George is back

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Mar 09, 2004

Mayors who give the green light to same-sex marriage in defiance of the law have been rapturously compared to Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. Thomas Sowell is unimpressed.

The real analogy would be to Governor George Wallace, who defied the law by trying to prevent black students from being enrolled in the University of Alabama under a court order.

After Wallace was no longer governor, he was within his rights to argue for racial segregation, just as civil rights leaders argued against it. But, using the powers of his office as governor to defy the law was a violation of his oath.

If judges of the Massachusetts Supreme Court or the mayor of San Francisco want to resign their jobs and start advocating gay marriage, they have every right to do so. But that is wholly different from using the authority delegated to them under the law to subvert the law.