Glenn Greenwald on Pres Obama's "State's Rights" Stance
<...> Adam Serwer complains that while endorsing same-sex marriage as a personal view, Obama insisted that it is up to the states to decide; thus, writes Serwer, “Obama has endorsed marriage equality federalism—not the notion that marriage for gays and lesbians is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution that can never be taken away.” He adds, correctly, that Obama has merely “adopted the same position that Vice President Dick Cheney did in 2004, when Cheney said he believed in marriage equality but that the states should be allowed to decide by a show of hands, as North Carolina did Tuesday, whether gays and lesbians have the same rights as everyone else.”
This objection is true as far as it goes, but it does not go very far. I actually had this debate with Adam over the weekend on Twitter, as I argued that Cheney had endorsed marriage equality back in 2004 while Adam insisted that Cheney had merely advanced a states’ rights argument. But Cheney back then — like Obama today — said that he believes same-sex couples should be able to legally marry. That’s marriage equality. It may be true that each believes that it’s an issue for the states to decide democratically — which means that they believe there is no Constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry — but ultimately, this issue is likely to be democratically decided on a state-by-state basis, and either way, since Obama isn’t on the Supreme Court, his view on the constitutionality of opposite-sex-only marriage laws is far less significant than his view on whether marriage laws should include same-sex couples. That both the current Democratic President and the prior GOP Vice President are now on record favoring same-sex marriage can only help this important cause. Salon
(I'd posted earlier that I thought the "state's rights" position was "horseshit," and I see many people who agree with that--and many who disagree with it. I thought Greenwald's post was interesting because, after all, he's never afraid to criticize the President)
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