On the Federal Marriage Amendment

As you all probably know, the Senate is currently debating an amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:

The emotionally charged proposal, backed by the president and many conservatives, provides that marriage within the United States "shall consist only of a man and a woman."

A second sentence says that neither the federal nor any state constitution "shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman." Some critics argue that the effect of that provision would be to ban civil unions, and its inclusion in the amendment has complicated efforts by GOP leaders to gain support from wavering Republicans.

I'm generally conservative, but I lean toward the libertarian side of things. I have always opposed an amendment to the Constitution regarding marriage. My opposition has nothing to do with whether or not I believe same-sex marriage is a good thing or not. Rather, it has to do with my belief that this is something that is frankly no business of the federal government. It is something that should be left up to the individual states.

In a recent missive to the President, Senator Barbara Boxer questions why the Senate is wasting its time on legislation that is almost certainly doomed to failure when other pressing legislation waits in the wings. Senator Boxer is a Democrat from California so I'm going to assume that I will disagree with her on most issues. However, she makes a very good point when she writes:

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year, University of Chicago Law School Professor Cass Sunstein noted that all of the amendments to the Constitution are either expansions of individual rights or attempts to remedy problems in the structure of government. The sole exception was the 18th Amendment that established Prohibition and that attempt to write social policy into the Constitution was such a disaster that it was repealed less than 15 years later.

Actually, she's not entirely correct. There is one other amendment that is an exception to the purposes she lists and that is the 16th Amendment that instituted the federal income tax. Other than that omission, she is right about the rest of the amendments.

I believe that amemdments to the Constitution should not ever limit what the people can do. Instead, the only limits they impose should be on the federal government itself. Otherwise they should serve, as Senator Boxer writes, to expand individual rights or fix problems with the structure of the government (like clarifying the order of succession to the presidency).

I could go on and list a bunch of items that I disagree with in Senator Boxer's letter but you can probably figure them all out for yourself.