It is truly pathetic to see the Senate waste time and effort on another bid to pass a constitutional amendment that violates states’ rights, triviliazes the Constitution and stigmatizes a minority. The arguments for it keep collapsing. Jon Rauch has another superb and sane column on the subject:
Two questions for anti-gay-marriage, anti-abortion Republicans: If states can be allowed to go their own way in defining human life, why not allow them to go their own way in defining marriage? Where constitutional amendments are concerned, why is preventing gay couples from marrying so much more urgent than preventing unborn children from being killed?
It is precisely because marriage is so important, and because it is the subject of such profound moral disagreement, that a one-size-fits-all federal solution is the wrong approach. California and Texas, Massachusetts and Oklahoma take very different views of same-sex marriage. By localizing the most intractable moral issues, federalism prevents national culture wars.
Conservatism, properly understood, is the solution to the question of how we integrate gay couples into society. Republicanism, as it now is, is part of the problem. Its rigid, theologically-based, ideologically driven agenda is the antithesis of a federalist, pragmatic, humane conservatism. Let the states decide. On abortion and marriage.
The Dish 