There’s “precedent” and then there’s precedent. It seems for Maine’s Senator Susan Collins – who is the very definition of a RINO -- precedent is everything, except when it isn’t. According to Townhall:

Maine's moderate Republican Senator Susan Collins told CNN's Jake Tapper today that she would not be supporting a Supreme Court nominee who has “demonstrated hostility to Roe v. Wade” because, in her mind, that would be a justice who does not respect established precedent.

Collins added,

I want a judge who will apply the law to the facts of the case with fidelity to the Constitution. Roe v. Wade is a constitutional right that is well established, and no less an authority than Chief Justice Roberts said that repeatedly at his confirmation hearing.

Because, you know, when you are killing the most helpless and innocent among us, you’re supposed to think “fidelity to the Constitution.” A longtime U.S. senator -- especially one who is so often called upon concerning the same moral issues, should not be so careless with her words. Roe v. Wade is not a right in and of itself but rather is a court case that found a “right” that, prior to 1973, had escaped every previous jurist in the history of the U.S. judicial system.  

In getting their perverse agenda into law, if only today’s liberals would limit themselves to things that are actually “constitutional.” Even the pro-slavery Americans of the 18^th century were willing to get their way via the Constitution. And legal slavery was forever ended in the United States constitutionally, via an amendment, not by the mere ruling of a judge or a majority of judges.

But winning elections and actually achieving law the way our founders intended has proven far too difficult for liberals and the party they own. Thus, the courts have long been a favorite tool of the modern left. Don’t get me wrong, though. As November, 2016 well demonstrates, liberals love to win elections -- and hate to lose them! Because so many of them have made a god of government, liberals very much enjoy obtaining all the political power possible, whether legislative, executive, or judicial, and they are loathe to see it in the hands of those opposed to their perverse agenda.

As most today well know, much of what modern liberals hold dear was achieved because of the efforts of rogue judges who happened to find in the U.S. Constitution what had so long escaped so many others (because it was never really there). Liberals look at the Constitution like an NBA referee: based on who’s playing the game, the rules are changed. Of course, liberals wouldn’t describe it as such; they simply justify this foolish mental and moral gymnastics by claiming a “living Constitution.”

As the late, great Justice Antonin Scalia -- who repeatedly stood against such nonsense -- said, “the Constitution is not an organism, it is a legal document… (it) is an enduring document but not a ‘living’ one, and its meaning must be protected and not repeatedly altered to suit the whims of society.”

And once liberals magically find a “right” in the Constitution -- and thus, “make law” -- we’re supposed to revere said law because of “precedent.” How absurd. If “precedent” really mattered to anyone with a sound legal and moral mind, Obergefell v. Hodges would’ve been laughed out of the courtroom in 30 seconds.

The vast majority of states that actually took the trouble to deal with marriage legislatively --including even Collins’ home state of Maine -- overwhelmingly voted to establish the biblical definition of marriage as law. In other words, when actually put to a vote, 31 states in the U.S. -- including very liberal states such as Maine and California -- soundly rejected same-sex “marriage.” How’s that for “precedent?” By one single vote in the U.S. Supreme Court (Good Riddance, Justice Kennedy!), liberals wiped this away.  

One might argue that “precedent” in the legal sense is a judicial term that refers to the rulings of a higher court. As legaldictionary.net notes,

In the modern legal system, the term precedent refers to a rule, or principle of law, that has been established by a previous ruling by a court of higher authority, such as an appeals court, or a supreme court. 

Of course, there is no higher court than the one led by Him who made us. Dr. Martin Luther King alluded to this in his letter from the Birmingham jail. He noted, “[T]here are two types of laws: There are just and there are unjust laws.” And we agree with Dr. King, who agreed with Saint Augustine that, “An unjust law is no law at all.”

Dr. King also reminds us of the difference:

A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.

For human beings, there is no law more eternal than that which defines marriage. Marriage is the oldest institution in the history of humanity -- older than God’s covenant with the nation of Israel, older than The Law, older than the church. Marriage is one of the earliest truths revealed by God. As the first three chapters of Genesis reveal, before we were even aware of the preciousness of life -- because there was no death -- humans were made aware of what is a marriage.

Additionally, whenever Jesus, or any of the New Testament writers -- who often used marriage as an illustration of the relationship between Jesus and His church -- spoke of marriage, it was always as the union of one man and one woman. Whether life, marriage, and the like, there’s nothing with more precedent than the eternal truth. We would all -- especially U.S. senators and those on the highest courts in our land -- do well to remember such.

Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com