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An Open Letter to PA Gov.
Tom Corbett to Appeal "Gay Marriage" Decision by Rogue Federal Judge
by Robert
A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.
Pittsburgh
Theological Seminary, gagnon@pts.edu
PA
Gov. Tom Corbett
May 21, 2014
Dear Governor Corbett,
I urge you to reconsider your decision not to appeal the "gay
marriage" ruling by the rogue federal district judge John Jones, who
imperiously declared that it was "time to discard [male-female marriage
laws] into the ash heap of history." I understand that you continue to
regard marriage as a union between one man and one woman but believe
that an appeal has little chance of success. This matter is too
important not to exhaust every option available to you. If necessary,
the state needs to appeal the decision all the way up to the Supreme
Court.
As
you know, it is absurd to regard a person of the same sex as one's
anatomical, physiological, and psychological counterpart or sexual
complement. Becoming sexually aroused by what one already is as a
gendered being, as though one were only half one's
own sex rather than half of a
whole sexual spectrum containing two sexes, is obviously contrary to
nature and a self-dishonoring impulse. The disproportionately
high rates of measurable harm that attend homosexual unions
correspond to gender type: for homosexual males higher numbers of
sex partners lifetime and significantly higher rates of STIs; for
homosexual females lower longevity in relationships and higher mental
health complications. This is what one expects when, owing to the
absence of a gender complement, the extremes of a given sex are not
moderated and the gaps in one's sex are not filled.
Validating "gay marriage" is comparable to granting the name
"marriage" to the union of three or more persons concurrently or to
adult-consensual incestuous unions (you yourself have rightly made
an analogy to sibling marriage). For Jesus it was God's male-female
design at creation, the twoness of the sexes in complementary sexual
union, that led him to the conclusion that there should be only two
persons to a marital bond. Homosexual marriage in the end provides
support for calling a polyamorous union "marriage" since the
limitation of marital bonds to two persons derives obviously from the
twoness of the sexes. Similarly, we reject incest first and foremost
because there is too much formal identity on the part of the
participants, as regards kinship or gene pool. There is even less
complementary otherness to a same-sex union than in an adult incestuous
union, since sex or gender is a more essential element of sexual
relations than kinship. While incestuous unions are physiologically
capable of procreation, albeit with a higher incidence of birth
abnormalities, homosexual unions lack even that capacity, thus
demonstrating an uber-sameness that exceeds incest.
Letting "gay marriage" stand will lead to an attenuation of civil
liberties for those who express the viewpoint that homosexual practice
is immoral, consistent with the witness of Jesus, Paul, and
thousands of years of Judeo-Christian heritage. School children
will be indoctrinated in a compulsory manner across the state and
told that their parents, if they think otherwise, are bigots.
Academic advancement and job security will be threatened for those
who make their moral objections to homosexual practice known, whether
they make it known inside or outside the halls of academia or the
workplace. Business owners will be forced to provide non-essential
goods and services that promote homosexual "marriages," against
their moral conscience. "Coming out" celebrations and mandatory
"sensitivity training" requiring acceptance of homosexuality will
become standard fare in the workplace. "Gay" adoptions will be given
equal standing with adoptions by a husband and wife, even though
such homes will have greater instability (more sex partners, higher
relational turnover) and will model a distorted view of sexuality that
extols blurring of sexual differences, including an embrace of
cross-dressing and transgenderism.
It is your democratic duty to appeal this ruling, a ruling
that has short-circuited the democratic process. What could not be
achieved by the ballot has been imposed by an activist judge with skewed
moral sensibilities. The Defense of Marriage law was passed by an
overwhelming vote of the Pennsylvania legislature and signed into law by
Gov. Tom Ridge. It was the duty of Democratic Attorney General Kathleen
Kane to fulfill the oath of her office by defending it against the ACLU
challenge. Your refusal to appeal the rogue judge's decision would
likewise constitute a political and moral abdication of your
responsibilities as governor. It would be a slap in the face of the
average voter.
Please reconsider your decision not to appeal the ruling. Do what you
can in the courts and in the legislature to put a stay on the issuance
of marriage licenses to homosexual unions while the case is on
appeal, if necessary, all the way up to the Supreme Court.
Encourage resistance on the part of government functionaries since
the judges have taken upon themselves an authority to legislate that the
U.S. Constitution never granted. Follow the example of Thomas
Jefferson, who repeatedly warned about the threat to democracy posed
by tyrannical judges.
“Nothing
in the Constitution has given them [the federal judges]
a right to decide for the Executive, more than to the Executive to
decide for them. . . . The opinion which gives to the judges the
right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only
for themselves, in their own sphere of action, but for the
Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the
Judiciary a despotic branch.” (Letter to Abigail Adams, September
11, 1804)
“Our Constitution . . . intending to establish three departments,
co-ordinate and independent that they might check and balance one
another, it has given—according to this opinion to one of them alone
the right to prescribe rules for the government of others; and to
that one, too, which is unelected by and independent of the nation.
. . . The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax
in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into
any form they please.” (Letter to Judge Spencer Roane, Sept. 6,
1819)
“You seem . . . to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters
of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed,
and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.
Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so . . . and
their power [is] the more dangerous, as they are in
office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries
are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no
such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided,
with corruptions of time and party, its members would become
despots.” (Letter to William Jarvis, Sept. 28, 1820)
“The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the
constitution of the federal Judiciary; an irresponsible body (for
impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow) working like gravity by
night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and
advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of
jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped.” (Letter to Charles
Hammond, August 18, 1821)
“The great object of my fear is the Federal Judiciary. That
body, like gravity, ever acting with noiseless foot and unalarming
advance, gaining ground step by step and holding what it gains, is
engulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that
which feeds them.” (Letter to Judge Spencer Roane, 1821)
“At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies
were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the
government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were
to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the
means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and
irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern
individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at
large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent,
sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution,
and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived
that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in
consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted
for life if secured against all liability to account.” (Letter
to A. Coray, October 31, 1823)
“One single object… [will merit] the endless
gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from
usurping legislation.” (Letter to Edward Livingston, March 25,
1825)
Lincoln also understood the danger
coming from the judicial branch. In his first inaugural address
(1861) he warned:
“…The candid citizen must confess that
if the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting
the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the
Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation
between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased
to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically
resigned their government into the hands of that eminent
tribunal.”
I look forward to your reply.
Sincerely,
Prof. Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.
Author of: The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics
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