Obeying or flouting the law as established by Obergefell v. Hodges is not, as Buchanan has it, a matter of “conscience” but of self-interest. Violate the law and you risk legal sanction. In a representative democracy, obviously, citizens are free to band together and campaign for changes to laws they consider unjust.
And there is no law “higher” than that on which the Supreme Court has ruled. Article III of the Constitution is explicit: “The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” Judicial power “extend[s] to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution,” and “the laws of the United States.”
The avowedly secular Founding Fathers would not, in any case, have recognized the term “higher law” (meaning “divinely ordained”) as Buchanan uses it. They founded a republic in which the government derives its power “from the consent of the governed,” not from some purported deity. Our gloriously secular Constitution makes no mention of God, let alone Christianity. If you’re in doubt, search for yourself.
It’s time we recognized “civil disobedience” against same-sex marriage for what it is: mean-spirited bullying, an attempt to forcibly impose vicious old superstitious notions of right and wrong on people wanting to do nothing more than enjoy the equality before the law provided for in the Constitution. No matter what Jesus said, the “kingdom” of these reactionary zealots is very much “of this world;” they aim not merely to practice their religion as protected by the First Amendment, but to coerce others into living by its bizarre dictates. And make no mistake about it: a healthy lust after mammon drives at least some leaders of the faith-deranged, as Buchanan and others imply when worrying aloud that secularists may next take aim at abolishing religious tax exemptions.
And it’s time we appreciate how wonderful our progress has been, fragile though it may be, from the law of the jungle to the rule of law, from the almost universal sleep of faith to the awakening of reason now underway. If we had contented ourselves in, say, science, with the crude piffle of Genesis, we would today know nothing more than the ignorant human primates who concocted it millennia ago, when gravity was a mystery, the composition of matter and light unknown, the Earth at the center of the universe, and the gods or God behind every thunderstorm and earthquake. We have disproved the voodoo “knowledge” religion preaches about cosmogony, and can safely ditch its “moral” certitudes, too, in favor of solutions arrived at through reason, discussion and consensus.
Meanwhile, faith-deranged tantrum-mongers will fume and foam at the mouth, at least for a time. Their best plan of action may well be an active retreat from the rest of us, otherwise now known as the Benedictine Option, which faith leaders have already begun proposing.
Which was why making him laugh could feel like an act of kindness. Whenever I told him an off-color joke or gave him a funny line for a speech, he kept repeating them and guffawing, sometimes for hours. And along with levity, I gave him loyalty. And honesty. In the face of that Old Testament temper, I offered advice he did not always relish hearing.
One of my recommendations was to conciliate rather than confront Obama, to roll with the president’s punches rather than try to outsock him. I believed that Israel needed to maintain the bipartisan support and widen the diplomatic leeway we might later need in war. And preserving the alliance remained my paramount priority. Netanyahu, though, insisted that by giving in on peace issues, Israel would undercut its credibility on the most pressing threat of all: Iran. But in addition to his strategic thinking, my approach ran counter to Netanyahu’s personality—part commando, part politico, and thoroughly predatory.
That combination, perhaps, deterred me from telling Netanyahu the most difficult truth of all. Simply: that he had much in common with Obama. Both men were left-handed, both believed in the power of oratory and that they were the smartest men in the room. Both were loners, adverse to hasty decision making and susceptible to a strong woman’s advice. And both saw themselves in transformative historical roles.
Their similarities, perhaps as much as their differences, heightened the chances for friction between the president and Netanyahu, I could have told him. But I did not. Rather, as the prime minister descended the stairs to the tarmac that early May 20 morning, I merely said, “Welcome to Washington, sir,” and extended my hand. This he gripped and pulled me toward him. With his eyes still flaring, he recalled the cable I sent him months back predicting the president’s speech. “You called it right,” he whispered.
Excerpted from the book “ALLY: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide” by Michael B. Oren. Copyright ? 2015 by Michael B. Oren. Reprinted by arrangement with Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Michael B. Oren is an American-born Israeli historian and author, and was Israel’s ambassador to the United States from 2009 to 2013. He has written two New York Times bestsellers—Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present and Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for history and the National Jewish Book Award.
If franchises are terminated, BCCI-IPL will have to consider ways to bring in two new franchises. If it is decided to let the franchises remain suspended for the next two years and allow them to make a comeback in 2018, the board will have to look at ways to run the two teams during the interim period.
Both aspects raise pertinent questions. In case of termination will the BCCI be able to attract a decent valuation when the two new franchises are brought in? They will also have to wait and watch what the Kochi Tuskers are up to considering they have won their arbitration with the board and are free to play in the IPL.
Most importantly, the board will run the risk of CSK and RR heading to court - if sacked - and that will mean further litigation for BCCI, which al ready finds itself immersed in all kings of legal hassle.
However, if the franchises stay suspended for two years and are al lowed to make a comeback, what kind of a message will the BCCI be sending to the Supreme Court about cleaning up the game?
How prudently the BCCI decides to go ahead with its decision will mark the future of the much tainted but beloved IPL.