Judge Jones Is Back: 2005 Anti-ID, 2014 Anti-Marriage

The judge who ruled against intelligent design in the Dover case has just overturned Pennsylvania’s defense of marriage law.

PennLive.com describes the latest ruling from Judge John E. Jones III, famous for his 2005 ruling in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case that evolutionists hailed as a victory (12/30/05) against the “intelligent design movement” (actually, the Discovery Institute opposed the defendants’ actions in that case).  Now, Judge Jones has overturned Pennsylvania’s 1996 Defense of Marriage Law that only recognized traditional marriage between one man and one woman, and refused to recognize same-sex marriages from other states.  The text of his opinion makes his feelings clear:

Today, certain citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are not guaranteed the right to marry the person they love. Nor does Pennsylvania recognize the marriages of other couples who have wed elsewhere. Hoping to end this injustice, eleven courageous lesbian and gay couples, one widow, and two teenage children of one of the aforesaid couples have come together as plaintiffs and asked this Court to declare that all Pennsylvanians have the right to marry the person of their choice and consequently, that the Commonwealth’s laws to the contrary are unconstitutional. We now join the twelve federal district courts across the country which, when confronted with these inequities in their own states, have concluded that all couples deserve equal dignity in the realm of civil marriage.

It appears that Jones’s definition of marriage is based not on biology, age, or ability to procreate, but on “the person of their choice” or “the person they love“.  So far, in other words, his decision appears limited to marriages of two persons; but if choice and love are the criteria, why should marriage be limited to two?  And why must it be limited to persons?  Could other plaintiffs not consider this an injustice or inequity, if they can prove love and choice are driving their decisions?  If a future DOMA law cast the net of protection around traditional and gay couples only, how would Jones rule, using his same principles, if polygamist defendants came “to end this injustice”?

As if ready to pounce, various county clerks in the Keystone State are rushing to issue new marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

According to Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Judge Jones’s decision, which came within 24 hours of Oregon’s similar ruling, was particularly harsh:

Oregon and Pennsylvania didn’t have much in common — until this week. Separated by thousands of miles, the two states united in outrage over the courts’ decisions to strike down their marriage laws barely 24 hours apart. In Oregon, the 10 year-old marriage amendment was toppled in district court, where the state’s attorney general refused to defend it.

Like a dozen black-robed activists before him, Judge Michael McShane argued, “Because Oregon’s marriage laws discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation without a rational relationship to any legitimate government interest, the laws violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.” The state’s failure to defend its own constitution, and the failure of an openly homosexual judge to recuse himself, demonstrate what an overreach this decision was. The deluge of rulings hit Pennsylvania next, where Judge John Jones wrote one of the harshest opinions yet, insisting that laws affirming natural marriage should be discarded “into the ash heap of history.”

While both judges cited the Supreme Court’s June decisions as a rational basis to destroy marriage, the high court said nothing that would give a federal judge the right to redefine marriage. In an interesting twist, both rulings came down within hours of Politico’s new polling — which showed that a clear majority of likely voters in swing states (52-48%) are digging in on their support of natural marriage.

PennLive used the occasion to reprint a 2005 story when the Dover decision was about to be handed down.  Some atheists, predictably, are rejoicing again at this decision, like they did at Dover (e.g., Patheos blog).  Jones has always denied the charge of judicial activism, claiming he only follows the law and the evidence (e.g., interview for PLoS Genetics, 2008), but when has the law and evidence favored a redefinition of marriage, and an opinion about what belongs on the ash heap of history?  A search on “Dover” at Evolution News & Views turns up over 21 pages of articles mentioning that case.  Jones considered that one his top achievement.  The atheist blogger now thinks he has outdone himself.  The text of Jones’s opinion says, “We are a better people than what these laws represent, and it is time to discard them into the ash heap of history.”

“No rational reason,” huh?  Natural marriage belongs in the “ash heap of history,” huh?  This country is destroying itself faster than an Edsel revving up in quicksand.

Judge McShane thinks he is a champion of rationality.  He may as well say there is no rational reason to reason.  Judge Jones thinks of himself as a champion of justice.  He may as well say that justice should be discarded into the ash heap of history.  So: for thousands of years, everybody was wrong about the definition of marriage, until these unelected judges arrived to tell us all about reason and history.  But why stop at same-sex marriage?  Why not polygamy, or any relationship among any number of people, animals or objects, that seem comfortable around each other?  Doesn’t a country have a legitimate interest in raising a generation who benefit from a mother and father?  Does not biology teach us the obvious?  Not for leftists and those drunk on political correctness.  Now in California, even though Proposition 8 was never overturned as the law of the land, the leftist-insane Demoncats in the state legislature are preparing new forms allowing men to call themselves mothers and women to call themselves fathers.  Only public outrage is standing in the way of hairy men with beards wearing dresses from entering girls’ bathrooms.

Try to imagine this kind of insanity only 10 or 20 years ago.  We are the frogs in the pot, and it’s close to the boiling point now.

I really don’t know how long it might be before websites like this one are forcibly shut down for suggesting that natural marriage is best.  Look what Mozilla did last month—forced out its co-founder, just because it was discovered he had contributed to California’s Proposition 8, on his own time, six years ago (see FRC article).  Will ISP’s, either on their own or from government or gay-activist pressure, start checking the donor lists of anyone else who contributed, and shut down their access to the internet?  You might have no way of learning what happened if this website suddenly disappears.  Shutting off what the government or power brokers consider a threat to their propaganda is standard practice before tyrannical regimes take over.  The public must hear a unified voice (in the name of “diversity” of course: the big lie).  Anything else is “hate” that must be hated!

I’ve had personal experience with a judge who cast justice and reason to the wind, apparently ruling what was politically correct in his own mind.  Oh, he had lots of “evidence” and “law” he could call on to rationalize his decision.  I’m sure Jones and McShane were masters of spin doctoring, too.  In my situation, it was astonishing to me how a clear-cut case of discrimination could be contorted into any message the opposition lawyers wanted to portray.  They cited lots of law and evidence for why it was OK for my boss to shout at me and tell me why I couldn’t mention intelligent design to anyone in the office under threat of being fired, when nobody else was singled out for that restriction, it was not against company policy, and my boss agreed on the witness stand that he was angry and had never done that to any other employee in his whole career.  He got away with it, thanks to JPL’s taxpayer-funded legal beagles and a judge who most likely didn’t want to lose cocktail lounge privileges among his peers.  The points of law and evidence were mere props for a foregone “PC” conclusion.  One of my friends is convinced that it was my support for Prop 8 that did me in (on one single day before the election, I had shared information about the proposition among a few co-workers I had worked with for years).  Even though the case was primarily about intelligent design, he thought the other issue was the thing that made me intolerable to the lab.  Of course, gay marriage supporters were free to mock the proposition with hateful cartoons on their doors next to their anti-ID cartoons.

Rulings like these are why voters had better pay attention to judicial elections, and to elections for the presidents and governors who appoint them.  Judges are taking this country to hell faster than any other branch of government.  Already, activist federal judges have overturned 13 state laws protecting natural marriage, even when those laws were passed by large majorities of citizens and embedded in the state constitutions.  (How can a constitution be ruled unconstitutional?)  Some of the judges are openly gay and should have recused themselves.  The will of the people doesn’t matter any more.  The elites tell us what to think and how to act.  They decide who the”better people” are, and by extension, who the bad people are.  They control what goes into the ash heap of history.  We are approaching the very tyranny that our founding fathers warned us about—perhaps even what George Orwell warned us about.  What usually comes next is physical persecution.  Have a nice day.