ARE HUMAN RIGHTS A STATE ISSUE?: David Blankenhorn replies to Jonathan Rauch

Thanks to Jonathan Rauch for his post. Let's recap. These exchanges between the two of us have focussed on two related questions. The first is my suggestion that there is a contradiction in insisting a) that the right to marry anyone you choose is a fundamental human right, while simultaneously insisting b) that whether you actually get to marry anyone you choose is a matter properly left to the states. Jonathan disputes that point. The second is my suggestion that it's a bit self-serving for Jonathan and other SSM proponents to insist that anything related to SSM fitting under their rubric of "federalism" is morally permissable, whereas any national-level activity related to SSM is morally odious to the point of flat-out bigotry. I call this formula self-serving because anything that advances SSM in the near to medium term future in the U.S. is almost certainly going to occur at the state level, mostly through the state courts. Jonathan also disputes this second suggestion.

In his latest reply, Jonathan concedes that marriage is a basic human right, but says that (unlike some others in his camp) he does not believe that "defining marriage is a basic human right." I'm not sure I understand this distinction, and even if I did, I doubt that this or any other fine-print semantic clarifications would remove the essential problem. If marriage is indeed a basic human right, and if state courts begin (as they have already begun) to declare that the right to marry anyone you choose is a basis human right, the denial of which is morally beyond the pale in our society, then it is very hard to see how, in the long run, this right is going to be granted to citizens in some localities and denied to other citizens in other localities. The last time we tried this solution was with "popular sovereignty" in the 1850s over the issue of slavery, and it did not work. ...

On the second question, Jonathan in these exchanges has made some robust defenses of federalism, but he seems hesitant to stress in this forum what he has stressed so forcefully in others--namely, that any national-level activity in opposition to SSM is in his view basically little more than morally repugnant gay-bashing.

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posted by Eve at 7:46 PM VOTE

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