The political divide over the issue of gay marriage is…disheartening, to say the least. As a conservative who really doesn’t take offense or particularly care about this issue, I find myself talking about gay marriage both on my show and in political conversation much more often than I feel I should or even care to. First of all, I’m in favor of gay marriage: IF it is passed on a state by state level. My reasoning, you ask? While I certainly don’t want to equate homosexuality to sexual exploitation of minors, the sad fact is that if an amendment is added to the constitution, groups like the North American Man Boy Love Association (more commonly referred to as NAMBLA) will try everything they can to secure their own rights by using the gay marriage amendment as a precedent. If you don’t believe me, all you have to do is use Roe v. Wade as a case study. However you feel about abortion, nothing in the Constitution specifies one way or the other the founding fathers’ beliefs on the subject. Therefore, the lawyers literally threw every amendment at the Supreme Court until one stuck, and somehow the Supreme Court found that our freedom of speech is in the same category as abortion. The lawyers admit to this fact, and the statements are found in Roe V. Wade: The Abortion Rights Controversy in American History (Landmark Law Cases and American Society) by N. E. H. Hull and Peter Charles Hoffer. Now, I know what you’re thinking: Come on, Travis! That’ll never happen! And perhaps it wouldn’t immediately, or even in the future. However by opening that Pandora’s Box just a hair, I worry about a future where a 40 year old man can have a sexual relationship with a 13 year old boy, and with lawyers getting better and better at manipulating the law I don’t want that box opened at all.

                However, I am straying from my thesis. Last week, Maine had the opportunity to be the first state to pass gay marriage at the ballot box. The initiative lost, however narrowly, and anti-gay marriage conservatives rejoiced. I don’t know off hand the amount of money that was raised to campaign against this initiative, but I can imagine it was substantial. While religious conservatives who don’t believe in gay marriage as a matter of faith were celebrating, more moderate conservatives (at least on this subject) are now becoming worried. If some states, especially the more liberal ones like Maine and Vermont, don’t pass this, we may see politicians trying to jam legislature through on a national level not only to appease gay rights groups and other liberals, but because they truly feel that they are doing the right thing. If history is anything else, it is an example of what a government with one party in the majority, whether it’s Democrat or Republican, will do. When the federal income tax was struck down by the Supreme Court with a 5-4 decision, the states simply added the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1913 in order to impose the tax.  Democrats are less likely to believe in states’ rights as an answer, and with a liberal Democratic majority I don’t foresee too many more failed initiatives before they decide to go around the Supreme Court by means of an amendment.

                I understand the view of some religious people that gay marriage is wrong, and I respect that view even if I disagree with it. I don’t consider these people bigots, and by all means it is their right to voice their own concerns. But to those conservative and libertarian folks out there that share my own viewpoint (this includes Dick Cheney, who has a lesbian daughter), I hope that you will all be a little more vocal the next time that a ballot initiative like this comes around. And more than that, I hope you all realize the consequences of voting against initiatives you claim to support just to make a point.

Originally written for the IUN Phoenix.