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I could go a hundred
different directions with today’s column: states’ rights, gay
rights, the institution of marriage and so on. I’ll do what I can
with 650 words, starting, in the words of philosopher Al Franken,
with lies and the lying liars who tell them.
A gay rights organization
called Human Rights Campaign began an advertising campaign January
12 to take advantage of what it sees as a tiff between conservatives
over a Constitutional amendment to define marriage as being between
a man and a woman. According to the group’s website, the ad says,
in part, “They (certain conservatives) believe that, even if you
oppose gay marriage, you don’t amend the Constitution to deal with
every controversial social issue. And you definitely don’t amend
the Constitution to give more power to the federal government.”
To the contrary, gentle
reader, that is exactly why you amend it. Giving power to the
federal government isn’t supposed to be easy, and an amendment
isn’t.
Advocacy groups like Human
Rights Campaign generally prefer to depend on their accomplices in
the courts, and for obvious reasons. It’s faster, cheaper, and you
can shove things down the throats of the citizenry that wouldn’t get
within a light year of the three-fourths of states required to pass
an amendment.
Cheryl Jacques, Human Rights
Campaign’s president, told Associated Press “We can all have
different positions on the underlying issue. But at the end of the
day, there are many conservatives who come down on the side of
‘Don’t mess with the Constitution.’” That wouldn’t include the
Founders, not if an amendment counts as “messing;” the ink had
barely dried on the parchment before the first ten were ratified.
Human Rights Campaign has
made Constitutional arguments for gay marriage before. Testifying
against the federal Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, Jacques’
predecessor Elizabeth Birch told the House Judiciary Committee
“Under the guise of protecting states’ interests, the proposed
statute would infringe upon state sovereignty and effectively
transfer broad power to the federal government. This was never
intended.”
Remember Bob Dole? He’s the
old guy in the Viagra commercials, but back in 1996 he was a
presidential candidate vowing to make states’ rights his top
campaign issue. Dole even claimed to carry a copy of the 10th
Amendment in his pocket, which is entirely possible. It’d fit in a
fortune cookie: “The powers not delegated to the United
States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are
reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
Dole’s strategy drew an
overwhelming yawn and he eventually threw it overboard, though not
in time to save himself from a good drubbing. I doubt it will be a
much better seller for Human Rights Campaign.
The role of any government in
marriage is a legitimate topic for debate. While some argue the
institution of marriage is in such sorry shape that giving gays a
shot at wedded bliss can hardly do any harm, governments must take
their share of the blame for the present state of matrimony.
Laws protecting marriage have
been replaced by “no-fault” divorce, leaving people free to tear
families apart and divvy up children at will. Poverty and domestic
abuse have risen in lockstep with the divorce rate. Married couples
pay higher taxes, some of which is used to fund what amounts to
bonuses for unemployed single mothers to bear children.
A Constitutional amendment to
protect marriage would unquestionably limit the power of states. So
did the abortion ruling of Roe v. Wade, a family-hostile notion made
law without the Constitutional niceties of an amendment.
That would have been the
conservative way. A few loud voices aside, however, neither
abortion nor the continuing decay of marriage are mainstream
conservative causes. The slickest ad campaign money can buy won’t
change that.
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