I hope it fails and am prepared to rally against it. It's an abuse of the constitutional amendment process. The US Constitution is meant to restrict federal gov't's intrusiveness. In this country, "marriage" has always been the domain of the states and should remain so.
I love the politics of convenience around here.
Do you really think the Democrats will be content to leave it to the states? No, they will make it mandatory for all 50, just like they do with every other pet liberal cause.
Unfortunately, the "full faith and credit" clause means that the rest of us may be forced to bow before the Massachusetts Supreme Court's unconsitutional declaration. We need this amendment to protect the rest of us from such abuses. In the long run, we need something to limit judicial activism in the long run but this is the issue that is being trust upon us so we must respond and protect our society.
The proposed amendment doesn't increase the federal government's power, and the United States Constitution itself isn't by definition coextensive with the power of the federal government.
What the proposed amendment would cure would be the very rare situation where a state has managed to figure out a way to intrude upon the power of the other states - specifically, by abusing the Full Faith and Credit clause. The federal government has nothing to do with the matter.
That would be incorrect. Marriage was defined by the feds when Utah entered the union. Either they changed their law to refelct marriage = one man one woman or they could not enter the union. That is and remains the precedent for the definition of marriage. The states regulate marriage but can not change the meaning any more than Utah could except for edicts from tyrannical courts.
In addition there are thousands of federal laws relating to whther people are married or not. The idea that 50 different states can evolve this new paradigm of marriage differently is ridiculous. The federal courts will say that if a hetero couple move from Mass to Alabama and their marriage is recognised then equal protection under the law demands that Tom, Joe, Dick and Harry must be treated the same. And whats more that would be the correct interpretation of the constitution.
I love the politics of convenience around here.
Beats ignorance.