For the past half-century, “non-discrimination” has been a popular justification for enforcing the will of the ruling elite, and so it was today in U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker’s ruling that California’s Proposition 8 ban on “gay marriage” is “unconstitutional” because it “advance[s] the belief that opposite-sex couples are morally superior to same-sex couples.”
It is also a remarkably un-democratic decision, in that Walker explicitly acknowledges that the “majority of California voters supported the initiative” in a fair referendum. (This certainly won’t stop the Left from universally acclaiming the judgment as a victory for “the people.”)
But the most revealing line of all is Walker’s claim,“Tradition alone cannot support legislation.” (Walker actually means something much stronger, for it was because the law was based on tradition that it had to be thrown out.)
Many well-intentioned conservatives and Christians want to rely on the court system, lawyers, and politicians (who are lawyers) to “save marriage” from the cultural revolution. They should stop wasting their time. Instead, attempting to divorce marriage from the state altogether (Ron Paul’s position) -- that is, making it pure tradition, unconnected to legislation -- is the only way to protect this millennia-old folkway from the forces on “non-discrimination.”
