FEDERAL MARRIAGE AMENDMENT

Two weeks ago I described the Federal Marriage Amendment as a cannon designed to kill the "full faith and credit" gnat. Today we learn that Eugene Volokh agrees. And he's got a law degree.

He's disagreeing with Ramesh Ponneru's interpretation of the scope of FMA. Ramesh is probably getting his talking points directly or indirectly from the Alliance for Marriage, a pressure group that claims to have drafted the amendment. See here, and their interpretation of the amendment here. The Alliance claims that the amendment "leaves up to the legislature" whether or not there should be such things as civil unions or "benefits associated with marriage" granted to same-sex couples; it only prevents courts (read, liberal, unelected judges) from imposing those things on an unsuspecting and unwilling state. The Alliance admits that the amendment is also designed to prohibit a state-level redefinition of marriage by the legislature, however, which the text clearly shows.

I would gather that most social conservatives are perfectly happy with the federalism-restraining dimensions of this proposed amendment, and are not particularly concerned if the amendment is read to restrain state legislatures from granting anything like marriage or its benefits to same-sex couples. For example, Ben Domenech sees nothing less than the future of american society at stake in the question of defining marriage, authoritatively, as the union of "one man and one woman" (add before God, dedicated to raising children). Ben's post is one of the best (Burkean) defenses of this position that I've seen. I don't believe it, though, but that's a story for another day. . .