The gay marriage amendment was not a solution
July 16, 2004 ~ 1:50 p.m.
This past Wednesday, the proposed gay marriage amendment went down in flames in the Senate, falling shy of passage by twelve votes. Along with the majority of Democrats, six Republicans voted against it.
I�m relieved that the measure got defeated. We didn�t need to amend the Constitution to attempt to settle this decisive issue.
Now don�t get me wrong. I still think gay marriage is an assault on tradition and family values (if I may dare to use a phrase that inspires such strong cynicism). It�s a belittling of the social contract that binds society together. As has been made abundantly clear, these days, anything� anything �goes.
But two considerations were at the forefront of my thought on the amendment proposal:
The reactionary reaction
Although I believe ardently that Bush did not start this latest cultural battle, he chose a reactionary method in an attempt deal with it. A Constitutional amendment barring gay marriage was as much a sham as the prospect of gay marriage itself.
Solidifying the conservative base?
The anti-gay marriage amendment was Bush�s passion because he sought an issue to garner support from a bewildered and angst-ridden conservative base justifiably upset over his spendthrift ways, not to mention the anti-war faction of conservatives.
Now then ... What does it say about said conservative base�and the GOP�to back the idea of amending the Constitution to fight what was, in large part and in due course, inevitable anyway? Conservatives who supported the proposed amendment either did not know or ignored history. Prohibition, anyone?
As surely as a Constitutional Amendment did not stop drinking or drunkenness during the early 20th century (please see below, dear reader), the gay marriage amendment would not have halted the slide toward social anarchy. The problem, as Bush and conservatives have pointed out, is the power that federal judges arbitrarily wield. That being the issue at hand, why not just hand the whole mess over to the states to decide? And if state supreme court justices enact gay marriage, as in Massachusetts�the test case for this whole sorry debacle�let the battle for tradition be waged in those states in question.
Many conservatives were, quite rightly, reluctant to provide no basis for the states to settle the issue themselves. Even some Democrats�who mostly opposed the amendment for social standing among their liberal base�saw it that way in their opposition. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, for instance.
�In South Dakota, we�ve never had a single same sex marriage and we won�t have any,� he said. �It�s prohibited by South Dakota law as it is now in thirty-eight other states. There is no confusion. There is no ambiguity.� Though it pains me greatly to admit it, Daschle was absolutely correct when he opined that there was no �urgent need� for a constitutional amendment.
The amendment was reactionary spin which only stood to damage the image of conservatives and the Republican Party greatly more than it would ever enforce traditional values. Good riddance to it.
Speaking of Prohibition �
When we talk of drugs, we often find much cause to talk about illegality. The two terms tend to go hand-in-hand. This is due to the fear of permitting people a chemically derived escape hatch from the effrontery of human existence, in my mere opinion. The Puritans wouldn�t have approved, you know. (Nonetheless, Thomas Jefferson might have approved simply to deal with working in the same administration as Alexander Hamilton, had he not been so busy trying to muster support for the French revolutionaries.)
There�s simply no moral scope for barring drugs from those who can use them wisely�the same argument applies to guns as well�which is to say, the great majority of people.
There is, however, great legal scope for it, and I am convinced beyond a shadow of doubt that if alcohol was to be discovered tomorrow, it would be regarded as the most notorious of drugs, ripe for the government�s Controlled Substances shit-list, and doomed to top even methamphetamine or heroin in terms of government-warning propaganda and proportion of anti-drug law funding spent in the attempt to control it.
The BBC aired a documentary entitled �Drunk and Dangerous� last night, focusing on drunken violence in Cardiff. The Welsh capital city is the hot spot for young revellers and a prime destination for bachelor parties/hen nights. Binge drinking takes place on a massive scale. (It�s nothing unique to Cardiff, as this entry attempts to make clear.) We can argue that the problem lies with the legal age being 18. But it�s not the whole story. Inebriation at any age is a potential danger to the individual and, if extrapolated amongst the general public, to society as well.
Alcohol, of course, needs only to be taken in moderation, and most of the general public does drink responsibly. In some cases, it calms people down rather than turns them into monsters (I consider myself considerably more temperamental while sober than when I�ve had a tipple.) It is even good for the heart when consumed in moderation. Any alcoholic drink, that is. (That, plus the bioflavonoids and reservatrol found in red wine makes the dark fermented grape juice my drink of choice.) The moral argument for suppressing drink loses yet more credibility.
And yet the scary point to be made is that there was a point in American history when alcohol was suddenly assumed to be the source of all evil in mankind, a great scourge upon society, and war was declared against the substance with the passage of Prohibition, which took a Constitutional Amendment to enforce (later nullified).
It also tells us something about the leaders of the time who publicly supported Prohibition. President Warren Harding was one of them, stolidly defending Prohibition while privately pouring bourbon down his throat. No surprise, really, to learn that Harding�s was one of the most corrupt administrations in American history.
Anyone who doubts the verity of the prohibitionist impulse needs only to witness the veracity with which it has historically been promoted from the Bully Pulpit, emphasis on �bully,� a.k.a. the Presidency.
� M.E.M.
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Copyright � 2001-2007 by M.E. Manning. All material is written by me, unless explicitly stated otherwise by use of footnotes or bylines. Do not copy or redistribute without my permission.
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