Do you ever wonder? Well, yes and so another foray into life’s conundrums big and small.
You are invited to follow me below the fold.
Do you ever wonder why people who insist on taking the Bible literally have a problem with our Constitutional documents. Taken literally there would be no Constitutional wrangles concerning individual rights. Not the right of women to vote, not the right of Blacks not to be slaves, or Native Americans recognized as full citizens, or marriage equality, or that this country is not a Christian nation. Clearly our founding fathers were far more egalitarian than the religious right. There is no wiggle room in the words of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Kinda like the words of Jesus that way, unambiguous.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.-.
Evidence of a Christian nation, well not exactly. If “creator” is taken to mean THE CREATOR, a universal concept in all theistic beliefs, then it would mean all religions from Christian to Hindu. But Jefferson’s god was found in the order of nature, not the Bible, hardly a Christian concept. How disappointed he would be if he knew that one phrase would embolden a group of fanatics to try to bring about a theocracy, stomp on the Constitution and rewrite history.
In the Bible literalists find plenty of justification for bad behavior too, like support for slavery and marginalizing indigenous people, for hate crimes and persecution of anyone deviating from their version of right and their parsing of the Charters of Freedom. All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator. Its talking about human beings, mankind, all of us and we get the goodies just by showing up. Heck we don’t have to DO anything, being a live is enough to get all the perks and privileges of being an American. Our Constitution goes further and with remarkable humanity extends those same protections to everyone inside our borders citizen or not. No second class people here, no doorway to oppression.
The DOI laid out the general premise, the Constitution nailed it, starting with WE THE PEOPLE. The central theme of the Bill of Rights isn’t about rich white Christian men, no the language of the Constitution is powerfully inclusive, by the people, to the people, of the people. No caveats, no loopholes, no cheesing out.
This has been a very important week starting with the demonstrations in DC and Jena, La. The fight in Congress over Habeas and funding for the war. Monday was the 220th annivesary of the signing of the Constitution. I don’t remember hearing anything on the news, no special programing on Constitution Day. It is one thing not to cover the marches in DC but quite another not to celebrate the Constitution, not to reacquaint us with the most powerful document ever written.
This started as a rant about the ultra conservatives who would dismantle the Constitution, but it is really about anyone willing to parse the documents out of ignorance or perfidy. The Charters of Freedom are the DNA of this nation, part of our DNA too. We are nothing without it and everything if we embrace it. The DOI, The Bill of Rights and the Constitution, an amazing gift to future generations who would read it and believe.
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I know, I know
Both documents leave an enormous amount of wiggle room: most famously in the Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, or the Commerce Clause. In plain English, it says that Congress has the right to regulate commerce between the states. Somehow that’s been stretched into places that defy logic, like the Civil Rights act of 1964.
Technically all jurisdiction not granted Congress belongs to the states, which Congress has interpreted in the most liberal way possible (when it’s convenient to do so, and more power being more power, they typically go for broad readings). I certainly don’t complain about the results sometimes, as in the Civil Rights act, but the Constitutional justification is a bit… Well, they did a lot of wiggling.
Then we get into fuzzy language and disagreement over terminology. For example, is equal access to marriage a right? If so, the federal government can claim constitutional jurisdiction; if not, the issue defaults to the tenth amendment. The Supreme Court has found that marriage is, indeed, a right… They just haven’t applied it to non-heterosexual relationships. Total mess.
This is a good essay and I’m with you on upholding the ideals that are spelled out, as you put it, in unambiguous terms (even if the actual details weren’t: the Constitution did calculate the relative worth of slaves versus free men).
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expediency, the unforeseen consequences of trying to form a union. Clearly the actual writers of the Constitution thought slavery an evil thing and a stain on this country. But we had outgrown the Articles of Confederation and a centralized government as necessary if we were to survive. There was also a matter of economics, Southern states were rich and willing to pay high taxes, so they agreed to the 3/5th rule, more taxes but also 30% more voting power. But what it also did in a back door kind of way is reaffirm slaves as human beings not property or they would not be included in representation. I believe the framers were very careful not to include slavery in the BOR, save Amendment V nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, taken to mean slaves.
Other Amendments do muddy the original concept, but taking the DOI and the BOR at face value, this country is meant for everyone equally. The best part of it all is the compromises and mistakes can be undone, we can evolve to be what Jefferson and Madison meant.
As for marriage equality. States regulate age and relationships of who marries. This seems reasonable because the laws regarding those two issues reflect the local customs and mores. But based on the BOR the government has Constitutional jurisdiction. Loving vs Virginia only addressed a single issue, interracial marriage and the harsh penalty in some states. However, the Supremes did say Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival.. that is pretty heady stuff.
And Mildred Loving I think said it best Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people civil rights.
But there is more than Loving to fall back on. “Zablocki v. Redhail In 1978, the United States Supreme Court declared marriage to be “of fundamental importance to all individuals”. The court described marriage as “one of the ‘basic civil rights of man'” and “the most important relation in life.” The court also noted that “the right to marry is part of the fundamental ‘right to privacy'” in the U.S. Constitution.”
While neither of these cases deal with same sex marriage they do set a tone for what marriage means Constitutionally for every citizen.