Marriage Amendment

There is a rumor on the Internet that there will be an attempt to introduce a new amendment to the Constitution of the United States about marriage. The supposed text will be:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

If this is the text being voted on I oppose its ratification. I believe that this text would successfully enshrine discrimination in our country's most important document. I hope that enough people will see this as fundamentally weakening the moral weight of the constitution for all time.

With such a position a casual observer would say that I must be a Democratic supporter. This would be especially true of those conservatives who support this amendment. I fear that the Republican Party will make this the centerpiece of their platform for one very simple reason. I find that on many very important issues, I am much more in agreement with them than the Democratic Party. These issues include national defense policy, tax policy, trade policy and criminal justice policy.

By promoting this effectively anti-gay measure, I fear that I will be forced to choose between a party that is unwilling to effectively defend our country and one who might well make the country not worth defending.

Many people who support this amendment do so from understandable and defensable relgious grounds. I, however, as a married hetero-sexual believe that marraige means different things to different people of differing faiths (or even lack thereof). For this reason, I would gladly support an amendment to remove and prohibit all references to marriage in the law. Leaving marriage to be defined as each faith sees fit would be quintessentially american. Forcing one conception of marriage upon people of all faiths and rewarding with benefits only those who fall within its parameters is a form of descrimination against any who fall outside of that conception.

I understand the problems of those who believe that it is inappropriate for the courts to overturn what has been a longstanding definition of marriage. For this reason, the Defense of Marriage Act or similar legislation that seeks to control the change of the definition of marriage to the legislature is just the sort of thing that, while I personally disagree with, I wouldn't have a strong desire to vote against its supporters.

Amending the constitution, however, essentially says that not even a future majority opinion in the legislature can change the definition of marriage. This is fundamentally unnecessary.

Until those who support this amendment seek to impose sanctions on those hetero-sexual couples who make a mockery of traditional marriage or seek to eliminate the "legal incidents" of marriage, I will be forced to believe that your support of this amendment is an unequivical statement of your desire to discriminate against gays to the fullest ability of your political power. As such, you will make this independant voter who agrees with you on most things very likely to seek to decrease your political power by adding my vote and money to the other column.

Posted by tmichael at February 8, 2004 10:30 AM