My son and I have been discussing the issue of marriage for homosexuals. He's something of a libertarian (a viewpoint I have considerable sympathy for) and supports homosexual marriage on the basis of "live and let live." He also makes the plausible argument that, whatever one thinks of the merits of the issue, it's a bad idea to write policy into the Constitution.
As a general principle, I think he's right on that. A Constitution is intended to deal with process matters and with the most general principles of governance, not with the specifics of policy. But I think he's wrong on this specific matter for two reasons - one having to do with process, and the other having to do with the general principles of governance (and with the specifics of the homosexual marriage issue).
Even were we to grant for the sake of argument that any potential marriage amendment would write "policy" into the Constitution, we would have to acknowledge that the courts are finding policy on this matter in the Constitution already. The courts are finding a definition of marriage in the Constitution - a definition which says that "the union of one man and one woman" is not fundamental to the concept. If there is a policy on marriage in the Constitution (even implicitly), then it cannot be improper for the people to change that policy. The Constitution would have no more policy in it after an amendment than it had before. It is simply that the policy would be different: changed by the will of the people.
That's my argument as regards process. But there's also a problem with my son's argument as regards the general principles of governance. The general principle involved is that by nature, not all things are subject to the state or to the will of the people. King Canute could not turn back the tide, and we cannot make the winters milder or the summers balmier by a vote of the legislature. In particular, we cannot make marriage and family something that it is not, either by a a vote of the legislature or by the ruling of a judge. The family is not a creation of the human will, it is a constituent part of human nature. It is, as Pope Leo XIII stated it, "anterior and superior to all positive law." So a Constitutional definition of marriage as "the union of one man and one woman" would not be a policy statement, it would be a statement of the obvious. But such a statement of the obvious has become necessary because the idea has got abroad that the human will and human intellect is superior to, rather than an expression of, human nature, that the human will and intellect can remake human nature at its pleasure; and because wayward courts and various government bureaucrats have begun putting that cockamamie idea into practice.
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