Walker's "anti-gay transition"

[Torie]

How will a Constitutional amendment proposal work out when it requires 3/4 of the states to ratify, and at least more than a quarter of the states have gay marriage by non Judicial means, and a bunch more have legislatures overwhelming in favor of legalizing SSM? Putting aside all the policy issues, this is just so totally disingenuous. Well Walker's done anyway. Bye.

[Torie]

Hmm. His rhetoric seems to have changed, but I'm not so sure his views have actually, tangibly changed on anything. In the older quotes he said he supported anti-discrimination laws or gays in the workplace but was against gay marriage "a healthy balance" as he said. Now, he says he wants to pass a constitutional amendment to let states ban gay marriage. It is obviously impossible for him to do any such thing, yet this isn't really a flip flop.

The obtuse answer where he said "it's in the constitution" was a reference to Wisconsin's state constitutional ban on gay marriage. Walker was saying that his opinion on it is irrelevant since it was in the constitution anyway. It shouldn't be remotely surprising to anyone following Walker that he said that. Again, his gubernatorial campaign was built somewhat on avoiding topics he viewed as a pointless distraction.

I won't begin to pretend that running in the Republican Primary isn't changing which issues he views as pointless distractions. In general he now has to give his actual opinion on a lot of things he used to be able to avoid. But he's always been a hardline conservative on pretty much every issue. That hasn't changed.

The real problem here is of course that he, as the article says, may be running to win the primary and lose the general election.

Whatever Walker is doing, being it tacking, emphasis change, irrelevant musings about ways out the box that he doesn't like that are DOA, doesn't this strike you TJ as all pathetically inept?  He also projects to me this ersatz quality, as if he is trying to read someone else's lines that are written for him, but just isn't doing it very well.

[Torie]

"Religious institutions can confirm if a couple is married, my argument is simply to get the government out of the marriage question all together."

Will there be any governmental restrictions as to whom a religious institution can deem married? If there are, the government is still in the marriage business. If not, then suddenly any two or more humans of any status will effectively be able to get married, via such religious institutions.  And even then the government will be in the marriage business, to the extent it restricts marriages to intra-species hookups. With all due respect, you really need to think this through better. There is no escape from the government being in the marriage business, because a basket of rights and duties attends the relationship.

And of course, restricting it to "religious" institutions would be unConstitutional, as favoring religion, as opposed to the government taking a neutral status, so how does one deal with that little detail?

We really need to get Rand Paul to participate in this thread. Where is he?