The slave trade was foreign commerce.
“The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.” So you’re saying you think the issue of slavery, obviously falling into the category of “lives, liberties, and properties,” should revert to the states?
And yet some of the separate and sovereign northern states passed legislation independent of the federal government banning slaves, some even banning the existence of blacks within their borders (the Oregon Constitution went so far as to ban 'Chinamen' (their words not mine)). Apparently to these northern states it did fall under the purview of the states as to what their powers were.
But marriage has nothing to do with 'foreign commerce' does it? It clearly falls under the limitations of Federalist 45. 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.
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.