Why the Effort to Repeal Same-Sex Marriage in Idaho Should Fail

I wasn’t a fan of the court decision. Marriage was defined as the union of a man and a woman. Courts decide the law, they don’t rewrite the meaning of language. That leads us to a dystopian future. But I also wasn’t surprised by the outcome.

It doesn’t appear our founders spent much time thinking about personal relationships. They wanted to make some money and prosper with a minimum of government interference. They left the moral judgments up to the states, but the Constitution doesn’t mention marriage.

During the fallout after the Supreme Court decision, the conservative Christian Cal Thomas opined that straight people had already ruined marriage. He was speaking of a divorce rate that has often reached 50 percent in the decades that followed World War Two.

But here’s my excuse, the government has no business in marriage whatsoever. This week I spoke with Idaho House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel. She supports same-sex marriage and explains there are 1,800 regulations applied to marriage. The number might not be exact, but I get her point. She said if you’re married, someone can make decisions about your medical care if you’re incapacitated. Gee, what do we do with the single people, euthanize them?

The government has no business in your business as long as you aren’t harming someone else. I have Christian friends who will tell me you’re harming yourself in a same-sex relationship. I agree, but our government doesn’t operate on the Bible. Instead, we have that pesky Constitution, which, again, doesn’t mention marriage or sexual relationships.

Why does anyone need government permission to marry? If people want to assert they’re a married couple, they can’t be jailed for making the claim.

The faithful will still look for church weddings, but that’s not government, and the First Amendment protects clergy from being forced to conduct any marriage or any union with horses, cows, and pigs. The unfaithful can simply call themselves married. I’m not forced to acknowledge the union.

I wish Representative Heather Scott well in her effort to get the Supreme Court of the United States to reconsider (she’s the sponsor of the proposed Idaho legislation to end same-sex marriage), but what we need is for government to butt out. Maybe her efforts will open the debate.