Rare News Desk
Millions were holding their breath waiting to see what the Supreme Court would decide this week. Whether the issue was voting practices, affirmative action, property rights or gay marriage, no matter what the justices ruled, vast segments of the citizenry were going to be profoundly disappointed in the outcome. Abraham Lincoln’s Gospel-inspired warning that, “A house divided against itself cannot stand” has echoed through the ages and convinced disparate groups to work together for the greater good of the union before. Today, though, it sometimes feels that the country is divided on almost everything. Americans need to find our way back to some common ground.
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The Supreme Court’s decision striking down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is representative of the chasm in contemporary society. Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy argued that DOMA was unconstitutional because it violated the guarantee of equal protection under the law, “by seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons [in same-sex marriages approved by state governments] as living in marriages less respected than others.”
The conservative opposition couldn’t have been more strident in its protest to the majority opinion. “It takes real cheek for today’s majority to assure us, as it is going out the door, that a constitutional requirement to give formal recognition to same-sex marriage is not at issue here – when what has preceded that assurance is a lecture on how superior the majority’s moral judgment in favor of same-sex marriage is to the Congress’s hateful moral judgment against it,” Justice Antonin Scalia dissented.
On this issue, as with so many in America today, there is no common ground. The two differing sides hold entirely separate concepts of right and wrong and consider the positions of their ideological competitors to be immoral. Depending on the poll one consults, the public isn’t any more unified than the black robes in the high court. Judges can’t solve such fundamental differences within a populace.
At every moment of peril in the past, Americans came together and became stronger through the test. The days after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 and the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 are the most common examples. In those instances, everyone understood that the United States was threatened and banded together to fight back. The Senate Budget Committee estimates that national debt will explode to $25.4 trillion in the next decade. This financial calamity endangers the future more than any external threat, but how to fight the enemy within isn’t a simple answer.
Partisan disagreement in Congress largely reflects the will of their constituents, so it’s hardly a surprise our elected representatives can’t see eye-to-eye across the aisle when the voters are split on so much. For change to occur, politicians need to be told by the people that it’s time to get to work and fix this mess together. Kicking all our problems to the courts won’t heal the breach.
Written by Editor-in-Chief Brett M. Decker for the Rare Editorial Board. Follow us on Twitter @Rare.
