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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (31366)	2/25/2004 10:45:26 AM
From: michael97123	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793698

Frankly if an amendement was what they wanted, i think that the admin should have supported an amendment to constitutionalize the Defense of Marriage act, dealing with the roaming bands of gay marrieds looking to test the law in all jurisdictions. But if he had done that he would have appeared to weak to the evangys. By the way, i heard a talking head suggest that congress need only repass defense of marriage with a proviso that the SC could not rule on it. Is that legal? Mike PS have been arguing with my daughter on this issue. she thinks its the biggest issue since sliced bread. She cant believe that i am so ambivalent on it. But in my argument to her i said look at all the progress gays have made in only the last 10 years. It is almost revolutionary. My idea was that it would be nice if moderate voices in the gay community who know this to be true, came out and said so and worked a compromise with their well wishers who may be for civil unions and not marriage just yet. Yet Mass and a couple of other states be the lab for gay marriage but no roving bands of gays testing the laws for a stated period of time.

To: Lane3 who wrote (31366)	2/25/2004 4:15:25 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793698

Imagine if folks had tried to amend the constitution in the past to prohibit "miscegenation"- saying marriage could only take place between people of the same race. Eventually (I think) the amendment Bush supports will look every bit as bad to people as the above hypothetical would look to most of us today (there are, of course, people who would support such an amendment regarding miscegenation, but they have been marginalized in their prejudice by the passage of time).

To: Lane3 who wrote (31366)	2/25/2004 6:43:22 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 793698

I agree with michael97123 on this I don't think it does debase the constitution. The amendment process is just about the only way to counter judges redefining things like marriage or other important traditions and traditional legal understandings without the clear relatively direct support of the constitution. Theoretically you could combat such judicial activism by picking the right judges but that isn't always a very effective method and it has to be done beforehand. Other ideas that could in theory be tried include some form of nullification (refusing to comply with and enforce the judges ruling), and impeaching judges for not following the constitution in their rulings. Either of these ideas would be far more radical then an amendment and would be much less likely to succeed. They also would create a political firestorm and possibly a constitutional crisis. Realistically they can be ruled out as alternatives (that's why I said they could be tried "in theory"), which really only leaves you with amendments or accepting the arbitrary rule of judges. Tim