Having the states regulate marriage may have made sense in the 18th century, when most people never traveled more than a day's walk from the house they were born in, but in the modern world it makes no sense. Not only do people routinely travel great distances, but marriage is a component of benefits, insurance, taxation, and a host of other issues that have to be administered on a nationwide, even global scale.

I'm all in favor of using constitutionality as a flywheel for government, to damp out the effects of ill-considered sudden changes in policy, and to prevent suddens fads and fashions from getting too strong a grip on the law.

But we have to forget about this nostalgia for colonial mores and customs. We are in the 21st century,
not in a world of slave plantations, property owning male-only suffrage, and electoral selection of presidents. The constitution should expand our freedom into new areas, not preserve old injustices.

How do we tell the difference? Public debate and compromise, the one thing the founders definitely got right.

After all, we didn't need a constitutional amendment to ban duelling.