Billbears, you get points for cleverness if not for persuasiveness.
Domestic slavery was not banned, nor was a Civil War fought, because of how slavery affected “foreign commerce.” But nice try.
Further you write: “If the Framers knew there were some advocating passage of an Amendment to ban associations at the federal level (no matter how disgusting they may be), they would be laughing their heads off.”
I’ll concede that the Framers would have thought it simply inconceivable that what was at the time a capital offense in some colonies (sodomy, or “buggery” as it was called then) would EVER be claimed as the basis for marriage.
And if the Framers understood that the only way to stop a latter-day runaway tyrannical Supreme Court from overturning the traditional marriage laws and constitutional provisions of the states, they’d have written the definition of marriage into the document at the time.
If the Supreme Court in the 19th century had failed to uphold the Congressional action banning polygamy, there’d have been a ONE-man, ONE-woman marriage amendment adopted then, which would have saved us all the trouble of doing it today.
Bump
No they wouldn't have. Because they understood it was an issue for the states. The problem with some that advocate a marriage amendment is they're wanting to play both sides of the fence. If you go down this path of passing an Amendment for every moral issue, you're going to have a Constitution with a list of Amendments stretching to the floor. It's a knee jerk reaction to a much larger issue. In fact the 10th Amendment clearly already covers marriage and many other issues.
Passing Amendments to catch every concern while it may alleviate a small concern for a short time will not fix the problem. The only way to fix the problem is to nominate judges that respect federalism. Personally I can only think of a handful that have been nominated in the past 20 years (Janice Rogers Brown and Clarence Thomas come to mind and Thomas only at times). And with the current leadership of both parties, I don't see the situation being reversed.
I would also add reading Federalist 81 (or 78 I forget at times) the original intent of the judiciary was quite limited in scope. What it has evolved to (review of state laws, etc.) was not the original intent either. Misinterpretation by progressive courts in the 20th century of the 14th Amendment have taken that evolvement to great lengths unimagined by the Framers as well