Constitutionality

Allow me to throw some more Kudos at Jonah Goldberg: his brief piece today was a needed questioning of all the (albiet receding) hysteria surrounding the Federal Marriage Amendment.


Sure, it's easy to catch Terry McAuliffe in an inconsitency. For that matter, it's easy to catch Goldberg himself in one. If he can ask when McAuliffe suddenly discovered the "sacred" nature of the Constitution, one can ask him when he suddenly got so excited about democracy (which he recently declared to be a system in which "51 percent of the population can vote to give the other 49 percent wedgies"). But he underlines an important point: there is nothing in the Constitution that says it cannot be changed to say what we wish it to say. We can have the Constitution say that left-handed people must walk backwards on days beginning with "T". But we all have to agree to it first, and left-handed people who'd rather not have giant chiropracter's bill from looking over their shoulder will have the opportunity to suggest that this amendement is stupider than Rosie O'Donnell's magazine. That's different from judges saying that a right to an abortion is found in the existing text of the Constitution, just because he thinks that right should be there.


Right now the Constitution says nothing whatsoever about marriage. I'm not sure that I want it to say anything about marriage, even if it defends the understanding of marriage that I agree with. But right now the Mayor of San Francisco and a couple of judges thinks that the Constitution already says that their understanding of marriage is valid, and are acting accordingly. It may be that their understanding of marriage is the correct one. But if the majority of the population is unconvinced, it is nothing short of tyrannical to impose this understanding without public debate. So let's have that debate.


And if the people decide in a few years that they made the wrong decision, guess what? We can Amend the constitution again to say so. It's been done before. All you need to do is persuade the other side that it should be so. Just make sure your arguments don't consist of the notion that all your opponents are bigots. That might not play well.