Debra Saunders would probably be happy living in the deep south.
Pre-Civil War. She may picture herself as a Southern Belle in
wide hoop skirts sipping mint juleps on the verandah while darkies peel her
grapes. At least that’s the impression
this reader got after reading her Chronicle
column this morning. No, she is not
spouting right wing rhetoric, nor pining for the good old days. She’s simply
saying she wants the voters in each state to decide what marriage laws will
apply. If State A says ok for same sex couples to marry, she’s all for it, but
if State B says no way, she’s for that too.
She prefaces this whole “let the voters decide” spiel with
her avowed support for gay marriage. She
has lots of gay friends, she hastens to assure us and she would never be happy
if California passed a law allowing them to marry. (So long as those who object
don’t have to perform the ceremonies.)
That kind of reasoning would have kept slavery in half our
country. It would have denied black people and women the right to vote. It would have prevented interracial couples
from marrying. And it would have allowed states to deny basic reproductive
freedom to women. Oh, yeah, she uses Roe v. Wade as an example, pointing out
that the Supreme Court could go back on precedent in the choice cases and
re-interpret the Constitution to take away a women’s right.
But so could the states’ voters make similar changes if it
was left up to them. With voter suppression statutes being proposed in many
states, and not just the Southern ones, it is only the courts that keep the
legislatures and the voters in check. If a measure that is enacted through
popular vote is unconstitutional, it cannot stand.
If we believe in basic equality, then all people should be
free to marry whom they choose and where they choose, not be forced to move if
their state denies a right that another state allows. This is a fundamental
freedom. In this she parts company from even her conservative gay friends, who
have filed a “Friend of the Court “ brief supporting gay marriage in the
Proposition 8 case now before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Instead, she echoes another conservative, Bush Assistant US
Attorney General known for his authorship of the “torture memo”, now a law
professor, who states: “It would be a mistake for the Supreme
Court to use this case to basically cut off the political process and impose
its own view on a moral and political question that is very divisive.”
Wrong. It would be a mistake to leave
such an issue, one of basic human rights, up to the whim of voters. That’s why
we have a Constitution and a Supreme Court.
Do they always get it right? No, especially with the Bush era court we
are now stuck with. But they will, eventually.
Just as the Court did away with the policy of separate but equal in the
1954 case of Brown
v. Board of Education; and a year later reversed its 1905 Decision in Lochner v. New York decision that allowed gouging of employees
under a convoluted interpretation of contract law, stating in Williamson
v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma “The day is
gone when this Court uses the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to
strike down state laws, regulatory of business and industrial conditions,
because they may be unwise, improvident, or out of harmony with a particular
school of thought."
Put away the picture hat, Debra, and join us in the 21st
century, crossing our fingers that this Court does the right thing!
