I have to wonder about Jack Danforth

This is one of the silliest statements on the subjects of either gay "marriage" or the Constitution I have ever read.

A constitutional amendment to ban gay "marriage" would not be an attempt to dictate human behavior. It would neither criminalize nor penalize either homosexual behavior, or committed relationships between people of the same gender.

It would simply safeguard the most basic institution of human society from meddling specifically by extrademocratic means.

"The basic concept of the Republican Party," the logically challenged Episcopal priest and former U.S Senator and ambassador to the United Nations disingenously argues, "is to interpret the Constitution narrowly, not expansively, so that legislatures, and especially state legislatures, can work out over a period of time the social issues in our country."

But since when has the social Left in this country accomplished such changes through legislation on any level- or through democratic processes of any kind? Surely Danforth is not clueless enough to imagine that we are talking here about the gradual working through of such matters over time, either in the social or the political realm - and certainly not through the work of legislatures!

From Roe v. Wade to the legalization of gay "marriage" in individual states, such fundamental and revolutionary changes in social mores and their legal expression have never come by democratic means. They have always been undemocratically imposed upon a society wholly unwilling to enact them by such means through judicial fiat. And preventing that would be the whole purpose and effect of a constitutional amendment banning gay "marriage."

Another Episcopal priest I once knew (and a gay one, at that) once defined the cardinal doctrine of his church for me as "justification by good taste." Rev. Danforth appears to do his constitutional reasoning the way the Episcopal church does theology- with less attention either to binding authority or to logic than to what he regards as being in good taste.

One more point about Danforth's theology. He keeps referring in his public statements with religious content to "moderate Christians." Revelation 3:16 admittedly comes to mind. But even more, I'm reminded of Justice Antonin Scalia's question about what is meant by "moderate" judges.

Scalia wondered whether these might be judges whose rulings fell halfway between what the law says and what they would like it to say. I have to wonder whether "moderate Christians" might be those with a similar attitude toward the Bible.

Well, no. Actually, I don't have to wonder. That, of course, is exactly what it means- and that's the reason I don't take what Jack Danforth and his ilk have to say on such matters very seriously.