by

JC Schildbach, LMHC

It’s more than a bit comical that Matt Walsh accuses Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges (the same-sex marriage case) of reading “like a lengthy Facebook post written by a 17-year-old” given that Walsh, utilizing the ‘you’re-not-the-boss-of-me’-style language of 6-year-olds, titled his own angry rant about the decision “Gay Marriage Still Doesn’t Exist No Matter What the Supreme Court Says.”

Walsh really should have added two or three exclamation points and at least one angry emoji to that title.

Walsh claims, repeatedly, that Kennedy and the other majority justices simply made up the right to marry for, well, adults who Walsh thinks are gross and icky. He claims that there is no legal precedent for such a decision, and that the majority opinion “barely attempts to offer anything resembling a constitutional defense or a coherent thought.”

I’m guessing Walsh didn’t actually read the legal arguments offered in the majority opinion. Barring that, one can only assume that Walsh was so consumed with rage over all those icky and gross people being allowed to marry that he was incapable of comprehending what the opinion said—or that he’s just too stupid and childish to understand the “constitutional defense” that is offered, and offered in great detail, with multiple citations of precedent cases.

After all, Walsh does not actually link to the decision, so that his readers would be able to check the validity of his arguments. Instead, he links to another article on The Blaze (which does link to the Court opinion), and to stories on CBS News, NBC News and even, yes, to MSNBC, as evidence that the court “upended the institution of marriage, dismantled the rule of law, undermined the will of the people, and canceled out the legislative process entirely.”

Let’s take a brief pause so that you can check out the Majority Opinion. It is rather lengthy, but, in case you don’t want to read the whole thing, like many Court opinions, there is a “syllabus” at the outset (the first five pages in this case) that explains the overall issues, legal precedent, and basis for the decision.

Had Walsh read even the syllabus (and been able to comprehend it) he would have realized that the court argued:

• The “institution of marriage” has had an evolving definition over time, which basically means his whole argument about what marriage “really” means is only so much, to borrow a phrase from Justice Scalia’s recent Obamacare dissent, jiggery pokery.
• The rule of law was not “dismantled” in this case, but worked exactly like it was supposed to—utilizing legal precedent, and examining the specific impacts of particular laws and legal questions, to arrive at a decision about how laws can be equally applied to all adult citizens of the United States. That’s kind of the job of the Supreme Court, Matt.
• ‘Undermining the will of the people’ is, perhaps, a bit more complicated. Yes, there are states where people voted to keep same-sex couples from marrying, just like there are states where people voted to allow same-sex marriage. But, to borrow a bit of bumper-sticker-style wisdom, that’s the great thing about rights: we don’t get to vote on who is allowed to have them and who isn’t. Everybody gets them.
• As for “cancelling out the legislative process”—laws are subject to judicial review. That’s how that whole “balance of powers” thing is supposed to work. Funny thing is that laws can be “cancelled out” if it turns out that they’re illegal.

But Walsh tries to make the argument that the same-sex marriage decision is evidence that liberals have taken over everything throughout all of America, and are doing all they can to attack Christians and make the once-great United States of America into some gross, icky thing where Matt Walsh has to put up with gross, icky people, just because liberals want to make people like Matt Walsh all mad and uncomfortable and stuff.  Walsh seems to forget that there are plenty of Supreme Court case decisions that liberals haven’t been particularly happy about, but when you have a persecution complex, you have to ignore all evidence that doesn’t allow you to play the victim (especially as you accuse others of playing the victim).

There are multiple meltdowns throughout Walsh’s piece, including this string of ‘ideas’ that sound like an affirmation for people suffering a break from reality because of the Court decision: “There is no right to gay marriage. There is no gay marriage. It’s not real. It’s not possible. It’s make-believe. It means nothing.”

It almost makes you feel sympathetic enough that you wish one of Matt’s super-heterosexual friends would grab him by the shoulders, slap him, and tell him to get a grip.

Walsh continues on with a segment that he subtitles “What is a Right?” He makes the claim that, to liberals, “a right is some sort of cosmic force that guarantees him access to whatever he happens to want,” going on to enlighten everyone that “Constitutional rights” and “human rights” are, instead, those rights bestowed on us by our “Creator.” So, rights are not a “cosmic force,” but rather granted by our “Creator.” Good thing Walsh cleared that up. It all makes sense now.

But just a few follow up questions–does the Creator grant us rights based on what we want, or what we need, or is there some other criteria?  And does the creator only grant those rights to heterosexuals?  Or, maybe the heterosexuals get some of those rights to themselves, but not all of the rights only to themselves?

Also included is a segment subtitled “What is Homosexuality” in which Walsh argues that anything other than good, old, heterosexual, marriage-based boning is just a bunch of twisted urges that people can walk away from.  Or, in other words, if you think you might be something other than completely heterosexual, you are confused and looking to justify your desire to engage in sinful behavior.

Okay, Matt, we all get that you’re confused by the idea that there are people who think sex might involve more than just attempts to make babies, and that gender identity might involve more than the binary boys vs. girls. But your confusion doesn’t mean that you are an expert on human sexuality. In fact, your confusion pretty much means that you’re the opposite of an expert on human sexuality—some might even say that it means you’re completely ignorant and should probably not say anything else on this topic–at all–ever.

In Walsh’s view, there are greater goods to be achieved by marriage, such as stability in society.  But, he asserts that somehow that stability is undermined unless marriage exists only so that families can be created–and created by fertile, heterosexual couples. Walsh does not feel the need to fully explain himself here, as we all know that families are only and always created by heterosexuals marrying and having children—no exceptions. We also know that having children is the only reason people get married, and that anyone who is not heterosexual does not have/belong in a family.

Walsh says that even though the Supreme Court changed the definition of marriage in this case, there are still limits on marriage that the court is willing to enforce, and wonders why that is. Of course, most of the examples of marriage limitations that Walsh cites are pointless—a human and anything non-human, three or more humans, multiple humans along with other non-humans, an adult and a child, etc. These arguments are meaningless, because the Court is not asserting that marriage involves anything other than two adults willingly entering into a legal relationship, which is the question the Court was charged with answering.

Those situations Walsh hightlights where there is potential for further clarification of legal definition—including the example of a brother and sister wanting to get married, or multiple people wanting to get married in a polygamous union—are not involved in the current decision. Arguably, it is possible that cases involving such relationships could come up in the future. But they are not at question now, and the same-sex marriage decision does nothing to allow such unions. For now, the decision allows each adult to enter into a (non-incestuous) consensual marital relationship with one other adult—which means it is giving all adults the same, basic right, instead of granting it only to the people Walsh thinks are not gross and icky.

Ignoring the entire history of marriage, which has involved a range of issues much more than simple love and procreation between two God-fearing Christians, Walsh makes the absurd claim that marriage is only and always a union condoned by God and God alone, having nothing to do with the state. He, for example, ignores the fact that marriage predates even the Jewish religion, not to mention the Christian religion, and that much of it involved such events as arranged marriages that were tied to issues of property and inheritance, including those property exchanges where the wives were considered part of the property. I’m guessing Walsh is okay with at least some of the changes in the definition of marriage that have occurred over time; although if that is the case, it would essentially undermine his own argument of an eternal, monolithic definition of marriage.

Walsh further asserts that allowing only heterosexual marriage does nothing to harm gay people, and that, “Before the legalization of gay marriage, the government wasn’t ‘involved’ in marriage, as so many have claimed.” This is just patently stupid. One would have to be completely ignorant of what the law says about property rights, transfer of property rights, legal say over medical decisions, legal say over custody rights of children, and numerous other legal rights, responsibilities, and benefits that come with marriage to make such an argument.

And even if Walsh was ignorant of the myriad rights and legal benefits that marriage confers, he would have understood at least some of those issues if he had bothered to actually read the Majority Opinion, or even the syllabus of the Majority Opinion, wherein several specific situations of the petitioners are made clear, involving (gay) adults and their families being deprived of rights because they were not legally allowed to be married, or because one state recognized that right, but another did not.

It’s irresponsible enough to assert that something represents an illegal power grab by one’s political opponents simply because one disagrees with that thing. It’s even worse to assert that something lacks legal standing when one has not bothered to read and understand that thing. And it’s worse, still, to assert that something lacks legal standing when one has read and understood that thing, and simply decided one would rather argue to the contrary for one’s audience, knowing full well that said audience will not bother to read and understand the original thing and are simply looking for someone to lay out an argument that supports their own anger and lack of understanding.

In this case, giving Walsh the benefit of the doubt would mean one of a few very distasteful options: that he either didn’t read the Court opinion, or that he didn’t understand it. Otherwise, he is deliberately lying to his readers.

In the end, Walsh’s argument comes down to his view of what is right, based only on his beliefs. But rather than asserting that it is his view, he asserts that what he views as right is the absolute truth, and that it is backed up by God Almighty as it has always been and always will be.

Walsh apparently doesn’t recognize that even God changes God’s mind—I mean, at least if you believe in that whole law/gospel, Old Testament/New Testament business.

Still, I will grant that Walsh is right about one thing.

There is no such thing as gay marriage.

It’s just marriage now.