IS MARRIAGE A RIGHT? Mark Tardiff replies to Mark Barton

Mark Barton, apparently to correct my strong emphasis on representative democracy,
insists that the US Constitution is "leavened with anti-democratic principles to prevent tyrannies of the majority." A few comments:

First, the parallel to free speech does not hold. Free speech is explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution; SSM is not. The only way to reach SSM is through interpretation.

Second, while I do not have a copy of the Massachusetts constitution with me, I believe that the phrase quoted is from an amendment to the Massachusetts constitution. As Eve and others have pointed out, this amendment was passed with the assurance to voters that it would NOT lead to SSM. So in this case, at least, it seems to me that the voters did not surrender their authority; they were defrauded
of it.

Third, the justices' decision depends less on law than it does on philosophy. Specifically, they had to assume the radical feminists' intention that gender is a social construct, one that we can rearrange as we like. Apart from this unmentioned and unsupported philosophical assumption, the ruling makes no sense.

Now I contend that basic philosophical assumptions, basic worldviews that give our words specific meanings, are NOT the province of judges to determine. The PEOPLE should decide such things. Otherwise representative democracy collapses completely and we have what can only be called judicial oligarchy.
posted by Eve at 3:09 PM VOTE

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