Published in the Winona Daily News, June 7, 2006
C’mon Mr. President, we don’t have time for this nonsense.
We have a country that’s slipping into the red at the rate of $1.75 billion a day, that’s importing 11 million barrels of oil a day and losing our young men and women to Iraqi bombs and snipers every day and you’re telling us to pay attention to who might want to marry whom.
With Iraq, the deficit, spiraling energy costs, health care, melting ice caps and the price of tea (and everything else we buy there) in China — amending the Constitution to deal with something that hasn’t happened yet is worthy of Congressional debate and special presidential attention?
We don’t think so.
Do we think it’s a cheap political ploy to distract citizens from their country’s real problems?
Yes we do.
It’s a case of the president crying “Wolf! Wolf!” while pointing to a snoozing Chihuahua.
Whether an individual believes the right to marry should be limited to heterosexual couples or not, the Marriage Protection Amendment before the Senate this week is an ill-considered un-needed politically-driven legislative sideshow.
From the nation’s beginning, setting standards for marriage has been a state, not a federal prerogative. How old, how closely related, how long to wait — marriage laws all change significantly as a prospective couple crosses state lines. Fifty years ago, in some states, race entered the equation. Nowadays, in some states, gender no longer does.
The Republic has survived.
Specifically, when it comes to same-sex marriages, 18 states have amended their constitutions to define marriage as between “one man and one woman.” Other states, Minnesota among them, have the same definition written into statutory law.
Furthermore, in 1996, the federal Defense of Marriage Act became law which specifies that, under federal law, “a marriage is the legal union of a man and a woman as husband and wife” and absolves any state from the obligation to recognize a same-sex marriage performed elsewhere.
What most people believe the proposed Constitutional amendment is intended to do has already been done.
So what is the president all worked up about?
Well, he insists, someday, somehow, some court might decide all those laws and all those amendments are so much ink on paper and only a Constitutional amendment can protect us against that.
It’s a pre-emptive amendment — a lot like the invasion of Iraq was a pre-emptive war.
We suggest a conservative approach. If the Supreme Court rules that heterosexual exclusivity is an unconstitutional encumbrance on Americans’ civil and marital rights, then let the Congress take up the issue and, if in their wisdom they see it necessary to overrule the court, send such an amendment to the states for consideration and ratification. But first, let’s let the idea get past Justices Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Scalia, Kennedy and their somewhat less strict-constructionist colleagues. Until then, it’s just the president and his partisans waving a political red shirt — the 21st century equivalent of segregationist race-baiting in the Old South.
We don’t have time for this nonsense, Mr. President. Neither should you.
By Jerome Christenson on behalf of the Winona Daily News editorial board, which also includes publisher Rusty Cunningham, editor Darrell Ehrlick, photo editor James A. Bowey and sales and marketing manager Tom Best. To comment, call 453-3522 or send e-mail to letters@winonadailynews.com
