"A Victory for Equality and Justice," blared the headline above the editorial. "Momentous," "historic," "a major victory for civil rights," "a scrupulously fair ruling based on law, precedents and common sense."

This was the ecstatic reaction of The New York Times to the California Supreme Court's declaration that homosexuals have a right to marry and have their unions recognized as marriages.

Now there may be hugging around the newsroom at the Times, where one senior writer said, a few years back, three-fourths of the folks who make up the front page are gay. But this is just another streetlight on America's darkening path to perdition as a society and republic.

To declare that homosexuals can marry is patently absurd. The very definition of marriage is the union of a man and woman, first and foremost, for the procreation of children.

To say two men who live together and engage in sex can be married renders the idea and ideal of marriage meaningless. The court may declare it, but it cannot redefine an institution that nature and nature's God have already defined. As they say in Texas, you can put lipstick and earrings on a pig, and call her Peggy Sue, but it's still a pig.

"What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder," Christ taught. Through the Old Testament and into the epistles of St. Paul, homosexual sodomy is an abomination leading to personal destruction and damnation, one of the five sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance. How, then, can four judges declare it to be integral to the sacrament of marriage?

Well, we don't believe all that rot, comes the reply.

Fine, but Christianity is the cornerstone of Western Civilization. Since the fall of Rome to our own time, nations have believed and acted on the belief that marriage and traditional families are the cinderblocks on which a society must be built. When these cinderblocks crumble, the society collapses. The truth has been born out in our own time.

With a third of all children born out of wedlock — 50 percent of all Hispanic kids, 70 percent of black kids — and half of all marriages ending in divorce, the social indicators have recorded explosions — in crime, violence, drug and alcohol abuse, dropout rates, gang membership, and jail and prison populations.

The correlation between prison inmates and broken homes, or homes never created, is absolute. What armies of social scientists with six-figure salaries today tell us, 12-year-olds knew 50 years ago.

Setting aside the risibility of the court's conduct, consider what it says about us as a democratic republic.

We are supposed to be a self-governing people. "Here, sir, the people rule." Elected representatives write our laws.

Yet, no Congress or state legislature ever voted to declare homosexual unions a marriage. The idea has everywhere been rejected. Wherever it has been on the ballot, same-sex marriage has been voted down. In the 13 states where it was on the ballot in 2004, it was defeated by 58 percent to 85 percent — the last figure rolled up in Mississippi, where black Christian pastors told their flocks to go out and vote down the abomination.

Californians have consistently expressed their opposition and voted against recognizing the idea of homosexual marriages and granting the benefits of married couples to same-sex unions. What is bigotry at the Times is common sense to most Americans.

Homosexual marriage is not in the California constitution, else someone would have discovered it in 160 years. Where, then, did the state Supreme Court find this was a right?

Four of seven justices unearthed this right by consulting what Orwell called their "smelly little orthodoxies." They then decided to overturn the expressed will of the voters, declare their opinion law and order the state of California to begin recognizing homosexual unions as marriages. And they did it because they know the Times types will hail them as the newest Earl Warrens.

Not long ago, a governor of California would have laughed at the court and told the justices to go surfing, and ordered state officials not to issue the marriage licenses. The voters would have put the names of the four justices on the ballot in November and thrown them off the court, as they did Chief Justice Rose Bird, a generation ago.

We used to have executives and legislators like that.

Thomas Jefferson came into office and declared the Alien and Sedition Acts null and void, released all editors from jail, and refused to prosecute any more or to enforce the law. Andrew Jackson said of the great chief justice: "John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it."

In 2004, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom handed out marriage licenses to thousands of homosexuals. Today, conservative mayors in California, if there are any, might engage in similar civil disobedience against this latest judicial usurpation of the legislative power that belongs to elected representatives and the people.

What's sauce for the goose, etc.

To find out more about Patrick Buchanan, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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