One more time

I’ve been on this earth since the 1940s, and for most of the years since then gay marriage was never something people talked about. Generally if people don’t talk about something, they don’t think about something — unless it directly affects them, that is.

So it wasn’t until recently that people started talking about gay marriage, and that happened because people who are gay started wondering out loud, “Why can’t I get married?”

And that’s when I started thinking about it. All of a sudden it was all over the news, and before other people could start wondering why gay people couldn’t get married, a panicked Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act. I guess the idea was to settle the question before too many people asked it.

But it didn’t work with me. When I asked myself about it, my mind went immediately to the Constitution, specifically the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which essentially prohibits states from denying to any person within its jurisdiction “the equal protection of the laws.” And interpreting this is oh, so easy . . . so easy in fact that a child can understand it. What it means basically is that a state can’t deny a right to someone that it has granted to someone else.

The plain fact is, states everywhere should be throwing out their unconstitutional marriage laws without waiting for court challenges — or (especially) without calling for referendums. How foolish it is to think something like interpreting the Constitution should be left up to the people. That, folks, is what courts do.

Like it or not, states have only one legitimate interest in deciding who can and cannot get married — whether or not those applying for marriage licenses are consenting adults. It may be possible to define narrower interests regarding polygamy and incest, but those aren’t at issue here.

Figuring out that gay marriage had all the constitutional protection it needed was easy for me — and when courts have the opportunity afforded by challenges to review the laws, for the most part they agree. It’s politicians who can’t all be persuaded, apparently in some cases despite legal backgrounds themselves. Take the Arkansas attorney general, for example — Dustin McDaniel — who decided to appeal a court decision to throw out laws prohibiting same-sex marriages. Yikes — did McDaniel sleep through his Constitutional Law classes? Surely if a layman like me can understand the 14th Amendment, so can an attorney.

An age-old war

As conservatives try to elevate contraception to a pressing political issue, I am reminded that the war on women is not a new thing. In the European witch trials of the 15th-18th centuries, tens of thousands of midwives (perhaps many more) were accused of being witches, tried, and executed in the most horrible ways, as were men who defended them. It’s widely believed that charges of witchcraft were brought simply because women were encroaching on the domain of physicians. But these women were apprently also feared because of their knowledge of birth control during a time when Europe was struggling to repopulate following the plagues.

In our own nation, which was founded by men who were supposedly enlightened,  it wasn’t until the early 20th century that women gained the right to vote, and they are still struggling for equality and fighting repression even as the 21st century reaches its teens. How interesting it is that birth control is once again at the heart of another inquisition. How unfortunate it is that so many men still fear strong women.

Cantor shows his bias

On learning that Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) requested emergency funds for his state in the wake of hurricane Gaston in 2004 with no strings attached, I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion that Cantor is a male chauvinistic pig for demanding spending cuts to offset disaster relief after Irene.