Editorial: Don’t trash states’ role in marriage

Friday, Feb. 27, 2004 | 8:51 a.m.

This week President Bush threw his support to an effort under way in Congress to amend the U.S. Constitution so that marriage can only be defined as a union between a man and a woman. Bush said he was moved to back a constitutional ban against gay marriage following the Massachusetts Supreme Court's ruling that would allow same-sex weddings and the recent decision by the San Francisco mayor to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, a move that has resulted in more than 3,300 such marriages.

Despite the president's claim that this is a grave matter, this proposed amendment is unworthy of being added to the U.S. Constitution, which only has been amended 27 times in our nation's history. Besides, the federal government has no business getting involved in marriage, a role historically reserved for states and local governments. Bush's decision is all about energizing the far-right conservative base of the Republican Party, but there are some things that should be out-of-bounds during an election year, and one of those is debasing the U.S. Constitution with a needless amendment that will drive even more of a wedge between the American people. The president's decision shows just how hollow his 2000 campaign pledge to be a "uniter, not a divider" has become.

One of the more intelligent observations about the folly of such a constitutional amendment that we came across didn't come from a legal scholar but from a late-night comedian. Jon Stewart, who hosts "The Daily Show," noted that if the amendment against same-sex marriage were ratified, "... it would only be the second amendment designed to restrict, rather than enlarge, the scope of civil liberties. Of course, the first was Prohibition in 1919. You all remember how that worked out. People immediately stopped drinking, all alcohol-related problems in this nation ceased at once, and the next decade became known as 'The Sober Twenties.' "

We expect that Congress also will see how inane it would be to amend the Constitution for such a transparently political purpose in an election year.