BARR ON FMA: Duncan Maxwell Anderson

[Duncan writes on sex and culture for a variety of publications]

I'm a Federalist to the end, and Barr has an excellent argument. But…

It wouldn’t be the first time the Federal government has gotten involved in the question of what marriage is. As I recall, as a condition of admission to the Union, Utah was required to outlaw polygamy. That's quite a bit of Federal interference in a state matter, and it even concerns the definition of marriage. Yet this polygamy ban is not what led to a raft of Federal interference in other state matters. That came later, and for other reasons.

I think the forces of real marriage need to protect state and local rights as their primary focus. To paraphrase Tip O'Neill, all morality is local morality. But I'm not sure you can make a civilization with people who are trying to remove the building blocks of human society. You need to have some starting point, or those states with definitions of marriage that are hostile to the public good become a means for messing with people's minds in other states (which seems to be the whole idea).

posted by maggie at 10:23 AM VOTE

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