Monday, May 15, 2006
Both Andrew Sullivan and Mary Cheney seem to be missing the point of the Federal Marriage Amendment. No serious person really was thinking "about trying to amend the constitution as a political strategy." The political strategy rested in the threat to so amend the Constitution. Ms. Cheney is absolutely correct in how abhorent such an amendment would be. That said, one needn't be a "Christianist" to conclude that bypassing the legislative process in order to alter one of our civilization's most central institutions in the name of a...novel...conception of civil rights is also abhorent. Essentially the middle got pretty much what it wanted out of the entire matter. The courts were scared off of their attempt to legislate social progress and the Amendment was allowed to the die the death it so richly deserved.
