Pro-Family Leaders: Judicial Activists Continue Attack on Marriage, Family
by Bill Fancher
March 21, 2005
(AgapePress) - Pro-family spokesm3n are still reacting to last week's comments from a San Francisco judge that "no rational reason exits" for limiting marriage to the union of a man and a woman. They say Judge Richard Kramer's remarks reflect much about the state of the country's judiciary.In his ruling, the San Francisco County Superior Court judge effectively struck down California's defense of marriage law, saying the state's "protracted denial of equal protection cannot be justified simply because such constitutional violation has become traditional." (See earlier story) Robert Knight of the Culture and Family Institute says he could not believe the comments.
Robert Knight | |
"Obviously, a man who can't find a single reason that marriage is the union of a man and a woman -- not the six-billion people on the planet who are the product of such unions -- is just seriously unfit for the bench," Knight says. "This is another lunatic judge trying to make law."Kramer's ruling comes on the heels of another judge's similar decision in the Empire State -- about which Knight says: "There was another lunatic judge in New York who started by quoting Romeo and Juliet to make the case for same-sex marriage, which is kind of odd since Romeo and Juliet are clearly an opposite-sex couple."
Knight says Congress needs to get rid of radical judges like Kramer -- a power it has, but has not used. Conservative icon Pat Buchanan agrees that activist jurists who have elevated themselves above the law and the Constitution need to be reined in. Aberrant judges, he says, have damaged the nation.
"For 50 years, a judicial tyranny has been imposing a social revolution on this country without the consent of the people of this democratic republic," Buchanan says, "and we have tolerated it."
Knight contends the debate goes beyond what it appears to be on the surface. "This is about more than just marriage because the left sees it as a way to break the family," he says, "and if you break the family, then you leave the culture wide open to the government acquiring more and more power to pick up the pieces."
Cost to Society
A pro-family member of the U.S. Senate has similar concerns about the long-term effect of any redefinition of marriage on families and society in general. Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum says society will suffer enormous costs if the traditional view of marriage is not protected.
The Republican lawmaker says the integrity of marriage is worth defending because without it, the nation will be left with broken homes. He says that translates into the absence of fathers -- and children who are products of such homes, he notes, face uphill struggles.
"Children [from broken homes] are two times more likely to use drugs, to be abused, to commit crimes; three times more likely to fail in school, to commit suicide; and five times more likely to be in poverty," he quotes. "It becomes a generational problem."
He adds that in other countries where same-sex marriage has been legalized, people have simply stopped getting married. "And when people stop getting married, fathers stop participating in the lives of their children," Santorum says. That, he says, exacts a high moral and fiscal cost on society.
Bill Fancher, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
