No Matter Who Won, We Lost

  It  has been interesting to watch the news coverage of the latest SCOTUS  fiasco.  As usual, the  elctronic media  hypnotists do their  dead-level  best to   misdirect you and  point your focus somewhere other than where it should be. I have seen almost no  television coverage of any substance regarding the horrific gutting of the 5th Amendment by our good friends in the 'conservative leaning' Supreme Court.  That is  massively more impactful to my day to day  life and liberty than DOMA, which was a poorly thought out law to begin with.  The media instead  have   tapped into the deeply emotional nature of the DOMA debacle, which  to me was the least surprising thing the  Supremes have done lately.  But even  while covering it, they have failed to  look at it in any depth.  The narrative is painted as a simple one reinforced with looped footage; happy  homosexuals on one side of the argument, and foaming at the  mouth religious people on the other.  I'd like to think I don't fit into either group, in fact I can assure you that I don't  qualify for the first group with my  wife as  the star witness.  but I would like to weigh in with my own analysis of  these events, and throw my 2 cents into the national debate.
  DOMA was a bad idea, because there exists nowhere in the Constitution the authority for the federal government to regulate or define marriage. I'm not even entirely certain where we got this notion from.  Legislation intended to shape or steer a society is  often the most dangerous stuff you  can dream up. Had I been a Congressman I would have voted against it.  An individual has a right to  conduct their own personal affairs and enter into any sort of  relationship that they desire. I may not approve of it, I  may even preach against it, but in the end, according to scripture they are sinning against their own body and is not something  Congress needs to pay any attention too.  I will go on further to say they  have the right to call that relationship whatever they want, but as we  say back home 'putting a cat in the oven don't make it a biscuit'.  You don't have the right to  redefine a word  to suit your own agenda at anyone else's expense.  At this point , the individuals involved have only harmed and involved themselves. DOMA gave Congress unconstitutional powers to regulate  something that only affects the people involved.
  So as an example, let's say I joined a  2 person club. Me and my  fellow club-member agree that when one of us dies, the other one gets  his stuff.  We both agree to this, and  even put it  in writing.  We decide to call our club "The  Coolest Club in the Universe". Silly? Absolutely.  You might even say that the club name is misleading ( really Mike? the whole universe?). You may not like it, you may not approve of it and even speak out against it but really, it's none of your business what we are doing, and what we call it.   What you lack is the legitimate authority to outlaw it.  Later on, we decide to expand the club parameters to allow a 3rd person to join.   Does it suddenly become your business legislatively?
  Here's where it gets hairy and here is exactly where I think , as bad an idea as DOMA is, the SCOTUS decision is just as  bad.  I now take my club and  go to your restaurant and say 'you must offer my  club the discounts and  privileges you offer other  clubs, or I will cry foul'.  A  rational response would be to assess what business impact this would have  on your restaurant, along with your personal feelings about our club, and make your decision from there.  You may decide to offer me what you have offered others, or you may  decide to tell me to  hit the bricks. Either way, I should  have no authority to FORCE you to  cater to our little group of weirdos because you are under no obligation to  honor a agreement that you weren't part of. Our club has no 'rights' other than the right to  associate with whom we please. We should not be able to force you to associate or acknowledge us.  We certainly shouldn't have the right to legislatively force you to modify your business practices to accommodate us against your  will.
  The long term fallout of the SCOTUS decision will be in its application, and my prediction is that  a new 'right' will spring out of whole cloth, and with it the justification for  the state to  force other people to acknowledge a union that they were never part of. I  expect discrimination  lawsuits and defamation campaigns to   be generated against those  that choose not to  acknowledge the latest 'club'.  Those that speak  out against the club will be vilified even worse than they already are, and their speech curtailed under the jackboot of the  police state. I expect the  heavy hand of government will  violate  people's right to association and to their own  property and business practices in order to force this new reality down every ones throats.  The end result will be less freedom for everyone, the  homosexuals included ,and more  government interference in people's bedrooms.
  Nobody wins.