Some of us believe that to be conservative is to defend freedom, preserve individual liberty, and keep government small. Others believe that being conservative is about electing a government that will defend and enforce “traditional” values.
For our purposes here, a list of those values isn’t relevant. But if you place yourself in this camp, consider whether you truly want a government that will enforce your personal values at gunpoint (this is what all laws effectively do). And if you surrender such power to the government — power to defend not your life or your property, mind you, but your values — can you live with the consequences when your officials are no longer in power and you are staring down the business end of that barrel? Could you live with mandatory government schooling, for instance? (I could not). When you find yourself in a minority, as everyone does at some point, what protections do you imagine that you will have, other than our Constitution? One of the beauties of that document is that no citizen can undermine it without eventually putting his own interests in peril.
In the context of this debate, it is impossible to overemphasize that this is the same inspired, carefully considered document that protects the religious freedom we hold dear.
Looked at from this perspective, gay marriage isn’t a complex issue. Science aside, one needn’t believe that homosexuality is moral in order to understand that nowhere does the Constitution give the federal government the right to regulate marriage.
This sounds about right to me. I'd put myself in the first camp she mentions, so to me it doesn't really matter what I think of gay marriage but I do agree it is not the place of government to regulate human relationships, whatever I or anyone else may think of them. Read the whole thing of course.
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