Why DOMA Matters

President Obama says his Justice Department will stop taking cases involving gay marriage. He continues to call the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional. Shocking as it may seem to those who know me, I cannot find any constitutional reason the Federal government should have enacted DOMA. Some try to argue that the states need this kind of protection to keep same-sex couples married in one state from claiming rights in other states which do not recognize same-sex marriage. This is a specious argument. Prostitution is legal in Nevada (for now) but practitioners cannot take their trade to other states and claim protection based on its legality in Nevada. Citizens of Arizona can carry concealed firearms in Arizona, but they cannot take that right to other states. Medical marijuana is legal in Michigan, but if a patient is caught smoking weed in Ohio, he will be charged with drug possession. And so on nearly ad infinitum.

It used to be a cardinal principle that the states could do pretty much what they want as long as it does not countermand the US Constitution. That was back when the Constitution was thought to mean something permanent and objective. Now it seems that the Constitution is either blatantly ignored or else assumed to be fluid to the point of meaninglessness. I am enough of a libertarian to believe that the Federal government has no business interfering in the private lives of US citizens. The ridiculous lengths to which “equal protection” and “interstate commerce” have been stretched strain credulity. Honestly, I believe DOMA is unconstitutional.

That said, I believe marriage as an institution between one man and one woman should be defended with the same vigor as the enumerated rights in the first ten amendments to the Constitution. The purpose of the Bill of Rights was precisely to keep the Federal government from taking from citizens those rights which are elemental to the operation of a free society. It saddens me that many well-intentioned people are suggesting that the right of gays to marry is one of those elemental rights. Do I sound conflicted? Am I contradicting myself? I don’t think so.

If gays and lesbians want to live together in some kind of recognized union, I do not see how a pluralistic society can forbid them. But that society can refuse to call it marriage. Some argue that this is just a matter of semantics, but I disagree; words mean things. Marriage is an institution because it transcends the mere dictionary definition of the word. Marriage is the foundation, the bedrock of a society. For tens of thousands of years societies have seen the need to restrain the chaos of uncontrolled sexual impulse by orchestrating the music of procreation.

Not to go all Biology 101, but sexual intercourse has a natural consequence: children. True, since the middle of the last century this relationship has been somewhat decoupled (pardon the pun.) Francis Fukuyama wisely noted that this severing of sex and procreation played a starring role in the ending of history as we know it. It may well have been the bell sounding the final round in the fight for a civil society. Family is the foundation of any society; destroy the foundation and you endanger the whole building. Say what you will about the right of people to do whatever they like in their bedrooms, chaos ensues if the ties that bind families are broken.

Marriage has long been that tie. Don’t talk to me about same-sex couples adopting and creating wonderful families. There will never be a same-sex pregnancy; babies come from man-woman relationships. Even artificial insemination or whatever else might be suggested must involve a donation from each of the two sexes. The “natural” way of humanity is for a man and a woman to make a baby and then nurture it until it can become a productive member of society. That process requires a commitment if it is to work properly. Marriage has historically served as that commitment.

All of the perversions of the “natural” way of things create chaos – premarital, extramarital, polygamal, homosexual, incestual, bestial sex all destroy the order which traditional marriage brings to society. I think we need an awareness of D.O.M.A. in this country, but it stands for don’t obscure marriage anymore. There is enough chaos in the world as it is. Redefining marriage will only add to it.

Serving Customers, Helping America

Caution: this is going to be a rant. I don’t see how I can make anything heavenly about it, so if you expect the w.h.a.m.m. you may be disappointed.

I had occasion recently to call a credit card company’s customer service number. It should not surprise anyone that the voice which answered sounded distinctly Indian. To their credit, the bank had found someone who was able to speak understandable English, more or less. After the standard greeting and informing me that her name was [unrecognizable,] she asked for my sixteen digit account number. Rant one: I had already entered my account number via the keypad in order to access her department. Why is it that the computer which recognized my account number could not also send it to the screen of the person taking the call?

Rant two: despite the fact that her English was passable, she had trouble understanding the nature of my problem. I speak a little French, so I can put together a sentence or two which I suspect sound “passable.” However, if a French speaker responded to me at conversational speed, I would be clueless. I think this was [unrecognizable’s] problem. I tried to make her understand that the account which they were attempting to collect was issued to a now defunct business. Pretend the business dba was Michigan Disposal Center. The card was issued to Michigan D Center. The struggling service rep wanted to know if the person named on the card now resided at a different address. I repeated that it was not a person, but a business. She countered by asking if I knew the new address of the person named on the card. I repeated that the card was not issued to a person, but to a business which is no longer in existence. And around we went… again and again. She couldn’t grasp that first name, Michigan, middle initial D, last name Center did not exist – had never existed as a person.

Rant three: we have a huge employment problem in the United States. It seems anti-American to hire foreign workers when so many of our own are un- or underemployed. The technology exists, I believe, to route call center contacts to any phone in the universe. (They send them to India.) Why not pay a stay-at-home mom or dad to answer these calls? Via the wonders of the Internet, I can access just about any information a company would give me access to from my desktop in my study. Could companies hire our own citizens to do this work at home? This would kill three birds with one stone: it gets rid of the irksome language issue and employs US citizens while keeping people like me from needing to rant. I would be much more likely to become a repeat customer of a company which did not flaunt its anti-American policies through its customer service options.

I am not anti-globalist or hyper-protectionist. I know we need the global economy to survive. But I am not alone in thinking that the profit motive has spawned a cancerous attitude in many corporate board rooms. A recent article in Reader’s Digest suggested that a sizable portion of the US citizenry would pay “a little more” for American made products understanding that it meant jobs for fellow citizens. I know I would.