Without Hyperbole, The Civil Rights Issue of Our Time: Marriage Equality

As Americans, our uniting principles are focused in a leveling equality and a difficult, yet rewarding path to social progress, which by extension leads to social justice. The reasons the path towards change should be difficult is because the tides of public opinion are turbulent and whimsical, however, should any find their way to the shores of true leveling equality and equity they shall not be denied. There are many who claim that the Constitution is not a living breathing document—conservatives claim this in the face of the 20^th Century progressive definition that is. In this way conservative interpretations are wrong—effectively the Constitution should be nigh impossible to change, but not entirely so.  If the Constitution was not meant to change, then the Founding Fathers would not have installed a mechanism for change in the document. The navigation of that change, as well is its successful utilization is difficult because any amendment made to the blueprint of the Republic should see considerable stacked odds against it to prove its viability, strength, and necessity. This mechanism for change, and the rationale for its difficulty is explained by the Constitution’s framer, Thomas Jefferson, and is quoted in stone on the Jefferson Memorial quite clearly:

“I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

That said, who may marry who is not in the Constitution in any place I have seen. As a Constitutional issue, it seems to me that writing an amendment that allows for human being to marry human beings is the manifestation of the inherent problem in the wording of our blueprints, and the positive nature of our country’s legislation in general. Our legal language generally asserts what the government is allowed to do while it outlines what citizens are not to do (with the notable exception of the Bill of Rights). This should be turned around…a proper government of free citizens would be well constructed in outlining what the government may not do and therefore would create a rather clear picture of what is allowed by default.  Since that is not the case, however, we are left with a sticky and tangled mess of legal battles that can only be won in political death match before our Supreme Court where the manifestation of our legal linguistic problem takes form in California’s Proposition 8—a law which actually strips a right arbitrarily from homosexuals that they at one time held.