Someone who signs his or her messages to me "Rightwing Vegetarian" sent me an interesting one. Here's part of it…
I don't like seeing the Constitution littered with amendments to address the passions of the moment. The proposed amendment is akin to using a rocket launcher to kill a fly. There are so many more pressing problems facing us as a nation right now.
Equally troubling to me, however, is having some lone judge re-write the constitution to guarantee the right of gay marriage, without having to go to the actual trouble of amending it. Or a politician who decides to ignore the marriage laws of his state. Opponents of the President act like today's proposal came out of a vacuum. It didn't. It was in direct response to radical moves by the likes of the Massachusetts Supreme Court and Mayor Newsom imposing gay marriage without the consent of the people.
You know, I don't completely disagree with the above. I guess the part I'd disagree with is that the proposal is a direct response to recent action. This proposal has been around for some time, and I suspect the reason Bush is now officially in favor of it is that he's looking to dissuade a third-party run by someone who'll run to the right of him and siphon off conservative votes. But I'm also not thrilled with the idea that California can vote, as it did, against gay marriage and that can be ignored. I don't like what the voters did in that case but elected officials are not supposed to only enforce the laws they like…or even, amazingly, the ones I like. (It's odd to see people praise Mayor Newsom for an act of courage. I suppose it is in the sense that he may have to spend a lot of time defending the legally indefensible. Still, how much courage does it take to expand gay rights in San Francisco?)
I think my problem with complaints about "activist judges" flows from the fact that I didn't hear one single conservative or Bush supporter say, "I'm glad G.W.B. won the presidency but I'm uncomfortable with the way the Supreme Court stepped into the process." I could even respect someone saying they thought the decision was legally sound if they admitted that it sure sent the wrong message about how the court system is supposed to work. If the principle is that we don't want judges making or modifying laws, I think we have to condemn it even when we like the results…but no one ever does. (I think we also have to consider the possibility, not in the gay marriage matter but in some others, that maybe some laws don't really say what we want them to say, and that an impartial judge could correctly interpret what is written and we wouldn't like the outcome.)
I agree that the proposed Constitutional amendment on marriage is overkill, and I think that's the point of it. Right now, those who are opposed to gay marriage may have the votes to get this thing passed. I don't think they do but they might. I also think they know that in five or ten years, they won't. The polls on this are all over the place depending how the question is phrased but I suspect the backers of this amendment sense that the national consensus on this is not moving in their direction. If it was, they could leave it up to individual states…but they know that voters in some states, if left to their own determination, will allow gay marriage. They also know that those states will not experience massive pestilence and disease-laden frogs falling from the sky…and the idea will then seem more palatable in other states. (Hey, how will they feel if legally-sanctioned gay marriages in some state wind up having a much lower incidence of divorce than hetero wedlock? How will they then be able to argue that letting gays wed threatens the institution of marriage?)
When you come right down to it, the idea of the amendment is not just to stop judges and Mayor Newsom but to stop the people of your state, wherever you live, from deciding you think gay marriage is okay. And when the day comes that most Americans feel that way, it will take years to undo that amendment. That's what this is all about.