Someone Didn't Read the Decision

Sen. Rand Paul is glad DOMA was struck down. Unsurprising -- he would be against DOMA on federalism grounds. But then he went on to praise Anthony Kennedy for his moderation and balance.

Paul, who is widely expected to be a top contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, said that he felt Justice Kennedy's majority opinion “tried to strike a balance” and praised Kennedy as “someone who doesn’t just want to be in front of opinion but wants government to keep up with opinion.”
“As a country, we can agree to disagree,” said Paul.

Whoa. Someone clearly hasn't read the Windsor decision, since it doesn't argue from federalism and is a prolonged rant about how in fact we can't agree to disagree, we must believe that anyone not for ersatz marriage can only have malice and intent to demean as motivations.

I hope that was quick talk and not an indication of Rand Paul's judicial philosophy -- wanting someone who keeps up with the times?

Update: I want to say a word or two about Sen. Paul's assertion that marriage "is not a defining Republican issue."

Actually, the Republican Party came into existence over two issues: slavery and polygamy. The very first Republican platform read in part:

it is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism--Polygamy, and Slavery.

 Mr. W. put it rather well recently: 

The 19th century understood what the 21st century refuses to understand--that monogamous heterosexual marriage is the character of civilization itself, whereas other forms of marriage are 'barbaric.'  What that meant was that other forms of marriage are a kind of enslavement, which is why the two [slavery & polygamy] were "twins." This denunciation of polygamy was repeated in platforms into the 1880s.  Justice Kennedy on the other hand talks about gay marriage as an "evolving standard."  Healthier cultures see it as it is, a "twin" to slavery and a return to the age of enslavement to appetites.

This is my main gripe with the Libertarians, even though I make common cause with them often enough. Libertarians are foolish enough to believe that men who have not the character to discipline their own appetites will have the wisdom or will power to limit their government. Laws follow the character of a people and you can't prescind from the questions of abortion and marriage and ever hope to reduce reliance on government. It's not about imposing morality or telling people what to do. It's about forging the character of a people in the broadest sense. 

Mona Charen has a good piece on the Windsor decision. She sees it for the disaster that it is. She compares it to Roe, though I think a more apt analogy would be Dred Scott because the Court in Windsor does not, as it did in Roe, directly find a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Rather it sets same-sex marriage proponents up for a spike next year, just as Dred Scott was a set-up for the destruction of any limits to slavery and an effort to delegitimize anyone with a different opinion. Justice Kennedy's sanctimonious dismissal of the entire Congress and President Clinton as mere bigots sounds exactly like Justice Taney's condescending and bilious moral lecture in Dred Scott. Each was more interested in giving a pious lecture on correct opinion then in sound judicial reasoning. Those who want to think as Paul does that the Court did something limited ought to re-read Lincoln's House Divided speech. It can serve as stand-in for my response to Rand Paul. Windsor is a piece of legal machinery in the destruction of states' ability to regulate marriage, just as Dred Scott was a piece of legal machinery in the destruction of states' ability to regulate slavery. And Rand Paul has just said, with Stephen Douglas, that he "doesn't care" about the result.

Or try Lincoln's Cooper Union speech, which addresses the political correctness of his day, and his answer to the charge of divisiveness, extremism. 

what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

It is one thing to do as Lincoln did and try to let a debate play out without acting precipitously. Maybe that's all Paul was getting at. But there should be no fooling ourselves that the forces of ersatz marriage are going to be content with agreeing to disagree. They cannot possibly win this debate and not crush every right guaranteed by the First Amendment along with it -- we have already seen this in Britain, in Canada, in the Scandinavian countries and in the states that have affirmed gay marriage. Wherever it goes, free exercise and free speech disappear.