Pulse and Breath Detected: Federalism Lives
What happens if a state doesn’t issue marriage licenses to homosexuals?
If the policy of the Government
upon vital questions affecting the whole people
is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court …
the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.
— A. Lincoln
The Supreme Court having spoken its mind on the subject of homosexual marriage and the nation’s marriage policy, the question now is: What happens next? One theory is that all states are now required to authorize homosexual marriages. But suppose they don’t?
Following the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, which held that the states could no longer segregate schools by race, there were…recalcitrants. One of them, Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas, ordered the National Guard to prevent the integration of schools in Little Rock; whereupon President Eisenhower nationalized the Arkansas National Guard (removing it from the governor’s control) and, for good measure, sent the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army into Little Rock to keep order.
Could that happen now if a state refused to issue marriage licenses to homosexuals? En principe, as the French say—when they mean “No.” But does anyone think President Obama would send in the 101st Airborne to enforce homosexual marriage?
One difference between the two Supreme Court cases is especially significant. Brown vs. Board of Education was a unanimous decision by the Court, its unanimity reflecting the considered opinion of most of the country: that state-enforced discrimination had to go.
In the recent homosexual-marriage case, however, the Supreme Court was divided (5 to 4), and, again, that reflected opinion in the country: it is divided.
And because opinion is divided, the liberals are trying to hitch up the homosexual-marriage cart to the desegregation horse in order to shame people who don’t accept the Court’s marriage ruling: “Not so long ago, of course, government officials invoked religious beliefs to justify all manner of racial segregation and discrimination, including laws banning interracial marriage,” wrote The New York Times. (We should pause a moment to note the complete absence of any outrage from blacks at being thus analogized.)
For the most part today, the states have abandoned federalism: they’re all on the federal dole. For highway money, for school money, for money to do 101 useless things which their citizens wouldn’t vote for if they realized they were paying for them with their own tax money, but which they like because they appear to be freeeee.
State X doesn’t want to follow the diktats of the Department of Education? Fine, but then the feds will withhold a hundred million dollars or so in education funding. A hundred million here, a hundred million there—first thing you know, the governor won’t be able to afford fuel for his airplane. You see the problem.
But what happens if a state doesn’t issue marriage licenses to homosexuals? What on Earth—or what in Louisiana—would the 101st Airborne do if Obama sent it in?
The federal government’s problem is that the 101st Airborne stick is too big to wield, and there aren’t any relevant carrots to withhold.
This looks promising. Already six states (Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas) have expressed interest in resisting the Supreme Court’s civilization-changing rule. They seem to understand what Lincoln was talking about: government by the people, not by the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile … last summer, five Republican governors said that they might refuse to put into effect President Obama’s sweeping climate-change regulations. The governors’ actions were instigated (that’s likely to be the word President Obama will use—it makes the governors’ actions sound so…criminal) by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) who urged all governors to refuse to carry out the federal rules, promulgated by President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency. The regulations were finally published by the E.P.A. on October 23, and now 24 states have filed lawsuits to have them overturned.
The rules are aimed, according to the enviro-mentally unstable turn-out-the-lights, take-cold-showers Obama Administration, at reducing global warming. They will require states to shut down coal-powered electricity generating plants and replace them with plants powered by so-called “renewable sources”—solar and wind power (you just put your lips together and blow). President Obama sees this as a transformative policy.
So do the governors, who see their states being transformed back into the whale-oil era for the sake of the Left’s only religious cause: stopping global warming, a dogma the governors and most other sensible people don’t believe in.
“The E.P.A.’s latest attempt at imposing burdensome regulations represents an unprecedented meddling with Texas in order to push the Obama administration’s liberal climate-change agenda,” said Texas governor Greg Abbott.
“The president’s Clean Power Plan undermines the role of states in the federal Clean Air Act in an effort to realize a radical, liberal agenda that will lead to increased energy costs. While we believe the proposed rule should be immediately withdrawn, we are considering all options to mitigate the damage if it becomes final, including not submitting a plan,” said a spokesman for Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal.
Fighting words indeed. Federalism (of a sort). Finally.
And how can liberals object? For years they’ve been supporting the practices of “sanctuary cities” (almost two hundred of them!)—cities that have refused to follow the federal government’s policy requiring that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials be notified when an illegal immigrant is released from custody.
But surely the transformation of the culture from the traditional Western Civilization marriage and family culture to a hook-up, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (and disgusting, and Democratic party) culture is more consequential than having to turn out the light when you leave the bathroom. Gentlemen, please: Focus.
Still, we have to begin somewhere. The governors have to get the hang of protecting their citizens from the federal government, and the citizens may have to learn to enjoy being protected. Resisting the religious practices of federal voodoo climate-change believers may be a good beginning, a first, if small, step toward federalism—and freedom.
They say that after you’ve shot your first sweet, innocent, harmless, leaf-eating, doe-eyed little deer, the second one’s easier.
And there’s nothing sweet, innocent, or harmless about the U.S. Supreme Court’s marriage policy, which lovers of federalism and freedom should make sure is not irrevocably fixed.