You can all blame me for a case of pointy-fingers later on. The blame game can take the many decades it needs to be played — prior to its being repealed — if the Federal Marriage Amendment gets passed:

“Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.”

Andy Sullivan on the FMA:

These are the words of something called the Federal Marriage Amendment. Right now, it is the main focus of activists in the religious right, who are making it their first priority in the coming months. Backed by social conservatives in the Republican Party, they hope to amend the very Constitution of the United States to bar gay equality in marriage for ever.

“But we’re just trying to protect the word “Marriage” from being redefined!” What did I say about this argument? Petty. What did I call people who would usually use the word game as an argument against marriage? Closet bigots. Not to bring in the civil rights movement (since I too believe that it is not similar to the movement for gay marriage) into this situation, but I’m sure that an inter-racial “marriage” back then was considered by many as not a marriage. Oh, to travel through time to prove that point. Maybe I can do the next best thing (hat tip: Up With Beauty). Inflaming the petty closet bigots here isn’t the goal of this entry.

Rosemary Esmay on the FMA:

I am writing to state my opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment. I strongly oppose this measure on the grounds that it is unAmerican, bigoted and reeks of tyranny. By supporting this amendment, you are taking away the rights of States and, by default, its people to decide for themselves on the issue of Gay marriage.

Only, in our representative republic of a government, it is perfectly legal and within the bounds of the law that this Amendment be passed. It, however, flies in the face of every principle of freedom, federalism, and states’ rights. How sad, though, that the very same states’ rights which I call on now, were allegedly the very same states’ rights trampled upon by Lawrence v. Texas… or are they? Does a state have the right to legislate bigotry and discriminatory laws? I am not a lawyer. I cannot pick through this issue without falling flat on my face somewhere down the line.

What I do know is that the social conservatives behind this law, blinded with fury, anger and hatred, are willing to use the tent of the Republican Party to go ahead and enact a very un-Republican, overreaching, big-government, and discriminatory Amendment into the constitution so that they would never have to deal with faggots and dykes ever again. They’d be willing to call those against it as immoral, and evil, and they would not lift a finger to fight it because they have a voting constituency whose final criterion in many cases is morality.

My only supposition in this entire debate is that the implementations for the Full Faith and Credit Clause be changed in order to allow for strict federalism, as Matthew Stinson indicates. Judicial fiat will only cause problems in this case. What is important is to allow the people to adopt the “Why not, who cares?” attitude. This is a much easier goal than finding loving acceptance from everyone.