Mexican Supreme Court says Gay Marriage Must be Legal under US Constitution

I know. Change one word and I’ll keep reading, right? Actually, though, you should keep reading anyways if you are at all interested in the Mexican legal system, the American legal system, or in the civil rights movement. If you are not interested, then you should probably burn this paper without delay, and without concern for the safety of yourself or those around you, because what I am about to say may sear away the very essence of your being from the membranous division between your soul and the physical world damning at least one of your ears for all eternity, depending on how many ears you are already deaf in. The Mexican Supreme Court has legalized gay marriage for all of Mexico.

Still have an undamned ear? Probably has something to do with the fact that that wasn’t the shocking part. The shocking part is that gay marriage is not legal in Mexico. But gay marriage has been legalized in Mexico. And no, this has nothing to do with the executive branch trodding on the toes of the judicial branch. It really is a paradox, a failure of logic, of rationality. This proves that all human knowledge is meaningless and useless. There is nothing. And this is the point where you start to go insane and think that your ears have been damned.

Actually, there is a perfectly rational explanation for all this, which can be obtained by considering Mexican constitutional law, which operates a bit—reada lot—different from US constitutional law. In the United States, laws are made by the legislative branch, enforced by the executive branch, and broken by the judicial branch. Then they are either ignored, or mended by higher courts in the judicial branch. Once the judges are done with it, an unconstitutional law can be taken back to the legislature and mended by means of a constitutional amendment (which almost never happens), or it can be taken to the executive branch to be mended, by means of ignoring the judicial branch’s ruling, and by irreparably damaging the very fabric of a constitutional democracy—which …never… happens.

All of that is the same in the Mexican system, but that is where some of the similarity ends. In the United States, when a state law is declared unconstitutional for some reason, that reasoning becomes a part of constitutional law forever. The case establishes some principle. In theory, all laws that violate that principle are presumed to be unconstitutional and unenforceable. If the executive branch of some other state tries to continue enforcing the law, it will be quickly struck down by a district court judge citing the Supreme Court decision, and the higher courts refuse to hear the case again.

In Mexico, however, it is not that simple. When their Supreme Court interprets the constitution in a certain way, striking down some state law, that interpretation does not automatically become standard. The case does not gain broad applicability—applicability beyond the specific state and law being considered—until the principle has been utilized with regards to 5 different Mexican States.

Thus, the Mexican Supreme Court eloquently cited US case history, made a passionate plea for LGBT marriage equality, established it as requisite based on Mexico’s equal protection clause, and actively used that interpretation to strike down a state law prohibiting gay marriage, setting the groundwork for full nationwide marriage equality in the coming years. Yet marriage equality has yet to truly become a part of Mexico’s constitutional equal protection clause.

Of course, the most interesting piece of this story is not what will happen in Mexico. It is what will happen in the United States because of this that truly interests me. The Mexican Supreme Court arrived at its decision by considering the reasoning used in Loving vs. Virginia, the landmark US Supreme Court Case that established that anti-misogyny laws violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by denying the right of marriage to interracial couples. It follows then, that denying marriage to individuals solely because of their gender also violates the Equal Protection Clause. The US Supreme Court has a long history of ignoring the rulings of international tribunals. Yet, the Mexican Supreme Court’s opinion has to count for at least as much as an amicus curie brief from the Republican Governors’ Association. It will be interesting to see how the high court takes this. At the very least, proponents of marriage equality now have a truly significant neutral outside actor siding with them.

A Liberal Reagan?

When Ronald Reagan took office, he inherited a rising unemployment rate of 7.2%, and an American public that was growing weary of the moderately liberal Democratic Party that had governed since FDR. The unemployment rate peaked at 10.8% in time for Reagan’s colleagues to lose big in the midterms. Then it drifted back down to 7.2% in time for him to sweepingly win a second term, winning a popular vote margin that went unsurpassed until Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign nearly thirty years later. Through his effective use of the bully-pulpit, Reagan capitalized on his electoral vote margin and convinced Democrats and Republicans alike to support his agenda. Reagan managed to realign America from a blue-leaning nation to a red leaning nation, an accomplishment that has lasted through three decades of politicians.

When Barack Obama took office, he inherited a skyrocketing unemployment rate of 7.8%, and an American public that had finally grown weary of Republicanism. The unemployment rate peaked at 10% just in time for Obama’s colleagues to lose big in the congressional midterms. It then drifted slowly back to 7.8% in time for him to sweepingly win a second term, gaining seats in both houses of congress, and gaining a majority of votes cast in congressional races despite failing to retake the House of Representatives. Through his effective use of the bully pulpit, and his effective capitalization on the demographic shifts in the nation, Barack Obama has convinced Democrats and Republicans to back parts of his agenda. And, the nation as a whole has taken a sharp turn back towards the moderate liberalism of the pre-Reagan years.

So what are the signs of a moderately liberal nation? First off, gay marriage bills are popping up in states across the map, and winning. Marijuana is being put to the ballot, and liberals are winning. After years of debate over law after law seeking to limit access to abortions, Governor Andrew Cuomo has now introduced a law in New York that would expand access. As New York goes, so goes the nation. And the numbers of Latino and Asian voters, 70% of which voted for President Obama, continue to skyrocket.

Secondly, more and more Republican lawmakers are coming out in support of traditionally liberal issues. Just yesterday, our own former Utah Governor and Mormon, John Huntsman (AKA the OTHER Mormon running for President), came out in support of gay marriage, saying, “There is nothing conservative about denying other Americans the ability to forge that same relationship with the person they love.” Republicans in the House and Senate have come out in support of some gun control regulations, some tax increases, and a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, all of which were politically toxic even for some democrats prior to the election. At the very least, the vast majority of the Republican Party has tried to stop talking about what it considers to now be “losing issues,” even as they refuse to rescind their stances.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, is the growing strength of the libertarian movement. In a nutshell, libertarians are socially moderate Republicans. Ron Paul united and energized a growing demographic of young voters who would tend toward the Republican Party, except for their disgust with the racism, corruption, sexism, and general hypocrisy that they perceived to be at the core of Republican social conservatism. Today’s libertarian party is the direction that the GOP is headed. They seek—and have obtained some success in doing so—to return the GOP to its fiscally conservative roots, prior to the advent of the “culture war.”

Truly, the ground has shifted in America. Through two wars, decades of fiscal irresponsibility and demographic change, and the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, the way in which we view the world has been fundamentally changed. Our political spectrum, at least, will never be the same again.

Excessive Spending? Actually, I Blame the Republicans

In Utah, we hear a lot of blame going around for our budgetary woes. We like to blame California democrats, and New York Democrats. Massachusetts democrats are a favorite target. And no good debate is complete without a little Obama-bashing. But mostly, it is just democrats in general. We understand that they have big hearts, but our big brains tell us that their policies just don’t work—for balancing the budget, that is.

 

The argument generally boils down to something like this: Since transactions rarely occur without both parties benefitting, money continually multiplies in value as it cycles throughout the economy. But, money is continually being pulled from the economy by the government and funneled into bloated bureaucracies that fail to re-multiply it. Thus, government should be minimized to those bare functions which we deem necessary to the continued operation of the free market.

 

This is a great argument, I admit. I am fully convinced that spending should be cut. I also admit freely that Republicans have, for all intents and purposes, deforested a slim strip of rainforest in Brazil with the amount of oxygen and paper they have consumed in their endless pleas for spending cuts. Nevertheless, for the massive expansion of the federal government that has occupied the past half century, the greater part of the blame lies squarely with the Grand Ol’ Party.

 

First, I will address the massive expansion of the federal government that has resulted from Republican policies. Remember Ronald Reagan, the hero of the conservative movement? Ronald Reagan, who was so popular that he won all but a few states both times he ran for President, and set a popular vote record that would not be matched for decades? Ronald Reagan, who was so influential that he realigned America from a blue-leaning nation to a red-leaning nation for three decades? That same Ronald Reagan presided over the biggest expansion of the federal debt in the past half-century, increasing the debt by 189% during his two terms. This was done partly by slashing taxes on wealthy individuals to about half their previous rate, and partly by overseeing a massive expansion of federal spending. Compare that to the measly 60% record that Obama is taking crap for. Worst case scenario, by the time Obama leaves office he will have increased the debt by 100%. President G H W Bush increased the debt by 55% while in office for one term. President Clinton, with by far the best record, only increased the debt by 37% during his combined two terms in office. President G W Bush signed into law Medicare Part D, which The American Conservative referred to as a “far larger expansion of the welfare state” than what Obama has done, and increased the debt by 89%. Keep in mind, also, that Obama inherited a larger deficit than any of his listed predecessors (over 1$ trillion), and an economy that had just fallen off of the biggest cliff since the 1920s. I’d say he’s done pretty good.

 

Next, I want to bring your attention to a particularly detrimental mentality that has pervaded conservative orthodoxy which has actually accomplished the exact opposite of its intended purpose. I am referring to the “starve the beast” mentality. The idea is simple. Think about the federal government as a giant beast that is always hungry for our money. If we keep feeding it, then it just keeps growing, and we can never, ever, get our money back. So, instead of feeding it, we should starve it. If we cut taxes and let the deficit grow large enough, then chaos will ensue that will be the democrats’ fault. Finally, when economic collapse is imminent, the democrats will negotiate with us, and we can cut the budgets of popular social welfare and unemployment programs that otherwise would never be considered.

 

Sounds reasonable, right? Just one problem. Renowned economist and late chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute William Niskanen published a paper in 2002 showing evidence that from 1981-2000 there was actually “a strong negative relation between the relative level of federal spending and tax revenues.” In other words, the more you cut taxes, the faster spending grows. This may seem counter-intuitive, but think about it this way: the public is judging the value of social programs compared to the taxes they are paying to subsidize them. If taxes go up, then some of those social programs start to look a little less attractive. Congressmen respond to the signals they receive from their constituents, so it makes sense that the system would respond by cutting spending when taxes are high.

 

So what does that imply for the “starve the beast” mentality? It implies that it is severely misguided, that it causes numerous harms, and that it fails to accomplish any reasonable goal. It is like playing roulette, except instead of betting your life on a pile of cash, you are betting the entire global economy on nothing.

 

 

Blodget, Henry. “Yes, This Chart Showing That Most Debt Growth Came Under Republican Presidents Is

Accurate, But…” Business Insider. September 3^rd, 2012. http://www.businessinsider.com/who-increased-the-debt-2012-9

Larison, Daniel. “Republicans Never Reduce the Size of Government.” The American Conservative. March

16^th, 2012. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/republican-presidents-never-reduce-the-size-of-government/

Niskanen, William. “’Starve The Beast’ Does Not Work.” Cato Policy Report .March/April 2004.

Click to access cpr-26n2-2.pdf