Kennedy's Marriage Decision Can Easily Be Overcome

But the American people don't want to do it. Keep in mind that the corruption of the American people is a bigger problem than the corruption of the Supreme Court. In five out of the last six presidential elections, voters have chosen presidents who would deliberately select liberal justices for the Court. (In the 2000 election, the will of the voters was inconsistent with the electoral college result, so the voters didn't get what they wanted, thankfully.) Those justices support the sort of judicial activism that gave us yesterday's ruling on same-sex marriage. Likewise, the American people are the ones who encouraged the Court to think they could get away with what they did by giving same-sex marriage so much support in the polls and in other contexts. They also encouraged the Court to think it could get away with doing what it did by reacting so apathetically, and sometimes even approvingly, to previous abuses by the Court. And so on.

The American people could do things like having Court justices removed and amending the Constitution if they wanted to. They don't. But there's an even easier solution, and it's something that could be done soon. Elect presidents who, when they have the opportunity, will replace the current bad judges with good ones. Then, reverse yesterday's decision and take the appropriate actions against same-sex marriage at the state level. But the American people won't do that anytime soon. Even if, say, a president Rubio would select some good judges to replace bad ones, and even if those judges would rightly reverse yesterday's ruling, I suspect that even the most conservative states would refrain from removing state recognition of same-sex marriage.

For one thing, most people in America, even many conservatives, like to flatter themselves with the notion that they're more loving, wise, etc. than they actually are. Advertisers regularly flatter them in an attempt to get their money, and politicians regularly flatter them to get their votes. That flattery has gone to their head. Once you cast them in the role of civil rights leaders, compassionately giving homosexuals what had wrongly been denied them for so many years, it will be hard to get them to relinquish that delusion. And even aside from all of the self-flattery, most Americans, including many conservatives, will misdefine concepts like love and wisdom in such a way that taking state recognition of marriage away from homosexuals after giving it to them would be some sort of horrible act.

For instance, people would tend to project themselves into a same-sex couple's situation and ask whether they would want state recognition of their marriage taken away. Of course, the erroneous nature of that approach is easy to illustrate by asking people what they would do if an abusive Supreme Court ruled that there's a Constitutional right to marriage between adults and children or some such thing. The question is whether such a ruling and the instituting of such forms of marriage are right to begin with, not whether the people whose marriages are later not recognized like having those marriages not recognized. There are all sorts of contexts in life in which people hate losing something they never should have had in the first place. That doesn't stop us from taking away what they shouldn't have.

Besides, even if people were unwilling to take away state recognition of marriages already recognized, they could enact a compromise approach by allowing same-sex marriages already implemented to continue to be recognized while not allowing any further ones to be recognized. That wouldn't be ideal, but it would be better than extending same-sex marriage even further.

So, how do we persuade the American people to change their minds? In the immediate future, one thing to do is for pastors, Sunday school teachers, friends having conversations in church, etc. to speak up on the issue during this weekend's church services. Follow the examples of John the Baptist, who spoke out against incestuous marriage at the cost of his life (Matthew 14:1-12), and Jesus and Paul, who argued against polygamy in their day by adopting the popular anti-polygamy argument of replacing "they" with "two" in Genesis 2:24 (Matthew 19:5-6, 1 Corinthians 6:16, Ephesians 5:31).

Try to have conversations about this issue with your relatives, friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc. Use your blog, Facebook, message boards, and other online contexts to persuade people. Use arguments like the ones I've outlined here.

Political solutions in the immediate future would include leveraging the sympathy people have for the losing side of the same-sex marriage dispute. Proponents of same-sex marriage won't be able to portray themselves as a persecuted minority the way they did in the past. We should use this window of opportunity to get as many religious liberty measures in place as we can, especially at the state level (since Obama would block them to a large extent at the federal level).

Make discussions of the problem of judicial activism prominent in the 2016 presidential campaign. However unpopular it will be to discuss same-sex marriage in particular from a conservative perspective, there wouldn't be such opposition to addressing judicial activism. Even many supporters of same-sex marriage recognize the dangers of judicial activism in other contexts. And I suspect that many of those who are ignorant or apathetic about the subject could be persuaded to be more concerned if Republicans would make the effort.

When Republicans are asked about same-sex marriage or related issues in the 2016 campaign and beyond, or they bring the issues up themselves, they should not only state their position, but also make a persuasive case for it. The days of merely appealing to opinion polls, making vague appeals to tradition, and arguing against same-sex marriage in other such unpersuasive ways ought to be over.

As a general principle, voters should look for the Republican candidates with the optimal balance of conservatism and electability and support those candidates. Generally speaking, forget about third party candidates. Don't sit out an election unless you have good reason to. Don't sit it out just to pout or throw a tantrum. Recognize that the corruption of your fellow Americans limits your options. Choose the best of the options you have and hold their feet to the fire. Make it clear that issues like marriage and the appointment of judges are important to you, and insist that the candidates make the right decisions once elected. They often won't make the right decisions, even if they claimed that they would. But sometimes they will do the right thing, and we should try to make that happen.

A lot more could be said, but I'll leave it at that. There's a lot that can be done, if we're willing to do it.