Writ and Right
Last month The Honorable United States Supreme Court Justice Alito offered a keynote speech for The Federalist Society. As usual, his speech was brilliantly prepared and executed (truly showcasing the ability of a person of his stature), which must have been trying given its content. His words were, I’m certain, difficult to prepare, deliver, and hear by some.
His speech echoed a joint statement offered by himself and Justice Thomas a few weeks prior. That statement offered a bleak view regarding a denied writ of certiorari for the 2015 ruling of Obergefell v. Hodges, which read a right to same-sex marriage in the Fourteenth Amendment. As usual, I’d urge you to read it and not merely take my paraphrasing as a full account. In the statement, the honorable Justices make three solid and valid points: a discrepancy between equal marriage rights and religious liberty rights, a ruling instead of a vote, and the implications of the verdict toward some people who hold to religious liberties.
The discrepancy between equal marriage rights and religious liberty rights has been a long and challenging discussion. The low-resolution view states there should be a mutual ground between giving people the right to wed and allowing people to stand for their personal religious beliefs. It becomes complicated when the two are pit against each other, religious liberties being the more fundamental ground in the discussion as it was one of the founding reasons the United States was sought out and established in the first place. In contrast, the right to wed was later read into the Fourteenth Amendment, though it’s considered part of the translation of “all men are created equal,” which holds massive weight in the Constitution. The arguments arose as of late when the two points, equal rights to marry and the right to exercise religious beliefs, collided when a local government official felt the necessity to choose between the two, which leads to the Justices’ next point.
Kim Davis, a former county clerk for Kentucky, objected to same-sex marriage on religious beliefs and had so for many years. She believed marriage existed between a man and a woman, which corresponds with Kentucky law’s definition. On those grounds, she protested the ruling on the amendment and, when faced with signing a marriage certificate for two men, protested again. She stood that she had the right to exercise her freedom to practice her religious beliefs. This right directly infringed on the couple’s newly affirmed right to get married. In some parts, the question became which constitutional right would be more fundamental: the right to equal liberties or to exercise religious beliefs, which is why the Justices cited the democratic process.
If the definition of marriage went through the voting process, the people would vote only after many drafts of the legal verbiage, eventually coming to a consensus regarding the language that might include a provision for a situation like Ms. Davis’s. However, there wasn’t a vote on wording, leading to the Justices’ third point where they cite language from the verdict, which characterizes peoples’ views with religious beliefs as “disparaging to homosexuals.” They argue this view could ultimately “vilify” those people, labeling them “as bigots,” and cause “ruinous consequences for religious liberties.”
The couples promptly sued Ms. Davis after she refused to sign a marriage certificate on religious grounds. Without the precedent of the democratic process, the Supreme Court eventually received the dispute via a writ of certiorari, a request to review the ruling. The court denied the writ, but its denial sparked the Justices’ statement. The legal situation is outside my realm of confidence, but this is quite reminiscent of other discussions that are still going strong.
Arguments in Christianity condemning homosexuality call on several passages from the Bible but the two most often quoted are from Leviticus.
18:22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.
20:33 If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.
There are several arguments to these statements, primarily stating the definition. Some scholars adhere to the biblical description of intercourse as “to know” not “to lie,” maintaining that the breadwinner’s role falling to the wife due to the husband’s ineptitude or selfish sloth is the abomination, not the sexual act. Another view cites the placement of the phrase “man lying with a male.” The statement lies between human sacrifice and ritualistic bestiality, two common cultic religious practices of the indigenous religions of the time and geography where the Levitical laws were established. It’s argued that this placement aims that the unclean act mentioned is not a personal, loving, consensual relationship between two men. Instead the trespass is the practice of cultic religious practices and this passage forbids those practices strictly differentiating Israel’s people from the other local religions. I believe the truth of the matter lies an order of magnitude higher and is even more profound than definitions, but to start we must go back to Genesis.
Genesis chapters two and three detail the creation and subsequent fall of man. God placed Adam and Eve in the garden with strict instructions not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. After some coaxing by the snake, they partook, placing themselves at odds with God and cast out, but first, God sacrificed an animal to make coats of skin for them. This sacrifice was the initiation point of sacrifice as redemption. Human beings, after this point, used animal sacrifice as a means of redemption of their sins, culminating in the Levitical laws, sometimes referred to as the law of sin and sacrifice or the law of sin and death.
The Levitical laws detail some six hundred sub-laws, most of which aim at maintaining a level of practical holiness by laying out a state of ritual cleanliness. This cleanliness could be revoked by acts listed as unclean in the text. The texts also detail ways to regain cleanliness by performing ritual cleansing. The final act to find redemption in the eyes of God was to performing a sacrifice weighed as equal to the transgression committed. This way of life was the reality of the chosen people of God: constant concern over the state of one’s cleanliness followed by requirements of ritual and sacrifice, but everything changed in the new testament.
The existence of the law of sin and death extended from a divide between God and his people. Adam and Eve initiated the divide at the point of original sin, the sin of disobedience committed in the garden. This divide was never fully healed. Throughout history, before the new testament, the only means to find yourself close to God was to maintain cleanliness. But cleanliness was only an admission of sin, and holding it set the Israelites up to become unclean eventually. In truth, the act of sacrifice perpetuated the divide, maintaining it by requiring sacrifice in the first place. The fact was there was no sacrifice valuable enough to offer reconciliation with God, which is why he offered his only begotten son.
The act of sending Jesus, God made flesh, as a sacrifice was God’s way to fulfill the law and offering actual reconciliation. Jesus willingly offering himself as a final sacrifice, clean and perfect as required by the law, made the reconciliation a reality, as symbolically explained by the torn veil, the divider between man and the holy of holies. Christ’s willing sacrifice fulfilled the law and saved humanity from the law of sin and death. As of the death of Jesus Christ, the law no longer holds weight.
With the fulfillment of the law, the Levitical rules no longer apply to Christians. Further, anyone who calls themselves a Christian announces an alignment with Christ and his teachings. The fundamental tenant of Christianity is the sacrifice of Jesus, thereby fulfilling the law, redeeming us from it, and providing reconciliation with God. Claiming Christianity and saying homosexuality is an abomination or eating pork is a sin dismisses and belittles the sacrifice Jesus made. Saying it stronger: Claiming to be Christian but still holding to the Levitical laws announces that Jesus’s sacrifice was insufficient for your standards. You would instead keep to the antiquated laws.
I understand this view is wildly different from the perspective taught for many years. I also appreciate that considering it may shake the foundations of some beliefs, but this is also what Jesus did every time he confronted the Pharisees and Sadducees. Jesus was challenged and demeaned when he was found consorting with tax collectors or women of questionable repute. He was threatened when he announced that what came out of a man was what rendered him unclean, not what went in, and he was killed when he said he was the son of God. These dogmatic views sought to quell and quiet a radical uprising because it was different than the long-standing norm, and now we have the chance to do the same, to be inclusive and accepting and Christ-like, even if it means being questioned by the ones who see it as a challenge to their old ways.
I don’t know the implications of the reading equal marriage rights into the Fourteenth Amendment. I also don’t know the implication of the statement the Honorable Justices of the Court made while denying the writ of certiorari. The state of the Levitical law is clear to me, however. I’ll do my best to live as Christ-like as I know how.
Resources:
http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2020/images/10/05/100520zor3204.thomas.pdf
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0146107915577097
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMnukCVIZWQ
