Attorneys General For Commonsense
As a brief follow up to yesterday’s entry, let me point out the good work of the Attorney General of Utah. He organized 9 of his other colleagues to urge them to ask the California Supreme Court to stay their decision redefining marriage in California. Read about it here.
The idea behind this is simple: because California has no residency requirement for their marriage license, once the undemocratic supreme court decision goes into effect, anyone from anywhere can come and request a marriage license – and don’t be surprised when they do.
So what?
Under the US Constitution, we in West Virginia are bound to give “full faith and credit” to the laws of the other states when not in contradiction to our Constitution. Thus, a homosexual couple from West Virginia could vacation to San Francisco, get married and come back to West Virginia, demanding to be treated like a married couple. That presents a significant legal (as well as social) problem because WV has adopted a Defense of Marriage Act – much like what Proposition 22 was before the CA supreme court redefined the will of the people. Thus, the Attorneys General from 10 states are effectively saying to the California supreme court, “Please, don’t make your judicial activism our administrative headache!”
By the way, Attorney General Darrell McGraw did not sign on to this letter – even though he was given the opportunity to do so.
If it is not self-evident by now, the only way to affirmatively defend marriage in West Virginia is to define it in our Constitution. The argument that has been lodged against doing so suggests that the statute is enough. If that is what you still, please ask the 4 justices in California for their opinion on the matter.
That is the practical reason for defining marriage as that of between one man and one woman in our constitution. For a more theoretical answer, see below and read Jennifer Roback Morse’s thoughts on the same subject. (For the record, I hadn’t read her article until after yesterday’s post. Great minds….)
