9/14/2004 03:11:28 PM|||Sarah|||I was having a discussion with one of my close friends over the weekend. She is supporting John Kerry. She believes that President Bush is taking away our individual rights and threatening the Constitution. I asked her to give me an example of a right she has lost, and she mentioned gay marriage. I hope her fiance (who is a man) is aware of this!
Please tell me where marriage is a right granted in the Constitution. I know, the 9th Amendment can imply the right to marry by stating that there are rights the federal government can grant but that not listed in our guiding document. In fact, next to the 9th Amendment, the crappy American Government textbook I was forced to use as a public school teacher showed a happily married couple as one of those pretty photo inserts that is supposed to capture the ever-fading attention span of our youth. (There's a run-on sentence for you. For those with short attention spans, I probably lost you at "crappy".) However, the 9th Amendment has very rarely been used to justify our federal expansion. I imagine the 9th Amendment was included because the Framers couldn't know what rights would be needed in a future filled with new concepts and changing ideals. Marriage did exist in 1787, though, so James Madison could have included it as right if his posse thought it part of the government's responsibilities.
I don't think marriage is guaranteed to us by the federal Constitution. Neither is abortion, welfare, social security, or a public education. We are guaranteed freedom of speech, press, assembly, petition, religion, guns (including assault weapons), no quartering of soldiers (what would we do without the 3rd Amendment?), and various other protections when accused of a crime. Therein lies the beauty of the 10th Amendment, which states that powers not expressed granted to the federal government are reserved for the states. The individual states can grant us additional rights and privileges if they so choose. The states can't take away what the Constitution allows, but they can add to it.
It is by the individual states that most decisions should be made. Massachusetts wants to legalize gay marriage? Fine! Kentucky wants to outlaw abortion? No problem. Missouri wants to create a voucher program for all elementary schools? Beautiful. I want the Congress and the President to provide national defense, build some interstates and make sure that the civil liberties that are actually included in the Constitution are enforced. That's it.
If you aren't happy with the decisions made in your state, you have a couple of options. First, you can work to elect people at the local and state level who do agree with your positions. But, that takes effort. Or, you can move! The great thing about this country is that you don't need a visa to cross the border from Maryland to Virginia (actually, I would prefer going in the opposite direction). Of course, that takes effort as well. Hmmm ... the government will not do everything for you and grant your every wish and you have to make change happen yourself. Whatever shall you do?
|||109519454830255259|||The Constitution is a Floor, Not a Ceiling9/14/2004 04:58:53 PM|||Anonymous|||I disagree. The constitution, indeed the government, does not "grant" us rights. The Founders knew this. From the good-ole DoI:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
You can say rights come from God, or they're "natural" or whatever you like, but your rights exist *before* government. As the next sentence of the Declaration says, "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men." Government secure rights; it doesn't grant them.
Seeing government as an institution that doles out rights through legislation or judicial fiat is a dangerous view that is contrary to liberty.
As for your friend, she's horribly wrong. There's an excellent article in the new issue of Reason that details John Kerry's war on civil liberties. Lucky for him, he's running on his service in Vietnam, not his Senate record, eh?
--your pal,
Todd