Tuesday, July 13, 2004
This post is probably outside this blog's standard fare but here goes.
There are two bills in the Senate concerning a constitutional amendment banning "gay marriage." The GOP will certainly push this to some kind of vote, and the press will be asking Kerry where he stands on the issue. Bush and friends will try to make this THE issue in the election, and may well succeed. The GOP has cynically, but accurately, figured out that they can make the Iraq mess, Haliburton and the influence of the Oil Mafia, and all other issues, go away, by making a vote for Kerry a vote for gay marriage.
I am not in favor of "gay marriage" per se, and instead support state-recognized civil unions for practical purposes, but wherever you come down on this issue, it is not a subject of constitutional magnitude. It is, to me, purely a matter of state law.
However, one would think that the 18th amendment - - banning alcoholic beverages - - should have been seen then, as it is now, as an infringement on the states' police power.
The irony is that it is the liberals who are making the states' rights argument here, the traditional weapon of conservatives when opposing, for example, abolition and federal civil rights legislation.
There are two bills in the Senate concerning a constitutional amendment banning "gay marriage." The GOP will certainly push this to some kind of vote, and the press will be asking Kerry where he stands on the issue. Bush and friends will try to make this THE issue in the election, and may well succeed. The GOP has cynically, but accurately, figured out that they can make the Iraq mess, Haliburton and the influence of the Oil Mafia, and all other issues, go away, by making a vote for Kerry a vote for gay marriage.
I am not in favor of "gay marriage" per se, and instead support state-recognized civil unions for practical purposes, but wherever you come down on this issue, it is not a subject of constitutional magnitude. It is, to me, purely a matter of state law.
However, one would think that the 18th amendment - - banning alcoholic beverages - - should have been seen then, as it is now, as an infringement on the states' police power.
The irony is that it is the liberals who are making the states' rights argument here, the traditional weapon of conservatives when opposing, for example, abolition and federal civil rights legislation.
