The Philadelphia Inquirer has an interesting article detailing the difficulties President Bush and religious conservatives will have in getting a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage passed:
The religious conservatives who worked hard to reelect President Bush in 2004 have long anticipated that the White House would reward them by pushing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
But that’s not happening.
Too many other issues predominate, everything from Iraq to immigration. As a result, Bush seems ill-positioned to spend dwindling political capital on a social crusade - especially at a time when a nod toward greater religiosity might turn off secular Republican voters and thus imperil the moderate Republicans in Congress who are already struggling to keep their jobs in November.
So the religious right, which may well have been pivotal in helping Bush keep his job, appears destined for major disappointment in 2006.
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Why are so many moderate Republican voters feeling alienated? Party strategist Craig Shirley suggested, “There is a fear, among some in the party, that the Republicans are being identified too much as a theological party.” With good reason, apparently: Fabrizio estimates, based on his own surveys, that half of today’s Republicans are “theocrats” who want government to “promote traditional values by protecting traditional marriage,” as opposed to wanting less government intrusion into personal lives.
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But religious-right leaders insist that saying no to gay marriage is a mainstream position; they cite recent Pew polls showing that 51 percent of Americans oppose the concept. For that reason, said Gary Bauer, “President Bush should be pushing this. This is an issue where the public is on his side, yet he seems too busy to deal with it. At least he’d be able to talk about something that can get people’s heads nodding, instead of him getting tuned out.”
While I agree with the President’s motives for preserving traditional marriage between a man and a woman and support for the core family unit, I don’t believe a constitutional amendment is the right way to go on this issue. Sure, conservatives and American society in general, have largely rejected gay marriage in the legislatures and at the ballot box. However, issues like this remind me of why we have a Tenth Amendment to the constitution.
The Tenth Amendment to the constitution states:
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.
Clearly, because the federal government is not granted a license to govern social unions or the arrangement of the family unit in the constitution, it is up to the states to decide the status of gay marriage or define marriage in the traditional sense. President Bush and conservatives in my opinion, are wrong for attempting to use the constitution as a catalyst for social change. Not only is this not in the best interest of our republic, but it implies that the constitution should be changed for minor social issues that are clearly in the interest of the states to decide.
Instead of looking to the federal government to define what “marriage” means, conservatives should look to their state governments for defining law. As much as I support the traditionalist cause, some just might want to read the constitution for once and see how federalism allows judgement in the gay marriage fiasco.