Chris Christie’s Dangerous Attack on the U.S. Constitution

Chris Christie’s Dangerous Attack on the U.S. Constitution
February 21, 2012
By Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Though 74 delegates were chosen by their states, only 55 of them bothered to show up at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in May of 1787. Over the next four months, these 55 men gave the United States a system of government that has lasted two-and-a-quarter centuries, making ours the oldest working constitution in the world.

No small feat.

But now we are being told that 121 men and women are insufficient to provide the single state of New Jersey with a marriage law, a rather simple matter by comparison, most people would agree.

These 55 men drafted the most momentous document in world history: United States Constitution, the governing document of the country, establishing not only the principles of government but the very apparatus of that government – legislative, judicial, and executive and the means by which they were to work in relation to one another before the Constitution was finished.

It was signed by 39 men on September 17, 1787 out of the 42 remaining. The other thirteen men had left the convention for one reason or another. Those 39 men granted us a system of government. But 121 men and women on February 18, 2012, cannot pass a bill granting marriage equality in their home state?

Governor Chris Christie tells us that the marriage equality debate in his state of New Jersey, which provided four of those 39 signers (William Livingston, David Brearley, William Paterson, Jonathan Dayton), “should not be decided by 121 people in the statehouse in Trenton.”

Think about that for a moment. Or two.

You have to wonder what Christie means by this. Does he mean that only one man (Chris Christie) should decide it? He, after all, vetoed the pro-marriage equality vote, which means his one vote trumps the vote of those 121 men. A veto, after all, is a decision. Or does he mean that 121 men and women are not enough men and women to decide (we all know how much Republicans love referendums). No matter how you shake it out, his words make no sense.

The problem is that as the Civil Rights movement proved, rights come only from legislation, not from majority votes. One of the very things the U.S. Constitution was written to prevent was the tyranny of the majority – the excesses of democracy, as they were called at the time. And Governor Christie wants to sidestep the Constitution and as Republicans did in California with Proposition 8, buy a majority vote in their favor with money from outside the state, trumping the very rights of the people he is pretending to champion.

In the end the will of the people mean nothing to Christie or to any other Republican (Santorum comes to mind) because the majority of Americans approve of marriage equality. Increasingly, the American system of government reflects this as state after state approves marriage equality laws. Chris Christie has the right to veto bills – governors and presidents all do it at one point or another. But at least show some respect for the American system of government when you do it, and don’t pretend that the legislatures designed to do what New Jersey’s just did have no right to fulfill their function or that your decision is based on a desire to do what the people want.