Nobody would ever confuse the Massachusetts liberal Barney Frank with the South Carolina conservative Strom Thurmond. But when the tart-tongued Frank appeared on Fox News Sunday last winter, it sounded as if an aide had accidentally slipped him some of Thurmond's talking points from the 1950's, when he was a states'-rights segregationist. ''Should the federal government say no state can make this decision for itself?'' Frank asked. He had ventured onto Fox to assert each state's right to marry gay couples.
Frank isn't the only supporter of gay marriage to sing the praises of federalism. Last December, Andrew Sullivan argued in The New Republic, ''The whole point of federalism is that different states can have different policies on matters of burning controversy -- and that this is O.K.'' That same month, Paul Glastris, the editor of The Washington Monthly, posed the question, ''Why shouldn't the Democrats become the party of federalism?''
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/books/review/006FOERL.html?pagewanted=all