In October 1962, our country approached the brink of nuclear war after the Soviet Union placed nuclear missiles in Cuba that were aimed at our cities. It was an incredibly tense time. The Joint Chiefs of Staff encouraged President Kennedy to attack Cuba immediately. Fortunately, Kennedy kept his wits and responded with a naval blockade of Cuba backed by the threat of air strikes and an invasion. The Soviet Union blinked, and nuclear war was narrowly averted. President Kennedy showed incredible leadership in calmly telling his nearly hysterical security advisers to remember, “the judgments of history seldom coincide with the tempers of the moment.”
Those words offer good advice for the hysteria enveloping our nation this summer. On June 26, “five lawyers” (Chief Justice Roberts’ words, not mine) on the Supreme Court opted to redefine marriage from the only definition the civilized world has ever known marriage to be: one woman and one man.
Most of us understand that we are a nation of laws. Though we might disagree vehemently with the Supreme Court decision, we are not rioting and burning down our cities. Instead, we are wrestling with how to deal with this dreadful decision on a personal basis: intellectually, spiritually and culturally.
Three main points stand out. First, the Supreme Court is far removed from mainstream American society. Geographically, they are isolated along the coasts, primarily the Northeast. Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy are from California. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, John Roberts, and Sonia Sotomayor are New Yorkers. Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia are Jersey boys. Only Georgia’s Clarance Thomas escaped the elite Northeast/California orbit. All of them attended either Harvard or Yale law schools. Of the nine justices, six are Catholic; three are Jewish. There is not one Protestant, Midwesterner or non-Ivy Leaguer among them. How can judges from such a sliver of society objectively judge our laws from their incredible ivory tower?
Second, the decision has let the homosexual topic out of the closet. Ministers and others are openly discussing homosexuality as never before in the wake of the decision. On moral issues, Christians answer to a far higher power than the Supreme Court. However, the moral umbrella extends far beyond Christian theology. Many non-believers also recognize the slippery moral slope down which we are sliding.