Tomorrow: Historic Supreme Court Case

Tomorrow the Supreme Court will hear the case of Obergefell v. Hodges. It could be one of the most important cases in the history of the United States.

Just 30 years ago, in a Georgia case, the Supreme Court upheld state laws which made it a crime to engage in homosexual acts. A crime. Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986) Writing for the Court, Justice White feared that guaranteeing a right to sodomy would be the product of “judge-made constitutional law” and send the Court down the road to “illegitimacy.”

The Court looked back on thousands of  years of human history and the entire history of the United States, and said:

It is obvious to us that neither of these formulations would extend a fundamental right to homosexuals to engage in acts of consensual sodomy. Proscriptions against that conduct have ancient roots.  Sodomy was a criminal offense at common law, and was forbidden by the laws of the original 13 States when they ratified the Bill of Rights. [Footnote 5] In 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, all but 5 of the 37 States in the Union had criminal sodomy laws. [Footnote 6] In fact, until 1961, [Footnote 7] all 50 States outlawed sodomy, and today, 24 States and the District of Columbia  continue to provide criminal penalties for sodomy performed in private and between consenting adults.  Against this background, to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” or “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” is, at best, facetious.

Then, less than 20 years later, the Court reversed itself.  Lawrence and Garner v. Texas 539 U.S. 558 (2003) The Court’s reasoning in this case should have overruled Roe v. Wade, as Antonin Scalia pointed out in his dissent (begins p. 586).

Tomorrow the Court will hear a case which may result in the most “facetious” opinion in American history, sending the Court to the end of the road to complete “illegitimacy,” by ruling that homosexuality is a fundamental “right,” and that calling it a “sin” (as the Bible does) is hateful “animus” without a “rational” basis, and that America must officially declare that two homosexuals can be genuinely, truly “married” in the eyes of God.

It is staggering that thousands of years of human history can be swept away in less than 30 years. It is more staggering that Americans could be forced — by being threatened with fines, incarceration, and the destruction of the businesses they have worked a lifetime to build — to publicly applaud, honor, celebrate, and affirm behavior which was once universally recognized as being contrary to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Such a decision would mean the end of the First Amendment as the framers of the Bill of Rights knew it.

Homosexual conduct should not be punished by the government by fines, being locked in a cage with a violent psychopath, or firing squad. Neither should the refusal of an artist to portray the immoral act in a laudatory way.

You should take a moment right now to pray for the attorneys who will be arguing this case tomorrow, and for the Justices who will be rendering their decision in the weeks to come.