Marriage Amendment Opposition Falls In Face Of Reason
By Cheryl K. Chumley (08/13/04)
If a nation is guided by the moral compass of its citizens – and with an “of, by and for the people” system of governance, ours certainly is – then the marriage amendment should be a core platform of this year’s presidential election.
At risk is the entire tone of our constitutional structure because this issue gives rise to a very basic question, one that holds promise to shape the dialogue of political and cultural dilemmas to come: Are we a Judeo-Christian nation or not? While inarguably founded on these principles, the idea that we must even debate whether a marriage is in fact a union between one man and one woman shows just how far we have strayed from our traditional values and beliefs.
The obvious, the biblically based definition of marriage and characterization of homosexuality, is no longer accepted argument in this issue, as special interest groups and atheistic, overly intellectual constitutional interpreters have demanded, ad nauseum, adherence to their own very skewed interpretation of the separate church and state clause. So with religious convictions aside, the battle over marriage has instead focused on two issues: states’ rights and whether constitutional amendment is necessary.
And deeper analysis crumbles the viewpoints of those opposing amendment on these grounds.
Look first to states’ rights, a concern expressed as reason to kill the idea of amendment by the very same senator who, curiously, brought us the very anti-1st Amendment campaign finance reform.
Upon finding his Constitution, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told CNN in July that the marriage amendment “usurps” states’ authorities and “imposes a federal remedy for a problem that most states do not believe confronts them.”
Well, maybe most states do not believe the issue of marriage has become problematic, but half do.
Human Rights Campaign, an organization that works toward equality for homosexuals, reports that “legislation to amend state constitutions to prohibit performance of or recognition of marriage between same-sex couples has been introduced in 25 states during 2004.”
Eight months into the year and already half the nation has become so alarmed by the attacks against traditional marriage that state constitutional amendments are under consideration. That seems to indicate both a will of the people and a mass distrust of the judicial system to uphold the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act defining marriage, for federal purposes, as a union between man and woman and giving states the right to decline recognition of homosexual marriages.
Those who believe DOMA relegates the idea of a marriage amendment in the U.S. Constitution to the category of needless are misguided. The same day HRC reported Missouri’s voting ban against gay marriage, it also posted a Seattle Times story entitled “King County Judge Rules in Favor of Same-Sex Marriage.” The basis for the judge’s finding? DOMA is unconstitutional.
Since HRC decries the federal definition of marriage as “an unprecedented intrusion…into an area traditionally left to the states,” the fight against DOMA threatens to rage, with the nation’s highest court surely issuing the final decision. But if the U.S. Supreme Court rules indecisively -- as it did with the Pledge of Allegiance case, finding only that the plaintiff lacked standing -- the issue of marriage will ultimately return to the battlegrounds of states and people.
And that puts on the table the question of whether amendment is necessary.
“The founders wisely made certain that the Constitution is difficult to amend and … can’t be done without overwhelming approval,” McCain said.
Doubts over the overwhelming approval that the people ostensibly offered for creation of a permanent income tax aside, the 16th Amendment also provides fodder for those who contest the Constitution can be altered rather easily, as 1913 marks the stepping year for a chain of amendments that achieved ratification in seeming quick-time. Both 16th and 17th amendments were added in 1913; the 18th came in 1919, the 19th in 1920 and the 20th and 21st in 1933.
Some of these amendments, akin to the marriage proposal, seem moral in nature – witness the rising and falling of prohibition in the 18th and 21st – as do both earlier and later changes, evidenced by the 13th’s end to slavery, the 15th’s right of blacks to vote, the 19th’s suffrage for women and the 26th’s allowance for 18-year-olds to cast ballots.
Can it feasibly be contested, then, that defining marriage as a union of man and woman via constitutional amendment would be too difficult a task and should not even be attempted because it amounts to government intrusion upon the individual’s right to decide personal matters of morality?
Not when the basis of debate focuses on the guidelines that have already been established for determining when an amendment should go forth and when it should not.
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