Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer equated Friday’s Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex marriage throughout the country to Roe vs. Wade, arguing the Court should have left the decision up to the political process on “Special Report.”
Krauthammer told guest host Shannon Bream the decision was an “invention,” adding further that it’s “a huge loss for democracy.”
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Yes, well that’s what [Justice Anthony Kennedy] declared because that was the preference of the five justices. But I think as was convincingly argued by the dissents, and there were many of them, this is an invention — like the invention of the right to abortion. Whatever you believe about the policy for abortion or here for gay rights, the idea that the court should decree that it’s a constitutional right, something that had been hidden in the Constitution for over 100 years and that nobody has ever discerned is simply a way of saying that it has been removed from the democratic arena. It can no longer be debated. All the laws are canceled and we are now in a new place.
Ironically, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who’s on the court today, once said before she ascended to the court that the abortion decision had prevented a stable social settlement of the abortion issue that was headed in the reform direction because it took it out of the political arena. That’s exactly what happened today on gay marriage. Whatever you think about the policy, it is a huge loss for democracy.