One of the things that’s kind of been driven home to me, even more forcefully this week, is that following process is important.
While I agree with Mark Herring’s new stance, (as opposed to Larry Craig’s wide one….) he is violating the Virginia constitution he swore to defend.
Yes, in Federal court, Virginia would lose, but it’s up to the General Assembly to do the cooking by the book, and ask the voters to fix the Virginia Constitution. There is no shortcut. The General Assembly also needs to fix its Crimes Against Nature statute, which it cannot enforce. That’d actually be easier than the same-sex marriage ban.
If Herring is going to refuse to do the job he was elected to do, impeachment and removal are the only options open to the General Assembly. (And I’ll spare the lecture on how Virginia’s government functions more like the UK parliament than the US Federal governmetn does….)
What’s lost in all this? As I’ve said many times, Congress could have spared everybody this debate, simply by amending the Civil Rights Acts to incude sexual orientation as a protected class under them. They chose not to in 2009. Why, Ms. Pelosi? Couldn’t be because you have bigots in your own caucus, now could it? Unpossible.
Similarly, some of the nonsense I’ve dealt with work-wise the past year has been because people willfully ignore published procedures. Don’t like them? Change them. Oh, but that’s difficult, too. Just “hand jivejam” it!
Elections do have consequences, sure. But laws, rules, and regulations simply don’t evaporate just because there’s new folks executing them.
But I’m “pushing back.” I need to learn to quit doing that.