WHAT BACKLASH?

Predictions of a huge public backlash against Lawrence vs Texas do not seem to me to have been borne out. That may change if Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court rules in favor of marriage equality next week. But meantime, the far right seems a little divided and a little disoriented. It seemed an odd time for the head of the Family Research Council, Kenneth Connor, to resign – but last week, resign he did. Was it because he was lukewarm about the far right’s new gambit – writing an anti-gay marriage plank into the federal Constitution? Who knows? Blogger, “The Right Christians,” has some thoughts and theories. Here’s why I think the Federal Marriage Amendment won’t work for the anti-gay right. Constitutional amendments are extremely hard to pass. They normally need overwhelming public support – like the 90 percent plus support for a ban on flag-burning – but even then they tend to fail. Polls show Americans divided by 39 percent to 55 percent on equal marriage rights – hardly an overwhelming consensus that should be enshrined for ever in the Constitution itself. Moreover, those numbers have moved considerably in a few years, again suggesting that it would be foolish to mess with the Constitution to resolve a volatile and fast-changing issue. Lastly, conservatives rightly view the Constitution as a sacred document to be messed with only very carefully. Many conservatives will oppose such an amendment on those grounds alone. They should. One unconservative consequence could also be that such an amendment serves to retroactively invalidate what could be thousands of marriages by the time such an amendment would even have a chance of passing. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful use of conservative resources: going around the country actually trying to break up committed couples. And all under the pro-family banner! You can see the slogan now: Support the family – break up marriages and take kids away from parents. I wish it were merely funny. But it’s tragic.