the cases, the oral arguments would not have taken place until early 2015, and the decision would not have been likely until the end of next June. Until then, same-sex marriage would be on hold to some degree. Now, the Court’s decision to allow lower court rulings to stand sends an immediate signal — it is full steam ahead for same-sex marriage coast to coast.

As of last week, 19 states and the District of Columbia had legalized same-sex marriage by one means or another. The Court’s decision not to take one of the cases from the lower Federal courts means that every one of them stands. Therefore, not only will same-sex marriage be legal in the states that made a direct appeal, but in every state included within the same U.S. Circuit.

That result is that the decision made clear by the Court will lead, automatically, to the fact that 30 states will have legal same-sex marriage within weeks, if not days. The news from the Court means that the vast majority of Americans will live where same-sex marriage is legal, and three fifths of the states will have legalized same-sex marriage.

But the Court’s decision also sent another even more powerful message. The remaining federal courts were put on notice that same-sex marriage is now the expectation of the Supreme Court and that no appeal on the question is likely to be successful, or even heard. You can expect the lower courts to hear that message loudly and clearly — and fast.

This day in U.S. legal history will be remembered for many years to come as a landmark day toward same-sex marriage. It was the day the nation’s highest court took one of the lowest paths of least resistance. It now seeks to maintain its prestige by avoiding the backlash the Court experienced in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade in 1973. It wants to have its victory without taking further risks to its reputation.

Given the recent remarks made by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, even some of the Court’s most liberal justices wanted to avoid a backlash while achieving the same eventual result. This week’s announcement means that their hopes were achieved.

But the decision also indicates something further — it points to the vindication of Justice Antonin Scalia. When the Court handed down the decision striking down all state sodomy statutes in 2003 in Lawrence v Texas, Justice Scalia declared that it meant the end of all morals legislation. The majority opinion in that decision was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose legal reasoning was ridiculed by Scalia in one of his most scathing dissents.

Kennedy, said Scalia, had created “a massive disruption of the current social order,” that could not be stopped. Further: “Today’s opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.”

Eleven years earlier, Scalia had dissented from another Kennedy majority opinion, that time on abortion. Justice Kennedy had sustained a right to abortion, maintaining the central impact of Roe and pushing further toward a mysterious existential argument. Kennedy had written, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

Scalia famously rejected that language as Kennedy’s “sweet-mystery-of-life passage,” and he saw that same reasoning behind the Lawrencedecision.

But Scalia also said this about the 2003 decision: “This reasoning leaves on pretty shaky grounds state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples.” Further: “Today’s opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as a formal recognition in marriage is concerned. If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is ‘no legitimate state interest’ for purposes of proscribing that conduct … what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples?”

Indeed, the Lawrence decision did put all laws limiting marriage to opposite sex couples on shaky ground. Very shaky ground. Justice Scalia saw what now appears obvious. The Court’s decision in Lawrence in 2003 set the stage for this week’s news.

Even more recently, Justice Kennedy was the author of the Court’s majority opinion in the Windsor decision striking down the federal government’s Defense of Marriage Act. That decision, handed down in June of 2013, set the stage for this week’s development in a big way.

Once again, Justice Scalia saw it coming. He called the Court’s decision to strike down DOMA “jaw-dropping” in both its audacity and its reasoning. Then he offered these memorable words: “As far as this Court is concerned, no one should be fooled; it is just a matter of listening and waiting for the other shoe.”

That “other shoe” was the inevitability of same-sex marriage as a national reality.

What happened this week at the Court — or perhaps what didn’t happen — is a direct vindication of Scalia’s warnings. He saw it coming and he warned us.

What the Court’s majority has now decided, evidently, is to allow shoes to fall at the hands of lower courts that will follow its reasoning and obey its signals.

The news from the Court means a sad vindication for Justice Antonin Scalia. It means an even sadder day for marriage in America.

And it means, no matter what you think you heard or didn’t hear from Washington, that the other shoe has dropped.

This article was originally posted at the AlbertMohler.com blog.