I was a little puzzled when I read this CNN article about a recent interview with Fred Thompson in Iowa:

Showing his conservative stripes, Thompson said he would push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and would overturn Roe v. Wade.

Putting aside for a moment the absurdity of anyone as President overturning Roe vs. Wade (that would be the Supreme Court’s job, though Congress could make Roe moot by amending the constitution, but even then the President is only minimally involved), Fred Thompson supports a constitutional ban on gay marriage?

One of the big reasons why I support Fred Thompson is because he is a staunch federalist.  Meaning that he feels every issue not specifically assigned to a branch of the federal government through the Constitution ought to be left up to the states.  To all principled federalists, this means the marriage issue as well.  So if Thompson is now supporting a gay marriage amendment...that’s a major revelation.  And a rather sharp departure from his federalist principles

So does he support an amendment banning gay marriage?  I’ve never heard him talk about it, and I doubt that he does.  Here’s what Thompson is quoted as saying in the article itself:

“I don’t think that one state ought to be able to pass a law requiring gay marriage or allowing gay marriage and have another state be required to follow along,” Thompson told CNN’s John King in an interview Friday

Thompson added that the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion “was bad law and bad medicine.”

That sounds to me like Thompson, if anything, would support a constitutional amendment making it so that one state doesn’t have to recognize a marriage in another state.  Which sounds like a perfectly reasonable position to me

Still, it’d be interesting to see how Thompson addresses this

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