O Federalism, Up Yours!

Editor:

David Davenport and Gordon Lloyd's Oct. 7 column ("The
New States' Rights") reflects the classic conservative
strategy of conflating essentially disparate political principles
in order to divide and conquer. Comparing
worthy state-based initiatives to combat climate
change, encourage stem-cell research, and relax
marijuana laws with the emerging hodgepodge of laws
regarding marriage equality is like comparing apples
and oranges.

The authors are correct when they write that the
states are often laboratories for progress that
outpace the federal government. The three
examples cited above are just the tip of the iceberg.
Affordable healthcare, better education, and more
effective management of natural resources are other
areas in which states such as California have begun
innovative trends that have shown the way.

However, when it come to civil rights, the authors'
argument that the states should be let similarly alone
falls apart. This is the same logic that the
slave-owning states used before the Civil War, and
that rose again during the civil rights struggles of
the third quarter of the 20th century. I have no doubt
that if this strand of logic had prevailed (as seemed
quite possible in the 1950s and '60s), segregated
schools, unjust voting laws, anti-miscegneation laws,
and prohibitions on birth control, abortion, and
homosexual activity would still be on the books and
actively enforced in some states.

The authors are quick to refer to the 10th Amendment
in their piece. I suggest that they study some of the
other parts of the Bill of Rights and later
amendments, and the history behind both their
inclusion in the Constitution and their subsequent
interpretation, before they start us on the road back
to the era of repression to which their argument
leads. If there's any area in which these States must
be United, it is in the basic civil rights of all its
citizens.

[I wanted to include a paragraph about how the federal government has already essentially clutched to its own breast the issue of marriage because of all the federal benefits that accrue to matrimony, but the letter was already too long.]

[And yes, I realize there are at least two dull and obvious cliches in the letter. This is the Chronicle, not the New York Review of Books, so give me a break, OK?]

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