Blogs For Victory

While I disagree with the concept of gay marriage, B. Daniel Blatt over at Pajamas Media explains what gay activists will have to do to have a chance of actually winning the political fight over it:

…proponents of Proposition 8 began their campaign by pointing out that judges and politicians were trying to force gay marriage on the citizens of California. In their first television ad, they pointed out that four judges on the California Supreme Court “ignored four million voters,” the approximate tally of citizens who, in 2000, voted in favor of Proposition 22, which defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Those four justices explicitly overturned that initiative in their May decision.

That same ad showed San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom saying that gay marriage would happen “whether you like it or not.” The campaign thus made it appear that citizens were being left out of the process.

Other ads suggested that Proposition 8’s failure would lead to schools teaching gay marriage and prevent parents from allowing their children to opt out of such instruction. A “yes” vote would return sovereignty over such matters to the people.

Whenever state courts mandate recognition of gay marriage, it leads to a backlash at the ballot box. By November 2004, not even a year after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (the Bay State’s highest court) handed down the Goodridge decision finding it unconstitutional under the state constitution to limit marriage to different-sex couples, voters in thirteen states enacted constitutional provisions defining marriage by its traditional definition: the union of one man and one woman.

This year, after the California and Connecticut Supreme Courts handed down rulings similar to Goodridge, voters in Florida and Arizona joined those in California and amended their state constitutions.

Following the passage of Proposition 8, Jonathan Rauch, author of Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, wrote that gay marriage advocates need to rethink “the wisdom of mindlessly pushing lawsuits through the courts without adequately preparing the public.” Since state courts began mandating gay marriage, thirty states have amended their constitutions to define marriage so as to prohibit recognition of same-sex unions as marriage.

Our liberal friends, of course, rely upon judicial tyranny to impose their views - elect liberal executives who appoint liberal judges and then file lawsuits to impose new laws which would never pass muster with the people or which would involve long, expensive fights in the public square. The success of Roe in enshrining abortion in our laws has been the model - abortion on demand commands only a small minority of support, but it is the standard which the left holds to and they’ve got a Supreme Court ruling on their side about it. It is also handy to use judges as they can bypass the more local political bodies - State supreme courts to overturn city and county laws, federal supreme court to overturn State laws. This is a negation of America.

In point of fact, I’m not particularly concerned if the people of San Francisco wish to recognize as a “marriage” the union of two men or two women…or, for that matter, three men and three women, if that is what floats their boat. I don’t live in San Francisco and while I love my fellow Americans in that city and will fight to defend them against all enemies, foreign and domestic, its not for me to tell them how to live - just as it isn’t for them to tell me how to live. Within the framework of our sublime constitution, we’re supposed to have vast differences between the States and localities on how business is done. Think of the United States as a host of local and State political laboratories where various experiments in democratic governance are conducted, with the most successful experiments making it to the national level. This is what we really should be shooting for.

The problem with the left is that it seeks to impose itself everywhere - its not good enough if gays in San Francisco are married…Salt Lake City must do so, too. Its not good enough for abortion to be legal in Santa Monica, it must also be legal in Boise. Its not good enough to have a porno store down the street in New York City, there must also be one down the street in Billings. This is not the way it is supposed to be - as long as an American is free to hold his property, speak his mind and come and go as he pleases, he’s as free as any person needs to be…the rest of it is a matter of local desire. Some localities are ok with freewheeling immorality, some places aren’t…and each should respect the basic desires of the other.

If gay marriage is ever to come to the United States, it will have to come in a piecemeal fashion - States and localities, after extensive political argument, will have to decide for themselves what they wish to do. My bet is that most will opt for some sort of civil unions to allow gay couples - and other non-traditional family-like relationships - to pool their lives and resources free from outside interference (which, by the way, is a core American value)…but it has to be the people deciding. If the gay marriage advocates continue down the route of judicial tyranny, it will eventually provoke the ultimate backlash, an amendment to the federal constitution forbidding gay marriage.

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Tags: gay marriage