August 27, 2007

Fred Thompson will soon declare his formal candidacy, and as soon as he does, he should be asked about the Marriage Protection Amendment. The online editor of National Review, Kathryn Jean Lopez, received an e-mail from Fred Thompson’s staff stating unequivocally that “Fred Thompson does not support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.” That e-mail also said that “If necessary, he would support a constitutional amendment prohibiting states from imposing their laws on marriage on other states.”

This is essentially Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain’s position—and it is a refusal to recognize that a “wait and see” attitude is really a blinkered view of the direction of the courts, one that led to the judicial imposition of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts.

If The Defense of Marriage Act is struck down as unconstitutional and the Constitution’s contract clause interpreted to oblige other states to recognize Massachusetts’ same-sex marriages, the cultural and legal crisis will have arrived and the debate about reaction not even begun—illustrating why all the major candidates should support a Marriage Protection Amendment.

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