Ok, so the passage of Amendment 1 in the NC State House, which would constitutionally ban gay marriage in North Carolina, will inevitably be brought up all year since the vote is not until May. Therefore, I am going to address this nonsense now and not bring it up again unless absolutely necessary. The simple truth is that this would be a total non-issue if the Federal Constitution were enforced as it is actually written (a tall order these days, I know, but let’s see if I can even get the Young Democrats on board with this one).
To the progressives: good job. You get just about every other issue wrong, but for some reason you decided to side with individual liberty and equal justice this time and you deserve credit. I would like to point out that the libertarians deserve credit as well for siding with individual liberty and equal justice consistently.
Now, to my conservative friends: Get your story straight! When it is convenient the social conservatives proclaim unabashed support for and fidelity to the Constitution, but when it violates their pretty little sensibilities to allow a same sex couple to get married, they have shown themselves perfectly willing to throw the Constitution under the bus. If you support the Constitution, you support all of it, all the time, not just when it lines up with your personal tastes.
I direct you to Article IV, Section I. It states that, “Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State”. For those of you who have a hard time deciphering the law jargon, this basically means that each state must recognize the legitimacy of the legal actions of another state. This is mostly seen by having driver’s licenses issued in one state be valid in another state, but marriage certificates are likewise legal actions that have to be recognized by all other states. Therefore, if one state issues a marriage license to a gay couple, and North Carolina refuses to recognize it because of this Amendment, then North Carolina is in violation of the Federal Constitution. In short, this whole issue should be a seen as a charade because whenever a gay couple receives a marriage license from Vermont, for example, North Carolina must recognize it or be in violation of the Federal Constitution.
Now, social conservatives, if you still oppose gay marriage because you believe that your version of a biblical argument supersedes the Constitution, I beg you to accept that, while Judeo-Christian morality may define your personal life, it cannot be, and should not be, forcibly imposed on your fellow citizens through the government.
You may very well think that marriage is a sacred institution that will be defiled by the inclusion of homosexuals, but here are three things that you might want to consider. First, and most simply, the Christian arguments that you employ in your crusade against gay marriage also tell us that it is not up to humanity to decide what constitutes a sacred union; it’s up to Him. Second, no one is forcing your church to recognize or perform these marriages; only the government has to recognize them. This would simply mean that homosexual couples would enjoy the same spousal rights (filing taxes as a couple, having an easier time adopting children out of a broken foster care system, etc.) as straight couples. And third, you do not want the government to have the ability to legislate morality. Think about the implications of giving the government that power. Would you be so thrilled if a hypothetical movement, which thought that limiting the global population through forced abortion was a moral cause, gained strength, and they used the power that you want to give the government to enforce their moral code? Absolutely not! When citizens give the government the power to enforce morality, it can be used against them when the government changes its view of what is moral behavior.