|
|
|
|
8/1/04 No Middle Ground on Marriage Liberal politicians are afraid to sign on to a constitutional amendment protecting the traditional definition of marriage; they don't want to alienate their base, who thinks "tradition" means "the philosophy behind the Spanish Inquisition". They also can't come out in favor of homosexual marriage for fear of alienating the large majority of people in this country who agree that homosexual marriage is a contradiction in terms. So they are forced to try to oppose the amendment without endorsing the legalization of homosexual marriage. Their public position is that we must not abuse the Constitution by enacting an amendment that would discriminate against a class of people. They also try to hold conservatives' feet to the fire by making it an issue of states' rights: why would a conservative want the federal government to take the power away from the state constitutions to define marriage in whatever way they chose? I have previously dealt with the question of discrimination. Since any man can marry any one woman, and vice versa, there is no discrimination. Everyone is equal under the law. But the states' rights issue is a canard, and exposes the fact that the tightrope they are trying to walk is an illusion. The courts are almost inevitably going to take the states' rights on this question away. The high court of Massachusetts has already interpreted that Commonwealth's constitution to imply the right of homosexuals to marry members of the same gender. The only obstacle to the "full faith and credit" clause of the Constitution forcing all states to recognize the homosexual marriages performed in Massachusetts is the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which the courts are probably also on their way to overturning. The states will soon have no right to decide whether or not they honor homosexual marriages, so we cannot "leave it to the states." Let us be clear: even if all the citizens of Wyoming or Missouri or Texas voted in a referendum to amend their states' constitutions to prevent homosexual marriages from being recognized in those states, the courts would force those states to recognize such unions. Even if the state legislatures of California, Colorado, or Alaska vote to make it illegal for homosexual marriage to be recognized in their states, the courts will force those states to recognize such marriages. The only way to prevent judges from forcing the states who do not wish to to honor homosexual marriages (and even liberal California doesn't want to, according to the votes they've cast there in recent years) is to amend the U.S. Constitution to prevent it. There is no middle ground where it can be left to the states to decide this question. We will either let the courts force homosexual marriage on all the states, or we will amend the U.S. Constitution to prevent homosexual marriage from being forced on any state. If they were honest and really thought this issue mattered, liberals would declare on which side of that razor's edge they fall. But instead they pretend there is a middle ground, and what needs to be communicated to the public is that the middle ground they occupy is the ground in which the seeds of homosexual marriage are being sown as we debate the issue, and homosexual marriage is, in constitutional and legal terms, an invasive weed that will not be eradicated unless and until the Constitution eradicates it. This is an up or down vote, once and for all. I vote to defend marriage against turning it into some kind of crazy social experiment. How do you vote? Modified: 09/10/2004 |
|
|
All Original Content (C) 2003, 2004, 2005 SoothSeeker.Com
SoothSeeker Welcomes your Comments at letters@soothseeker.com Report problems to webmaster@soothseeker.com
Hits on this site:
|