OCPAC - Mawwage is what bwings us togevah today.
John Michener
“Mawwage is what bwings us togevah
today.” At least five of The Supremes
remind me of the Impressive Clergyman in The
Princess Bride. They wear funny
outfits, they utter unintelligible words, and they are clearly senile.
Their recent opinion on marriage is as monumental as Roe v. Wade in every way. It has the potential to reshape our entire culture from coast to coast. It has moral implications. It has constitutional implications. It destroys freedom and effectively completes the coup d'état of every sovereign state in the union if they do not reject it. Will the people cower and do nothing as they did over forty years ago when murder became de facto law, or will they rise up? The moment of truth is upon us.
This debate is about 1) marriage in civil law, 2) the right to govern ourselves, and 3) resisting federal tyranny. Everyone must pick a side. Not to decide is still to have made a choice. You are either on the right side or the wrong side. The right side believes in natural law, revealed by God in his creation. The wrong side believes humans invent their own laws. The right side believes that individuals in community have the right to govern themselves. The wrong side believes we are all subjects of whoever happens to be in power.
First, marriage goes back to the beginning, to a time before civil law. Nature itself defines marriage. It is personal, familial, and religious. Therefore, it does not have a proper place in civil law, beyond the courts helping to sort out disputes that arise out of the contractual nature of the relationship. Ideally, get government out of marriage!
Unfortunately, we have woven a tangled web in which government at every level is involved in marriage. It recognizes marriage for tax purposes, for employment benefits, for child custody rights, for inheritance practices, etc. If government is going to be involved in marriage, and until we can get government untangled from our families, then we must demand that government recognize natural marriage only.
Second, we have a right to govern ourselves. We do that through our local elected representatives who determine policy and through our local executives who carry out those policies. Courts can do nothing but issue opinions. They do not have the power or authority to do anything.
Court power is a lot like the purchasing power of the dollar. It only works because people believe in it; they have faith and trust in it. We all still believe that the dollar is the only way to trade. We have faith that our dollars will buy things tomorrow, and we trust each other to continue using the dollar. So life goes on. But what happens when our faith goes away?
Court opinions, like hyper-inflated dollars, are beginning to lose their purchasing power. For more than forty years, we have allowed court opinions to purchase the genocide of innocent children, but not anymore. Like Zimbabwe dollars, their opinions are fit only to be used for toilet paper or starting fires. It is time for new judicial currency. We have nothing to fear from these opinions. However, unless we act to make these opinions irrelevant, we will have something to fear, which brings us to my final point.
After 9/11 George W. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security with the stroke of a pen. Do not be surprised when the Obama-nation creates the Federal Agency of Gay Sensitivity and starts hiring a uniformed army of minimum-wage busybodies to enforce the rights of gay couples across the states. Once the executive branch gets involved, we will see lawsuits, arrests, harassments, and fines.
It is time that authority figures at every level of government interpose themselves between the people and injustice. From the county sheriff to the governor, from the town councilman to the state legislator, we have officials up and down our governing structures who can thwart unnatural, illegal, and immoral policies set by other corrupt parts of government.
At first I was depressed. I thought only of how our governor, speaker of the house, and senate president pro tempore have no track record of moral courage. I looked, but found nothing from Governor Fallin on the marriage opinion, and her response to the Obamacare opinion was like the ones I cited previously from the house and senate. She said we are “stuck with a law that is deeply flawed.” In other words, we are not going to do anything about it; I have no solution to recommend.
But then I saw the press releases coming from the capitol. There are legislators in Oklahoma who have not bowed the knee to the judicial idol, at least not in Oklahoma. A cadre of Oklahoma representatives did more than express disappointment—they said they would support Articles of Impeachment against the seven Oklahoma Supreme Court justices who are trying to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from near the capitol. I also spoke with legislators who are working in conjunction with the attorney general to make sure that the monument is not removed and that the law is changed to protect it. Hope is renewed.
Now, what about the federal idol? Will they take a similarly bold approach to protect us from the U.S. Supreme Court? We need our legislators to quickly draft some direction and protection so that Oklahoma officials can uphold our state constitution and natural marriage in Oklahoma. Without direction, lesser state officials will begin to go along with the court opinion. Without protection, federal agents may persecute Oklahomans. An emergency session would not be inappropriate. The longer we wait to reject this opinion, the more entrenched it will become. Because no state immediately rejected Roe v. Wade, it became de facto law. Let it not happen again.
The views expressed in this email are the personal opinion of John Michener and do not necessarily reflect the views of OCPAC, its leadership team, or its members. We currently meet on Wednesdays at noon at Chen’s Buffet, 4537 NW 23rd St., OKC, 73127. To become a member of OCPAC, follow the instructions in the online newsletter.