The moral fabric of America is not under attack. It never existed.
A nation founded upon the bodies of thousands of Native Americans, previously engulfed in numerous wars, hungry for world power, home to decades of slavery and hatred — America as a whole has not held the moral imperative that is now toppling down to the ground.
Our nation has had moral leaders, citizens and actions but has never been the moral leader of the world. We aren’t the Vatican City by any means.
While immorality has existed within our nation’s borders since its founding, religious freedom is a hallmark our nation relies on. Today, it is not under attack. The U.S. Supreme Court in its landmark decision to legalize same-sex marriages in all 50 states is upholding the First Amendment.
Thomas Jefferson believed heavily in the separation of state from church. However, the federal and state governments overstepped this boundary when they began defining marriage in state constitutions and in the Defense of Marriage Act.
Jefferson wrote in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802 that “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.”
Defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman defies the First Amendment’s intent of “building a wall of separation between church and state.” The federal government cannot force religious organizations to marry same-sex partners, as that would prohibit the free exercise of said religion. Therefore, how could the legalization of issuing licenses and providing marital benefits to same-sex couples constitute an attack on religious liberty? It does not.
Christians flocked to the Bible for quotes on marriage after the court’s ruling on Friday. Very few realizing that the use of the Bible to refute legal arguments is non sequitur.
The only respectable argument from the opposition of the ruling is that of the majority decision of the Supreme Court overstepped its constitutional authority in a show of legal activism.
“Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in his dissenting opinion. “Stealing this issue from the people will, for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage, making a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept.”
Roberts who constantly partakes in legal activism provides an argument that sounds tempting to an unseasoned reader. The chief justice, however, has decided to put forth an argument that died in the first 75 years of the Supreme Court’s existence. Legal activism or “legislating from the bench” is a practice that both aided in the existence of slavery and desegregation and led the way in their abolishment. It is a precedent that put George W. Bush in office and a precedent that won’t stop any time soon.
Many critics, including Gov. Bobby Jindal, have argued the Supreme Court violated the 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
State governments denying same-sex marriages violate the First Amendment by creating a definition deeply founded in thousands of years of religious history. Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion and argued that the Constitution grants same-sex couples equality and dignity in the eyes of the law.
The decision of Justices Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan does not cripple morality and religious liberty. It is a crutch to uphold American morality and democracy in the face of daunting opposition.
The Deep South’s opposition to same-sex marriage defiantly refuses to subside to the Supreme Court’s ruling. Just as Judge John Minor Wisdom of the Federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals fought tooth and nail to force desegregation upon the South after Brown v. Board of Education, so will the judges of today’s Fifth Circuit enforce the Supreme Court’s ruling upon an unwilling people, standing on the wrong side of morality.
Justin DiCharia is a 21-year-old mass communication senior from Slidell, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter @JDiCharia.