Guest Commentary
by Tom Del Beccaro
As published on Political Vanguard
My Thought for Today:
The Historic Same Sex Marriage Decision. My goal in all of my writing is to place events in historical context – to let you see the part, in light of the whole as Will Durant would say. With that understanding . . .
I am not surprised with this decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act. This Nation began as a country where federal law started where state law ended – not the other way around. States were to be the incubators and center of our laws. That was the true essence of our state-centric, limited government and it was the true essence of the experiment in Liberty known as the United States. The tide of history, however, is that government power centralizes – always and everywhere. Dispersed power is inefficient and the ambition of those in office to rule is insatiable. The Courts are not immune to that process. Long ago, the federal courts started invalidating state laws on federal grounds in keeping with that dynamic. Our 5th Amendment, at a very basic level, rests on a powerful principle. Equality under the law – and under that principle: different is not equal. When you combine that with centralizing power and federal supremacy over state laws, there really is no stopping point for the invalidation of states’ laws that are not the same or “unequal.” Viewed in that context, today’s ruling cannot be a surprise.
While any one court decision along the way may arouse greater ire than another, for those keeping watch over the American experiment, there can be little doubt that our system of government is no longer what our Founders wanted.
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Thomas Del Beccaro is immediate past chairman of the California Republican Party. He is publisher of PoliticalVanguard.com, author of The New Conservative Paradigm and frequent talk radio and television commentator.