Last
week, the United States Courts of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit made rulings
that banned same-sex marriage in the states that it has jurisdiction in: Kentucky,
Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. The 2-1 in-favor-of decision limited marriage to
between one man and one woman.
The last ruling that
banned same-sex marriage was made a little over 17 months ago, just after the
Supreme Court case United States v.
Windsor where a woman (Edith Windsor) tried to claim the federal estate tax
exemption for her deceased wife (Thea Spyer). However, Windsor and Spyer were
married in Canada and the United States did not recognize their marriage, so
Windsor had to pay $363,053 in estate taxes.
One of the ruling
judges, Judge Jeffery S. Sutton, released the official opinion of the ruling
where he defined 6 main arguments. The first of which was a humble response
from Sutton stating that judges should not “make such a vital policy call for
the thirty-two million citizens [in the Sixth Circuit’s area of jurisdiction]”.
His second argument is that the framers of the Constitution would not support
something that is [air quotes] “against the Constitution” such as prayer before
a meeting. They supported traditional marriage, so they saw it as how it ought
to be. Sutton’s third argument is that traditional marriage is just that, traditional! If that’s how everyone’s
been doing it for, well, forever, then we should respect that. His fourth
argument is that marriage is to protect the biological marriage, where a man
and a woman have children and create a family unit. Same-sex marriages are not
able to do that without a third party. His fifth argument was supporting the
traditional monogamist marriage. If marriage is traditionally between a man and
woman, it should be held to the standard of one
man and one woman.
Sutton’s sixth argument
was that judges need to recognize the Constitution as a living document and
adapt the Constitution to today’s world, not adapt the people to the old Constitution.
When a judge cites the Constitution literally, it might have been something written for 18th century Americans, not 21st century
Americans. As Christians, we can learn from his sixth argument. If a person reads
from the Bible as a dead text (translating it literally, word for word), parables
might be of no use to someone who wasn’t a 1st century farm worker.
Instead, we need to learn the lessons behind the words and realize what God
wants us to do today as 21st century Christians.
