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发帖数: 29846 | 1 SBC's Land: Polygamy Will Follow Gay Marriage
Monday, March 25, 2013 10:24 PM
By: David A. Patten
With the Supreme Court set this week to hear two historic challenges to the
traditional definition of marriage, pro-family advocates are charging that
legalizing gay marriage would “inevitably” lead to the legalization of
polygamy as well.
“No question about it,” Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics and
Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, told
Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview Monday afternoon. “If you make the
ultimate value a person’s right to express their sexuality with another
person and to have that identified as marriage, then how do you keep
polygamy from happening?
“How do keep consensual adult siblings from getting married?” he added. “
How do you keep a consensual father and adult daughter from getting married?
Incest and polygamy will come right after it.”
Land’s conclusion: “You shatter the definition of marriage if you try to
expand it to include same-sex marriage.”
Land is far from the only social conservative making that argument. The
Christian legal organization Liberty Counsel filed a brief with the Supreme
Court that states: “Ultimately, there is no principled basis for
recognizing a legality of same-sex marriage without simultaneously providing
a basis for the legality of consensual polygamy or certain adult incestuous
relationships.”
The remarks of Land, a leading social conservative, came in the context of
what is expected to be one of the most important weeks in the history of the
battle that pro-family forces are waging to preserve the traditional
definition of marriage, as the Supreme Court holds two hearings on gay-
marriage cases.
On Tuesday, the justices will hear arguments in Hollingsworth v. Perry, the
high-profile challenge to California’s Proposition 8 vote that struck down
legalization of gay marriage in California. That case is being directed by
two high-profile attorneys, Ted Olson and David Boies. They argue that those
trying to stop gay marriage have failed to demonstrate legalizing would
harm society.
Then on Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the 1996
Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which effectively prohibits any federal
recognition of the validity of same-sex marriage.
Land told Newsmax that it is no coincidence that a court which apparently
prides itself of judicial restraint – the notion that courts should wield
their power modestly in order to minimize the social and political impact of
their rulings – opted to hear two cases on the same issue. Doing so, he
said, enables them to render a mixed verdict.
“I actually think that the court is going to rule on narrow grounds. This
is why they took these two cases in tandem with each other,” Land told
Newsmax. “This court has a predilection for doing this. They did this with
the Ten Commandments case; they took two Ten Commandments cases at once.
They ruled in favor of one and against the other, sort of split the
difference, and took the path of least resistance. So the issue did not
become the court and the court’s role, and it has left as much as possible
to democratic processes.”
Land predicted the Court will rule that the states, including California,
have the right to define what marriage means. But he believes they will also
rule that once a state recognizes same-sex marriage, as nine of them do
plus the District of Columbia, then those individuals must be eligible for
the same federal benefits as other couples.
“They’ve learned from Roe v. Wade,” Land said. “Even Justice Ginsberg
who’s the most liberal justice in the history of the Supreme Court, said
that Roe v. Wade was a bad decision because it tried to take the abortion
issue out of the democratic process, and made the abortion issue much more
contentious than it would have been otherwise.”
If the Supreme Court, which is not expected to rule on the cases until June,
does make the states the decider when it comes to gay marriage, Land told
Newsmax : “We will continue to try to defend traditional marriage in the
states where it is the only option and we will try to overturn same-sex
marriage in the states that have passed it. We will continue to make the
argument that when you try to extend the definition of marriage to include
same-sex marriage, you shatter the definition of marriage.”
Social conservatives are sparing no effort to make their views known on the
issue. Last week, Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission
issued an alert that “The sacred institution of marriage has reached an
hour of great need for prayer.” Thousands of pro-family supporters are
expected to descend on the Nation’s Capital Tuesday for a “March for
Marriage.”
Gay-marriage proponents have countered that there is no social reason for
denying same-sex couples the same protection under the law that heterosexual
couples enjoy. They also contend that expansion of marriage to polygamy
could be avoided by pointing out the social ills of being married to more
than one spouse.
Land also addressed the view that public opinion is beginning to shift in
favor of gay marriage.
“My reaction is that their celebrations are premature. Certainly, opinion
has shifted to some degree but America is still very, very closely divided
on this issue and it’s not nationwide.”
He added that as voters see the repercussions of same-sex marriage laws,
opinion against it will strengthen.
“The longer that same-sex marriage exists in the states that it exists in,
” said Land, “the more problems people are going to see with it .… You’
re going to see appeals in the courts for polygamy. You’re going to see
significant issues arise from same-sex marriage that the American people are
not going to like and there’s going to be a backlash.” |
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