After Obergefell: Facing the Main Question

Not entirely facetiously, I wonder whether there isn’t something to be said for abandoning legal restrictions on marriage entirely. Polygamy (in his dissent against the Obergefell decision John Roberts indicated that the legal principle that the affirming judges used to create the right to homosexual marriage equally creates a right to polygamy)? Fine. Polyamory? Fine. Every member of the River City Frog Watchers Club married to every other member (regardless of gender) of the River City Frog Watchers Club? Fine. Since the legalization of same sex “marriage” has effectively created a new institution which is NOT marriage (as understood according to previous definitions), and at the same time effectively dissolved the institution constituted by the previous understanding (albeit generally badly understood by 21st century Americans) of what marriage really is, why not let the definition be watered down until everyone is married to everyone else, and the entire concept is completely lost? Maybe then, people (and legislators and even federal judges) would recognize that something in fact had been lost, and they would start to try to rationally walk it back to establishing a reasonable institution – which might just as well be true marriage.

Here’s another vector to pursue…the possibility that obergefell was keystone cops versus a kangaroo court, and the best defense of marriage was never even tried. I am speaking of the fact that homosex marriage represents the most fundamental form of sex discrimination and therefore violates federal law.

TCT would do a great favor for its readers if it published the list of major corpporations which support sodomite marriage. Coca Cola, Shell, General Mills, Starbucks come immediately to mind. As Chief Justice Roberts pointed out, Obergefell had nothjing to do with the Constitution. BTW, should not Justrices Kagan and Ginsburg recused themseles from the Court on Obergefell as they had both presided over same sex marriages before the decision?

I read and take to heart and consider all the various articles in TCT and elsewhere about the possible “approaches” to somehow turning this trend and court decisions (along with other issues of similar nature) around in our society, and I hope they are successful. But the half-empty part of me fears that the downward spiral may only become steeper and steeper.

And if that is the case, I guess I would like to see more articles and discussion about how Christians — and particularly Catholics — should act under those potential conditions, since Catholics are primarily the ones who reach back to contraception and easy divorce itself as a primary generator of the follow-on issues and so would presumably be most immersed in the problems encountered.

To my pessimistic side, the “how do we effect a legal change” approach is, or soon may be, not unlike early Christians persecuted and martyred in Rome asking “how do we formulate a legislative response to the emperor’s declarations that will stop this horror?” I’m not saying that approach shouldn’t be taken and I pray daily for its success. But if/when the suits and penalties and job denials and sentences and, gulp, persecutions begin (well, expand, since they have already begun), it would be nice for those of us without law degrees or the knowledge and ability to file briefs with the courts, to have concrete well-thought-out articles and advice for ways of “living” that can help if those persecution conditions arrive.

And perhaps more importantly, the sorts of things we should be practicing right now in anticipation and preparation for that potential arrival. Prayer and fasting to be sure, but perhaps there are other concrete actions that can strengthen our resolve to bear through these particular hard-times-to-come?

What would be the authority in the federal Constitution for Congress to pass legislation restricting marriage to two people?

I assume that you won’t draw an artificial line and will also devise a broader strategy to outlaw divorce and second (or more) civil marriage. The Church seems to have ceded this affront to marriage and natural law to Henry VIII and made it a private, Church-only matter. It is also a matter of mortal sin that will send souls to hell, but we seem to be curiously accommodative to its existence.

The heart of the matter is the child that has been procured to be the toy or one could say chattel, of the homosex couple. Your incrementalist suggestions to wall off polygamy will only entrench the homosex dyad. Heather may have two mommies, but she has no daddies. The only solution when a child, or a slave, is at stake is the single minded pursuit of an amendment to the constitution.

Courts in Europe have long had to wrestle with the question of polygamy.

When citizens of one country, say Algeria or Pakistan, enter into a marriage there that is actually or, more often potentially, polygamous and then come to settle in, say, France or the UK, where marriage is strictly monogamous, the courts have had to ask themselves whether the relationship between a man and the ladies living under his protection in a polygamous union is sufficiently analogous to the relationship of husband and wife, as described in the Civil Code, to make it just to apply the same rules to them. Otherwise, there is a real danger of the courts creating obligations, rather than enforcing them.

The same question can arise in relation to succession to moveable and immoveable property, the owners of which are citizens of and domiciled in a foreign country.

No jurist has suggested there is an easy answer to this and legislatures are reluctant to discuss it..

Perhaps, the great Scottish judge, Lord Meadowbank, was right when he said, “The whole order of society would be disjointed, were the positive institutions of foreign nations concerning domestic relations and the capacities of persons regarding them, permitted to operate universally and form privileged casts living each under separate laws, like the barbarous nations during many centuries after settlement in the Roman Empire.” The same consideration would apply, as between states.