Buckley on Daschle and gay marriage

William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review, has just published a new piece headlined "Circle-Squaring by Daschle; The South Dakota senator and marriage." Excerpt:

Now consider Senator Daschle's plight. Most of the leaders in his party who oppose the amendment do so on the grounds that it impairs gay rights. They aren't saying exactly that, but the essence of what moves them is what they'd call one more step in gay liberation. If non-gays can marry, so should gays be permitted to "marry."

But that by no means is the position being taken by Senator Daschle in his nervous fight to survive. He says the amendment is "unnecessary." Why? Because South Dakota law prohibits same-sex marriage, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act means South Dakota does not have to recognize same-sex marriages from other states.

If it were actually so, the movement to amend the Constitution would indeed be unnecessary. But it isn't so because there are judicial activists in the land who tend to edge the argument about marriage over not into what state legislatures have done, but into the great sunlight of rights that inhere in us at birth, endowments of nature/philosophy/the Bill of Rights/the Areopagitica, whatever.