MARCO RUBIO: As I’ve said, that would be conceding that the current Constitution is somehow wrong and needs to be fixed. I don’t think the current Constitution gives the federal government the power to regulate marriage. That belongs at the state and local level. And that’s why if you want to change the definition of marriage, which is what this argument is about.
Actually, no, it's not. The questions the Court considered were quite straightforward:
1. Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex?
2. Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out of state?
I don't see anything in there about "the definition" of marriage (as if there were only one).
And we're back to the "will of the people" argument:
It’s not about discrimination. It is about the definition of a very specific, traditional, and age-old institution. If you want to change it, you have a right to petition your state legislature and your elected representatives to do it. What is wrong is that the Supreme Court has found this hidden constitutional right that 200 years of jurisprudence had not discovered and basically overturn the will of voters in Florida where over 60% passed a constitutional amendment that defined marriage in the state constitution as the union of one man and one woman.
First, it is about discrimination, no matter how you try to wiggle out from under it, Senator. And it's not about the definition of "a very specific, traditional, and age-old institution": marriage gets "redefined" every time someone takes a look at it.
And it's a fundamental principle of American law that fundamental rights are not subject to popular vote -- that's been affirmed again and again, the most recent case I can think of being Romer v. Evans, overturning Colorado's Amendment 2, which took away the First Amendment right of gay and lesbian citizens to petition to government for redress of grievances. The Sixth Circuit tried that one, which is what led to the Supreme Court hearing the consolidated cases on appeal. The Supreme Court has found, in fourteen decisions going back to 1888, that marriage to the person of one's choice is a fundamental right. Game, set, match.
This is the substance of the arguments against the Court's decision in Obergefell: total misrepresentation, leavened with a good helping of outright lies. Of course, you're not going to catch any interviewer or moderator or news anchor calling them on it. These are, after all, Very Serious People.
Digby summed up Rubio's comments perfectly:
Also, Marco Rubio is a smarmy little creep.
2 comments:
I'm also sick of the frequent claims that such and such percentage of the people want to do so and so. The 60% claim is deliberately dishonest: 61.92% of the votes cast were for Amendment 2, but in that election barely 58% of eligible voters actually went to the polls, giving us a solid approval rating of only 35.9% of the voters who wanted to restrict marriage to one man-one woman. Quite a difference, I'd say. Oh, and fuck Marco Rubio and his incipient comb-over.
That's true across the board, but that's not going to bother the mendacious right -- we're dealing with what I call the "Nine Commandment Christians": their Bibles don't seem to have the one about not bearing false witness.
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