By: Peter McClelland
This coming May there will be a referendum in North Carolina that will determine whether our state will adopt an amendment to our state constitution that would, “provide that marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State.” This would prohibit state recognition of marriage licenses or civil unions issued by other states, and it would greatly delay legislation that would allow North Carolina to issue either of these licenses. Now, in a conservative magazine such as this, many of those reading may initially favor such an amendment. There are, however, several troubling issues regarding this legislation. To begin with, this amendment may seriously violate the federal Constitution. Moreover, it seems to threaten individual liberty, and exemplifies a government overstepping its bounds, which should trouble any conservative that prizes freedom and limited government.
It is a bit shocking how conservative politicians portray themselves as ardent defenders and proponents of the United States’ Federal Constitution only to betray its principles when it is politically popular with their base. The simplest Constitutional argument against this change to our state’s constitution is that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the US guarantees that, “No State shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction equal protection of the laws.” This is the part of the constitution that guarantees that state governments cannot and will not discriminate between their citizens when it comes to recognizing and protecting legal rights and privileges or when enforcing laws. By having a statute that grants spousal rights and privileges to heterosexual couples, who are mutually consenting adults, and not homosexual couples, who are also mutually consenting adults, I believe the state would be violating this central tenet of our Constitution. Moreover, ratification of this amendment would enshrine this violation in our state constitution, which should be an abomination to anyone who sees the Constitution of the United States as the supreme law of the land. Along similar lines, this amendment clearly contradicts Article IV Section I of the United States Constitution, which states, “Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of very other State”.
This means that marriage licenses or civil unions granted by the judiciary in one state ought to be recognized by North Carolina and all other states. Admittedly, there have been some exceptions carved out for law licenses, driver’s licenses, and other licenses which involve an activity that could be drastically different from one state to another. This is justifiable because the laws and courts of different states are often quite different from one state to another. It is also understandable in the case of a driver’s license for new, permanent residents of a state because the nuanced differences in driving laws depending on the state could lead a driver to physically endanger others by not knowing those differences. For domestic partnerships, whether they be marriages or civil unions, there are no such changes from state-to-state, there I nothing inherently different between a committed, loving couple in North Carolina and a committed, loving couple in any other state. Thus, because of Article IV Section 1, there is no legal standing to withhold recognition of any legal union issued by another state. Shockingly, the House majority leader, Representative Paul Stam, told the News Observer that the proposed amendment was a reaction to the decision of other states to allow same-sex marriages and civil unions. He said, [Homosexual couples] are going to bring with them[, to North Carolina], their same-sex marriages… They’re going to want to get divorces [and have custody issues decided… and] we’re not equipped to handle that.” If this is truly the reason why a bipartisan majority (65 Republicans and 10 Democrats) passed this proposed amendment, then our state has utterly failed in its most basic functions. Adjudication is quite possibly the most basic service that governments have to offer their citizens, and most conservatives and libertarians would argue that it is one of the few that they should offer at a state level. If North Carolina has been reduced to violating key principles of American Constitutional law simply because it doesn’t want to be bothered with providing basic government functions to a part of its citizenry, as the Federal Constitution demands, then we should be ashamed of our state. Not only does
North Carolina’s refusal to recognize equivalent legal rights for both hetero- and homosexual couples violate the Constitution but the leader of the House cannot even give cogent reasoning for codifying this violation in our state’s constitution. In short, the North Carolina Marriage Amendment is a complete outrage. On a more theoretical level, it is not the role of the state to decide whose right to pursue happiness it will assist and whose it will impede. While the Declaration of Independence is not law in the United States, it should serve as a framework or guide to American political theory and the role of the state. Therefore, as long as a person’s pursuit of happiness does not infringe upon the rights of another person, the state should strive to hold the ideas of the Declaration paramount and not strip a person of the right to pursue happiness with whichever other consenting adults he or she chooses.
Granting spousal rights to heterosexual citizens but not homosexual citizens effectively inhibit the homosexual couples’ pursuit by presenting challenges to them that their heterosexual counterparts would not otherwise encounter. In this way, the Marriage Amendment would not only violate the Constitution, as referenced above, but it would also betray the spirit of our nation’s birth, which is perfectly describe as having the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Also, allowing any group’s fundamental rights to be determined by a simple majority vote opens the citizens of the United States up to a tyranny of the majority. If we allow a simple majority to be all that is necessary to strip a group of their rights, then no group, however numerous today, is secure in their rights and liberties in the long run. While evangelicals may be plentiful today, by giving the state the power to strip a group’s rights with a majority vote, they give the same power to some other hostile faction that becomes the majority in the future. The solution for anyone who values individual liberty, as today’s conservatives claim to, should be to limit the government’s ability to strip a person of their rights unless they infringe upon the rights of another. This means it is actually a conservative position to support the civil liberties of even the smallest minority.
To have a constitutional amendment or even a statute that forbids the state from ensuring equal opportunity to pursue happiness spits in the face of liberty, the spirit in which our nation was born, and what should be a truly conservative message. To conclude, there seems to be a deep seeded conflict in many conservatives between their faith, which they often believe condemns homosexuality, and their political ideology, which states that the government should be limited and not take the rights of the few. Social conservatives often tout out the expression that to let the state acknowledge homosexual unions or marriages will somehow tarnish the sanctity of marriage. This logic, however, implies that the state can somehow bestow holiness to a union. This is just fundamentally untrue. By most evangelicals’ own religious beliefs, God is the only one who can recognize a marriage as sacrosanct and holy. Therefore, let Him be the judge in the end, and don’t let a violation of the Constitution of the United State and of individual liberty be enshrined in our state’s constitution. Vote “No” on May 8.
