Posted on 06/26/2013 5:41:29 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Here's The latest in the continuing saga of Rand on the Skywire, trying to inch along the tightrope between libertarians and conservatives towards the GOP nomination on the other side.
Love him or hate him, the 2016 debates will be roughly 8,000 percent more interesting with him onstage than they would be otherwise.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told ABC News he believes the Supreme Court ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act was appropriate, and that the issue should be left to the states. He praised Justice Anthony Kennedy for avoiding “a cultural war.”
“As a country we can agree to disagree,” Paul said today, stopping for a moment to talk as he walked through the Capitol. “As a Republican Party, that’s kind of where we are as well. The party is going to have to agree to disagree on some of these issues.”…
Paul said he agreed with Kennedy, whom he called “someone who doesn’t just want to be in front of opinion but wants government to keep up with opinion.” He said Kennedy “tried to strike a balance.”
Many social conservatives won’t be happy to hear him talking about leaving things to the states, and they really won’t be happy with him waving off the culture war, but they were never Paul’s target constituency in the first place. If you’re a young, bridge-building, aspiring GOP nominee, the politic answer here is obvious: Support traditional marriage at the state level and oppose any lawmaking on the subject at the federal level. Be a socially conservative small-government federalist and hope that both social cons and moderate/libertarians each cut you enough of a break on your middle-ground position that the Skywire doesn’t sway too much. That’s the smart play for someone in Rand’s position (at least until he makes it to the general, when any misgivings about gay marriage at the state level will begin magically to melt away). Just one question: Does he support state traditional marriage laws at the state level? I honestly can’t tell. This morning he told Glenn Beck this:
“I think traditional marriage laws are now affirmed in 34 states,” the Kentucky Republican said on Glenn Beck’s radio show Wednesday morning, calling it the “good side of the ruling.”
So he does support them. But wait — a few months ago, he said this:
Social issues are another area where he thinks Republicans can make a better argument to independents and centrists without departing from their principles. Gay marriage, for instance, is one issue on which Paul would like to shake up the Republican position. “I’m an old-fashioned traditionalist. I believe in the historic and religious definition of marriage,” he says. “That being said, I’m not for eliminating contracts between adults. I think there are ways to make the tax code more neutral, so it doesn’t mention marriage. Then we don’t have to redefine what marriage is; we just don’t have marriage in the tax code.”
As I said at the time, that’s the sort of thing you often hear from libertarians who want the government, and not just the federal government, out of the marriage business altogether. I don’t think Rand could get away with that position in a GOP primary, which is why I assume he’s still nominally in favor of state marriage laws. Whether he’d have an Obama-esque “evolution” in support of liberalizing those laws to include gays once safely elected, though, I leave to you to decide.
Via Noah Rothman, here he is with Beck having a not-especially-libertarian exchange about whether legalizing gay marriage necessarily means legalizing polygamy. Beck’s more concerned about that than Paul is — Rand clarified what he said here about non-humans later in the day, in fact — but he does seem to see some hazy role for government in legislating morality. Some of his dad’s fans won’t like that, but plenty of mainstream conservatives will.
Update: A “wacko bird” divergence:
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) today released the following statement on the Supreme Court’s decisions on the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8:
Today’s Supreme Court decisions on marriage are a regrettable overreach against the will of the people as expressed through large, bipartisan majorities in Congress and directly through referendum in California – a markedly blue state.
Nothing in the Constitution compelled this result, and, once again, the Court has chosen to substitute its own views of public policy for the democratically expressed will of the voters.
The family is the fundamental building block of society, and I strongly support traditional marriage between one man and one woman. The voters of California made that same choice, until the courts improperly substituted their preferences for those of the people.
Our Federalism allows different states to make different policy judgments based on the values and mores of their citizens. Federal courts should respect that diversity and uphold that popular sovereignty, not impose their own policy agenda.
I like the notion of the states making their own decisions but I don’t like the notion of those who oppose gay marriage being demonized and marginalized like Justice Scalia noted in his dissent.
“What about Mike Lee and Jeff Sessions?”
Both great people, too.
I was impressed that Mike Lee wrote a book about why Roberts was wrong about Obamacare.
A homosexual marriage will have to be recognized nationally.
Families cannot be trapped in isolated states. Two lesbians moving somewhere with their children will be recognized as married.
It would be nice if states could assert their soverign rights on this matter.
These big talkers like Governor Rick “The Conservative” Perry could show us if they are more than smoke blowers....
To do what, tell military members and federal employees and tourists in car accidents at the hospital, and new Texans bringing in their 4 kids, that their marriage is invalid in Texas?
Agree with Cruz on this one
I’m just trying to throw an idea out there since universal recognition of gay marriage is of great concern to you.
My main concern is the demonization and marginalization of those who support traditional marriage.
We are moving in the direction of a totalitarian state where religious belief will be subordinated to what the state says is right and wrong.
I think you make very good points...but I also think you divert somewhat in the “estate” portion of your argument.
I do not know what the limitations are for estate taxes, I think they may be at $2 million. But they do not affect the overwhelming majority. The fact is that via powers of attorney, all those estate transfers that are eligible to escape estate taxation could be made very easily and economically.
The real demon in this, is that marriage is NOW officially complete as a 3-way deal between two who claim to love each other and wish to weld their lives together, before whatever deity they choose or lack thereof; and government. It is effectively a repudiation of religion and a ratification of the substitution of government into whatever place religion once might have occupied. As such...it’s in perfect alignment with all the other directives and energies of this junta.
Rand Paul - a libertarian. So he wants fag marriage forced on the country.
He is dead to me.
I agree with you!
Shark, Jumped; 1 each.
++
Once again Cruz articulates actual conservatism despite its unpopularity and refuses to bow down to the rainbow facade.
Good for him, and good for us.
The homosexualists, OTOH, have won nothing but a Pyrrhic victory.
Straight up states rights issue.
The above was said out of concern about divorce. I can imagine Leo's head spinning around at the thought of the homosexual simulation of matrimony.17. Now, since the family and human society at large spring from marriage, these men will on no account allow matrimony to be the subject of the jurisdiction of the Church. Nay, they endeavor to deprive it of all holiness, and so bring it within the contracted sphere of those rights which, having been instituted by man, are ruled and administered by the civil jurisprudence of the community. Wherefore it necessarily follows that they attribute all power over marriage to civil rulers, and allow none whatever to the Church; and, when the Church exercises any such power, they think that she acts either by favor of the civil authority or to its injury. Now is the time, they say, for the heads of the State to vindicate their rights unflinchingly, and to do their best to settle all that relates to marriage according as to them seems good.
18. Hence are owing civil marriages, commonly so called; hence laws are framed which impose impediments to marriage; hence arise judicial sentences affecting the marriage contract, as to whether or not it have been rightly made. Lastly, all power of prescribing and passing judgment in this class of cases is, as we see, of set purpose denied to the Catholic Church, so that no regard is paid either to her divine power or to her prudent laws. Yet, under these, for so many centuries, have the nations lived on whom the light of civilization shone bright with the wisdom of Christ Jesus.
19. Nevertheless, the naturalists,[32] as well as all who profess that they worship above all things the divinity of the State, and strive to disturb whole communities with such wicked doctrines, cannot escape the charge of delusion. Marriage has God for its Author, and was from the very beginning a kind of foreshadowing of the Incarnation of His Son; and therefore there abides in it a something holy and religious; not extraneous, but innate; not derived from men, but implanted by nature…
20. Next, the dignity of the sacrament must be considered, for through addition of the sacrament the marriages of Christians have become far the noblest of all matrimonial unions. But to decree and ordain concerning the sacrament is, by the will of Christ Himself, so much a part of the power and duty of the Church that it is plainly absurd to maintain that even the very smallest fraction of such power has been transferred to the civil ruler…
DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE ACTTitle 1. Definition of marriage.
For the purpose of federal regulation and federal jurisprudence, marriage is defined as a bond between one man and one woman.
In interpreting the words "marriage," "matrimony," "wedding" and all variants of the above, federal courts will use the above definition as its meaning.
Title 2. Not subject to judicial review.
The definitions established in this Act are not subject to judicial review.
That would have permanently taken the issue out of the hands of the judicial activists.
Thanks SeekAndFind.
The next logical step is for religious groups to get "out of the business" of marriage altogether. And what I mean by this is that these groups must all return to their roots and establish marriage as a truly religious institution. No more straddling the fence and paying homage to Caesar by going through the farce of mixing a religious event with a civil process.
Ironically, the whole idea about government involving itself in a religious institution like marriage is tied to this country's roots as a Protestant nation. That's why the whole question of defining marriage was never a problem before. As these religious sects lose their minds and turn away from their own moral principles over time, and as this country becomes populated by people from more and more different religious/ethnic backgrounds, the natural result is absolute chaos.
I agree with everything you've said here, with one key exception. This didn't just happen NOW, but happened many years ago when religious sects all over the country voluntarily invited government into their own affairs.
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