Roger Simon's post about his conversation with Hugh Hewitt, on yesterday's show dealing with the media's focus on Michael Jackson ahead of more Al Qaeda attacks in Israel and Turkey, has turned into a debate over gay marriage in the comments section, which veered off into a debate about this article by Hewitt on the Weekly Standard's website.

My contributions:

I agree with Hewitt, whose opposition to the Massachusetts decision is based on a general opposition to courts substituting their judgment for that of the elected representatives of the people.

Courts are the least democratic of the branchs of government, and should therefore exercise circumspect restraint when raising issues to the level of constitutional import. There is a trend today to make every claim into a constitutional right, instead of allowing these issues to be debated long and loud in the political arena. This is an important point, because as Jefferson wrote, "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," and that includes courts.

Hewitt is only restating that, by pointing out that if courts get out too far ahead of popular opinions they risk blowback. I believe that the sorry spectacle of Senate confirmation hearings we've seen over conservative appointees to high courts in recent years is due to the fact that these courts have made themselves political with decisions of policy which are better left to the political process. They need to be aware that the power of judicial review is not explicit in the constitution, but is inferred by themselves and deferred to by the other branches. But would they really want to provoke an incident between their marshalls and the powers under the command of the Congress and President?

We have a government of laws and not of men, but the courts need to remember that they too are men and women, and recognize that it is not good for their institution to become the third political branch.

One more thing about gay marriage. I would argue, and I believe, that rights come with responsibilities. We have become so focused on our freedoms, rights and privileges that we forget that there are things that our society has a right to expect from us in return for protecting those rights.

I believe also that our society needs well-functioning families which produce and rear good citizens. I think that unwed mothers and single parent families are destructive of the needs of society, and until someone can show me that children raised by homosexuals are psychologically as well off as those raised in a functioning traditional family, I will be opposed to legal recognition of such unions as the equivalent of marriage between a man and wife. I also think that divorce is harmful and a failure of citizenship. Fortunately, we still have a core of healthy families, but we shouldn't be doing so much to make them obsolete. We don't have any proven alternatives, and I don't think we ever will.