>>> With marriage amendment, no one wins
That’s the truth though not so much for the reasons cited. The issue will ultimately be decided not in state legislative initiatives like this, but in the US Supreme Court. Most probably in the Prop 8 appeal already working its way up in the courts.
If the court rules that gay marriage is a right, initiatives like this will be voided as being contrary to the federal constitution. The fight will have been for nothing.
If on the other hand the court rules that there is no guaranteed right to gay marriage, current Minnesota doesn’t permit such anyway. So again nothing is really gained.
The political capital to fight on this issue could be more profitably spent on more immediate and lasting issues. Budgets, unions, etc.
It won't have been for nothing. It will have been for the very valid cause of demonstrating the will of Minnesota. Consulting the People is something movement gays assiduously avoid in every jurisdiction.
The gay movement has always, always sought top-level, "strict scrutiny" Supreme Court rulings as a way to legislate their will against the 96% majority.
The political capital to fight on this issue could be more profitably spent on more immediate and lasting issues. Budgets, unions, etc.
There is no more "lasting issue" than the foundations of society itself. That is why social-conservative issues should be at the top of the list, every election, and only the poofty cabal in the RNC leadership ranks has kept this issue out of the Constitution itself.
We need a federal amendment to spike the gays' guns for good, and President Palin will obtain one.
As far as the author's inane remarks that "no one wins," I'll concede that he is in a sense right, though not for the reasons he has in mind. It's always a tragedy to be forced to defend something so firmly established in common reason and natural law from insane nihilists bent on corrupting the very nature of reason itself. It is never a victory to have to build an expensive, impenetrable bulwark around one's property; even if it does hold back a hoard of mindless barbarians bent on murder. Such is the effect of these marriage amendments: needful, but tragic in their needfulness.