By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — The judicial march toward imposing controversial “same-sex marriage” on the United States involves more than one aspect of the issue.
It’s not only inventing how to allow two members of the same sex to be recognized as a married couple, but also forcefully denying the right of anyone else to dissent from this legal fabrication.
The First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty is simply ground into dust while the jackboots of mandatory immorality stomp on people.
The Associated Press reported March 16 that Arizona’s Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee issued an opinion saying that judges who perform wedding ceremonies must also perform “same-sex” weddings, even if judges have a sincere religious objection.
The judge isn’t allowed to avoid this mandate by referring the homosexuals elsewhere to “another judicial officer,” the opinion said.
An exception is allowed if the judge performs marriages only for narrowly defined “friends and relatives,” the opinion said, but the judge still would run afoul of the requirement if he declined “to perform marriages for same-sex friends and relatives.”
Or the judge simply could decline to perform any marriages, the opinion said.
“Arizona’s guidance marked the first time a state has issued a public, formal opinion on same-sex weddings to judges, said Cynthia Gray, director of Center for the Judicial Ethics at the National Center for State Courts,” the AP reported.
Of four people The Wanderer contacted for a comment, two opposed the opinion, one said it made legal sense, and one didn’t respond.
“Same-sex marriage” was imposed on Arizona only last October by a federal judge, John Sedwick, despite a constitutional amendment approved by Arizona voters that recognized only traditional marriage.
Voters from coast to coast had approved measures in their states affirming traditional marriage, reflecting millennia of moral, religious, and social understanding, only to have the popular initiatives cast aside by unyielding judges fabricating and inventing magical rules unknown in the history of law.
When judges act entirely outside the law, it remains to be seen how much more of this Americans will allow.
It’s not Americans’ fault if the elite try to get away with this sweeping usurpation. But it becomes their fault if they keep deferring to this assault on their very bodies and souls, lives and livelihoods, contrary to the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution, to say nothing of the revealed rules of God.
The Arizona judicial-ethics opinion summarized its conclusions in a Q-and-A format. Its first six questions about the possibility of declining to perform a “same-sex marriage” all were answered by a one-word, boldfaced No.
The seventh question, about performing marriages “only for friends and relatives,” was answered in boldface with A qualified yes.
Declining to perform a “same-sex marriage” “manifests bias or prejudice,” the opinion said.
The March 16 AP story quoted Republican Arizona State Sen. Steve Yarbrough on the opinion as saying: “Without having studied it, my reaction is, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ I think we’ve got some First Amendment issues that would instantly come to my attention.”
Asked for a comment by The Wanderer, Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of the New York-based Priests for Life, said:
“Those who oppose gay marriage are increasingly punished in our society. This is primarily because of the blunt force of unelected judges [under] the political pressure of activist groups that are wrong on the issue. It is noteworthy, for instance, that in the Arizona case, the ‘opinion’ that was issued came without any opportunity for public comment.
“We can certainly expect such punishment to continue. This does not mean we are losing the battle for marriage; it simply is the pattern for any kind of clash between Christian truth and pagan society. The truth and those who defend it are always crucified before they triumph,” Pavone said.
Thinking of those being persecuted for standing up for marriage, Pavone cited the words of Blessed Pope Paul VI in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, issued December 8, 1975.
Paul VI said: “It is appropriate first of all to emphasize the following point: for the Church, the first means of evangelization is the witness of an authentically Christian life, given over to God in a communion that nothing should destroy and at the same time given to one’s neighbor with limitless zeal. As we said recently to a group of lay people, ‘Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses’.”
The late Pope continued: “St. Peter expressed this well when he held up the example of a reverent and chaste life that wins over even without a word those who refuse to obey the word. It is therefore primarily by her conduct and by her life that the Church will evangelize the world, in other words, by her living witness of fidelity to the Lord Jesus — the witness of poverty and detachment, of freedom in the face of the powers of this world, in short, the witness of sanctity.”
Judicial Tyranny
Rob Haney, a Catholic and past chairman of the Phoenix area’s Maricopa County Republican Party, told The Wanderer that the judicial ethics panel’s opinion “makes as much sense as the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that we have a constitutional right to murder babies in the womb by slicing them up and decapitating them. Or as much sense as [New York’s Timothy] Cardinal Dolan subverting the annual parade to honor St. Patrick into a shameful and heretical spectacle to celebrate sodomy.
“How far are we from a judicial ruling that medical doctors must perform abortions in order to be licensed? The writers of the science-fiction hero Buck Rogers, who was transported from the 20th to the 25th century, could never have imagined how quickly our culture would have declined into the judicial tyranny in which we live today,” Haney said.
“The people are unable to discern good from evil and repeatedly elect faithless men and women to office,” he said. “I believe that only through Divine intervention will this country survive as our Founders imagined. Without righteous leaders, our laws are but words on paper to be disregarded at the order of an unrighteous official.”
A media spokesman at the activist, socially conservative Center for Arizona Policy failed to respond to one email and two phone calls from The Wanderer seeking comment.
However, conservative Arizona Republican campaign consultant Constantin Querard saw the issue as one of civil officials having to follow the law even if they don’t like it.
“What do you think about the differences between judges/JPs who perform marriages and priests? A JP’s duties are to the bench, and performing weddings is optional for them. Most do it for the extra money. But it is a civil ceremony,” Querard told The Wanderer.
“In that case, they can skip them all together or, as publicly elected officials conducting non-religious ceremonies, it makes sense that they have to perform any ‘legal’ ceremonies they are asked to perform,” he said. “By comparison, that argument should not apply to religious officials who are serving their faith in the officiating of marriage ceremonies.
“Not sure if every one of my friends would agree with me, but legally it makes sense,” Querard said. “It isn’t how I would wish it to be, but you can’t have elected judges picking and choosing which laws to follow or discriminating in the application of those laws.”
The Wanderer then posed this question: “‘Same-sex marriage’ has been imposed suddenly by judges against the clearly expressed will of the people and without any historic, longstanding precedent. Does that make it legal and binding upon the nation, including Christian judges who have millennia of legal and religious precedent?”
Querard replied: “Are the decisions of the courts legal and binding upon the nation, including those who vehemently disagree with them? Of course they are. Why would you even consider that they wouldn’t be? That doesn’t make them automatically moral, just, or right. But they would be legal. And they would be binding.
“Now, you could practice civil disobedience, and many have throughout history, but they were disobeying what was at the time legal, binding law,” Querard said.
“I don’t like it, obviously, but if the law of the land says yes to same-sex marriage, then public officials — those who work for the government, the taxpayers, etc. — whose job it is to carry out and execute the laws of the land, should follow the law.
“They could practice civil disobedience, but the way to do that is likely to resign,” Querard said. “In this case they have the extra shield — which is that they could register their protest by simply not performing any marriage ceremonies, for anyone. It is extracurricular to their job as judges, in any case.
“Where we cross the line is when we start forcing religious officials, rather than public officials, to cross that line against their beliefs and wishes,” he said, adding that he has “no doubts that efforts to force the clergy into performing the ceremonies are coming.”
Not so long ago, proponents of “same-sex marriage” portrayed it as only a personal decision that didn’t coerce anyone. Now that they’re getting homosexual “marriage” imposed on society, they’re rushing to coerce and compel everyone else to worship it or suffer serious penalties.
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