corrente

Thank heavens we didn't put Bork on the Supreme Court!

Alan Cooperman of WaPo reports:

In the spring and summer of 2001, a group of conservative legal scholars including former Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork hammered out the proposed text of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

[Now] White House aides say President Bush is about to endorse [the amendment]. Yet there is no consensus -- even among its authors -- about what the text means.

Though it is just two sentences long, the amendment's possible interpretations are a matter of furious debate among constitutional scholars and political activists, with some contending that it would allow Vermont-style civil unions and others saying it would not.

When he, Bork, Bradley and others were circulating drafts three years ago, he said, they were trying to satisfy many conservative constituencies.

"Some people wanted to ban all civil unions," he said. "Some people wanted a pure federalism amendment" -- one that would guarantee that no state has to recognize same-sex unions granted by another state -- "and some wanted a pure judicial restraint amendment" that would tie judges' hands.

The amendment's second sentence, in particular, bears the hallmarks of committee action. Gay rights groups contend that the phrase about "legal incidents" of marriage would bar civil unions, and that evangelical Christian organizations are trying to sell the amendment to the public as more moderate than it is.

Peter J. Rubin, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center who heads the liberal American Constitution Society, said he originally thought the Musgrave amendment "couldn't possibly have been the work of a lawyer."

But after learning that Bork and other eminent scholars were involved, Rubin began to see more in the text. "If they don't mean it, it's sloppy," he said. "If they do mean it, it's mean-spirited."

Sloppy, mean-spirited, arrogant, and self-righteous. Sounds like Iraq all over again! And I bet the Republicans have no plan to get out of this war, either. So, as the Big Dog said, "We'll just have to win, then."

NOTE Here's the text of the amendment:

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.

UPDATE More on the second sentence from Jacob T. Levy in the New Republic here:

The [anti-gay marriage amendment] was oddly written in an attempt to meet social conservative aims under cover of shoring up the separation of powers and respecting federalist principles--and while avoiding the appearance of extremism that would be created by banning civil unions altogether. The attempt to do all this simultaneously failed. We're left with an amendment that achieves social conservative aims by subverting both the separation of powers and federalism. In this case, a bad cause seems to have made for bad law.