Same-Sex Marriage and the Assault on Moral Reasoning: Gender no longer matters, because the judge said so

Matthew J. Franck writes at Public Discourse: “It is something of a consolation, albeit a small one, that the best arguments advocates for a constitutional ‘right’ to same-sex marriage can muster are so transparently bad. Disconnected from nature, from history, from the canons of legal reasoning, and even from the standards of logic itself, their arguments betray themselves at every turn, as acts of the will and not of reasoned judgment. When the advocate advancing the arguments wears a black robe and sits on the federal bench, of course, even falsehood and fallacy have a decent chance of ultimate victory . . . Perhaps the most surprising thing in the judge’s opinion [Perry v. Schwarzenegger] is his declaration that ‘gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage.’ This line, quoted everywhere within hours with evident astonishment, appears to be the sheerest ipse dixit—a judicial ‘because I said so’—and the phrase ‘no longer’ conveys that palpable sense that one is being mugged by a progressive.