At 06:19 PM 7/24/2003 EDT [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>As will hardly surprise anyone, I could not possibly disagree more. By this
>logic, the Supreme Court should not have decided as it did in Brown vs
Board of
>Education. If it were left up to states, there would still be legal
>discrimination in the deep South, almost 50 years after Brown.
> Rights are rights; they
>should not be at the mercy of transitory or even entrenched prejudiced
>majorities. It has been the province of the Supreme Court for 200 years to
rule on
>the constitutionality of laws. A conservative, of all people, should respect
>that kind of established tradition.
Uhhh.... except that laws banning gay marriage have existed for 200 years
without *anyone* thinking that they violated the Constitution. Thus, it
would be capricious and authoritarian for the Supreme Court to suddenly
strike them down.
Brown v. Board was a completely different example, involving an amendment
that had been passed relatively recenty in history, and in the Supreme
Court overturning its previous interpretion. In the case of gay marriage,
the USSC has never even ruled on the subject whatsoever.
Constitutional governance is not a permanent part of human civilization.
For Constitutional governance to work, it must not be perceived that
agreeing to a Constitution leaves the door open for "bait and switch"
changes to the system of governance. For the USSC to legislate the
introduction of gay marriage without the input of Congress would be akin to
the USSC ruling that slavery was unconstitutional in 1850. It would have
been the right thing to do humanitarianly, but the damage done to republics
and consitutional governance for the rest of history would have been
devastating.
JDG
_______________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world,
it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03
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