The Patriot Post® · Gun Rights, Gay Rights, and the Constitution

“Without the Second Amendment we have no right to defend ourselves and our families.”

That is not correct. We have an unalienable right to life and to self-defense, as well as the means of providing self-defense. All the 2nd Amendment does is get in the face of government by ordering it to keep its totalitarian hands off of our rights and our means of self-defense by asserting in the fundamental charter of government that the People possess a right that rightfully goes without saying.

Government is not the source of the right to adequate self-defense, and thanks to the explicit language of the 2nd Amendment, all of those in government and the courts who have a brain and can understand plain language are expected to limit their “right” to abridge or infringe the rights of the People to not only keep but also to “bear” arms, which the Supreme Court has determined does not mean bear arms in one’s home, but in public.

That means that in all those old Western movies in which the town had an ordinance that mandated turning in one’s weapons while in town, the ordinance was an offense and violation of a fundamental constitutional right unless the town was in a federal territory and not a state. Did Wyatt Earp really engage in the shoot-out at the OK corral with the Clancy brothers over their refusal to turn in their firearms? If so, it must have been during the pre-statehood period.

I heard on a history show once that the number of shootings/killing in one western town like Boot Hill or Deadwood was one per day on average. So clearly people kept and carried their arms with them.

An example of the overreach of federal power, one that should give you shivers, is seen in a recent writing about the 122nd anniversary of the massacre of 297 Sioux natives at Wounded Knee Creek. The feds decided they had the right to cancel the Native Americans’ right to possess firearms, and since the natives weren’t keen on surrendering their paid-for property, the were fair game for extermination.

One interesting fact is that at the battle of Little Big Horn, Custer and the 7th Cavalry were killed because the tribes that came together to kill-before-being-killed were armed with better weapons than the cavalry. The cavalry only had single shot rifles from the Civil War era, while the Indians had gotten hold of Remington repeating rifles, making each warrior with one of them as effective as a dozen cavalrymen. So the come-to-kill cavalry got what was come to it.

The right of self-defense is innate to life in this world, along with the right to exercise it via swords, knives, or firearms, as is the right to marry, but as with the right to own arms, there are limitations which protect society and do not violate anyone’s rights because some “rights” have never existed.

Individuals have never possessed the right to own nor use weapons of mass destruction, just as individuals have never possessed the right to marry anyone whom they choose. Throughout history, for much of the human race the choice of a marriage partner was not even a right of the individual but was a right of the parents. But even in societies that didn’t follow such paternalistic regimentation (for better or for worse), individuals have never possessed certain options when it came to marriage.

The right to mate and form permanent unions is a natural right accepted by all societies and nations, but none of them accept it without limits.

The justices of the Supreme Court are being put in a corner and aren’t sure what to do or whether or not to even accept the proposition that the People have a right to defend their state constitution’s amendments or propositions (California’s Proposition 8, the officially recognized definition of marriage) if the political hacks running the state aren’t willing to defend state law before the court. The justices are probably hesitant to impose federal rulings regarding state matters, which marriage inherently is.

The argument that homosexuals are being denied equal rights is absurd on its face because marriage is inherently a discriminating institution being as no civilized society allows one to marry an animal, a child, a sibling or parent, multiple wives or husbands, (or both), nor a member of the same sex, because of scriptural prohibitions and visceral revulsion toward such couplings.

The People decide what state law is and federal judges have no authority under the constitution to override conventional social norms that do not involve being denied a civil or human right.

Marriage is a right only to the extent that society and religion validate it. The State has no moral basis to decide what the morality of the People must be.

The government, judges, governors and legislators do not have a right to tell the People what their religious foundations must be or not be, anymore than the government possesses a fundamental right to ownership of your children and can legitimately take them whenever you fail to carry out its orders and social engineering edits.

But the government acknowledges no such limit on its power and authority as we saw with the Health Care ruling. You must submit as a government slave to coercive federal mandates that require you to accept strong-arm extortion that forces you to engage unwillingly in an involuntary contract that requires a monthly payment to a health insurance company. So much for individual liberty in the land of the once-free.

Under the rule of Law and not men (with their opinions and preferences), to institute a fundamental change in society requires securing the permission of the People via an amendment to the Constitution, state or federal. Since there is no amendment to the Constitution securing the right of homosexuals to marry, the right is not and never has been secured, so how in the world can they claim a right that has never existed?

Their claim to such a right is made in the total absence of any history to support it. The States have always interfered in the legal contract of marriage because of the legal issues involved, even requiring a “license” accompanied by a fee. What “right” requires a license and a fee? Do you have to register and get a license before having a baby? Before buying and owning property? Or food?

Those who qualify for a marriage license fit a criteria decided on by the People or their representatives, not judges. Judges have no moral authority to tell the People what social norms are to be – except when laws are passed that violate human rights, such as would slavery laws, or social disenfranchisement laws that bar some people from voting or mixing equally in society.

Such rulings are fundamental in that they ban discrimination, but the proposition passed by the California voters (Prop. 8) bans nothing. It merely states that the State’s official definition of marriage is that which it has always been since before statehood. It’s like a defense of the English language and the meaning of its words versus a bastardization of the definitions of words (as the Communists engaged in by inserting the word “Democratic” in the name of their oppressive totalitarian regimes). [Pejoration: root of pejorative; in linguistics, a change of meaning, for the worse.]

Calling a dictatorship a democracy is no less illegitimate than calling marriage something other that the union of two consenting unrelated adults of opposite genders. It simply isn’t what it isn’t, so in order to make it what it isn’t requires the consent of the people, just as was needed for changing the law of the land regarding the freedom to make and sell liquor (Prohibition, the 18th Amendment); the unprecedented right of women to cast political votes in elections (the 19th Amendment); and the right of freemen to own slaves and indentured servants (the 13th Amendment).

Fundamental societal change requires an alteration in the fundamental law of the land, and that type of alteration is only legitimately effected via the only means given in our Constitution to achieve it, which is found in Article Five. It spells out the process for passing an amendment to the national charter that binds us all together as a nation.

Without following it, there is no legitimacy to any law passed by Congress which by-passes it. So the question of whether or not so-and-so supports gay marriage should be irrelevant. The only question that should be in the public’s mind is does so-and-so support a constitutional amendment permitting it. So-and-so may be a state or federal politician, or a state or federal judge.

Judges have the authority to declare laws passed by Congress to be unconstitutional, and that might be based not on a law violating the Constitution but rather violating the social norms of the society that ratified the Constitution, making it and the process of amending it, the law of the land. Remember, Congress did not and could not outlaw slavery. That was the prerogative of only the People. Same with same-sex marriage. But not only does the “loyal opposition” not adhere to the constitutional process, they aren’t even aware that they are supposed to. A perfect recipe for disaster.