Guest essay by Scott Lively
On October 21,2014, U.S. Federal Judge Juan Perez-Gimenez wrote a blistering rebuke to activists judges in America in his dismissal of a legal challenge to authentic marriage in Puerto Rico. In upholding marriage and rejecting LGBT arguments, he wrote:
[O]ne basic principle remains: the people, acting through their elected representatives, may legitimately regulate marriage by law. This principle is impeded, not advanced, by court decrees based on the proposition that the public cannot have the requisite repose to discuss certain issues. It is demeaning to the• democratic process to presume that the voters are not capable of deciding an issue of this sensitivity on decent and rational grounds.
Ultimately, the very survival of the political order depends on the procreative potential embodied in [natural marriage] … These are well-tested, well-proven principles on which we have relied for centuries. The question now is whether judicial ‘wisdom’ may contrive methods by which those solid principles can be circumvented or even discarded. ”
Because no right to same-gender marriage emanates from the Constitution, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico should not be compelled to recognize such unions. Instead, Puerto Rico, acting through its legislature, remains free to shape its own marriage policy. In a system of limited constitutional self-government such as ours, this is the prudent outcome. The people and their elected representatives should debate the wisdom of redefining marriage. Judges should not.
© 2014 Used by permission
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