Last week’s Iowa Republican Caucus produced what effectively amounted to a tie. Mitt Romney came in first place with 30,015 votes, while Rick Santorum came in second, just eight votes behind him on 30,007. Both Republicans are on record as saying they favour amending the United States Constitution to define marriage as solely a union between a man and woman. In other words, both want to overrule Washington D.C. and the six states that currently allow same-sex marriage by banning it at the federal level.
It is, of course, laughable that candidates who claim to advocate “small government” and “less regulation” want to intrude on the private lives of American citizens and regulate whom they can and can’t marry. It is, of course, hypocritical that they paint themselves at patriots with the same values as America’s Founding Fathers and then seek to amend the Constitution that those founders painstakingly debated and wrote. I could write about either of these issues, but what interests me more is whether or not such a constitutional amendment is even possible.
Since the Constitution was ratified in June 1788, there have been 27 successful amendments. Ten of these are included in the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791. Counting the Bill of Rights as a single amendment rather than 10 separate ones means there have only ever been 18 successful amendment movements in the last 223 years. These have included protecting freedom of speech (I), the right to bear arms (II), the right to trial by jury (VII), the abolition of slavery (XIII), and the granting to women of the right to vote (XIX). Only one amendment has ever restricted individuals’ rights: that amendment introduced prohibition (XVIII) and was ratified in 1919, but it was repealed 14 years later by a further amendment (XXI).
Full Story from the Huffington Post
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