That said, Obergefell, along with the decisions regarding ObamaCare subsidies and housing discrimination lawsuits handed down the same day, is the flowering of a different (though culturally related) trend, this one among lawyers and legal academics in particular. And, where one can argue that Americans have brought the first, anti-marital trend upon themselves and have a duty to reverse it for themselves through evangelization and the hard work of loving persuasion, the other trend clearly tends and even intends to preclude any such recovery. Why? Because this other trend, which may be summed up as legal cynicism harnessed to ideology, has so undermined the rule of law in this country (and others) that it leaves discussion, people of faith, and the very institutions of civil society open to abuse at the hands of an unrestrained state possessed by a mob mentality.

What made Justice Kennedy´s decision in Obergefell so damaging was not its seemingly endless, vapid paeans to individual autonomy and other pseudo-intellectual claptrap. The inferior quality of Kennedy´s musings is beside the point. The problem is that his musings have no basis in our Constitution or in the moral and intellectual traditions that shaped it and our culture. Kennedy´s legal reasoning, such as it is, flagrantly violates the rule of law in order to impose the “correct” policy on the nation.

Read the article “The Legal Cynicism of the ‘Living Constitution’” on kirkcenter.org.