Robert Novak’s column today really

turns up the heat on the president to take a stand on the Federal Marriage

Amendment

Novak points out that there really is no middle ground on this one. Either

we will have the FMA, or the courts will impose gay marriage. I can’t see

where he’s wrong. Personally, I believe there’s nothing in the Constitution

granting gays the right to marry (or the right to abortion, or any other

“rights” the Supremes and other jurists have discerned in recent decades),

but of course that hasn’t deterred the courts from conjuring such rights and

imposing them on the entire nation, willing or not. It might be acceptable

to have a federalist solution to this gay marriage thing, but for various

reasons that would be unworkable, and after the Lawrence decision, the High

Court would find any reason it could to declare gay marriage a right always

and everywhere. This usurpation of politics by the judiciary then

compels the radical step of the FMA. As Eugene Volokh, a gay marriage

supporter, has argued, judiciary overreach in these matters forces the

social right to these last-ditch measures. By temperament, I dislike the

idea of amending the Constitution. But when the alternative is to yield

before the powers of an unelected few to make sweeping social policy that

overturns an institution that has been the bedrock of society for a many

centuries, well, amending the Constitution is by far the lesser of two

evils.