Apr

7

WHY NOT FEDERALISM?

[From AndrewSullivan.com]

Kansas is the latest state to put discrimination against gays into its constitution. A terrible stain but within the rights of the people of that state. Stanley Kurtz exults and points out that 18 states now have such constitutional bans against committed gay unions. Kurtz predicts 30 such anti-gay bans by 2008. But then he says this makes it all the more necessary to pass a federal amendment banning protections for gay couples in every state. Huh? Isn’t the opposite actually the case? Doesn’t state action mean federal action is less, rather than more necessary? This is surely how federalism is supposed to work. Why is it so terrible if the voters in Massachusetts or Connecticut or Vermont choose another path? (And voters have been involved. In Massachusetts, voters have punished pols who voted against marriage equality and rewarded those who supported it. The state legislature may well kill off an anti-gay-marriage amendment this year. In Connecticut and California, legislative bodies have enacted broad civil union laws, that are the effective equivalent of civil marriage.) We may well soon have a situation in which there are states that are safe for gay couples, and states that are unsafe. Gay people can move to the free states, rather as inter-racial couples moved across country to states where equality and freedom were respected. And in the process, we can see whether the gay-friendly states see marriage collapse, as opposed to the flourishing of marriage in those states which are constitutionally hostile to gays. I’m in favor of federalism. Today’s GOP right isn’t.

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