A Thread on the Supreme Court Allowing Gay Marriage to Go Forward In Several States Across the Country
I’m a little late to the topic but I feel I owe you guys a thread on it. It’s a bit of a chaotic situation, but basically the Court refused to hear a bunch of cases, and gay marriage was suddenly legal in a handful of states. Then Anthony Kennedy blocked a 9th Circuit decision allowing gay marriage in Idaho and Nevada, and then quickly took it back as to Nevada, saying it was a mistake.
Personally, I like Ted Cruz’s approach:
“It is beyond dispute that when the 14th Amendment was adopted 146 years ago, as a necessary post-Civil War era reform, it was not imagined to also mandate same-sex marriage, but that is what the Supreme Court is implying today. The Court is making the preposterous assumption that the People of the United States somehow silently redefined marriage in 1868 when they ratified the 14th Amendment.
“Nothing in the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the 14th Amendment or any other constitutional provision authorizes judges to redefine marriage for the Nation. It is for the elected representatives of the People to make the laws of marriage, acting on the basis of their own constitutional authority, and protecting it, if necessary, from usurpation by the courts.
“Marriage is a question for the States. That is why I have introduced legislation, S. 2024, to protect the authority of state legislatures to define marriage. And that is why, when Congress returns to session, I will be introducing a constitutional amendment to prevent the federal government or the courts from attacking or striking down state marriage laws.
Wouldn’t this be something covered by the 10th Amendment?
A little reminder on the 10th Amendment may be in order. I meant to say something about it after I noted that Congress has far outstripped its authority to regulate commerce, and a troll said I was wrong about this, claiming:
Prove it.
Show me the text of the Constitution that establishes that.
Oh right, you can’t. And we have both courts and politicians going back over a century thinking otherwise.
Oh right, I can. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you . . . the Tenth Amendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
This is why ObamaCare, or a Department of Education, or any of the numerous other things our federal government does on a daily basis, are all unconstitutional.
Now, to circle back to gay marriage, if the 14th Amendment actually addressed gay marriage, it would trump the 10th Amendment, because it comes later. But as Cruz notes, the 14th Amendment had nothing whatever to do with gay marriage. So let’s leave it to the states.
And it would be nice, as I have always said, if the courts in those states would leave it to the people of those states. Attitudes are changing anyway.