What Do You Think of the Olsen/Boies Suit?

[BishopIoan]

I find it interesting that Olsen and Boies want to present the case for overturning Prop H8 to the US Supreme Court. I'm taking a wait-and-see attitude on this but wonder what people at Soulforce think of this.

[TrueAce]

California Supreme Court’s Chief Justice Ron George said,

“In a sense, petitioners’ and the attorney general’s complaint is that it is just too easy to amend the California constitution through the initiative process. But it is not a proper function of this court to curtail that process; we are constitutionally bound to uphold it.”

Therein is the pitfall of a pure Democracy, which the California State Supreme Court has both illustrated and upheld, but which does NOT, repeat NOT, characterize the actual system of governance that is instituted by the U.S. Constitution: a Republic.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for working to enlighten minds, not just over the next year but at all times, about how sensible, righteous and just it is to have marriage be accessible to any couple desiring it.

However, this endeavor, in my opinion, should be undertaken more as supplementary to and supportive of the real FIGHT.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees that there are certain rights and liberties that are “INALIENABLE“, meaning no citizen can be separated from those rights and liberties, and that among these inalienable rights is the right to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” for each citizen. Further, the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees that:

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The clinching fact about our Republican system of government is that it provides that the majority may not infringe upon the inalienable, immutable rights and civil liberties of the minority.

What has happened to the California gay community over the last year, the ‘mob rule’ overthrow of a constitutional liberty that had rightfully been adjudged as innate with homosexuals, is testimony to the truth that we should refuse any longer to be lulled into a reliance upon a PURE Democracy, and is demonstrative of why the “Founding Fathers” so wisely instituted a REPUBLICAN form of government, where the *Rule of Law* within the U.S. Constitution prevails over any majority opinion as those laws serve to preserve, protect, and to defend the inalienable, immutable rights of every citizen.

The question that now begs to be answered is this: Is a state constitutional prevention of same-sex marriage a *violation* of the basic human rights and civil liberties GUARANTEED as inalienable and immutable by the highest Law of the Land, the U.S. Constitution?

If we are to expect and demand that state governments honor not just these basic premises enshrined in the U.S. Constitution but also the U.S. Constitution’s 1st Amendment guarantee of the separation of Church and State, if we are to insist that any ban on marriage between any two human beings based upon religious prejudice is tantamount to instituting a THEOCRACY, then we MUST JEALOUSLY guard the basic structure of that governance originally instituted by the Founding Fathers and that is clearly and soundly represented by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

If we want to pursue activism against state bans on gay marriage whether brought about by ‘mob rule’ or state-level legislative action, then fully and finally we should revisit the enduring libertarian standards embedded within the U.S. Constitution and accept our true and abiding HERITAGE as citizens of the Republic of the United States wherein reigns the constitutional Rule of Law and fight against PURE Democracy!

I say we should take up the courage to insist upon our Constitutional rights, not as a grant at the pleasure of any governing body, but as a fact of our existence because we are ALIVE.

The 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution affirms that it is the citizens of the United States that extend governing privilege to the three branches of the Federal Government in order that we may secure the immutable rights and civil liberties guaranteed to us by the U.S. Constitution:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

I say we extend our moral, intellectual, and financial support to Attorneys Ted Olson and David Boies as they take on what has devolved into the Behemoth that dares to presume to stand in the way between us and the Founding Document that already guarantees our very existence as first-class citizens of this Constitutional Republic!

It’s not as if there isn’t already in existence the very Founding Document of this nation that already spells out the fact of our existence as citizens endowed with certain inalienable rights and civil liberties! It’s there! The wheel has already been invented for us! Moreover, centuries of liberty-consecrated souls have sacrificed their lives so that this Founding Document would still stand today as the beacon of true freedom, our true freedom.

It’s high time we shake off the reticence so subliminally and insidiously instilled into our psyches and take up the courage to stand up for the truth! This truth is our *greatest* weapon, not volumes of strategic brochures and legions of would-be opinion swayers, or the fickle whims of any populace.

Dare to breathe new life into this nation. We are at a crossroads. I can’t think of a more fitting capstone for the summit of the 50-year Civil Rights Movement than for history to witness this nation’s last disenfranchised and, not surprisingly, most reviled Minority rise up to come into our own with a united confidence in, and to reaffirm to a struggling world as well as to our own wayward, dumbed-down nation, the greatest document ever devised by mankind and for the benefit of mankind, the Constitution of the REPUBLIC of the United States.

“[D]emocracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
— James Madison

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide”.
— John Adams

“A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way.4 The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness [excessive license] which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty.”
— Fisher Ames, Author of the House Language for the First Amendment

“We have seen the tumult of democracy terminate . . . as [it has] everywhere terminated, in despotism. . . . Democracy! savage and wild. Thou who wouldst bring down the virtuous and wise to thy level of folly and guilt.”
— Gouverneur Morris, Signer and Penman of the Constitution

“[T]he experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived.”
— John Quincy Adams

“A simple democracy . . . is one of the greatest of evils.”
— Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration

“In democracy . . . there are commonly tumults and disorders. . . . Therefore a pure democracy is generally a very bad government. It is often the most tyrannical government on earth.”
— Noah Webster

“Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state, it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage.”
— John Witherspoon, Signer of the Declaration

“It may generally be remarked that the more a government resembles a pure democracy the more they abound with disorder and confusion.”
— Zephaniah Swift, Author of America’s First Legal Text