Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is not happy with the ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down anti-sodomy laws in Texas and 12 other states. Neither am I. My views on the matter are pretty well summed up by Clarence Thomas’s brief dissenting opinion, which reads as follows:

I join Justice Scalia’s dissenting opinion. I write separately to note that the law before the Court today “is … uncommonly silly.” Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 527 (1965) (Stewart, J., dissenting). If I were a member of the Texas Legislature, I would vote to repeal it. Punishing someone for expressing his sexual preference through noncommercial consensual conduct with another adult does not appear to be a worthy way to expend valuable law enforcement resources.

Notwithstanding this, I recognize that as a member of this Court, I am not empowered to help petitioners and others similarly situated. My duty, rather, is to “decide cases ‘agreeably to the Constitution and laws of the United States.’” Id., at 530. And, just like Justice Stewart, I “can find [neither in the Bill of Rights nor any other part of the Constitution a] general right of privacy,” ibid., or as the Court terms it today, the “liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions,” ante, at 1.

In other words, the law was silly, and should have been repealed years ago - just as similar laws were in 37 other states since the early 1960s, and probably would have been in Texas, too, if the courts had left well enough alone.

Now to the point where Frist and I part company. According to this story from FoxNews, Frist thinks the sodomy ruling will lead to a “constitutional” right to gay marriage, as well. He is quoted in the story as supporting a constitutional amendment authored by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO), which would prohibit gay marriage. You read that right: the proposed amendment would prohibit gay marriage - not just protect states that do not permit gay marriages from being forced to recognize gay marriages performed in states that do. Here’s the text of the current draft:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any state under state or federal law shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

[Emphasis added.]

In other words, the amendment would not merely provide that gay marriages have no force under federal law (they don’t now, never have, and probably never will) nor would it merely protect states that do not recognize gay marriages from being forced to honor gay marriages from states that do. Rather, it would strip states of the ability to decide for themselves what is or isn’t a marriage, at least as far as their constitutions are concerned. No word as to the absence of a reference to state statutes was an intended loophole or an uninteded one that will be “fixed” in future drafts. But no matter - what business is it of the federal government whether Vermont wants to amend its own constitution to protect gay marriages?

This makes Frist’s subsequent argument, that matters such as sodomy ought to be addressed by state legislatures rather than the federal government, ring a bit hollow. They should, of course, but isn’t the same true of marriage? If the real concern were to preserve the ability of states to define marriage according to local mores, while preventing the federal government from recognizing gay marriage, here’s a constitutional amendment that will do that without all the (intended?) collateral damage of the Musgrave proposal:

Marriage under the laws of the United States shall consist of the union of a man and a woman, or such other unions as Congress and the states may designate from time to time. No provision of this Constitution shall be construed to require the United States or any state to recognize as a marriage any union other than a union of a man and a woman.

I am not a fan of gay marriage per se, but I do believe that this issue, like most others, ought to be left to the states. It’s too bad that few of my fellow Republicans, and hardly any Democrats, share this concern.

UPDATE: I expected Reason to provide a coherent, reasoned argument against that godawful Musgrave Amendment. Unfortunately, they offer this instead.