” ‘Slavery was a social issue. You want that amendment repealed?’ Not all things are amenable to that solution. Alcoholism is a social issue but the 18th Amendment was not the right answer. Nice red herring though.”
No red herring at all.
A federal ban on slavery was obviously a violation of “federalism,” as are constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech, religion, and bearing arms, given that they do not allow those issues to be decided by the states in different ways.
So obviously our forefathers thought some things — not all things — should be universally guaranteed, while others not “enumerated” are left to the states.
I support adding universal guarantees of prenatal Right to Life and of what a marriage is to the Constitution.
If you disagree, please explain how each of the above — slavery, free speech, etc. — is a justifiable violation of “federalism,” but the right to be born in the first place is not. Or the protection and preservation of the lowest, most local unit of self-government on which not only American but all of Western Civ rests: marriage.
“I support adding universal guarantees of prenatal Right to Life and of what a marriage is to the Constitution.”
Yes on the first, no on the second.
Why? In the case of abortion and life a life is at stake. Abortionists say it’s not a human yet but the fetus is not going to become a snake or a cat or a mineral - only a human being. This is a very clear-cut scenario: Life, Death. This situation resembles in type the Amendments that have gone well for us: ending slavery, ladies’ suffrage - we expand freedom and expand the definition of who is fully human to include more humans.
In the case of the second, we are encoding a moral value which is not life or death or whether someone is property. You and I agree on the worth of this moral value, but that’s not the point. If in Massachusetts Bob and Joe get ‘married’ the harm is a) to themselves; b) to taxpayers and/or fellow participants in HMOs who will bear the financial costs of the consequences of their buggery; and c) to what we would call the moral fiber of MA.
Now I would argue that the moral condition of a state full of people who would like to recognize ‘gay’ marriage and one in which the state *has* recognized ‘gay’ marriage is little if not zero. So I don’t think locking in a federal position on marriage really improves the soul of the nation, so to speak.
In fact, the case example of Prohibition leads me to conclude that the opposite happens. The effort was moral, well-intentioned, and resulted in drunkenness galore, the rise of organized crime, and along the way a hefty expansion in Federal power in the process of fighting said organized crime.
In my opinion the best way to handle this one is to let the states handle it separately, but guarantee that one state cannot end up ordering around the other 49 on the issue.
In this way some states will attempt experiments; these corruptions will fail on their own (note how where ‘gay’ marriage has been tried the ‘partners’ fall apart very quickly), and further on a political level the issue will be off the table with the ‘gays’ unable to rant about how ‘theocrats’ are keeping them down.
Oh: for reference, gun laws do vary considerably between states. The ones in MI do not resemble those of IL, despite the clear wording of the 2nd Amendment (and those of the Constitutions of each State).