Except to those who mistake power for truth, the evident triumph of the judicial redefinition of marriage doesn’t speak to the question whether that triumph is constitutionally legitimate. For the reasons I’ve spelled out in dozens (if not hundreds) of lengthy posts, I believe that the answer to that question is clearly no. (The redefinition of marriage through the democratic processes is a very different matter.)

For those interested in the constitutional question, as well as in the consequences of getting that question wrong, I’ll highlight legal philosopher John Finnis’s essay on Public Discourse today, titled “The Profound Injustice of Judge Posner on Marriage.” Among other things, Finnis argues (much as I did in these posts) that Seventh Circuit judge Richard Posner, in his recent ruling against the marriage laws of Indiana and Wisconsin, “did not present [the states’] argument with even minimal integrity.”

Finnis also ties the judicial imposition of same-sex “marriage” to the utterly insane transgender movement that is underway (a recent example of which involves directing teachers not to refer to boys and girls as boys and girls but instead to call them “purple penguins”):

The equality that demands same-sex marriage demands just as imperiously that all social recognition of the distinction between mothers and fathers—of the paternal and the maternal, the masculine and the feminine, and of the sexual identity of everyone as male or female—must be systematically expunged from our schools and social life, to be replaced by the lies and seductions of “gender identities” on the ever more blurry rainbow spectrum. The resultant miseries and losses will reach into every family, and wound Indiana and Wisconsin to the very heart of their people.