| A commentator recently ran his mind over the gay marriage issue. He is opposed to same-sex marriage but squeamish about a constitutional amendment. Amendments, he said, were too radical an approach to the problem. This attitude provokes thought about the Constitution, framed other than on the difficulty or the undesirability of amendments.
The Constitution became, over the years following the rugged debate over its ratification, something more merely than an organizational table of rules and regulations. People taking public office in America bind themselves to defend the Constitution, which is correct, even as it is correct to defend the law.
But of course laws change, and the law is different in different parts of the country. There is a solemnity that attaches to an oath to defend the Constitution, and the reason for it is that, over generations -- in particular, after the Civil War -- the Constitution achieved a kind of moral authority that went beyond merely the accumulation of laws and traditions.
To amend the Constitution is thought by many to tamper with a holy covenant. The only people who can do that are the priests. There are nine of them, and they sit on the Supreme Court. The way to amend the Constitution, it is accepted by most of our clerisy, is to interpret existing language in such a way as to accommodate the desired reform.
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts wonderfully exemplifies the point. Four of its members ruled, in their now-historic decision last November, that the practice in the state, in the matter of marriage, was not congruent with the equal-protection clause of the Massachusetts Constitution, which reflects principles inherent in the U.S. Constitution.
The man-from-Mars reaction to that decision would have been: You must be crazy! You are telling us that the Constitution prohibits special civil sanctions applying to married people? That reaction to the court decision is absolutely healthy, but it no longer works. Because the Constitution is held to be venerable, and its reaches, undeniable. In the scheme of things, the Massachusetts court is telling the legislature of the state that a failure to "marry" same-sex couples violates the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and by extension the Constitution of the United States.
So what is an aroused public supposed to do?
At a local level, one needs to amend the constitution of Massachusetts to the desired effect: to specify that a "marriage," as contracted under the state's law, is a union between a man and a woman.
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