Sen. Rand Paul broke his silence over the last week’s Supreme Court same-sex marriage decision, saying that the federal government’s involvement is making marriage worse.
In an op-ed for Time, Paul said he disagrees with the “redefinition of marriage” that the Supreme Court issued last week, which said the 14th Amendment requires all states to allow same-sex marriage. Paul said all Americans have a right to enter into contracts, but he said “that does not mean that the government must confer a special imprimatur upon a new definition of marriage.”
“I acknowledge the right to contract in all economic and personal spheres, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a danger that a government that involves itself in every nook and cranny of our lives won’t now enforce definitions that conflict with sincerely felt religious convictions of others,” he wrote.
“Since government has been involved in marriage, they have done what they always do — taxed it, regulated it, and now redefined it,” he wrote. “It is hard to argue that government’s involvement in marriage has made it better, a fact also not surprising to those who believe government does little right.”
Paul said some are already warning that the ruling could lead to new police powers over churches, church schools and church hospitals. “This may well become the next step, and I for one will stand ready to resist any intrusion of government into the religious sphere,” he said.
Paul quoted Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissenting opinion, in which he argues that “liberty has long been understood as individual freedom from governmental action, not as a right to a particular governmental entitlement.”
