Marriage

     The current debate on marriage, I feel, has been insidiously derailed into a debate on the means by which the federal government will be allowed to further intrude into our personal lives. What is my basis for this statement? The vast majority of people seem to fall into one of two camps. Either they support the government mandating that marriage be allowed for all, regardless of sex, or that the government mandate that marriage be restricted to being between one man and one woman. There is, however, a serious fallacy with both of these arguments. They both require assignment to the government the authority to regulate the personal affairs of individuals, without regard to whether those affairs infringe upon a third parties rights. The idea that a child is a third party whose rights are being infringed upon is brought up frequently, but that is really a separate discussion, and should be debated as its own topic.
     Whichever one of the two most popular positions you take, I ask you to point out the part of the U.S. Constitution which assigns the federal government the authority to regulate marriage at all. Yes, there is a case for the requirement that the states recognize and respect each other"s laws, but does this really mean that the federal government has the constitution authority to create a law superseding state laws, or that the federal government simply has the authority to require the states to recognize each other's laws? I answer simply that if the federal government is allowed the ability to override state laws in one area not specifically assigned it by the Constitution, by inference it is given authority in all areas, thereby eliminating the concept of state sovereignty which is so vital for the success of a constitutional republic such as ours. The solution is to assign the authority to regulate or not to regulate marriage to the individual states where it was intended to be. Here I must answer the question of individuals moving from one state to another. The answer is obvious. While you are a resident of a state where your marriage is accepted as a legal contract, all other states must recognize that. If, however, you become a resident of a different state in which that contract is no longer valid, it is not that state's responsibility to change their laws to recognize your desires, it is your responsibility to either abide by that state's laws, even if it means renewing your marriage contract under their requirements, or to choose not to move there if you find their laws unacceptable to your desires. If the laws in that state do need to be changed, they must be changed in the proper format, as defined by that particular state's constitution, and by the will of that state's citizens, not by federal mandate from above where the citizens of that particular state have minimal say.