The Religious Left:
Law as the New State Religion
In reading the Goodridge decision legalizing same-sex marriages, I finally realized of what this decision and so many other politically correct decisions going all the way back to Roe v. Wade remind me - that of a preacher's sermon in a church. There is no doubt that the law is becoming, if it has not become already, the new state religion. In the same way that the previous dominant Western religions destroyed Roman Law, now, the descendent of Roman Law through permutation by Christian ideals is getting its revenge by destroying religion.
Starting in childhood and going into my early adult years, I studied different religions and the dogma and institutions they fostered, listened to their sermons, and read their beliefs. There is one element clear in all religions, that is, the essential meaninglessness of words. Any word pretty much can mean whatever the preacher, prophet, or whatever wants it to mean to a receptive audience. This includes also the very basic, simple words such as "brother", "sister", "father" or whatever. Words are used to achieve a certain goal without any attempt nor need to learn the history, initial meaning, or intentions of the use of the words and without any attempt to study or understand the ideas and background that led to the creation of the words; they are essentially used for whatever purpose the religious leader using them has in mind. The same words can be used alternatively to support peace or war, social order or disorder, logic or illogic, or whatever. Much of this was due to the fact that the basic purpose of religion is in fact an irrational goal - giving meaning to an irrational world - and to the fact that the front-line preachers of any religion are usually not educated enough nor competent enough to deal with the study of the history, logic, ethics, and rationale behind a given word's use.
Supposedly, the law is to be different. The "common law" or even the "civil law" tradition is supposed to be based on some type of logical or rational relationship to the past or at least the awareness of such a restriction and then an honest attempt to adhere to it.
If that were ever true, it is clearly not true any longer. As religion for many reasons is losing its meaning to individuals and failing in providing a structured social goal, to many the law is now providing their meaning in life: it is giving them hope, it is giving them remedies for perceived injustices, and it is providing a means for an acceptable social order in which every one has certain "rights." In the same way that the initial development of Western religion was seen as an alternative to the despairing power of the Roman government and empire, it is now that a direct descendant of Roman Law, Western Common Law, is being seen as a alternative and remedy for the apparent despairing and failing power of Western religion to provide hope and social order to the modern world.
Part of the process of doing this is to take words such as "due process", "equal protection", and "right" and through the use of preachers known as judges to turn them into meaningful tools for the politically powerful to create a society in their own image. As with the sermons, this is usually done by individuals who have no training, competence, or caring about the cultural, social, or historical development and the intent of these words. The four judges who joined in legalizing same sex marriages in the Goodridge case - Marshall, Cowin, Greaney, and Ireland - are probably the least competent judges at the appellate level and probably make the top ten list of incompetent judges for the whole court system. All of them were incompetent attorneys whose only success was to become well enough politically connected hacks to be appointed to the ultimate hack job, that of being a judge. None of them has had an original thought in their entire politically correct careers and yet have reached the point of taking their own personal ethics, without ever devoting a minute of their life to a study of the concept of ethics, and making it dogma for an entire society. They have done this in the same way that the hierarchy of churches or religions issued proclamations based on "infallible" revelations.
Actually they have done it in a more dishonest and incompetent way. Organized Churches actually make dogmatic changes only after centuries of study and argument by learned people that is available and open to the public - many times the thoughts behind these changes are truly difficult, subtle, and thoughtful. Case law is make by hacks with no qualifications other than they pleased some politician somewhere enough to get a hack job with the real reason behind the decision hidden in their chambers or by their worshipping law clerks to avoid the disrespect for the decision that would come with honesty.
What is someone like me who works in the trenches of the legal system to do? (- a system that supposedly protects free speech but which I must criticize anonymously in order to protect my clients from being forever barred from ever again winning a case?) Should I keep the faith and pretend that there really is such a thing as "law" distinct from religion. That is what so many dissenters to these politically correct cases seem to do - stating I "respectfully dissent" to the decision no matter how dishonest it is. What a bunch of cowards. No more. I am no longer keeping up the faith or the facade. The law is what a judge on any particular day in any particular mood says the law is. From now on, I am passing this empirical truth on to my clients and the system is on its own in trying to survive, it will get no help from me.