Federal Marriage Amendment

In this article, Mike Minton writes:

Normally, in issues such as this, I am a staunch supporter of states' rights to make such decisions. And to be completely honest, I would prefer that this decision be left exclusively to the individual states. However, the United States Constitution makes this option impossible. Due to the "Full Faith and Credit Clause" in the Constitution, even if homosexual marriage is illegal in my beloved Kentucky, if a gay couple were to get married in a liberal state such as Massachusetts and then move here, because of Full Faith and Credit, Kentucky would have to recognize the "marriage."

Is this sanctimonious fuck-head actually attacking the United States Constitution?

Well, unfortunately, our constitutional form of representative democracy has opened itself up to just this kind of attack. It gives idiots, like Mike here, two potentially very dangerous weapons: States Rights and Majority Rule.

States Rights -- Today, our world is vastly different from the one in which the founding fathers lived when they developed our system of government. Then, the country lacked any kind of basic transportation or communication infrastructure. The only effective way to govern the masses was to distribute the bulk of that responsibility to the states. This distribution inevitably lead to cultural, ideological and economic divisions. These, in turn, eventually provoked dissensions, and in 1861 a conflict over States Rights lead to the American Civl War, which resulted in 970,000 casualties including approximately 560,000 deaths.

Majority Rule -- This is a cornerstone of democracy. These days, however, it's being used to legislate opinion. It's become a bludgeon wielded by an angry mob of bigots and homophobes against those who dare to think (or love) differently. Any time you put a person's basic human rights up for a vote, it's... well, to coin a phrase, "That's a bad idea."

Come on people -- we need to start thinking like Americans. Human rights are simply that: human rights. It shouldn't matter whether I live in Massachusetts, Kentucky, Vermont or Texas. Moreover, our federal government should be working to safeguard our human rights not wasting a lot of time, effort and money trying to limit them.


tags: homosexuality, homosexual, gay