This NYTimes op-ed piece recites a very brief history of the French Revolution: Bush’s Dangerous Liaisons. Without being so pedantic as to spell everything out for you in tedious detail, I will simply say, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Bill said “Marriage has always been the purview of the several states. The Tenth Amendment to the constitution has, since its adoption in 1791, been a rallying point for conservatives and federalists. The constitution does not reserve the power of marriage to the United States; the right naturally belongs to the several, individual states.”
This is, of course, ridiculous nonsense. The men who founded the several states would never have countenanced such a ludicrous assertion. The idea of leaving to a state the “power” to declare what a marriage is, who may enter into one, etc., is confused by the Protestant ontological discord in which people may be said to be personally opposed to abortion but supportive of a woman’s right to kill her and her lover’s (or lovers’) child(ren). Or that there is a separation between Church and State. The several states were and are comprised of people who are integrally more than secular citizens. The definition of marriage stems from the natural order (the natural law, if you will) and is defined by the Creator of the natural order, not those who live in that order. One might as well state that it is the purview of the several states and not the federal government to enact laws as to whether a woman can urinate through her penis instead of her vaginal opening.
As to whether or not so-called homosexual marriage hurts anyone, I hardly know where to begin. The bitter and arid climate we find ourselves in today with regard to no-fault divorce, a positive right to artificial birth control, and denigration of marriage as an institution by the revolutionary Gramsciites of the 1930s, ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s is simply being tilled by their heirs in the 2000s. Would that you would reexamine your position in light of the exact same arguments put forth for those “harmless” innovations back then.
While I am going to leave the debate about whether the Republican Party is better off jettisoning the Religious Right to some of my other colleagues here, I do want to take up the issue that Bill threw out as an example of how the Religious Right has hijacked the discussion, namely, the Federal Marriage Amendment.
With same-sex marriage, there are, in my mind, two constitutional issues, which considered together, make this issue absolutely into a federal issue: the question of the effect of the Full Faith and Credit Caluse coupled with the possibility that marriage may be found to be a fundamental right for homosexuals under a Due Process analysis.
While I am not a proponent of citing Wikipedia as authority, in this case, the entry regarding the Defense of Marriage Act actually does represent the argument well. However, for those who will not accept that citation under any circumstance, no matter how accurate it is, try this one at Privacy Spot. Continue Reading »
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