Dr. Fleming weighs on the debate over Proposition 8.

If we generalize Mayor Newsom’s argument, I think we can agree. Should basic moral principles be decided either a democratic political process, whether the decision is made by a direct referendum or by democratically elected representatives or judges or by judges appointed by democratically elected public officials? Let me just draw up a random list of moral violations that have either been decriminalized or trivialized by legislators and judges–sodomy, rape, public use of profanity–or new moral and legal rights that have been discovered–women’s, children’s and animal’s rights, the right to rent a room from someone who does not like you because of your ethnicity or sexual misconduct….

The list of both sorts of outrages would be endless. If a monarch had done these things, he would have been proclaimed a tyrant. But when 20% or the population or less–or officials whose authority rests on these small percentages–overturns a longstanding custom, the usual response is to seek redress through the political processes that are responsible for the tyranny.

Marriage, until very recently, was never a mere contract between individuals or a government-created institution. Legitimate societies have always been interested in regulating inheritance laws, discouraging a decline in the reproduction of citizens, and in preventing dilution of the citizen ethos by marriage with non-citizens, but government has not, typically, defined marriage and the family, much less redefined them. The exceptions are the Jacobins of the French Revolution and the ideological states of the past 100 years, principally Marxist and democratist states.

Who made Gavin Newsom or Ken Star or Mike Huckabee, Barney Frank or James Dobson prophets or philosopher-kings that they should presume to define marriage? We have suffered enough from venal and ignorant politicians who think they are economists or patriarchs. Until people who regard themselves as conservatives are willing to find some moral and spiritual solvents to set them free from the tarbabies of political parties and ideologies, they will never even begin to resist the tyranny that Americans accept so willingly.

It is not just, as I have so often argued in the past, that politicians cannot be trusted to solve moral problems, but that there is a realm of human moral responsibility into which legislators and judges should either not enter or, if they do, their actions should be limited to preserving an ancient tradition. Democracy, in declaring that every moral issue can be determined by majoritarian politics, is a corrosive and revolutionary force that first destroys the social, then the cultural, and now the moral order. It is on the verge of attacking the natural order: Do not be surprised if Congress, while outlawing pet chimpanzees, permits intermarriage among all primates.

San Jose Mercury: California Supreme Court hears Prop. 8 arguments
California Courts: Courts: Supreme Court: High Profile Case