Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby is right about the gay-marriage debate should be approached:
Pro, con, or undecided, Americans should be able to discuss something as serious as redefining marriage without resorting to slander and ad hominem attacks. There are sincere, compassionate, and thoughtful people on both sides of this issue. How can you tell who they are? They aren't the ones calling people bigots.
The attempt, futile and grandstanding though it may be, to advance the constitutional-amendment option through the Senate is at least generating discussion of the issue, though not all of it is thoughtful and lacking in slander.
The federal Defense of Marriage Act, contrary to what its supporters say, is not the last word on the issue. On a lot of issues, a good federalist would say that it should be up to indvidual states how to handle things, and that is the approach taken by people who say both that they think gay marriage is wrong but it doesn't belong in a constitutional amendment. The marriage act allows states to not recognize same-sex unions approved in other states, but that collides with the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution, which has been the rationale for, among other things, a marriage in one state being recognized in all of them. There's no way to resolve that conflict but before the Supreme Court. One way or another, it would seem that we're going to have a national answer to this conflict, not a state-by-state one.
