N.J. High Court Says Yes to Same Sex Marriage

With yesterday's New Jersey Supreme Court ruling ordering the state legislature to create an institution that approximates marriage for homosexuals and requiring the extension of benefits to same-sex couples and their children, the Republicans are hoping to energize conservatives to vote for GOP congressional candidates. Desperate to distract the voters from the economy and from the quagmire in Iraq, this ruling has already been touted as an example of "activist judges" and "the imperial judiciary... "impos[ing] same sex marriage in New Jersey."

For 30 years the GOP campaigned for smaller government, for state's rights and against government intrusion in people's lives. Even on the fractious issue of abortion rights, the Republicans declared the necessity of letting the individual states decide. So who are these imposters in elephant clothing who want the Feds to decide to whom states can issue a marriage license, expanding government power and spending and encouraging the US Supreme Court to overturn jury awards in state courts?

In the 80s the Republicans somehow created a dichotomy between conservative and liberal and assigned itself the former. The party further defined anything liberal as anti-American, anti-God and to blame for all the world's ills.

Each election cycle since, the GOP has found issues to divide the opposition into splinter groups. Minority "hyphenated Americans" v. white "Americanism", urban "corruption" v. rural "heartland values", educated "elite" v. "real." In essence these dualities always favored the rich and fractured the rest of us. The power in urban areas didn't lie with the poor people who lived there, but rather with the suburban "carpet-baggers" who controlled employment. The educated elite were rarely in favor of an egalitarian state, rather they were enriching themselves from running the United States. The poor were painted as non-whites in spite of the numbers to the contrary. By the turn of the century all three branches of the federal government were controlled by the GOP.

Now it's a liberal assault on religion and marriage that the GOP uses to frame the issues. Forget Iraq, forget illegal immigration, forget gay marriage: these issues are straw men. Implementing policies that would benefit the economic bottom nine-tenths of America are the real goals for the GOP.

The more one considers the issues, the more it appears Republicans are opposed to same sex marriage not on moral or legal grounds but rather for economic reasons. If homosexual unions are recognized on a federal level, businesses would have to extend benefits to same-sex partners that they currently extend to heterosexual married partners. (Sometime during the 80s the concept of common-law marriage became extinct and all marriages needed government sanction.) It would cut into corporate profits.

GOP policies on illegal immigration and Iraq also seem to be slanted to benefit corporate America. And when people oppose these policies they are accused of being ultra-liberal or worse, interested in creating class warfare.

If only one house of Congress changes majorities any efforts by that house to address these policies will be shouted down as playing politics. If both houses fall to the Democrats, there will be calls by pundits and politicians for "civility" and "healing." Committees and subcommittees will be discouraged from asking questions of the White House or "reopening old wounds" on Iraq, tax cuts, Katrina, 9/11 or any of the other issues that have so divided the nation in the last six years.

The time for civility is long past. The need for officials to be held accountable is long overdue.