state your rights
the current republican response to any progressive issue along the lines of health care, gay marriage, or gay adoption is always “leave it up to the states”. what a wonderful non-answer. it really means “we can’t attack minorities successfully on a federal level, but the more limited scope we know we can defeat them on state levels, so i suggest fighting the fight there”.
it’s an example of codeword politics in the US. it’s not ok to be openly racist/homophobic, so instead you use words that are perfectly legit and defendible to the majority, but your fringe racist/homophobic base understands differently. the idea is to hopefully create a “good america” where straight, white, religious people are enshrined, and a second america where everyone else lives.
and no, that’s not ok. it’s why the US had to destroy the south in the civil war: it was a war over state rights, but “states’ rights” is a codeword for “i want to my white privilege to be explicit and legally mandated”. and, again, that’s not ok. deal with it.