Anselm, philosophy and US law

For one time an entry in English. I just read Helen Boyd’s entry on the Connecticut Supreme Court ruling on “gay marriage”. The CT court’s ruling makes me go back to be first year in theology, beginning of the 1980s.

We were studying then medieval proof of the existence of God. Ontological arguments. Of which right wing, conservative, christian, you name it, reasoning makes me think. Anselm reasoned that God necessarily exists because we can think of him. To put it very shortly. Wikipedia has a better version. The parallel between the (thank reason) refuted position is sloppy and tricky reasoning. Like Anselm actually created a beautiful mind trick, but still: a trick, no sound reasoning.

The religious right say: “because marriage historically has been between a man and a woman, it has to be this way”. Which the court cleverly and clearly refuted by saying this is sloppy reasoning. And they have a legal ground for it also. “A classification, however, cannot be maintained merely ‘for its own sake’ [Romer v.Evans, supra, 517 U.S. 635]”. Ha! There you got it.

Sadly we have to be grateful there are still judges that prefer sensible reasoning over sonsensical statements. That this is not usually the case. Hopefully this is a positive sign for mrre sensible reasoning in US courts, like maybe awareness is spreading that so much legislation and jurisdiction is bullshit and prejudiced, they feel they have to improve the quality of their work?

inch’allah or better: thank reason.