RUSH: Samuel Alito, a justice, United States Supreme Court, during oral arguments, had a question yesterday. He said, “Why not let four lawyers marry one another?” This did not sit well with the same-sex marriage crowd. “If we’re gonna change the definition,” he said, “why not let four lawyers marry one another?” It’s fascinating. It’s almost identical to a question I had. Now, I’m not accusing him of anything. I’m thinking like minds think alike.

Once you change the definition of marriage, where does it stop? It doesn’t just stop with people of the same sex getting married. People in UK want to marry their dogs and everybody’s saying, “Well, it’s okay. We’ve changed the definition,” and the same-sex marriage crowd says, “No, no, no, no, no. You can’t!” Why not? You’re the ones that wanted the definition changed. Where does it end?

National Review Online has an editorial about this, and they make a really good point about this, the old view of major contrasted with the new view of marriage. “An older view of marriage has steadily been losing ground to a newer one, and that process began long before the debate over same-sex couples. On the older understanding, society and, to a lesser extent, the government needed to shape sexual behavior — specifically, the type of sexual behavior that often gives rise to children — to promote the well-being of those children.”

That was, for the longest time — millennia — an understanding in the old view of marriage that couples and government to a certain extent, needed to shape sexual behavior to promote the well-being of children. In other words, marriage in the older view was always about the long term. Marriage was about children and raising them properly. It also had a role in defining sexuality and sexual behavior.

That old view is now called bigotry by the people who hold a new and different view of marriage. “On the newer understanding, marriage is primarily an emotional union of adults with an incidental connection to procreation and children.” The old version, the old view of marriage held that it was a long-term institution for the express purpose of creating families, holding them together, raising children, promoting the culture, keeping it solid and together.

The new version of marriage is, it’s just something of the moment to satisfy the of-the-moment desires and emotional connection of two people in the moment, that it has nothing to do with procreation or children. And obviously, I mean there certain element of that can’t be denied. National Review Online says, “We think the older view is not only unbigoted, but rationally superior to the newer one. Supporters of the older view [of marriage] have often said that it offers a sure ground for resisting polygamy while the newer one does not” offer that resistance.

“But perhaps the more telling point is that the newer view [of marriage] does not offer any strong rationale for having a social institution of marriage in the first place, let alone a government-backed one.” The newer view of marriage is it’s just something that people in the moment want to do because it’s convenient or related to benefits or what have you, but that there is no institutional long-term value associated with it.

The National Review editors say that the court should look at it in that light and then understand that it really isn’t a matter for the court because the court is about the Constitution, and the Constitution doesn’t say a word about this. The Constitution neither commands states to adopt one of these two understandings of marriage nor forbids them to.

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RUSH: You know what? I think we ought to make it legal to marry the government. In fact, you could make the case that untold numbers of women already have. And can you imagine the divorce settlement? (chuckling) You marry the government and you file for irreconcilable differences, and you want half! (laughing) Here’s Anthony Kennedy. Oral arguments on the constitutionality of gay marriage. Here’s what he had to say about marriage defined as between one man and one woman.

KENNEDY: This definition has been with us for millennia, and it’s very difficult for the court to say, “Oh, well. We know better.”

RUSH: That little sound bite has the left fixated. They are panicked. They are worried. Justice Kennedy, of course, to them is the only member of the court who counts. He’s the swing vote. He’s seemingly the justice that never has his mind made up beforehand. The other four libs, the other four conservatives supposedly locked in. So Justice Kennedy when he comes out and says (summarized), “Well, you know, marriage has had a definition for millennia.”

That’s thousands of years, for those of you in Rio Linda. “And for us at the court to come along and say that we know better, I don’t get that.” To which the same-sex marriage crowd says, “That’s not what you’re being asked to decide. You’re being asked to agree that this millennia-old definition is bigoted and biased and discriminatory.” To which Justice Kennedy could say, “So you want me to find that what has existed in nature for thousands of years is wrong?”

To which the same-sex marriage crowd would say, “Absolutely.”

Here is Anthony Kennedy again. He decide he needed to give the left something because he knew that the previous bite we just played would scare them.

KENNEDY: You had some premise that only, uh, opposite-sex couples, uh, can have a bonding with the child. That was a very interesting… That’s just a wrong premise.

RUSH: Just a where a wrong premise. “It’s not true that only opposite-sex couples can have a bonding with a kid. That’s just a wrong premise.” That’s the heterosexual marriage lawyer swallowing. So Justice Kennedy did what he does. He throws out morsels and tidbits to tease both sides in the case and leave them hanging. Here is the chief, John Roberts, during oral arguments.

ROBERTS: If Sue loves Joe and Tom loves Joe, Sue could marry him and Tom can’t. Why isn’t that a straightforward question of sexual discrimination?

RUSH: When was that? I need you to do that again. “If Sue loves Joe and Tom loves Joe…” So you’ve got two…? Oh, I get it. “If Sue loves Joe and Tom loves Joe, Sue could marry him and Tom can’t. Why isn’t that a straightforward question of sexual discrimination?” See, that’s… (laughing) That totally ignores Justice Kennedy’s question about nature and millennia and definitions and so forth. But I have to think even these people (chuckling), they will say things to keep the wolves at bay. The bottom line is, we have no idea what’s gonna happen on this, except we probably do.

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RUSH: Yeah, just one more thing here before we get back to the phones — oh, two things actually. I just want to tell you what’s upcoming: Mrs. Clinton and sound bites of her speech this morning on Baltimore and what we need to do. What she essentially did is to say that we need to dismantle the policies, policing policies put in place by her husband (chuckling) back in the nineties. Now, the media is not characterizing it that way of course. I, El Rushbo, am. But you will hear that, as we get to that.

One other thing about gay marriage. I doubt that anybody will remember, but we predicted this. National Review as well: “Obama’s Lawyer: Religious Institutions May Lose Tax-Exempt Status If Court Rules for Gay Marriage.” That’s what the Regime’s lawyer argued yesterday. “Religious institutions could be at risk of losing their tax-exempt status due to their beliefs about marriage if the Supreme Court holds that gay couples have a constitutional right to wed…”

Now, of course there is no such constitutional right, but that’s never stopped the court finding one. “Obama’ attorney acknowledged to the Supreme Court,” yesterday, and I’m sure he thought it’d be a selling point. I’m sure Obama’s lawyer is out there trying to sell the whole concept of gay marriage because he thinks it would be good for churches to lose their tax-exempt status. Now, that would not go over well with black community churches.

But they would be subjected to same thing. Of course, it would be up to the IRS and the Democrat Party to look the other way, they way they do with Al Sharpton. “‘It’s certainly going to be an issue,’ Solicitor General Donald Verrilli replied when Justice Samuel Alito asked if schools that support the traditional definition of marriage would have to be treated like schools that once opposed interracial marriage. ‘I don’t deny that.’ Alito was continuing a line of questioning started by Chief Justice John Roberts.

“‘Would a religious school that has married housing be required to afford such housing to same ­- sex couples?’ Roberts had asked. Verrilli tried to defer to the states on that point, but Roberts pressed him about the significance of the court’s ruling as it might pertain to federal law. ‘There is no federal law now generally banning discrimination based on sexual orientation, and that’s where those issues are going to have to be worked out,’ he said.” Why talk about housing discrimination?

Churches are gonna lose their tax-exempt status if they refuse to perform same-sex weddings. If the court finds a constitutional right for same-sex marriage, then every church that refuses to perform such weddings is gonna lose their tax-exempt status, and that’s going to eliminate many of them. They will not be able to stay, quote/unquote, “in business,” open, without their tax-exempt status. Of course. this is the ultimate goal, folks! This is the ultimate goal of this.

Yes, it’s about gay marriage, but it’s about so much more.

It’s about chipping away at the time-honored customs and traditions and institutions that have been in place for millennia, not just since the founding of the country. This is one of these unspoken things that they are so hoping for. They would love to be able to, via the power of a Supreme Court ruling, shut down half the churches in America. I shudder to think of the party the left would throw that night, and that did come up yesterday during the oral arguments.

Okay. Back to the phones, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Hi, Patrick. I’m glad you waited. It’s your turn. You’re up next.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. This is what I’d like to see the Supreme Court do, and I’d like to get your thoughts on it. I would like them to maybe just throw out the definition of marriage, say the government is no longer gonna recognize marriage. We’re only gonna recognize civil unions between consenting adults of legal age and right mind, and marriage will now be a function of religion, and anything legally that’s defined as a marriage for inheritance reasons — and, you know, I’m not a lawyer, but — will now be defined as a civil union.

That way we prevent the gay agenda from forcing their homosexuality on our religion and our family, and at the same time will prevent people with religious views from pushing their religious views on us. It’ll be up to the individual and their religion and their significant other to decide what’s a proper marriage. You do that with your religion, but then government just recognizes civil unions and civil unions only. They will not recognize marriage or what have you.

RUSH: The chances of that are slim and none — and as the saying goes, slim just left town. That’s not even before the court, the definition of civil unions. What you’re describing is something that should be put before the people for a vote in the democratic process. The courts can’t take this case… This is simply a discrimination case, same-sex discrimination and whether or not the Constitution prohibits same-sex marriage.

They can’t… I mean, they could. The court has been writing law ever since they’ve been the court. But the likelihood that they’re gonna get there and say, “You know what we’re gonna do? We’re gonna totally throw out the definition of marriage that exists and we’re gonna call everything that doesn’t happen in a church civil union.” You can’t really expect that’s gonna happen here.

CALLER: No, I don’t think it’s going to happen. I think you’re right. It’s a very slim chance it would happen. And, like you said, it’s not fully what’s before the court. But I guess I’d like to get your thoughts personally. I mean, do you think that would be a good solution to this problem and then that way the gay agenda can have their gay marriage and not force it on the rest of us, and we can have our Christianity marriage and —

RUSH: Well, I don’t —

CALLER: Go ahead.

RUSH: That’s not gonna satisfy them. When you’re talking about, as you describe it, “the homosexual movement” and gay marriage, there’s all kinds of people involved in this. You have apolitical gay people who do want to get married, and you don’t know who they are. They’re not on the front lines of anything. They just want to get married, but they’ll follow the law. If the law says they can’t, they can’t.

They won’t, and they’ll just live with it, just like there are people all over society who want things but the law says they can’t do it, so they don’t. Then you have other elements which are political activists. The political activists are driving this, and as such, it isn’t about what you think it’s about. It’s not really about gay marriage. It’s about the impact of that on society and on culture. So therefore, if you tell the gay activists (I mean, the politically leftist donor class, the activists in this movement that), “Hey, okay.

“If you want to get married, we’ll find a way. Get married. You can do everything that marriage has, but we’re not gonna call it that because marriage is gonna be a religious institution in the church. We’re gonna call what you want to do a civil union, but it’s gonna contain every element that you want,” they’ll reject it. Because the activists, like activists in any issue, want upheaval. There’s no desire to come up with a compromise peaceful coexistence solution here where everybody’s happy ever after.

That’s not the objective here for the activists in this, and they’re the ones that are moving it. They are the ones that are behind it, providing money for it. They are the ones agitating in the culture for it. And what percentage they are of the gay population, I wouldn’t know. I’d just have to take a wild guess. I wouldn’t even think it’s a majority. But it doesn’t matter. As long as they’ve co-opted the attention of the media, and the media has become their champion, it doesn’t matter how few they are.

All that matters is the media believes in their cause, wants their cause, and is gonna do everything they can to make it happen. And believe me, the cause is to redefine what marriage is. Everything else is a distraction to make you look the other way. An example is what the Regime’s lawyer said during oral arguments yesterday, pointing out that if the court finds that there has been discrimination against gays — and that’s been against the law — and going forward gay marriage is now constitutional?

Well, that means that churches are going to have to provide gay marriage ceremonies. They’re gonna have to perform them if they want to keep their tax-exempt status. It becomes federal law, and therefore they have to do it to keep their tax-exempt status. That’s what this is. That’s one of the side issues that nobody talks about but this is really all about. ‘Cause the hope is among the activist community is that the churches will refuse to perform them, that they will not violate their religious tenets.

And so government will eliminate their tax-exempt status, which means they’ll have to close. As far as the activists are concerned, this is a War on Christianity, just as it was obvious that’s what this was in Indiana and has been all over the country. It’s a war on organized religion because organized religion stands in the way. So it has to be chipped away. It has to be discredited, and, if possible, even destroyed. That’s from the activist standpoint. That’s the objective here. So you can’t come up with an alternative to their stated purpose and their cause that will make ’em happy because that’s not what is really at issue here.

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RUSH: Okay. So let’s play a little game here, folks. The people on Twitter… I don’t actually go there. I have spies that report to me on this. There are certain things I just will not lower myself to do. I’m being told here that after Justice Kennedy said, “This definition’s been with us for millennia. It’s very difficult for the court to say, ‘Oh, yeah, well, we know better,'” people on Twitter are posting things like:

“Dear Justice Kennedy. Practices behavior around for millennia doesn’t make them right. To wit, slavery, murder, abuse.”

See how this works? Slavery, murder, abuse equated with marriage. Marriage is no different than anything else that’s been going on for thousands of years. Murder, discrimination, slavery, abuse. Those weren’t right. Marriage, just because it’s been around thousands of years… What kind of moral equivalence must you descend to in order to include marriage in a list of examples of behavior for the millennia that includes slavery, murder, and abuse?

The feminazis are the closest I could think that might do that, and they have made their case that marriage is constricting for women that way. You know it as well as I do. Now, let’s go back to Justice Roberts, who posed this question — and, of course, the same-sex marriage gay activists are just all excited about this. This is what he said. (replaying of sound bite) Okay, fine. Well, how about this. If Bob loves Tom’s sister, and if Tom loves his sister, isn’t it just discrimination that Tom can’t marry his sister?

I mean, why can Bob marry Tom’s sister but Tom can’t marry his sister? I mean, it’s been that way for thousands of years, that two people in the same family can’t marry each other, but that doesn’t make it right. So if Bob loves Tom’s sister and Tom loves his own sister, and Bob can marry Tom’s sister but Tom can’t marry his own sister, then isn’t that discrimination? If Mary loves her daughter and John loves his daughter, isn’t it just sex discrimination that the woman always gets the child in a divorce?

Isn’t it?

Why is it all…? Where is it written that the child always goes with the mother except in the most hardened of cases? Is that not sex discrimination? Mary loves her daughter, John loves the same daughter, but Mary gets the kid in a divorce? You know, I think it’s incredible to take these arguments that people make and turn ’em around just a little bit to illustrate the sophistry that’s contained in them. But all of this misses the point about what’s before the court. What’s before the court is the constitutionality of this.

And, folks, the Constitution doesn’t say anything about it.

Justice Kennedy’s first comment is probably closer to poignant than anything else. (paraphrased) “What, we are gonna sit here — the nine of us on this court — and say that a definition that’s been around for millennia is wrong and that we know better?” Justice Kennedy may not know it, but with that little seven-second statement, he just has more poignantly, saliently put the scope of this court in proper perspective than anything I’ve heard recently.

This is exactly right.