On Monday, if conventional wisdom holds, the Supreme Court will usurp its authority once again and legislate from the bench — overturning the will of the people in a number of states — and rule that homosexuals can “marry” and that everyone must accept and participate in said “marriages,” regardless of their religious convictions.
Such a ruling will, of course, destroy the final remaining vestiges of religious liberty in America. So as a reminder of a bygone age when liberty still reigned, here are a few quotes on religious liberty from the founders:
- “Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion.” — John Adams in a letter to Benjamin Rush
- “[T]hat the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous falacy, (sic) which at once destroys all religious liberty.” — Thomas Jefferson, A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom
- “Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, ‘that Religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only be reason and convection, not by force or violence.’ The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man: and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.” — James Madison, “A Memorial and Remonstrance”
- “That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.” — Patrick Henry, Virginia Declaration of Rights, Article 16 (adopted June 12, 1776)
Our best hope is that the Supreme Court will rule in a similar fashion to its ruling in U.S. v. Windsor (Defense of Marriage Act case) that the states, not the federal government, had authority over marriage. From the majority opinion:
“[T]he states, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, possessed full power over the subject of marriage and divorce . . . [and] the Constitution delegated no authority to the Government of the United States on the subject of marriage and divorce.” Haddock v. Haddock, 201 U. S. 562, 575 (1906); see also In re Burrus, 136 U. S. 586, 593–594 (1890) (“The whole subject of the domestic relations of husband and wife, parent and child, belongs to the laws of the States and not to the laws of the United States”) … The significance of state responsibilities for the definition and regulation of marriage dates to the Nation’s beginning; for “when the Constitution was adopted the common understanding was that the domestic relations of husband and wife and parent and child were matters reserved to the States.” Ohio ex rel. Popovici v. Agler, 280 U. S. 379, 383–384 (1930).”
And in another ruling:
“All governments possess inherent power over the marriage relation, its formation and dissolution, as regards their own citizens, and where a court or legislature of a state has acted conformably with its own laws concerning the marriage tie as to a citizen of that state, its action is binding in that state as to that citizen, and its validity under the due process clause of the Constitution may not therein be questioned.” Maynard v. Hill, 125 U. S. 190.
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