This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Last week, five members of the U.S. Supreme Court upset our government's balance of powers when they cast down the Defense of Marriage Act, passed by Congress in 1996. They also trampled states' rights and the citizen initiative process when they threw back California's Proposition 8, an encore ballot measure passed by a majority of voters to preserve traditional marriage between one man and one woman.
These 5-4 majority decisions were political, not judicial; wanton, not wise. They are based on permissive political agendas, not on legal standards.
They promote the illusion that human beings can ignore the moral, social, historical, physical and biological consequences of permissive lifestyles and promiscuous intimacies, whether heterosexual, homosexual or transsexual.
While feigning tolerance, they assault the facts, faiths, freedoms and family values that have defined civilizations for millennia. While arguing for equality, they deceive individuals and couples by denigrating chastity, deflowering fidelity and derailing the DNA-bonded possibilities for a nurtured posterity that marriage can provide.
No law, no court decision, no executive order can alter the essence of true love and real marriage. Those who struggle with same-sex attraction and other afflictions need our compassion, not a counterfeit quagmire of dead-end detours.
Cynthia L. Hallen
Springville