A U. S. Senate panel led by Kansas Senator Sam Brownback yesterday approved a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The amendment will now go to the full Judiciary Committee and, if it passes there, the full Senate, the House, and then the state legislatures. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports, however, Democrats are saying this tramples on states’ rights, especially with so many states now enacting bans on same-sex marriage. Funny that the traditionally pro-states’-rights Republicans are choosing to ignore this.
Of course, I’m not surprised that a Kansas senator is leading the charge here. Kansas is the state that just approved new public-school science standards drafted by “Intelligent Design” proponents. The new curriculum takes a skeptical view of the theory of evolution, and redefines science “so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.” In other words, who needs science when you have God? (Not that the two are necessarily incompatible, as I’ve explained in my Salty Snack blog.)
I’d like to believe that the U. S. as a whole is more intelligent than Texas as a whole, which just added a same-sex marriage ban to its Bill of “Rights.” Hopefully there are enough people who realize that the purpose of the Constitution is not to restrict the rights of any group of citizens. Still, it never hurts to write to your Congresspeople and urge them not to vote for the amendment.