The U.S. Supreme Court has heard oral arguments on the gay marriage cases, and it now seems poised to impose a national marriage policy on America. This new national policy will likely restrict popular choice on a key cultural issue by preventing states from democratically preserving the traditional notion of marriage as being solely between one man one woman. Some will view this development as an illegitimate alteration of the Constitution through judicial fiat, while others will surely herald it as the proper understanding of the Constitution’s “aspirations.” The Supreme Court’s majority opinion will no doubt argue that the Constitution requires this decision, and it will do so in spite of overwhelming evidence that nobody who wrote or ratified one word of the Constitution ever contemplated a national gay marriage policy. Continue Reading »
Like many social conservatives, especially Christian ones, I spend a lot of my time reading and writing about religious freedom, especially how it might be affected by the legalization of same-sex marriage and the campaign for “gay rights” more generally.Yet at the same time, I harbor doubts about the position we are staking out.You see, I sometimes think that Justice Scalia’s majority opinion in Employment Division v. Smith may have been correct. Continue Reading »
Legal disputes over the definition of marriage, such as the recent case U.S. v. Windsor striking down the Defense of Marriage Act, raise urgent questions about religious liberty rights in a pluralistic society. Windsor relies implicitly upon the “public reason” philosophy of John Rawls when considering such questions.
Post-argument predictions will continue to pour out regarding Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius, cases in which business owners (the Green and Hahn families) have voiced religious objections to being forced to pay for certain types of contraceptives. The . . . . Continue Reading »
