A Leaven reader texted me last week, “Please tell me you’re writing a ‘take heart’ blog this week.” She was referring to the U.S. Supreme Court’s marriage decisions. Other matters forced their way into the news as well: a filibuster and a mob in Texas combined to block a bill restricting late-term abortions, and “final” word came down from Washington confirming that Obamacare’s HHS mandate is here to stay.
Quite an array of challenges right there. That was one head-banger of a week. Let me note that I found excellent short-term therapy in avoiding the news feeds for a few hours at a time. Seriously: you want to build a culture of life? Step awaaaaay from the smartphone.
But eventually, I have to face facts. It does me no good to see a glass as half-full when what it’s half-full of is poisoned Kool-Aid.
- After wasting a lot of words in the Windsor decision explaining how marriage is a state matter (and thus a Tenth Amendment issue), which is what I thought for sure would get the federal Defense of Marriage Act thrown out, Justice Kennedy and four of his distinguished colleagues shifted gears. The majority decision was that federal refusal to recognize same-sex marriages was a “deprivation of liberty” under the Fifth Amendment. Justice Kennedy gratuitously added that to hold otherwise is a deprivation of personhood and dignity of our neighbors who choose genderless marriage, designed to disparage and injure them.
(Personhood and dignity? Where has this man been when the life issues have been on the line?)
- The Texas senate did not exactly cover itself in glory when it let a mob dictate the terms of a vote. The bill in question sought to stop late-term abortions and to require abortion facilities to meet the requirements imposed on every other ambulatory surgical center in the state. A vote needed to be cast by midnight on a certain date. The mob in the gallery caused enough of a disruption to hold up the vote until three minutes past midnight. That, and not the filibuster by now-lionized Senator Wendy Davis, was the key to shutting down the bill.
- In the White House’s Friday afternoon news dump came the word that the HHS mandate will be a done deal next January 1. Don’t look for this on the White House web page, which is filled with notes from the President’s trip to Africa and his speech on “climate change.”
So where do I take heart? In the fact that people are willing to write and speak and act in opposition to all this. Peaceful, reasoned, courageous dissent inspires me to try to be just as constructive in my own choices. Underlying all the bad news is an effort to marginalize and isolate each dissenter (hey! that’s me!). I ain’t a-gonna let anyone do that. People around us still speak with courage and conviction, and therein lies reason to take heart.
- Governor Rick Perry (R-Texas) has called the legislature back into session this week to re-consider the bill on abortion and women’s health. No mob rule for him. This is why I’m glad his presidential campaign fizzled. Why on earth should I want one of the most effective governors in the country to leave his post before his term is up? Now, each pro-life senator – and there are plenty, which is how the bill got as far as it did – can resume defending life.
- Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in Windsor was a gem, giving his colleagues a rhetorical kick in the pants. He asserted that arguments against redefining marriage can be made with logic and fairness. The dissent bears quoting at length:
“But to defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions. To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution. In the majority’s judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement. To question its high-handed invalidation of a presumptively valid statute is to act (the majority is sure) with the purpose to “disparage,” ”injure,” “degrade,” ”demean,” and “humiliate” our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homosexual. All that, simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence—indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history. It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race.”
I hear all this, and I take a deep breath. Some balance has been restored. Standing on the sidelines and applauding is not enough, of course. These people, these neighbors regardless of address, are extending a hand to me. Get up, already. Be strong and of good courage. Examples of stoutheartedness abound. I want to share the news about them. That’s where I take heart. Nothing’s been “settled” for me.
Leaven for the Loaf 