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In a recent article about the federal judge who made the ruling on the gay marriage ban in California, Maggie Gallagher was quoted as saying “… our Founding Fathers who, I promise you would be shocked by the courts that imagine they have the right to put gay marriage in our Constitution.” They may be also shocked that Ms. Gallagher has the right to vote and own property. Imagine the chagrin of most of our Founding Fathers that Clarence Thomas sits on the Supreme Court.
As great as some of our Founding Fathers were, they were still flawed human beings who produced a document that allowed slavery and called them three-fifths of a person. They were intelligent enough to provide a constitution that allowed for flexibility by allowing it to be amended. The Founding Fathers were not around when the 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution. It is the equal protection clause in that amendment on which the judge based his ruling. It is a legal ruling based on an interpretation of the law, not a statement of sexual orientation. Nobody has put gay marriage into the Constitution. The judge has only ruled that gays must have equal rights under the Constitution.
Rights are guaranteed under the Constitution. Constitutional rights protect minorities from the majority. The majority has no right to deny the basic rights of individuals or minority groups. Conservatives today seem to revere the Founding Fathers while they forget that the Founding Fathers were the political progressives of their day. Had Ms. Gallagher and her crowd been around in the 1770s, they most likely would have supported the king of England.
Ms. Gallagher I’m sure is very happy with the rights she now has. It is too bad that she doesn’t want all Americans to share equally the rights guaranteed under the Constitution.
Jack D. Miller,
Middleburg
