15/06: Krauthammer and Same-Sex Marriage
Category: Same-Sex Marriage
Posted by: A Waco Farmer
Last week I criticized Charles Krauthammer in the comments section of my post, Same-Sex Marriage: What I Believe, which is not a comfortable or familiar position for me. I disputed his claim that state courts were on the verge of nationalizing "gay marriage--like quickie Nevada divorces--will have to be recognized "under the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution" throughout the rest of the U.S." (in full here).
I missed his subsequent column (June 9), A Ban We Don't (Yet) Need, which clarified his position:
"[I]t turns out that the Massachusetts experiment has not been forced on other states. No courts have required other states to recognize gay marriages performed in Massachusetts. Gay activists have not pushed it, wisely calculating that it would lead to a huge backlash. Moreover, Congress's Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) explicitly prevents the state-to-state export of gay marriage."
He went on to say that DOMA would need to be overturned by a federal court for state-sanctioned same-sex marriage to pose a national threat, which he (like me) sees as unlikely considering the composition of the Supreme Court at this point.
Krauthammer also pointed out the irony of removing the question from local sovereignty in order to promote popular sovereignty:
"The amendment actually ends up defeating the principle it sets out to uphold. The solution to judicial overreaching is to change the judiciary, not to undo every act of judicial arrogance with a policy-specific constitutional amendment. Where does it end? Yesterday it was school busing and abortion. Today it is flag burning and gay marriage."
Finally, I mention an obvious but important point (which Krauthammer made early on in the above essay) speaking to the question of same-sex marriage as a "divisive issue":
"As for dividing Americans, who came up with the idea of radically altering the most ancient of all social institutions in the first place? Until the past few years, every civilization known to man has defined marriage as between people of opposite sex. To charge with "divisiveness" those who would do nothing more than resist a radical overturning of that norm is a sign of either gross partisanship or serious dimwittedness."
Well done, Charles Krauthammer
I missed his subsequent column (June 9), A Ban We Don't (Yet) Need, which clarified his position:
"[I]t turns out that the Massachusetts experiment has not been forced on other states. No courts have required other states to recognize gay marriages performed in Massachusetts. Gay activists have not pushed it, wisely calculating that it would lead to a huge backlash. Moreover, Congress's Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) explicitly prevents the state-to-state export of gay marriage."
He went on to say that DOMA would need to be overturned by a federal court for state-sanctioned same-sex marriage to pose a national threat, which he (like me) sees as unlikely considering the composition of the Supreme Court at this point.
Krauthammer also pointed out the irony of removing the question from local sovereignty in order to promote popular sovereignty:
"The amendment actually ends up defeating the principle it sets out to uphold. The solution to judicial overreaching is to change the judiciary, not to undo every act of judicial arrogance with a policy-specific constitutional amendment. Where does it end? Yesterday it was school busing and abortion. Today it is flag burning and gay marriage."
Finally, I mention an obvious but important point (which Krauthammer made early on in the above essay) speaking to the question of same-sex marriage as a "divisive issue":
"As for dividing Americans, who came up with the idea of radically altering the most ancient of all social institutions in the first place? Until the past few years, every civilization known to man has defined marriage as between people of opposite sex. To charge with "divisiveness" those who would do nothing more than resist a radical overturning of that norm is a sign of either gross partisanship or serious dimwittedness."
Well done, Charles Krauthammer
an okie gardener wrote: