Donklephant » Blog Archive » John Danforth On Gay Marriage

John Danforth On Gay Marriage

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Religion, Sexuality, Smart Things Said By Smart People

“Some historian should really look at all of the proposals that have been forth throughout the history of our country for possible constitutional amendments. Maybe at some point in time there was one that was sillier than this one, but I don’t know of one.”

— Former Sen. John Danforth (R-MO), in a speech on efforts to ban gay marriage.

Thank you John. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 4th, 2006 and is filed under Religion, Sexuality, Smart Things Said By Smart People. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “John Danforth On Gay Marriage”

Monica Says:
May 4th, 2006 at 1:32 pm
I agree whole heartedly. The gay marriage amendment goes against everything I understood constitutional amendments to represent.

My hope is that future generations will correct this wrong.
DosPeros Says:
May 4th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
I’m not for it, either, but this is exactly what happens in a democracy when judges view the constitutional penumbra like the universe…always expanding and (continuing with a tortured metaphor) turning Article III of the constitution into a gravitational blackhole. I hardly bother to vote anymore, I just sue.

I voted against the constitutional ban in Missouri, but I was appreciative of the vote.
Paul Brinkley Says:
May 5th, 2006 at 11:40 am
It’s not a very good amendment, yes. It’s public policy, not defining how government should proceed. It has to do with delineating civil rights or federal/state power, but if it’s going to do that, it should be more general; Amendments are not meant to be tactical.

If we wanted to regulate gay marriage with an amendment, it would have to cover a more sweeping area, such as (for example) giving Congress the power to regulate family units in the interest of creating a stronger younger generation (and then doing the scutwork to prove that regulation of gay marriage would have some effect on this), or dictating that the right of the people to engage in long-term civil unions shall not be abridged (which in our culture requires much less justification).

Even if the former were done, any regulation of gay marriage would be dependent on both that amendment and a body of research arguing the need for such regulation.

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

NOTE TO COMMENTERS:

You must ALWAYS fill in the two word CAPTCHA below to submit a comment. And if this is your first time commenting on Donklephant, it will be held in a moderation queue for approval. Please don't resubmit the same comment a couple times. We'll get around to moderating it soon enough.

Also, sometimes even if you've commented before, it may still get placed in a moderation queue and/or sent to the spam folder. If it's just in moderation queue, it'll be published, but it may be deleted if it lands in the spam folder. My apologies if this happens but there are some keywords that push it into the spam folder.

One last note, we will not tolerate comments that disparage people based on age, sex, handicap, race, color, sexual orientation, national origin or ancestry. We reserve the right to delete these comments and ban the people who make them from ever commenting here again.

Thanks for understanding and have a pleasurable commenting experience.