POWER PLAYS AND PARTNERSHIPS
I see now that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has supported a proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriages.

This is in reaction to the recent Supreme Court decision that Texas’ anti-sodomy law (and by extension those of other states) is an unconstitutional violation of the right to privacy.

In Orwellian fashion, Sen. Frist was quoted as telling ABC’s This Week, “I have this fear that this zone of privacy that we all want protected in our own homes is gradually — or I'm concerned about the potential for it gradually being encroached upon, where criminal activity within the home would in some way be condoned.”

Strangely, he doesn’t have the same level concern for government bureaucrats regulating in which hole men stick their penises. (I’m sorry to put it so crudely but that’s fundamentally what the laws boil down to).

Of course, the right to privacy protects citizens precisely from that which Sen. Frist fears. If you don’t want criminal (or any other) activity in your house, you don’t have to accept it.

Anyways, it will present conservatives with an interesting dilemma. Many of them slammed the Supreme Court decision not because they supported anti-sodomy laws but because they felt it was not the decision of the federal government to regulate that which sovereign state legislatures choose to undertake (even if those actions are unconstitutional).

Yet the amendment supported by Sen. Frist would do exactly that: regulate that which sovereign state legislatures choose to undertake. The feds want to seize the states’ authority to regulate marriage. This from the leader of the party that supposedly stands for a smaller federal government. Why are some federal power grabs ok but not others? What happened to the “Washington should mind its own business” ideology? Do states have enforceable rights but not individual citizens? What exactly is the message Sen. Frist and his colleagues are sending?

If the state is going to remain in the business of marriage recognition, then the equal protection clause should apply. Although personally, I wonder why it needs to get involved in the first place?

Several places, like France, Vermont and Quebec, have systems where couples can register partnerships. It becomes more a contractual thing in the eyes of the state. This doesn’t diminish the sanctity of marriage. If you want maintain the spiritual aspect of marriage, you can still get married in a Church or your preferred house of worship. But some want to co-habitate without the “until death do us part” obligation (not that this obligation isn’t already shirked by the pseudo-religious). They want the state recognition because their partnership can have practical legal implications, such as those related to taxes, pension, insurance, property and child custody.

It’s not really a question of the state “endorsing” such relationships. Not anymore than the state “endorsing” a person who marries for the fourth time after divorcing their three previous spouses. It is being neutral. The state is simply recognizing the reality of the relationships so that legal considerations are clearly known.

That way, the state gets out of the business of marriage and leaves it to religious institutions where it belongs.