There is a general rule against advisory opinions and pretext cases designed strategically to force the court to rule on much broader constitutional principles.

Nevertheless, when it’s ‘compelling’ (and the technical procedures of the law have been followed to the letter), a court will overlook evidence that the case is fabricated (or originating in negative antagonisms and not deriving from sincere positive motives, as with this case) sand grant the parties special solicitude.

So you occasionally see laws that are on the books that haven’t been enforced in generations because of a change in social norms that have nearly fallen into a state of desuetude. But precisely because their enforcement would offend new social norms, they make perfect cases to illustrate the fact that jurisprudence has been moving in the direction of a principle incompatible with the tolerance of that old restriction (or, vice versa, newly comfortable with a restriction that would have been seen as onerous in the past).

So sometimes somebody tries to get themselves arrested by conspicuously and confessedly in an ostentatiously public manner (i.e. this guy, though for different reasons). At other times, it really is a conspiracy between the prosecutor and defendant and judge.

And sometimes someone who doesn’t want 10 commandments monuments on public ground or crosses at government cemeteries for ‘get religion out of the public square’ / ‘separation of church and state’ reasons, if they can’t get rid of them directly, they can try to suggest broadly-offensive statues of Satan and force the issue.

The problem is that once the new principle gets announced, it’s like an invasive species and runs amok unpredictably, eventually tearing up existing laws and norms left and right. There is no ‘limiting principle’, to use the jargon. There is no existing jurisprudential structure of competing values that form a framework of reasonable balancing, and so only the present degree of social outrage prevents the most radical implications from being implemented right away. But as one slides down the slippery slope, the ‘outrageousness’ of something that is now closer to long-standing law declines and the once ‘radical’ position is likely to be ordered by a court in time.

When people argue about these radical consequences that are the logical end-game of the newly enunciated principle – as Scalia often does – they are branded as cooks. “If you permit gay marriage, then what you are really saying is that there is no constitutional ability for the state to have a moral basis for its marriage policies, and soon enough you’ll have polygamy and …” – “Oh, you’re being ridiculous and extreme and making a mockery of yourself! This case is only about …”

And now, come to think about it, this is a leftward ratchet mechanism that Jim missed. Time to write another blog post.

For some reason they’re convinced OK is the 4th Reich.

No. Justice consists in the swift and accurate application of the laws.
The struggle for holiness, on the other hand…

Where are those tenets from? (Didn’t see them in the linked articles.) I lean towards agreeing with Taylor here, those tenets sound like ACLU not Satanism.

However this means we’ll be able to leave Satan to the Left, that is enemies bloc.

Whew.

The left-hand path …

If only it were that simple.

Whew.