"Conservatives" Are Wrong on the Pro-Marriage Amendment

Joseph Sobran rightly criticizes the "conservative" solution to gay marriage in an article entitled The Amendment Strategy:

Nobody ever construed the Constitution to mandate sodomatrimony before, simply because, for openers, marriage has always meant a union of two people of different sexes. The Massachusetts court wasn't reading the text dispassionately, as judges are supposed to do, but acting under the impetus of a current fad to impose its own will - just as the U.S. Supreme Court has often done, most notably in its 1973 abortion rulings.

So the problem isn't the Constitution; it's the judiciary, which has gone beyond usurping legislative powers to usurp powers even the legislative branch was never meant to have, such as redefining some of the most basic terms in the English language - human life, and now marriage. ...

... But proposing constitutional amendments has become something of a conservative hobby. It feels so good! So conservatives in our time have offered a series of needless amendments - to ban abortion, to ban flag-burning, and now to ban same-sex "marriage" - and every one of them has failed miserably, leaving the Constitution’s meaning the plaything of the liberal judiciary.

What I have never quite understood is the willingness of the American people - conservatives in particular - to submit to the arbitrary rulings of judges who lack an understanding of the moral foundation of the law and who have exceeded their constitutional authority. Such rulings are, by definition, immoral and unlawful and should be ignored.

What this country needs more than a pro-marriage amendment is a judiciary that actually respects the law of the land rather than reinterprets it. Conservatives, however, fail to grasp that fact. They are, as Sobran points out, more interested in party politics:

But the latest failed amendment, as one news report immediately noted, "has given President Bush a campaign issue." That's why Bush supported it - not because it had any chance of passing, but because its inevitable defeat would produce a conservative frustration helpful to his bid for reelection.

Republican politicians have learned to excite and exploit conservative passions without satisfying them. Conservatives, the GOP's own useful idiots, fall for it every time. Bush can get away with violating just about every conservative principle as long as he gives lip service on a few hot-button issues that shouldn't even be issues. Pushing an amendment that's going nowhere is one way to do this.

What conservatives need to do is set politics aside for a moment and stop trying to treat the symptom while ignoring the disease. Forget altering the Constitution and put that zeal and fervor to good use by attacking those judges who are making a mockery of our legal system. Besides, conservatives wouldn't want defining marriage added to the growing list of federal powers...would they?