I’m listening to the public forum taking place in the Iowa House on HJR 6 which is a resolution proposing an amendment to the Iowa Constitution which defines marriage as one man and one woman.
Those who oppose this legislation cite protecting homosexuals’ civil rights. What is a right? In our country’s organic law we see in the Declaration of Independence:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, driving their just Powers from the consent of the governed
We first can’t understand what a right is if we don’t realize where that right came from.
It isn’t government. It isn’t a legislature. It isn’t a Supreme Court. Our founders said that this should be self-evident. All men are created equal and each man and woman are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights.
Unalienable – government can’t give and government can’t take away on a whim (obviously government can take away life, liberty and property via due process when a crime is committed). So what basis did the Iowa Supreme Court have to grant a right to homosexual couples to marry? If you reject the idea of inalienable rights given by a Creator and you do believe governments do grant rights then you can’t complain when those same governments take them away.
What is a right? I don’t always agree with Steve Deace of WHO Radio, but today he made an argument that I agree with 100%. Rights are a state of being. I have the right to life, if that right is taken away it is murder. I have the right to liberty no one can take that way without due process it’s called involuntary captivity or kidnapping. I have property rights, when that is taken away without due process that is theft. When I wanted to get married, I needed consent. My wife now had to agree.
No one has a right to marry. Somebody else has to consent to it.