First Amendment my foot

Harvey Seidel has made the enforcement of laws through our legal system a First Amendment issue. His point is that the individuals moral sensibility should absolve him/her from the responsibility of carrying out the intent of the law, but what he really wants to say is that same-sex marriage is morally wrong and should not be allowed on that basis.

What he wants to argue is the individual’s right to resist doing his/her duty on the basis ones personal belief of the law’s immorality, but such an argument is like trying to hit a baseball with a flyswatter. The belief that individual conscience should dictate how laws should be administered is what political scientists call anarchy. Every law would be open to its appropriateness and enforcement. One does not have to look far into our history to find examples of what happens when the law is used by those whose moral senses are that this minority class or that one shouldn’t have the same rights as some other class.

The founding operational manual for the new American nation was the Articles of Confederation. If you want to see why a new cut at government was necessary, take a look at the Articles, and you’ll agree that they had no chance to succeed in this new nation. So, a new mission statement for government was compiled by several of the members of the Constitutional Convention led by James Madison. It’s called the Preamble, and it points the way to the purpose for this new government and its citizens. It’s what I asked my American History students to memorize during their year with me.It’s America’s mission statement.

Article III of the Constitution describes the powers of the Judicial System and the qualifications and rights of its judges. There’s not a single word in that article concerning moral sensibilities or individual conscience. The reason for that is clearly for the consistency and continuity of the law throughout the entire country. The law is the thing, not the judges nor the people who enforce it, and the ultimate interpreter of the law is the Supreme Court just as the ultimate interpreter here is the Wyoming Supreme Court.

Don’t like their decisions? Then work to enact laws, or nullify laws and decisions which you find onerous, but the sky isn’t falling and we’re not losing our First Amendment rights because a small town in Wyoming has a public official who let her personal bias interfere with the potential fulfillment of her elected responsibilities.