Thank you so much for inviting me to join you here today. I’ve been asked to provide you with an update regarding some of the more pressing issues that will be facing the Kansas Legislature during the upcoming session. While I do intend to cover my assigned topic I’d ask you to indulge me in getting there by starting with an observation.

It strikes me that one of the Christian principles most in need of restoration today is that of humility. But the problem is not so much that we have forgotten the concept of humility as that we have inverted it. Biblical humility is largely about recognizing our status as creatures, over against God’s status as creator and source of all truth. We were therefore meant then to be humble about ourselves, but bold in our adherence to truth. Today we often see this divine pattern exactly reversed, we are encouraged to be bold in self assertion, but humble and doubting as to the objective reality of truth established by God for all eternity. Now this strange reversal is much more dangerous than one might first think.

The perniciousness of this idea is that it sets before us the prospect of a sort of intellectual suicide, perpetrated by one generation on the next. Just as one generation could prevent the existence of the next generation if we all decided to jump off a cliff, so we can prevent the intellectual development of the next generation by teaching that there is no ultimate purpose of, or validity to, human thought. And it is this very tendency that is encouraged by the false and inverted humility of our age. A rejection of objective truth does not free our minds by opening up previously unknown possibilities; rather it has the opposite effect of producing a downward spiral of skeptical despair that ends in making all thought meaningless.

Now this is bad enough in and of itself, but it too has further and more dire consequences. For if truth is relative and unknowable then where can human dignity be grounded. Some of you may have read the Brother’s Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and might recall this brief passage, “for the mystery of man’s being is not only in living, but in what one lives for. Without a firm idea of what he lives for, man will not consent to live and will sooner destroy himself than remain on earth.” We live in an age where many, especially among the elites, have abandoned the very notion of truth. The result is an emerging and aggressive culture of death in which a concept of social utility has replaced the notion of human dignity.

As Russell Kirk so wisely noted the first principle of conservatism is belief in an enduring moral order. This idea encompasses several notions: a) that human nature is constant; b) that moral truths are permanent; c) that all social questions are at heart moral questions; that, to put it provocatively, not only can we legislate morality, but properly understood we legislate nothing but morality.

This first principle is perhaps the great dividing line between the ideologue and the true conservative. It marks out the boundary between him and those who believe that the temporal order is the only order, that material needs are the only needs, and that they may do as they wish with human patrimony.

Now all of this may seem a bit removed from the life of practical politics in the State of Kansas; but I would suggest to you that it is not. Indeed these ideas stand at the center of what I take to be the most pressing issues confronting our state at this moment; preservation of the traditional family, restoration of respect for the sanctity of life, and reigning in a capricious judiciary bent of pursuing a political agenda in contravention of the rule of law.

I’d like to talk about the upcoming legislative session with respect to each of these issues.

Two years ago when I addressed this same meeting I told a cautionary tale to all who felt that by passing the marriage amendment in 2005 we put to bed the pernicious threat posed by same sex marriage. At that time I warned of the lurking danger posed by the Kansas Supreme Courts ruling in State v. Limon. Why is this case important? Think about it this way: On June 21, 1776, John Adams said "Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand.” On October 21, 2005 the Supreme Court of Kansas said, “Moral disapproval of a group cannot be a legitimate government interest.”

The chasm between these two views of the role of moral values in the public square could not be greater. For those who worked so hard to promote the marriage amendment in Kansas this has dire implications. The reasoning used by the Court in Limon could certainly be put to work to invalidate the prohibition on same sex marriage in the Kansas Constitution. As a strong supporter of that amendment my core argument was that: “once we determine that marriage can not be denied to persons as long as they claim an abiding love and commitment for one another, then we have lost the ability, in principle, to impose any limits at all on the definition of marriage. It is axiomatic that a definition so broad as to encompass everything means nothing. It is for this reason, among other, that the recognition of homosexual marriage shatters the very meaning of marriage at its most basic level.” This argument and most of the others that I heard advanced for the marriage amendment would certainly be put to test by a legal standard that defines making moral distinctions between groups of persons as an illegitimate legislative purpose.

But we know more now than we did 2 years ago, we know that those who wish to undermine traditional marriage have been hard at work implementing a well thought out plan to undue what Kansas voters felt they had accomplished at the polls in 2005. The lynch pin of this strategy is the passage of local domestic partnership ordinances as we have seen recently in Lawrence. It is my prediction that if not preempted such local ordinances will ultimately provide the framework for a legal challenge to the marriage amendment under the equal protection and due process clauses of the U.S. Constitution. That is why last session I introduced on HB 2299 which would prohibit local government entities from establishing domestic partnership registries. This bill passed out of the House Federal & State Affairs Committee, but was not brought to a vote. Next week I will be asking leadership to allow a floor vote on this important issue.

With respect to the life issue I could quite literally speak for the rest of the day setting forth the crisis and the opportunity that we face at this moment. But time constrains me to say just this, within the next week or so I along with other legislators will be introducing legislation that if implemented will play a crucial role in ending the tragedy of illegal late term abortion that are being performed in Kansas because the executive branch refuses to enforce existing law.

Finally let me say that none of the work we do in the legislative process means anything if the Courts charged with enforcing the laws fail at their appointed task. We must make meaningful change to our method of appellate court judicial selection in Kansas. I will once again be introducing legislation to do just that.

With all of this in mind allow me to close with this, In 1776 John Dickinson, one of my favorite founding fathers, affirmed: "Our liberties do not come from charters for these are only the declaration of pre-existing rights. They do not depend on parchments or seals, but come from the king of kings and the Lord of all the earth." Let us all pledge her together to serve our Lord and our king with humility regarding ourselves, but with boldness regarding the truths that He has set before us.