The Constitution is singularly the greatest document that has ever been written and has resulted in more good for more people around the world than any other single document of man in history. It’s not however perfect. It has an amendment process that allows citizens to make bad choices – see the 16th and 17th Amendments, both enacted in the midst of a progressive frenzy in 1913 – but such changes require the active participation of a large segment of the population.
There is however a move afoot to change the Constitution in a different way. Article Four of the Constitution says: Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof. This is the part of the Constitution that says if you’re born in one state you can take your birth certificate to another and get a driver’s license, or that you can drive in one state with a driver’s license from a different state. It also of course is what allows persons married in one state to be recognized as married in another.
It has not been much of an issue in modern times until states started allowing same sex marriages. Sometimes done via legislation, more often than not the change has occurred as the result of judicial action. In no case where states have given voters a choice has a majority voted for same sex marriage. This includes California, where Proposition 8 banning same sex marriage passed but was then ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge.
The Constitutional question comes into play with 1996’s Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which explicitly states that no state shall be forced to recognize a same sex marriage contract from another state. It also prohibits the federal government from recognizing such compacts. This is where changing the Constitution comes into play. DOMA opponents read the first sentence of the Full Faith and Credit clause and suggest DOMA is unconstitutional. The problem however is that they simply choose to pretend the second part of the clause does not exist… but it does, in black and white: “And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.”
The whole of the Full Faith and Credit Clause was not some afterthought. The Founding Fathers included in the body of the original Constitution, a place where you will not even find the various elements of the Bill of Rights such as freedom of speech or religion. This should demonstrate exactly how important contracts were to the Founders in that they wanted citizens of the United States to feel confident those contracts would be valid throughout the country. The states however remained sovereign, and could not be forced to accept contracts that violated their own laws under Full Faith and Credit. When laws were written banning interracial marriage, it was the Equal Protection clause that provided relief, not Full Faith.
The Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution was not crafted as a fulcrum to allow activists to foist on the nation policies that could never be implemented on their own. The federal system gives states the right to define marriage virtually any way they want. It does not however give those states the right to force other states to agree with them. If the definition of marriage can be changed from one man to one woman to two men or two women, why stop there? Utah could resurrect polygamy and the other 49 states would have to recognize it. California might allow for the members of a commune to marry one another simultaneously. Now that you have California and New York lined up against the almost 80% of the states who explicitly ban same sex marriage, DOMA is likely an issue the Supreme Court will have to take up.
If 21st century activists want to change the way America deals with marriage they can do so, but they can’t just wish away half of the Full Faith clause. They might want to go back and read the playbook of their progressive brethren from the last century. The Amendment process is tough to get through, but that’s by design. Big changes require big buy in, and changing marriage is definitely a pretty big change.
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You forgot the 19th Amendment in that little discussion. The Fouding Fathers had a good reason for not giving some people the right to vote and letting others vote.
Frankly, the idea that any swinging-dick can vote is so stupid it is laughable. Full voting citizenship should depend upon prior military service.
“service equals citizenship”…luckily I’m covered 🙂
I can’t help but think of how the two upper house seats should be chosen by the states to protect the states interests as a whole. The 17th simply allowed both houses to become election whores, where the founders rightly saw the lower house as having that burden only and the upper house being the regulators of consistency in the legislature.
@Ivan:
Sorry, Ivan, but that statement is completely wrong. The founding fathers, in the writing of the Constitution, left the issue of who could vote, and the manner in which they voted, up to each individual state, by specific delineation of that power/right of the states.
Article I, Section 4;
The only voting requirements for President discusses the Electors within the Electoral College, and leaves the choosing of those Electors, associated with a particular state, up to that state.
I have no problem with each state determining who can andwho can’t vote.
But if universal suffrage is such a good idea, why didn’t the Fathers just put that in the constitution?
The answer is self-evident.
Oh I hope they pass this,next step is concealed carry permits will begood NATIONWIDE! Yes,this means New York, D.C. ,Chicago,and all the other places that you could never have dreamed of getting a CCW permit .
“But if universal suffrage is such a good idea, why didn’t the Fathers just put that in the constitution?
The answer is self-evident.”
Yep, it is. And, coincidentally, it’s the same answer as to why they didn’t simply put their own then-current rules in as our Rule in Perpetuity:
Voting rules are best made so as to be culturally contextual, both in time and place, and The Fathers’ solution allowed the various states to design their own system parameters, and also allowed the states to alter and amend and adjust and tinker with those parameters in order to produce the very best possible system instead of getting one and only one roll of the dice and possibly setting up permanent rules that turned out to be less then great.
That’s what you meant, right? ‘Because, I agree, it is self-evident.
@Ivan:
The answer is not quite what you believe it is, and it is certainly not “self-evident”. You make the same mistake that Richard Stengel, in his Time Magazine piece, does, regarding the Constitution. That is, since it wasn’t in the Constitution, specifically listed, or delineated, as a right, that the founding fathers must then NOT have extended it as a right of the people.
There are two points on the Constitution, and voting, that are important to understand.
One, the founders believed in the sovereignty of the states, and as such, and in order to garner the most support possible for the new Constitution, positively limited the powers conferred upon the federal government, and in so doing, granted expansive powers to the states by negative decree in the 10th Amendment.
Two, another means of garnering the support needed, was to write the Constitution in such a way as to give the individual states the power to decide their own voting structure. In so doing, the founders never denied women the right to vote, although, and by, allowing the states to decide, they essentially did so by their silence on it, and the current thoughts of the various states, concerning women and voting.
The 14th Amendment actually made the idea of women voting much harder to attain, by delineating men’s suffrage only, and discussing requirements of the states for the allowance of men to vote. It did not, though, prevent the states from allowing women to vote.
Prior to the passage, and ratification, of the 19th Amendment, several of the western states and territories, such as Kansas, Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming extended voting rights to women. With the passage of the 19th Amendment, the right of women to vote became a “positive” right, granted to women, whereas prior to this, it had been a “negative” right, but only with the concurrence of a state’s male electorate.
@langoley: Except in Illinois, evidently. Our illustrious Governor Quinn just hates it when his citizens get all “liberty” on him…
I think the laws where written for the FUTURE more then their present time,
because the STATES CAN PREVENT ILLEGALS OR IMMIGRANTS ON A SUSPECT LIST OF HAVING ACQUIRED IT’S CITIZENSHIP FRAUDULENTLY, PREVENT I REPEAT, TO CAST A VOTE, INTO ELECTING A FRAUDULENT PERSON LIKE THEM WITH THE FALSE REPRESENTTION TO BE A PRESIDENT WITH
THE INTENT TO RUIN AND DESTROY THE COUNTRY BY JOINING THE HATERS FROM FOREIGN LANDS AND SPEND THE RESOURCES, MONEYS AND LAND AND STATUES OF IMMIGRATION TO THOSE,
SO TO HELPING THEM GROW INTO A POWER BY UNITING THEM INTO A TOTAL FORCE GROWING RIGHT NOW BEFORE OUR EYES, WHICH GOAL IS AND CONTINIUE TO BE ; THE TOTAL TAKE OVER OF AMERICA BY DESTRUYING IT’S MAIN FOUNDATION. AND NATION
WHO NEVER STOP TO BELIEVE IN THE CONSTITUTION OF AMERICA WITH THEIR OATH OF HONOR FOR LIFE,
OATH THAT BEEN DONE AND SOON BROKENED BY THOSE IN LEADERSHIP POSITION