Who picked up the dinner check?

Matt Pearl

A couple weeks ago, the Supreme Court made its ruling that effectually lifted the ban 14 states still had on same-sex marriage.

Beyond discussion of the basics of how we ought to treat one another as members of a society, I have (wisely, I believe) kept the discussions in this column free of all things preachy —you believe what you believe, and I will do the same.

I have no intention of breaking my own rule on this morally based issue.

What I couldn’t help but observe on that Friday was a largely brainwashed American population — two groups of people who felt either elated or broken.

And why?

Because we have, as a society, decided to turn the bulk of our personal freedoms over to the state.

We watched a Supreme Court verdict being issued as if the king’s counselors were giving some sort of royal decree. And when the word came, I watched rainbow flags waving, and more traditional believers shaking their heads — and I couldn’t help but get a little irritated with all of them.

My frustration: The realization that almost 100 percent of our nation’s population acknowledged that the state gives or denies the right for us to marry. The Supreme Court said “yes” to same-sex couples in the decision.

My question to each of you: Who gave anyone the right to marry in the first place?

If you’re a believer in biblical marriage, your answer is going to be God.

If you are not, then it would be something else, but I’ve read back over the Constitution of the United States, and, frankly, I’m struggling to find the part where government has the power to decide who can be a licensed spouse to whom.

So watching some Americans celebrate and others weep at the occasion is irritating. There’s no better word.

Here’s what we really heard our government tell us with this verdict, America:

Our nation just made an edict that many applaud as a major step toward freedom. Think about that. Your government, from the moment that states began issuing marriage licenses — arguably an unconstitutional practice — held one of your stolen rights in its hand. Now, it’s giving Americans permission to do something that the government truly had no legal right to deny in the first place.

Here’s where it gets sticky. Now, by having held onto marriage as a state institution for so long and now relinquishing that control as a civil rights issue, you’ll see churches have to defend their First Amendment right to practice in the way their doctrine dictates.

If the state hadn’t unlawfully taken over the institution of marriage, none of this happens, you see. Churches or related organizations could practice as they please, and marriage rights wouldn’t exist as we now understand them.

So we will see this mountain rising before us, manufactured from a molehill — a hill that never should have shown itself. And the mole, as usual, is government, making its livelihood digging in other people’s ground.

And now the government gets to stand back and let us fight it out, sometimes embarrassingly and inappropriately in public, or with fired shots on social media.

Your government didn’t just grant anyone freedom, America.

The state just fed us food from our own cupboard, then lied and said it took us all out to dinner.