SocraticGadfly: #RickPerry: Just.Another.Politician.™ on gay marriage, #10thAmdt

July 30, 2011

#RickPerry: Just.Another.Politician.™ on gay marriage, #10thAmdt

Wasn't it just 24 hours ago that Texas Gov. Rick Perry was mouthing his 10th Amendment spiel about how much he was OK with New York's right to pass a state gay marriage law?

Oops. That was yesterday, this is today.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Saturday he supports a federal limit on gay marriage and thinks a creator put life on Earth. ...

Perry, 61, said social issues should be decided state by state and even remarked that New York’s passage of gay marriage law was that state’s business. Still, he said he would support a constitutional amendment that takes away the power of the states to decide who can get married.

“Yes, sir, I would. I am for the federal marriage amendment,” he said. “And that’s about as sharp a point as I could put on it.”
Ahh, he must be getting closer indeed to jumping in the ring. His mouth is going to have a sprain from how quickly he switched to talking out of both sides of it.

Here's "yesterday," to refresh your memory:
“Our friends in New York six weeks ago passed a statute that said marriage can be between two people of the same sex. And you know what? That's New York, and that's their business, and that's fine with me," Perry said last week at a speech in Aspen, Colo. "That is their call. If you believe in the 10th Amendment, stay out of their business."
And I'm not the only one calling out Perry on his 10th Amendment flip flops. The political class, and the more intelligent sounding libertarians at Reason are already hammering him.
Tony Perkins, president of the once (and apparently still) influential Family Research Council ... quickly got Perry to submit to an interview, so that he could recant.

Perry’s conversation with Perkins suggests that he is either confused, or a liar. For Perkins wasn’t the only person Perry spoke to this week about his comments in Aspen. On the same day the Perkins interview appeared, the Texas governor told the New Hampshire Union Leader, “If you're going to respect the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, you can't go picking and choosing” which laws to shove down the states’ throats.
Even more hypocritical, his staff is splitting hairs trying to claim he's still for states rights on this issue because a constitutional amendment has to be passed on a state-by-state basis.

Meanwhile, the 10th Amendment apparently extends to states on abortion in Perry's world.
Despite holding personal pro-life beliefs, Texas Gov. Rick Perry categorized abortion as a states’ rights issue today, saying that if Roe v. Wade was overturned, it should be up to the states to decide the legality of the procedure.

“You either have to believe in the 10th Amendment or you don’t,” Perry told reporters after a bill signing in Houston. “You can’t believe in the 10th Amendment for a few issues and then [for] something that doesn’t suit you say, 'We’d rather not have states decide that.'”
How long before he gets hit on this? And, how long before in-the-ring GOP candidates start bringing this up?

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