How Supreme Is the Supreme Court?

                                               How Supreme Is the Supreme Court?

                                                                              Published in Marietta Daily Journal Aug. 23, 2015

            In the recent GOP presidential debate, candidate John Kasich declared that since a Supreme Court ruling is the law of the land, we should accept its ruling on same-sex marriage (Obergefel v. Hodges) and move on.  The Ohio governor went on to say, with some pride, that he had recently attended the same-sex wedding ceremony of a friend.

            One’s first response to Kasich might be “Is he serious?”  Does Kasich not know that Supreme Court decisions can be overturned?  Would he take the same stance on the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision of 1857 that ruled a slave is property and is to be excluded from U.S. citizenship?  Does he not know the Dred Scott decision was overturned by the 13^th and 14^th amendments of the Constitution?

            How about Plessey v. Ferguson of 1896 in which the court upheld state segregation laws, giving rise to the false doctrine of “separate but equal” schools?   Does Kasich not know that in 1954 the court reversed Plessey in Brown v. the Board of Education, thereby satisfying the moral consciences of many Americans?  It appears that “settled law” is like “settled science.”  It’s not always settled.

            All of which raises a few questions.  How supreme is the Supreme Court?  How equal are our three co-equal branches of government?  How democratic is our democracy?  

A seasoned lawmaker, Kasich surely knows about the aforementioned legal cases.   In stating that we should acquiesce to same-sex marriage, he was most likely declaring that to him the issue was not a hill on which to die.  But to many Americans it is.  Yell “bigot” if they must, the gay lobby doesn’t understand that to evangelical Christians sexuality is inextricably tied to morality.

Consider also Roe v. Wade which legalized abortion.  One thing is certain: Roe v. Wade’s aftermath continues to this day.  Just as many Americans were morally outraged by the Dred Scott decision, so today are there still millions who cannot just “move on” from a Supreme Court ruling that legalizes killing unborn babies.

            In 1974 when the Supreme Court ruled on abortion, radical feminism’s voice was at its loudest.  “I am woman; hear me roar” was the feminist movement’s mantra.  Gloria Steinem chimed in with “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”  The seventies were the Golden Age of feminism and court rulings demonstrated just how easily judges can be influenced by loud political activism rather than the people’s deeply held convictions.

            One might ask why the Supreme Court in 1954 ruled as it did in Brown v. the Board of Education, thereby overturning Plessey v. Ferguson.  Was the Warren Court’s 9-0 decision a demonstration of moral conscience?  To be sure it paved the way for integration and added more than a spark to the civil rights movement.  What if believers in social justice had accepted Dred Scott and Plessey v. Ferguson and just “moved on”?  The nation should rejoice that there was no Kasich-like shrug toward these rulings.

            Thanks to the atrocious videos showing Planned Parenthood negotiating the sale of aborted baby body parts, Roe v. Wade will continue to be a hill on which to die for many Americans.  Just as moral conscience drove the opponents of two other Supreme Court rulings, Dred Scott and Plessey, so will Roe v. Wade continue to pierce the hearts of Christians as long as it is the law.

            In the same way does Obergefel v. Hodges (same-sex marriage) affect many Americans who view same-sex marriage as rebellion against nature.  It violates their sense of the question, “What is first in nature?”  What was first was not two people of the same sex marrying each other, but a man and a woman and usually children.  A little unit of government, if you will, that formed a foundation for all other societal institutions.

            So is the Supreme Court supreme?  Only if our three co-equal branches are not equal.  Only if Jefferson was wrong when he wrote, “I hold that a little rebellion now and then is as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”  Only if the Apostle Peter was wrong when he said, “We must obey God rather than men.”

            In a democratic society the people are supreme.  People of conscience and right reasoning changed the Dred Scott decision as well as Plessey v. Ferguson.  Whether they change Roe v. Wade and Obergefel v. Hodges remains to be seen.  I’m saying they eventually will, thus exercising the will of the people and showing that 9 unelected people cannot be the final arbiters of what is right and just. 

            Jefferson’s spirit of rebellion is in the air, no thanks to Kasich, and well it should be.

           

           

Roger Hines

8/16/15