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Friday, May 26, 2006
Gay Marriage Amendment: Cased Closed / Jon Rauch From my May 27 National Journal column: Whatever its political merits, the MPA remains as unwise substantively as when it first came up in 2004. Since then, moreover, the case for its necessity has disintegrated...
The social ramifications of gay marriage will take time to unfurl; but if rampant legal confusion were going to be the result of Massachusetts' gay marriages, it should have begun to appear by now. Indeed, few defenders of a state-by-state approach would have dared predict that the Massachusetts experiment would create as few legal tangles as it has. That the states can go their separate ways on gay marriage is no longer a prediction; it is a fact...
Two questions for anti-gay-marriage, anti-abortion Republicans: If states can be allowed to go their own way in defining human life, why not allow them to go their own way in defining marriage? Where constitutional amendments are concerned, why is preventing gay couples from marrying so much more urgent than preventing unborn children from being killed?
It is precisely because marriage is so important, and because it is the subject of such profound moral disagreement, that a one-size-fits-all federal solution is the wrong approach. California and Texas, Massachusetts and Oklahoma take very different views of same-sex marriage. By localizing the most intractable moral issues, federalism prevents national culture wars.
In 2006, that argument is no longer hypothetical. Federalism is working. As the public sees that states are coping competently and that no one state will decide for all the rest, the atmosphere of panic over gay marriage has mercifully subsided, providing the time and calm that the issue needs.
posted by Jon at
10:12 AM | Link |
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Jon Rauch simply doesn't get it. We have no problem with states voting for Marriage protection amendments and we repeatedly obtain overwhelming pro-marriage majorities when the people are allowed to vote. But, as Maggie has already pointed out, our concern is with the judges who both overturn amendments or impose homosexual "marriages" in direct defiance of the people's will. This would be resolved through the Federal Marriage Protection Amendment.
We are seeing significant interstate problems with "marriage" licenses granted in Massachusetts, from custody problems to "divorce" problems. The assault on conscience through pro-homosexual relationship indoctrination efforts in the public schools, etc. corrupts the morals of minors by teaching that there could be in objective reality such a thing as a homosexual
"marriage." Schools are teaching and encouraging dangerous sexual behaviors. We have also seen the damage done to Catholic Charities and orphan children in Massachusetts and witnessed the assault on both freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Jon Rauch doesn't see any problem with this but most of humanity does.
This is a federal problem that must be dealt with at the federal level to reinforce the DOMA which will inevitably be challenged. We cannot have a chaotic, patch quilt, state by state variety of marriage laws. The Federal Marriage Protection Amendment will save the taxpayer enormous sums money wasted by battling in courts and the legislature. The nation will also be spared this ongoing politically divisive campaign to provide special rights to homosexuals, a campaign that squanders resources and distracts from our more important socio-economic concerns. The effort to protect marriage can never go away. Let the People Vote and Respect the Vote of the People. Pass the FMA and it will be Case Closed.
The fact of the matter is that states are trying to go their own way, but Judges are writing laws. Rauch is naive in his understanding how advocacy for GLBT issues cannot win a following in a legislative format. It can only do so by fiat, by decree. Judges in MA decided the gay marriage issue, not "the state." The people were never consulted before the process was highjacked.
Now in states where the people have been consulted and voted overwhelmingly, Judges are deciding again, by fiat.
Rauch knows this is true and pretending to hide behind states rights issues.
He is really passively advocating for Judges Rights issues. We have been through this a number of times in a number of ways and Judges consistently over-value their role in being social engineers.
What GBLT cannot win in the arena of ideas and by pursuasion they must coerce through Judges.
Denying the obvious:
Two questions for anti-gay-marriage, anti-abortion Republicans: If states can be allowed to go their own way in defining human life, why not allow them to go their own way in defining marriage?
Two words: Roe vs Wade.
Activist judges can and will attempt to force their morality across state borders. Legal attacks on state autonomy by gay activists have not dissapeared. Nor will they, until their agenda is enforced nationwide, just as it was with the pro-abortion agenda.
Where constitutional amendments are concerned, why is preventing gay couples from marrying so much more urgent than preventing unborn children from being killed?
Because politics is the art of the possible. Your friends put gay marriage on the front burner -- not mine.
Jon Rauch -- I hope you will read and discuss the response here to your post.
The MPA would amend the U.S. Constitution to forbid gay couples to marry.
The amendment would reaffirm society's esteem for and preferential treatmentof the conjugal union of husband and wife; the issue is State recognition of a unique social institution as, well, unique.
Nonmarital twosomes remain at liberty to choose nonmarital alternatives.
To wit:
>> Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.'.
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gratuitously vindictive anti-gay-marriage law [...] so-called Marriage Affirmation Act outlawed not only gay marriage and civil unions, but also private contracts between same-sex individuals seeking to replicate marital arrangements
Jon, one-sex pairs are not banned from forming alternative arrangements. What you called vindictative in Virginia was the refusal to confuddle the supposed replications with the special status accorded the social institution of marriage through state elevation.
When you use words like "outlaw" it is as if you wish to gratuituously mislead by saying that the one-sex towsome shares the prohibited status of polygamists or others who positively break the law and are criminalized and penalized for doing so.
Meanwhile, for more than two years Massachusetts has been marrying same-sex couples, including couples who travel and move outside the state. Spot the chaos? The wholesale legal confusion?
The error in Massachusetts is that the court replaced marriage with the replication. The chaos and confusion? Have you not followed the procedural games being played to avoid correction of that court error? I think you have and know that good governance is at stake as much as marriage and as much as the federal-state balances. Goodridge issued forth not just sociological experiment -- how arrogant! -- but a legal experiment that is still being played out across the country.
handcuffing the democratically elected Legislature of the largest state in the union
Adhering to the state constitution is "handcuffing" the legislative branch? I guess the state referendum in California is insignificant in your survey of the supposed lack of chaos and legal confusion.
Your human life versus marriage comparison is not gratuitous? Come on, Jon.
demagoguery, which is sad [...] cynicism, which is sadder [...] none of this is surprising -- which is saddest of all
Hey, brighten up. Politics is not for the weak of heart.
The typical SSM advocacy is demagogic, cynical, and surprises no one who has observed sexual identity politics at play this past decade or so. The Goodridge decision itself exemplifies this and has been echoed in other courts. The confusion is profoundly on display.
and because it is the subject of such profound moral disagreement
GTFO. Prejudice and spitefulness DO NOT equal moral conscience.
And you demonstrate that point beautifully I might add, Brandon.
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