While we’re on the general topic of sex and culture, I should mention something I just learned that I have not seen remarked upon yet by others here in the Corner: The Maryland House of Delegates last night, reversing its decision of last year, approved gay marriage. The bill is expected to pass the Maryland Senate, which approved the measure last year, and then signed by Governor Martin O’Malley. (O’Malley, incidentally, was a classmate of mine at the Catholic University of America ’85. I didn’t know him at all; I was too busy hanging around with all the cool kids I thought were going places.) The Internet is abuzz with the rumor that former vice president Dick Cheney helped to sway one of the Maryland legislators in favor of the bill, but the Huffington Post reports that sources close to Cheney are skeptical:
A high-profile Republican close to Cheney told The Huffington Post that they had not heard about the former vice president’s involvement. Another source close to Cheney pushed back against the report. Cheney’s office was not immediately available for comment.
Cheney has, for years, been one of the most prominent Republican supporters of same-sex marriage.
The governor’s signature may not settle the matter, though: There is talk of a November ballot initiative in Maryland, of the sort envisioned for New Jersey by Governor Chris Christie.
Ballot initiatives and referendums are antithetical to conservative ideology, yet they are becoming a common tool of so-called social conservatives.
In using them, social conservatives expose themselves as religious statists with a propensity for using government in a liberal manner.
Ballot initiatives and referendums are examples of direct (pure) democracy, or populism, something that the Founders found dangerous, and an enemy of freedom:
"A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." - James Madison, Federalist No. 10
"Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state – it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage." - John Whiterspoon
"That a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure, deformity." - Alexander Hamilton
The idea of referendums and ballot initiatives impacting government was favored by Theodore Roosevelt.
That should tell you everything you need to know.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseShhhh. You're not supposed to notice that.
Also, just because the editor-at-large of NRO keeps stating that she has a moral issue with contraception and blocks comments from alternative voices on the matter -- and few, if any, NRO contributors offer alternative viewpoints -- don't get the impression that NRO, as a whole, has a moral issue with contraception.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRedefining marriage is a big deal.
In fact, it isn't just redefining what it means to be married; it's redefining what it is to be a family.
Will biology or the state determine who is related to whom? That's a question with far-reaching consequences.
Will government, the family, and religion be the forces that guide us, or will government hold a monopoly on power?
Will children have rights - including the right to have a relationship with both biological parents, to be severed only when doing so is in the best interests of the child - or will gay rights be deemed more important?
Will we continue to honor the idea that guardianship includes obligations to the one being guarded, or will we redefine "family" so that children can be sold and traded instead of guarded? Is a custody proceeding primarily about the needs of the children - or the needs of the ones who want custody of those children?
What gays want is in direct conflict with what families need to maintain health and integrity. One side or the other must lose. That's not something to be imposed on a culture from a tiny elite. That's a question of our basic identity as a culture, as a society - as a people - do we want to recognize the concept of family (meaning biological kinship), or do we want to throw it away and let the government decide what relationships do and do not exist among us?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMaybe not *everything* you need to know:
Here’s one for the Gipper! Today, the late former President Ronald Reagan would have been 100 years young.
To celebrate his birthday, we at Citizens in Charge highlight his support for initiative and referendum. In 1980, in a letter to New Jersey activist Sam Perelli, Reagan wrote, “George Bush and I congratulate you on your efforts to attain, for the people of New Jersey, the right to initiative and referendum. We urge you to keep up your fight and we endorse your efforts.”
Ed Meese, former U.S. Attorney General under Reagan and a very close California friend, has long been a supporter as well. “Having this
electoral ability [the initiative and referendum process],” said Meese, “is a critical ‘safety valve’ for effective citizenship.”
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMartin O'Malley is a vicious little piece of work. He's Bobby Kennedy mean.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis will go to a vote of the people, because there is a veto referendum mechanism in Maryland law (unlike in New Jersey). The closeness of the vote (71-67 in a chamber with 98 Democrats and 43 Republicans) tells you all you need to know about how the referendum will go. Black voters, who make up a huge part of the MD electorate, are generally not on board with this. White voters in MD are probably split, although once you leave Montgomery County you find that white voters in Maryland are fairly conservative for such a blue state.
Luis, constitutional amendments require (and have required for a long time) votes of the people to be enacted. As for veto referenda, they simply bring home the point that the people are sovereign. You may reject that, but it is a postulate of our political system. They were progressive era innovations, but so was the direct election of Senators. Does that mean conservatives should refuse to run for Senate? The fact is that the means are in place, and we should not be afraid to use them, particularly when bills like this -meant to achieve a profoundly anti-conservative end- are rammed through legislative chambers with the most squalid arm-twisting and maneuvering you can imagine.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhen you defend referendums, you're arguing against the men who wrote the Constitution, not me.
That something has been done for a "long time", only means that we've been walking down the wrong path for that long.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThanks for helping me make my point; we're so far from the path that the Founders set us on, that even our greatest fail to see the error of their ways.
As a country, the fact that direct democracy, so abhorrent to the Founding Fathers, indeed, even feared by them, is lauded by modern-day, so-called conservatives, is proof positive of just how far we have strayed from the principles that made this nation great, and just much the nation as a whole has moved to the left of the political spectrum.
Direct Democracy is the death knell for a representative Republic, and it is the antithesis of minimal government, since it grows government by making every citizen part of the government.
The saddest part, is that the overwhelming majority of the polity have such a fractured and faulty understanding of our form of government, that they perceive direct democracy and anti-Federalism as a conservative ideal.
Sad.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLuis, your argument is akin to the baseball purist who bemoans the DH in the American League.
Yet, if he wants his AL team to win, he sure better want them to hit for the pitcher...because those are the rules of the game.
The initiative system has killed CA, my state. But we have passed a couple good ones that have kept our Democrat masters at bay somewhat when it comes to their unquenchable desire to raise taxes. The idea that conservatives should not use the same rules the left uses on us, all in the name of conservative purity, makes no sense.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWorth noting in this discussion, if we are looking to the founding fathers, is the reminder that only property owners (white ones) could vote in those early years - which meant 85% or more of the nation was ineligible to participate.
Those quotes about 'direct democracy' need to be filtered through that fact.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLuis Gonzalez, you are hilarious. The framers you quote were discussing the federal republic. Regarding the states, you may remember a little thing called the Tenth Amendment. If you've forgotten, I can refer you to a couple of your screeds where you pour derision on people -- not for belittling the Tenth Amendment in any way, mind you, and not for arguing that a state doesn't have the *right* to do what it wants -- but merely for arguing that a certain someone exercised that right poorly. According to you, those who dast think anything a governor does might be an indication of his bad judgment or imperfect principles are blithering idiots who don't understand that a state is allowed to do what it wants.
Yet now you question the decision of the State of Maryland to provide for ballot initiatives? And here I thought you were a real Tenther!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLuis,
Would the Founding Fathers approve of same-sex pseudomarriage? Or abortion? Or any of the other causes of the leftist zeitgeist?
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