Well, No, the Founders Probably Didn’t Want Gay Marriage

Republicans in Congress are up in arms over the Justice Department’s decision to not defend the blatantly unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act. To justify opposition to same-sex marriage, Lamar Smith said, “No one can seriously believe that the constitution’s authors intended to create a right to same-sex marriage.”

And he’s right about that. I’m sure same-sex marriage was something that never even crossed their minds. The whole issue of sexual preference as we understand it today wasn’t on anyone’s radar for at least another century, I don’t believe.

Of course, the Founders certainly didn’t intend for women to have the right to vote or for African Americans to have a right to not be kept in involuntary servitude, either. There are all kinds of issues we face today that 18th century people either never imagined, or saw entirely differently, from the way they are viewed today.

But according to Wingnut logic, the perspectives of a handful of white guys who lived 200 years ago cancel out all the ways society has changed in all those years, keeping us locked in a kind of anachronistic tyranny. All the more weird, since the tyrants at this point are just projections of what the Right imagines them to have been. It’s government by ghost.

I might point out that abortion was legal in Britain and former British colonies in the late 18th century, and it never occurred to any of the Founders to do anything about it. I don’t believe any of them ever even expressed an opinion on abortion, which was openly going on all around them. What does that tell us about wingnut priorities?

However I’m sure criminalizing abortion and gay marriage will create lots of jobs. (/sarcasm)

Orange Julius is threatening to cut funds to the Department of Justice to punish them for not defending DOMA. See also Steve Benen.