Our Out-of-Control Court

[J.J.Gibbs]

Our Out-of-Control Court

By Dr. David R. Reagan
Founder & Director, Lamb & Lion Ministries


Today our nation's Supreme Court decided that it is the Supreme Being. It spit on God's Word and endorsed the abominable, immoral concept that the definition of marriage can be expanded to include a union between two people of the same sex.

The God of this universe is the One who created and defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman, and no one has the authority to change that definition (Matthew 19:4-5).

Further, God's Word makes it crystal clear that homosexuality is an abomination in God's sight and its practice is sufficient to preclude one from the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).

And the first chapter of the book of Romans states that a society's acceptance of homosexuality is a sign that it is under the judgment of God and is begging for destruction (Romans 1:18-27).

From a secular viewpoint, it must be noted that the Court's decision, like its previous decision legalizing abortion, is unconstitutional. Such matters as abortion and marriage are entrusted to the States under our national constitution. The only proper decision by the Supreme Court from a legal viewpoint would have been for it to deny that it has any jurisdiction and that the matter of defining marriage is a power of the States.

Chief Justice John Roberts emphasized this point about State's rights in his dissenting opinion:

"...this Court is not a legislature. Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us. Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be... The fundamental right to marry does not include a right to make a State change its definition of marriage. And a State's decision to maintain the meaning of marriage that has persisted in every culture throughout human history can hardly be called irrational. In short, our Constitution does not enact any one theory of marriage. The people of a State are free to expand marriage to include same-sex couples, or to retain the historic definition."

Further, all the dissenting judges (Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas) emphasized that it is completely undemocratic for the Court to impose its viewpoint concerning such an important social and moral issue on the entire nation. Consider the words of Justice Antonin Scalia:

"Today's decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact — and the furthest extension one can even imagine — of the Court's claimed power to create 'liberties' that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves."

Chief Justice Roberts agreed with Scalia on this important point:

"Those who founded our country would not recognize the majority's conception of the judicial role. They after all risked their lives and fortunes for the precious right to govern themselves. They would never have imagined yielding that right on a question of social policy to unaccountable and unelected judges."

Many years ago I remember seeing an interview of Justice Hugo Black (1886-1971) on television in which he was asked about his role as a Supreme Court Justice. He made it very clear that the role of a justice should not be to determine whether or not a law is a good or bad one, or whether it is stupid or reasonable, but only whether or not it is constitutional. The majority of justices who agreed today to Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion have rejected that concept. They argued that not all issues could be foreseen by our nation's Founders, and so they argued that the Supreme Court must serve as the arbiter of those issues, not the democratic process. They ignored the fact that our Founders provided for such matters by providing for a system of constitutional amendment.

Accordingly, Justice Scalia branded the Court's decision as a "judicial putsch." He wrote, "The five Justices who compose today's majority are entirely comfortable concluding that every State violated the Constitution for all of the 135 years between the Fourteenth's ratification and Massachusetts' permitting of same-sex marriages in 2003." In like manner, Chief Justice Roberts called the Court's decision an exercise in "judicial supremacy."

Justice Scalia, known for his brilliant, scathing dissents, summed up his feelings with these words:

This is a naked judicial claim to legislative — indeed, super-legislative — power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government. Except as limited by a constitutional prohibition agreed to by the People, the States are free to adopt whatever laws they like, even those that offend the esteemed Justices' 'reasoned judgment.' A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.

Justice Scalia supplied a very interesting insight into the Court itself when he pointed out that it is not representative of the nation in any way and therefore has no right to legislate. He noted that all nine justices have law degrees from either Harvard or Yale. Six are from New York or New Jersey (Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan), two are from California (Breyer and Kennedy) and one is from Georgia (Thomas). Not a one of them is from the Southwest, nor is there a true Westerner on the Court. And most significantly, none of them are Evangelicals or even members of a Protestant denomination! Six are Catholics (Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Kennedy, Alito and Sotomayor) and three are Jews (Breyer, Ginsburg and Kagan). Scalia's conclusion about this make-up of the Court was as follows:

...to allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.

Justice Scalia also expressed sincere concern about how the Court's decision will impact the free exercise of religion on the part of those who differ with the decision on biblical grounds. He pointed out that the majority decision emphasized that the decision would not impact the right of believers to continue to "advocate" and "teach" their views of marriage. But the First Amendment guarantees the free "exercise" of religion, and that is a word the court "ominously" did not use.

We can be assured that there will now be an all-out assault on Christians by the Gay Mafia as they attempt to force us to violate our biblical beliefs. They will confront all Christian businesses that participate in any way in marriage ceremonies, they will insist that ministers perform their marriage rites and they will demand that churches host their weddings. And when churches and ministers refuse, there will be a demand for them to be stripped of tax exemptions and benefits (like the housing allowance for pastors). And you can also be assured that ultimately there will be attempts to make even anti-Gay speech, including sermons, illegal as "hate crimes."

Note the date: June 26, 2015. It is the date that should be put on the headstone of our nation because it is the day that America died. We have sealed our destruction. We are now a walking-dead nation.


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