The Mayor of the City of St. Louis, the Honorable Francis Slay, has openly, willfully violated the state constitutional ban on gay marriage

Mayor Slay, perhaps taking his cue from President Barack Obama, who enforces only laws he likes, married several homosexual partners in a ceremony at taxpayer-funded city hall, then watched as the happy couples fired up cigars in violation of the city smoking ban. Slay has done this ostensibly to set the stage for a legal challenge to the law, which was approved with 71% of the vote in 2004. So, a typical Democrat simply ignores both the will of the People and the state constitution to get what he wants.

Article 1, Section 33 of the Missouri Constitution Bill of Rights states:

Marriage, validity and recognition.

Section 33. That to be valid and recognized in this state, a marriage shall exist only between a man and a woman.

And indeed it is so and has always been thus. Marriage is a word that means something specific, and to speak of "gay marriage" is to string words together that have no meaning. It's rather like referring to "our corporate family", something that also is done on occasion and which no rational person accepts as being in any way a familial relationship. In both instances a certain relationship can be established that bears a surface resemblance to family or marriage, but the reality is that neither are any such thing. Marriage is between a man and a woman, and its primary purpose is to procreate, and raise children who will become upstanding citizens. Oh, there are plenty of relationships that bear a similarity to marriage, and the passion involved may be equal but we do not define them as marriage. We do not allow marriage between brother or sister, and calling a committed sexual relationship between siblings marriage is unacceptable. We do not allow people to marry corpses (although a certain Muslim cleric says it's lawful for a man to copulate with his dead wife for a period of time after she expires). One may not marry non-human life forms; a boy may not marry his dog. One cannot marry an inanimate object. You cannot marry more than one person at a time, and you have to be legally divorced to remarry. And two men or two women cannot marry. Oh, they can create a relationship that bears a resemblance to marriage, one they may think of as marriage, one that is committed and meets the emotional needs of the partners, but it is not marriage. And we should stop calling it that.

Homosexuals took to calling their lifestyles "gay", co-opting a word that meant something quite different. We allowed this deconstruction of our language, and "gay" took a lot of the stigma away from what was once called sodomy. Then they began speaking about gay marriage, and now the term is "marriage equality". Who can be against marriage or equality? The reality is that this is neither. Homosexuals always had the right to marry, just not to someone of the same sex.

Indeed, as a man thinketh so shall he be, and we have allowed the Left to subvert our language to the point where it is nearly impossible for us to win in the court of public opinion, because we are speaking a very different language from that spoken by the Left. The institutions that define the meaning of words and phrases to the general public are controlled by our friendly neighborhood Progressives. When we speak of rights we mean something that is inherent to our personhood, something given by God that requires no active support from anyone else. When liberals speak of rights they mean something quite different, they mean a societal obligation. Gay marriage is such a right, because it obligates society to recognize a condition that is at odds with traditional norms - and to actively promote it. But most people believe the liberal definition of rights, not our definition. Rights come from government, and when we speak of Natural Law and the inalienability of rights we lose our audience because they have never had this explained to them. Rights to at least a plurality of Americans are government granted perks.

Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, as the Good Book says. The key to a healthy society is honesty. We have allowed liberals to erode our language and with it our minds. Or as has been attributed to Confucius:

"If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything."

And so now we have the mayor of a major city spitting on the Rule of Law and calling it good. Now law -- our most important mechanism for maintaining peace in our society -- has become a mere inconvenience, and for a brave hero like Francis Slay to openly defy it is considered praiseworthy. That in an earlier period Slay would have been arrested by state authorities seems lost on our dear Progressive friends. But Francis Slay is a criminal and that is precisely what should be done with him.

But it's courage when done in a liberal cause but lawlessness when done against them. President Obama sought to arrest honor flight vets who violated his closure of the WWII memorial (a purely political act on the president's part) but allows Lois Lerner to run amok attacking political enemies of the administration. This is not really hypocrisy in the minds of the Left, because laws are purely arbitrary things, created at the pleasure of the ruling class and enforced solely to benefit our betters. Obama breaks the law as he sees fit, as does the Missouri governor Jay Millhouse Nixon, who is in danger of being impeached for using executive orders to override the rule of law. In the minds of good liberals like BHO, Nixon, and Slay there is nothing wrong with ruling rather than governing. They are the natural superior class and have every right to do so.

There is a word for that -- it is tyranny.

Timothy Birdnow is a St. Louis based writer. His blog is The Aviary www.tbirdnow.mee.nu