GAY MARRIAGE, ABORTION, AND THE COURTS….When San Francisco’s mayor started performing same-sex marriages a couple of weeks ago, conservatives blew a fuse. It was a clear violation of the law, and liberals who heaped scorn on Judge Roy Moore’s Ten Commandments monument were hypocrites for supporting him.
Yesterday, the South Dakota legislature passed ? and the governor is expected to sign ? a bill that essentially outlaws abortion. It is quite clearly in defiance of settled constitutional law, something its authors pretty much admit. Conservatives, oddly enough, have not risen up in wrath at this act of legislative civil disobedience.
Nor should they. To be sure, in one case it’s a legislature and in the other it’s an arm of the executive, but the fact is that these two cases have a lot in common. They are both publicity stunts, they are both designed to force a court challenge, and neither one has much chance of being upheld. The real question at hand is the same in both cases: will the South Dakota legislature back down if a court tells them to? Will San Francisco’s mayor back down if a court tells him to?
Roy Moore didn’t. That’s the difference.
