Commentary: Iowa, Homosexual 'Marriage', Lambda Legal and Judicial Alchemy

We are experiencing a campaign to effectuate a radical change in our social order through a well planned and funded legal strategy.

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (Catholic Online) - I am a lawyer by training and spent seven years of my career as the Executive Director of a Public Interest Law Firm defending pro-life, pro-family and religious freedom legal matters. I am well aware of the ways in which Public Interest legal groups use this not for profit structure to protect authentic human rights and effect change when such rights are truly placed at risk. However, I also know better than most how this vehicle can be misused and abused. That is what is happening in Iowa.

We are in the midst of a Cultural Revolution in the West. The foundation of our Western societies has always been the first society, authentic marriage and the family founded upon it. It is the first government, first economy, first school, first religious institution and first mediating institution. Marriage has been clearly understood as arising out of the consent between one man and one woman and intended for life. It has been given a privileged and protected legal and social status. It is viewed as the primary civilizing institution which is constituted for the bearing and caring of children wherein they can be nurtured, loved, taught and prepared for life in broader communities. This understanding of marriage has long been accepted in the West as having been revealed by the Natural Law. It was the basis of our organizing vision of society and informed our philosophy of governance, including the place of subsidiarity. Even our educational system recognized that the family is the first school and parents are the first teachers.

We are experiencing a campaign to effectuate a radical change in our social order. It is being done with verbal sophistication and a well planned and funded legal strategy. Among the legal groups at the forefront of this Cultural Revolution engaging in a strategic use of the Courts is "Lambda Legal". Lambda Legal defines itself on its own web site: "Lambda Legal is the oldest national organization pursuing high-impact litigation, public education and advocacy on behalf of equality and civil rights for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and people with HIV. The work we do has impact on the way we live -- we change laws, policies and ideas. From our national headquarters in New York and four regional offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles, our legal and public education experts select the cases and issues that will have the greatest impact in protecting and advancing the rights of LGBT people and those with HIV."

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On December 9, 2008 Lambda Legal will have its day to argue their new "idea" before the Iowa Supreme Court where a case styled Varnum v Brien will be heard. The petitioners in this case ask the Justices of the Supreme Court of Iowa to engage in a form of "Judicial Alchemy". They are being asked to make something which is ontologically incapable of being a marriage, Homosexual Partnerships, into a marriage by Judicial Fiat. Such a ruling would have the effect of forcing all of the residents of Iowa to pretend that this impossibility was made possible simply by the Court's ruling. In the Middle Ages, some who claimed to be Alchemists purported that they were able to transmute common metals into gold. Others claimed they could create an elixir of life which would prevent death. Neither claim was true. Folklore grew up among people of that age alleging the existence of a "philosopher's stone" which held the key to their being able to accomplish these impossible claims. Now, fast forward with me into our own day and consider the claims of those who want to use the Court system as a new kind of "philosopher's stone". This is precisely what groups like Lambda Legal are doing. Oh, they use the language of constitutional law, but their arguments have no Natural Law basis. A Judge can call anything a "right" in this age of legal positivism but that does not make it one.

The architects of this effort are wordsmiths. They have shifted the popular argument with words which they have stolen and claimed as their own. Now, instead of defending marriage against those who seek to undermine it by making any cohabiting relationship its equivalent, the dominant media culture instead uses Lambda's Orwellian language of "marriage equality". Lambda has succeeded in persuading most reporters and commentators to say that there is some "civil right" for those who engage in homosexual practices and live under the same roof to be "married". The "bad guys" are those who defend authentic marriage and insist that it is the best foundation for civil society. The "intolerant" are those who refuse to recognize new "rights", such as the "right to marry" for people who are incapable of fulfilling the ends of marriage.

The lawyers of Lambda Legal like, Camilla Taylor, are savvy. In a recent interview she praised Iowa's citizens for supporting the "civil rights" of minorities and women in the past. Ms Taylor then equated being a practicing homosexual with being a member of a legally protected minority class involving gender or race. The effort is made to sound enlightened by using this kind of "rights talk". After all, who wants to oppose someone's "rights"? I was in a bookstore this weekend and noticed a homosexual advocacy magazine in plain view with the cover "Is Gay the New Black?" Clearly the lawyers of Lambda Legal are having an impact; to the chagrin of many concerned members of minority communities who reject and resent the analogy. She continued, "Iowa has an opportunity to play the role that it often has played in the past -- being at the forefront of civil rights struggles -- often long before other states were willing to be similarly courageous... This is not an uncomfortable role for Iowans, and we are looking at them to make a reality out of the promise of equality in the Iowa Constitution."

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Lambda Legal began using the Courts a long time ago. In this case in Iowa they filed in 2005. They solicited six homosexual partners who attempted to "marry" and were refused licenses. They then sued the agents of the Government, the former Polk County recorder and registrar Timothy Brien. In August of 2007 they persuaded District Court Judge Robert Hanson to further their cultural revolutionary scheme by persuading him to rule that the State Law which affirmed that marriage is between a man and a woman was a violation of the constitutional right to due process and the equal protection of the laws for homosexuals who wanted to "marry". Immediately, a dozen homosexual partners applied for marriage licenses and, even before Judge Hansen could stay his own wrongly decided order the next day, two homosexual men received a license, went through a ceremony (apparently with a minister) and claimed that they were "married". This set up the current Appeal.

Judges who purport to make such relationships between people of the same gender a "marriage" are not only abusing their roles, they are perpetuating a radical agenda. Marriage is the preeminent and the most fundamental of all human social institutions. It is a relationship defined by nature and protected by the natural law that binds all men and women. Judges cannot give anyone a "right" to marry; they can only recognize a marriage between people capable of contracting one. The institutions of government should be defending marriage against those who would redefine it. Government has long regulated marriage for the common good. For example, the ban on polygamy and age requirements were enforced in order to ensure that there was a mature decision at the basis of the Marriage contract. To "limit" marriage to heterosexual couples is not discriminatory now, nor has it ever been. Homosexual couples cannot bring into existence what marriage intends by its very definition.

In this effort at judicial "alchemy" judges claim the "power" to change the truth. Theologians and Philosophers speak of ontology as the science or philosophy of being. For example, a rock is a rock and not a cabbage; a man is a man and a woman is a woman. Marriage is ontologically between a man and a woman, ordered toward the union of the spouses and open to procreation which forms the foundation for family. These judicial alchemists are as mistaken in this claim as their ancestors were in their claim that they could change cheap metal into gold or mix an elixir which would overcome death. Unchecked by any balance of power they are following what the legal positivists have long proclaimed, "The law is what the courts say it is."

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All of us who care about our culture, marriage, family and our children's future must insist it most certainly is not!

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