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Whatever Happened to Self-Evident Truth? 12/11/2003 CWA Commentary: Four Massachusetts judges found nothing rational for limiting marriage to a man and a woman.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” were named without explanation. Jefferson and his fellow citizens understood that self-evident truths need no explanation or defense. These were truths from their Creator. Who didn’t know that?
Let’s assume for sake of argument that there is such a thing as truth. Self-evident is synonymous with obvious, apparent, clear, plain, visible, evident and axiomatic. Truth so plain, so obvious, needs no explanation and no defense—except for those who “suppress the truth in unrighteous.”
In courts of law, the rules of evidence permit judges to take judicial notice of such truths. For example, an expert witness isn’t needed to prove that boiling water is hot—judges know that. On second thought, there may be four in Massachusetts who do not.
These are the four who just discovered a right to homosexual marriage in the Massachusetts Constitution: Goodridge v. Department of Public Health. For them, it is not plain enough or obvious enough that two men or two women cannot commit marriage, and should not be permitted to engage in such a pretense sanctioned by a governmental license. Nothing satisfied the four as a rational basis for limiting marriage to a man and a woman—not the history of mankind, existing law, nature itself, natural procreation linking a child’s father to its mother, the well-being of children nor preserving limited state resources. A narcissistic, individual autonomy in the name of a newly found “liberty” trumped the greater good of society as a whole and children in particular.
John Adams, primary author of the Massachusetts Constitution, which is the oldest functioning written constitution in the world, wrote in his Dissertation: “Be it remembered that liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker.”
The Maker, who gives liberty and created male and female to complement each other, created and ordained marriage as the union of husband and wife—a man and woman who become one flesh. A state license cannot make two of the same sex one flesh.
The four justices have shamed and disgraced the oldest court in continuous existence in the Western Hemisphere. Three justices, one of whom is an admitted lesbian, wrote pages of strong dissenting opinions.
Many are angry because the four usurped the authority of the Legislature and drastically altered public policy on an issue of surpassing importance. Both the outcome and the process repulse others. The outcome would be as egregious if it had been a legislative act, but at least the people could throw the bums out at the next election and have the law repealed. Not so with judges who apparently have no fear of suffering any consequences for their abuse of power and distortion of the Constitution they swore to uphold. For them a written constitution is able to “evolve,” which makes their oath meaningless.
Adams declared that in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts “the legislative, executive and judicial power shall be placed in separate departments, to the end that it might be a government of laws, and not of men.” By this unconscionable ruling, the four have made themselves a government of men and not of laws.
The four have violated the Massachusetts Constitution by breaching the separation and balance of powers. Worse yet, they have mocked God and the sacred institution of marriage. The people of Massachusetts should demand that the Legislature and the governor remove the four from office.
Timeless words by Daniel Webster, who believed in self-evident truth, provide a timely and ominous warning:
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