HAWAII DECISION ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF JUDGES OUT ON A LIMB

A Hawaii judge has made good on predictions offered nationwide last year that he would overturn that state's law forbidding legal recognition of same-sex marriages. The case now goes through the appeals process before a final review by the Hawaii Supreme Court.

Pause to recognize what has occurred: A single judge has overturned the will of the citizenry as it is expressed through their elected representatives. The point here isn't to say that judges shouldn't ever strike down laws when they are shown to be patently unconstitutional, but rather to assert that this sort of thing is getting all too common. A confrontation is building on judges across America. They will either restrain themselves, or they will in some fashion be themselves restrained.

This case is an egregious example. Over the last year, no fewer than 18 states, including Missouri, joined Congress in enacting laws to thwart the long-expected Hawaii decision. The decision has national implications owing to the "full faith and credit" clause of the U.S. Constitution, which requires all states to recognize the legal enactments -- marriages, divorces, adoptions -- of the other 49 states.

This much is clear: Same-sex marriage is a revolution in the idea of society's most fundamental building block. That foundation is the nuclear family, which by definition begins with marriage as a union between one man and one woman, sanctioned by God and licensed by the state, for the purpose of nurturing children.

As the constitutional scholars dispute these issues, they must keep in mind that part of the Constitution is what some of their number have called "the deliberate sense of the people" as it finds expression through their elected representatives. That deliberate sense has found expression unambiguously, in every legislative body that has disposed of the question, in favor of the traditional understanding of marriage as a union between one man and one woman.