FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
December 21, 1999
BUCHANAN DECRIES
'JUDICIAL DICTATORSHIP'
Denounces Vermont Gay Rights,
Cleveland Vouchers Decisions
Today, Pat Buchanan released the following
statement:
"Yesterday, the American people were given a
brute demonstration of how their constitutional
right to govern themselves has been usurped by an
imperial judiciary. They may also see today just
how far that imperial judiciary has gone in
repudiating the moral order, as Western
civilization has always understood it.
"The Vermont Supreme Court gave advocates of
homosexual marriage what they have repeatedly
failed to win before the bar of public opinion. The
court unilaterally ceded to homosexual liaisons all
the legal benefits of married couples, and declared
outdated and obsolete the Judeo-Christian idea
that traditional marriage deserves special
consideration. The Vermont judges have thus, in
an afternoon, overturned thousands of years of
tradition and law that defined marriage as a sacred
bond between a man and a woman. This is
judicial dictatorship.
"On the very same day, a federal district judge in
Cleveland ruled that a voucher program passed
by the Ohio legislature was unconstitutional,
because parents used the vouchers to send their
children to religious schools. There in a nutshell is
the mindset of the judges who now rule over us:
'Gay marriage good; religious schools bad.'
Without the consent of the American people, a
social revolution is being imposed upon them from
above by unelected judges appointed for life and
answerable to no one.
"We, the people, are, with little protest, ceding
control over the most basic aspects of our public
life to such judges. The pseudo-conjugal
arrangements endorsed by the Vermont Supreme
Court would likely never have won the support of
Vermont's people or even of its generally liberal
legislature. But the voucher program struck down
in Cleveland was supported by the people of
Cleveland and their representatives. When
Americans are no longer able to decide, through
their elected officials, the most fundamental
questions of their public lives, they are no longer
living in a democratic republic.
"I condemn these two illegitimate judicial
decisions, as I condemn Roe v. Wade and other
decisions where federal and state courts have
ruled in unconstitutional and immoral ways. It is
time the American people took back from these
arrogant judges the right to make the decisions
that govern their daily lives."
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