Red States Betrayed Over Same-sex “Marriage”? Maybe They’ve Betrayed Themselves

A lawsuit last year called then-Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy’s Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) majority opinion “legal fiction.” This is for good reason, too. As Chief Justice John Roberts put it at the time, the Constitution “had nothing to do with it.” But then there’s what had a lot to do with it. That is, growing public support for faux (same-sex) marriage.

In fact, U.S. majority support for faux marriage (FM) — 53 percent — was reached in 2011. It was approximately 60 percent at Obergefell’s issuance in 2015.

What had much to do with this was a “conversion of the average American’s emotions, mind, and will, through a planned psychological attack, in the form of propaganda fed to the nation via the media.” (Related to this, declining religiosity was a major factor, too.) This line, do note, is from the 1989 book After the Ball, which laid out sexual devolutionary (homosexual) advocacy strategies.

This brings me to efforts to overturn Obergefell, notably by activist group Mass Resistance (MR). MR has, among other things, been encouraging states to issue nonbinding resolutions urging the Supreme Court to reconsider the decision. But, laments MR field director Arthur Schaper, this has proven difficult. Even conservative politicians, he states, lack the backbone to take such action.

Writing Monday, Schaper first outlined MR’s central argument:

Our model resolution frames Obergefell as fundamentally flawed, based on the most unfounded legal reasoning. The majority decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, relied on the judicial fiction of substantive due process, which unleashed a host of terrible Supreme Court precedents. From there, Kennedy argued that there is a right to same-sex marriage, even though marriage is not defined in the Constitution… 

Schaper also states that Obergefell “undermined democratic processes, imposed an unjustified moral vision on the country, and ignored federalism.”

He further warns that, as MR had predicted, faux marriage

has unleashed an accelerated decline in marriage rates overall, challenges to religious liberty (bakers, photographers, adoption agencies), the spread of LGBT ideology in schools and public institutions, and harm to public health and public order.

Schaper insists that as with the Dobbs (abortion) ruling, the Obergefell judicial overreach should be corrected. The marriage issue should be returned to the states, as constitutionalism dictates.

What’s Being Conserved

Now, MR has had some success in its resolution endeavor in Idaho and North Dakota. Schaper notes, however, that many rightist politicians have been indifferent to it or have even erected silent roadblocks. “Such cowardice,” he then states, “exposes how many Republicans in red states are just liberal politicians masquerading as conservatives.” Does it, though?

What if these pols actually are the conservatives (no, that’s not meant as a compliment)?

What if it’s people such as Schaper who are, in fact, something else?

After all, what is “conservatism”? British historian Keith Feiling once said that it “is not so much a fixed programme as a continuing spirit.” (The preceding is a paraphrase by Professor F.J.C. Hearnshaw.) Political theorist Russell Kirk wrote, “Strictly speaking, conservatism is not a political system, but rather a way of looking at the civil order. The conservative of Peru … will differ greatly from those of Australia.” Kirk then explained that, sure, “they may share a preference for things established.” The “institutions and customs which they desire to preserve,” however, “are not identical.”

This is apparent not just in Peru and Australia, but everywhere. In the 1950s United States, for instance, a conservative was staunchly anti-communist, à la Joe McCarthy. But at the same time in the Soviet Union, a conservative was a communist. A USSR liberal was someone seeking the Marxist state’s reform.

Then consider how Western European conservatives are akin to our liberals. A good example is ex-prime minister of Britain David Cameron. He was “proud” of his nation’s 2014 faux marriage acceptance and is tolerant of abortion. And he and other Euro-cons also accept socialized medicine and statism generally.

An Ideology?

So how can all these manifold, shape-shifting conceptions of “conservatism” — and “liberalism,” too, as it’s in the same boat — be reconciled? Simply by accepting the terms’ only consistent definitions:

Conservatism involves the desire to “conserve” the status quo.

Liberalism involves the desire to change the status quo.

Thus, as the status quo changes, so do the provisional positions of the day’s liberals and conservatives.

For this reason, conservatism and liberalism aren’t ideologies as much as processes. This brings us back to the FM-tolerating politicians.

FM has now had majority acceptance for fairly close to a generation, with national support in the 65-70 percent range. Given this and conservatism’s “process” nature, question: Isn’t FM acceptance now, perhaps, a conservative position? (This wouldn’t make it right, mind you.)

Moreover, also note that FM has majority support in “red” states as well, with the exception of Mississippi and Arkansas. And even in those places, the acceptance figures are, respectively, 47 percent and 50 percent. So is it surprising that “conservative” politicians from “conservative” states claim, as Schaper puts it, FM is a “settled issue”? They’re just doing what even liberal politicians do: trying to conserve their own positions and power.

Culture Reigns

The upshot? These political realities exist because of the culture and, therefore, that’s what must be changed. This is a herculean task regardless, but even more daunting when the problem is misunderstood.

Regarding this and as I’ve oft explained, consider that the main argument against FM was never even mounted by traditionalists. And most judges were oblivious to it. (A teaser: The Left never “redefined” marriage — they undefined it.)

Yet there’s another significant point: It’s not just that, as is obvious, the undermining of marriage didn’t happen overnight. It’s that it didn’t even begin with the homosexual lobby.

Consider: Many will emphasize their belief that our rights come from God. For if God has granted them, only God can take them away; government cannot. Yet is it any different with marriage?

For many hundreds of years, Christendom (the West) considered marriage a sacrament, a divinely bestowed, efficacious sign of grace. It came from God and was Church business — and “what God hath joined, let no man put asunder.”

But then the government got involved. You could have a justice-of-the-peace marriage, a totally secular affair. Then came the increasing acceptance of divorce and the greasing-the-skids no-fault variety. Is it thus surprising that we heard from some libertine 1970s cynics that marriage is unnecessary, just “a piece of paper”? In many cases, that’s all it was — or, all it had been reduced to.

The FM-advocating sexual devolutionaries couldn’t have gotten to first base in Christendom. Public officials would’ve been embarrassed to pay them any mind. In post-Christian America, however, politicians are afraid to not mind their dictates.

It’s another lesson teaching an immutable truth: If you don’t control the culture, the culture will control you.