The Fourteenth Amendment

Most of you likely know about the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment. That is the Equal Protection amendment that insures that all Americans receive equal protection under the law. What you may not know is where it came from.

This amendment was passed in 1868 as a response to the Dred Scott ruling. Do you know that one? Dred Scott was a black slave who was owned by an army surgeon. As such, he traveled to places like Missouri, Illinois, and Wisconsin, places where slavery was outlawed. So when the surgeon died, Scott sued for his freedom. The state courts shot him down, but he took it to the Supreme Court. The court, after much disagreement, ruled that blacks were not people nor citizens and, as such, had no standing before the court. Blacks were property and giving Scott his freedom would be unlawfully depriving someone of their property.

The Fourteenth Amendment, then, was passed in direct response to the Dred Scott ruling. To be a member of the United States, regardless of race, was to be protected by the laws of the United States.

So now we have a new use for this amendment. The crowd intent on redefining marriage into oblivion are using the "Equal Protection" concept to argue that they have the same rights that everyone else does ... even though no one is arguing to the contrary. Still, it is on the basis of this amendment that many argue for the oxymoronic "gay marriage" concept.

So isn't it so very odd that the Fourteenth Amendment, aimed at striking down a brutally cruel ruling that a human being was not a human being, is also used to rule that a human being is not a human being? How? Roe v. Wade was argued under the auspices of the Fourteenth Amendment as well. Women should have equal protection. They should be allowed to choose whether or not to have babies. And how does the amendment not protect the unborn? Because they're not persons. "Person" is nebulously defined as something to do with the ever-changing concept of "viability" and the location -- "outside the womb" -- and the desirability. (A wanted baby in the womb is a baby; an unwanted baby is a fetus. You can kill a fetus; killing a baby is murder.)

The final irony is that almost everyone arguing for the Fourteenth Amendment to assure that marriage must change in order to be equitable are also arguing that the protection of children does not extend to children in the womb. Talk about cognitive dissonance. Talk about a collision of ideas. Talk about a depraved mind.