It is a testament to our times that California Supreme Court Chief Justice George’s activist opinion really comes as no great surprise. Though his opinion conceded that “from the beginning of California statehood, the legal institution of marriage has been understood to refer to a relationship between a man and a woman,” and though California voters in 2000 overwhelmingly ratified that understanding by adopting The California Defense of Marriage Act, Justice George feels just fine and dandy about distorting his state's constitution and overriding the electorate.
As the ink dries on George's opinion, we contemplate how marriage, and really, all of the most intimate and personal aspects of human relations, are being reduced to mere matters of personal "choice" and style. We shrug at tradition while our judges are busy red-lining our constitutions. It seems to me that the adoption of Tolerance as the greatest of all virtues, and the insistence upon viewing the world subjectively, have sped us to this place. Each person is his own little god, deciding for himself what is best and right. He yields to no moral authority; he is master of all he surveys.
The twentieth century has witnessed as much moral-personal and political change as all of History combined, and the U.S. seems to be evolving (devolving?) rapidly. I hope we are ready to deal with the consequences.
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