A state circuit judge, Chris Piazza,
recently took it upon himself to throw out amendment 83 of the Arkansas State Constitution. The amendment defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman. And he petulantly did it in a way and with such timing
as to create a giant mess even if his ruling is eventually overturned.
There needs to be some word that is more extreme than "hubris" to define Piazza's attitude. He is the same judge who ruled that the state must assist homosexuals in their efforts to gain access to other people's children. I deconstruct that ruling here in an article aptly titled "
Judicial Tyranny at its Most Incoherent". But I have to say, his writing in that one was a model of propriety compared to the parody of a legal ruling he cobbled together on this one. After a point, I quit being angry and started being amused. The ruling read like a SNL skit of a smug, self-righteous lower court judge with a god-complex.
Rather than do a detailed de-construction of his "logic" as I did with the prior ruling, I just want to show you the five dumbest things this character wrote in his ruling. If it were not such a serious subject, it would be hilarious. Ready?
1) "The exclusion of same-sex couples from
marriage for no rational basis
violates the fundamental right to
privacy........The difference between opposite-sex and same-sex
families is within the privacy of their
homes."
No, no, he actually wrote this. Not just in a Facebook post either, where asinine assertions are
commonplace, but in his legal opinion on the case. Can anyone out there tell me how a failure to publically recognize anyone's relationship as a marriage violates their right to privacy? And does this man, who so self-assuredly bench-legislates his personal preferences on the populace really think that "the" difference between two men and a man and a woman is merely within the privacy of their own homes? Does he think we can't tell the difference outside of their homes, especially say, in the ability to procreate?
2) But the hilarity does not end there.
In his desperation to waive off any hint that the people he wanted to
step on (75% of the voters) had any rational basis at all for
defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman he also
wrote...
"Even if it were rational for the state
to speculate that children raised by opposite-sex couples are better off
than children raised by same-sex couples, there is no rational relationship between the
Arkansas same-sex marriage bans and the this goal because Arkansas's marriage
laws do not prevent same-sex couples from having children."
Right. Nature itself does. And when people are wise, nature informs the law. He is extremely determined to refuse to admit the other side can have any "rational basis" for their views. He repeatedly claims that there is no "rational basis" for defining marriage traditionally, but he does so by waiving off objections with absurdities like this, not by actually addressing them. For more on the rational case why the state should not recognize homosexual marriage see
here and
here.
3) In his efforts to show that he should use a higher level of scrutiny to look out for the "rights" of homosexuals to your approval of their relationships, His Eminence wrote..
"this Court finds the rationale of De
Leon v.
Perry, Obergefell v. Wyrnyslo, and the
extensive authority cited in both cases to be
highly persuasive, leading to the
undeniable conclusion that same-sex couples
fulfill all four factors to be
considered a suspect or quasi-suspect classification.”
OK, now listen to what those four
factors are which Piazza (I find myself spinning my index finger
around the side of my forehead in the universal sign for crazy every
time I say his name) finds are fulfilled....
"1) the
characteristics that distinguish the class indicate a typical class member's
ability to contribute to society
2) whether the
distinguishing characteristic is 'immutable" or beyond
the group member's control, and
whether the group is 3) a minority or
4) politically powerless,"
I added the numbering, but the rest was
listed right before his absurd claim that homosexuals fulfill all
four categories. Regarding 1) It is obvious that homosexuals can't contribute to marriage in all the way that natural couples can. Regarding 2) He is still crazy. The trait is not truly immutable. People can and have left the homosexual deathstyle. Compare that to the percentages of blacks who have quit being black! Regarding 3) OK I will grant they are a minority. This is the only one he is right about. Regarding 4) Are you kidding me? Total denial of post-modern political reality.
You can hardly turn on the TV without homosexual characters portrayed favorable in shows that are obstensibly supposed to be "entertainment." Even in the macho NFL, a player tweets a rather brief and mild protest at attention-whore Micheal Sam kissing his boyfriend on national television and
the player gets fined and suspended from the team until he goes to re-education camp! They are not a politically oppressed minority, they are the oppressors. Like Voltaire said, if you want to find out who your true rulers are, find out who you are not allowed to criticize. Apparently we are ruled by sexual deviants, because that's who we are not allowed to criticize anymore.
4) Amendment 83 was legally added to the
Arkansas Constitution by 75% of the voters. He actually found the
constitution unconstitutional, not just according to the federal constitution, but to the state constitution to which it had been legally added! He based his “reasoning” on the idea that the amendment did not repeal Article 2 Section 2 of the Arkansas Constitution which reads....
All men are created equally free and
independent, and
have certain inherent and inalienable
rights, amongst
which are those of enjoying and
defending life and
liberty; of acquiring, possessing, and
protecting property,
and reputation; and of pursuing their
own happiness, To
secure these rights governments are
instituted among
men, deriving their just powers from
the consent of the
governed.
I guess that last part just kind of flew right past him, eh? He said it was dangerous to "narrow the definition of equality" granted in this section "for no rational reason" of course. That is just silly because the amendment simply ratified what existed when it was passed, it did not change anything. But where does the section even use the word "equality"? Sure it says men (sorry ladies!) are created equal, but that does not mean that their choices must be honored by other men or women equally. It does not say they must have equal recognition from the state, even if their deeds are not strictly speaking, equal. It does not guarantee equality of outcome. It is just saying whatever rights men will have under the constitution will be had equally, but leaves it up to the rest of the document to define what that means. The guy is just hallucinating into the text that which he wishes to see, while missing the important point that ultimately, the people have to decide what they will recognize as rights and what they do not consider rights.
5) Let's see how well the judge knows what is actually in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights concerning "rights"..... See if you can find 1) Those that are
actually listed in our constitution as stated, 2) The one that is a
slight extrapolation of one that is stated 3) One that was conjured
into existence in the “penumbra” of a stated right, but
conveniently ignored in all cases involving the growing surveillance
state and 4) One that is not even remotely listed in the
constitution, and is being made up of whole cloth by the present
generation of judges to force acceptance of homosexuality on the
nation under any pretext....
“The strength of our nation is in our
freedom which includes, among
others, freedom of expression, freedom
of religion, the right to marry, the
right to bear arms, the right to be
free of unreasonable searches and seizures,
the right of privacy, the right of due
process and equal protection, and the
right to vote regardless of race or
sex.”
“Freedom of Expression” is #2, and
is a reasonable extrapolation of “freedom of speech and freedom of
the press”. The “right to privacy” is #3, conjured into
existence by penumbras of the 5th amendment (why doesn't
the 2nd amendment ever have any penumbras greatly
expanding the scope of its meaning with these judges?). This non-textual "Right to Privacy" is aggressively defended in cases relating to abortion but consistently ignored when the NSA wants to save our life's communications to their hard drives just in case.
Oh and how
about #4? It fits the bill of “which of these is not like the other ones” in
the sense that Piazza made it up before our eyes and inserted into
the hallucinatory constitution that only liberal judges can see while
no mention of it exists in the real one. That is “the right to
have your marriage recognized by the government”.
That so-called "right" is not in there. Piazza and company are just making it up and inserting it
into their Mickey-mouse super-secret constitution right before our
eyes. Those of us who don't have the magic decoding ring can't seem to find it in the actual text of the document. And what they really mean by it is not “the right to marry”
at all, but rather the “right to public approval for their
relationships” to any group the judges happen to favor at the
moment.
****************************
OK, some of his claims about the differences in homosexual relationships are funny, others, like his inability to accurately list the actual rights from the constitution and Bill of Rights without inserting his pet issue unto the list is merely amusing. I am going to end with two more example that are neither. They are just examples of what a pompous, self-important jackass this man is:
He wrote “The issues presented in the
case at bar are of epic constitutional
dimensions-the charge is to reconcile
the ancient view of marriage as between
one man and one woman, held by most
citizens of this and many other states,
against a small, politically unpopular
group of same-sex couples who seek to be
afforded that same right to marry.
Piazza does not even address the right
question, so it is no wonder he never gets near the right answer.
This is not about the “right to marry” since there is no law
threatening to jail homosexuals if they claim to be married. Rather
the question is whether society as a whole is to be compelled to
recognize such arrangements as equal to traditional marriage. He
acknowledges that the decision is epic, but has no problem at all
coming down hard totally on one side of the issue. The way he
“reconciles” the two positions is to dismiss with hardly more
than a waive of the hand the concerns of the vast majority of his
fellow citizens because he is just oh-so-sure that he is just that
much smarter and better than the rest of us. And he structured his
ruling in a way that makes it impossible to avoid a mess even if he
is overturned. Piazza is a god in his own mind.
He writes “The court is not unmindful
of the criticism that judges should not be
super legislators. However, the issue
at hand is the fundamental right to
marry being denied to an unpopular
minority.”
You see, he claims he is “not
unmindful” that judges should not be super legislators, but then
immediately and strongly does it anyway by virtue of the recently
manufactured claim unsupported by the text of any constitution that
marriage is a "fundamental right." And even that understates the
degree of his cluelessness and arrogance because even if marriage
should be considered a right, the question here is not that but
whether the public must recognize and grant honor to claims of
marriage. Marriages existed before the state recognized them and
will exist afterward. The issue is public recognition and approval
of the relationship, not the relationship.
People of Arkansas, we failed somewhere when we did not find an opponent for this man, who undermines the public respect the judicial branch ought to have with his zealotry and over-reach.
