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December 01, 2003
Robert George on same sex marriage By Tom Smith Princeton professor of jurisprudence Robert George had an interesting piece on same sex marriage and the Massachusetts decision in Friday's Wall Street Journal. George argues, too pessimisticly in my view, that the US Supreme Court will ultimately decide that all states must recognize the validity of same sex unions blessed by the Oyster State (or whatever they call Massachusetts). George says that this will force conservatives to seek a national constitutional amendment. He thinks the chances of such an amendment succeeding are pretty good. For various reasons, the politics of homosexual marriage has been much on my mind lately. I am coming to think that this issue may be a large rock upon which social liberals wreck themselves. In all but a few very liberal states, I think the opposition to gay marriage is strong and unyielding, and likely to remain so. If the Supreme Court did attempt to impose it on all 50 states, it would encounter profound opposition. The Court may have no principled reason for not enforcing universal gay marriage after Lawrence, as George observes, but having no principled reason only inhibits the Court sometimes, such as when it is highly convenient. Unless the Court's composition changes to a strong liberal majority, I can't see them not taking the sensible and easy way out of allowing different strokes to different federal folks. Even the Supreme Court is not stupid enough to decide a second and even more inflammatory Roe v. Wade, even if individual justices certainly are. However, I concede I am on shaky ground: Any sentence that begins "Even the Supreme Court is not stupid enough" has a good chance of being wrong. You might think any given justice might get, just randomly, the thought "Maybe we shouldn't force the American people to choose between the institution of the Supreme Court and the institution of marriage?" the way Steve Martin's medieval barber wondered "Maybe we should have a Renaissance?" But we know what happened there. The barber concluded "Nahhhhhh!" |