Life

Keyes: Gays don’t have a right to marry, just as we don’t have a right to pick our nose and eat boogers

Keyes: Gays don’t have a right to marry, just as we don’t have a right to pick our nose and eat boogers

As the Supreme Court debated the Prop 8 and DOMA cases, Alan Keyes, a conservative political activist and author, argued that gay rights are incompatible with both the Constitution and even the Declaration of Independence, calling marriage equality the “archetype of all crimes against humanity.”

His core argument is that the government can only recognize rights that are compatible with God’s law. Since he believes homosexuality is an affront to divine law, it cannot be approved of in the US.

Paul Fidalgo today noticed a speech Keyes delivered at a college in Michigan, where he made the case that the government can’t recognize gay rights, reproductive rights and the separation of church and state, just as we shouldn’t recognize the right of a person to pick their nose and eat their boogers.

Alan Keyes

MLive.com reports:

Just because something “feels right” doesn’t mean it is a “fundamental right” in God’s eyes.

That’s what former presidential candidate Alan Keyes said while speaking to a group of 100 people Wednesday, April 10 at Spring Arbor University as part of the university’s Thomas H. Cobb President’s Leadership Speaker Series.

Keyes passionately spoke on the topic of basic fundamental rights that were first laid out in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution of the United States, he said.

“The Republic is near death and it will die if we don’t wake up,” he said. “But wake up to what?”

He answered his own question when talking about fundamental rights, where they came from and how the country needs to recognize that rights come from God.

Abortion, same-sex marriage and separation of church and state are not fundamental rights, Keyes said. If God does not recognize them, they do not exist.

[…]

Keyes said while abortion, same-sex marriage and separation of church and state are not basic human rights there are leaders who are trying to “fabricate” rights.

“People who sit on the U.S. Supreme Court take it among themselves to argue that somehow there should be separation of church and state,” he said. “Nothing in the Constitution requires separation, nor could it because we cannot separate the country from its finding premise without destroying it.”

When arguing what a fundamental right actually is, Keyes gave an offbeat example of a young child who had a habit of “picking in their nostrils and “eating what came out.”

As the child grew up they noticed others were disgusted and did not want to be near him. As an adult the individual argued if others have the right to eat what they want, the individual should be recognized as having the same right.

“How many think that is a fundamental right?” he asked the audience. No one raised their hand.

“Nobody in their right mind would suggest it was,” Keyes said. “What makes something a fundamental right that actually trumps the Constitution of the United States? It can’t just be because you feel like it, or want to do it. It can’t just be that you feel badly about what you do because of the opinions of others, these are not arguments of rights…rights come from God.”

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