Fatherhood Quote by Judy Biggert

“Wisely” does a lot of political lifting here. Biggert’s line wraps a contemporary culture-war position in the warm blanket of Founding Father reverence, making a tactical argument about federal power feel like inherited common sense. By calling marriage “an issue” rather than, say, a right, she subtly shifts the terrain from personal liberty to jurisdictional housekeeping. It’s not about who gets to marry; it’s about who gets to decide. That’s the intent: relocate a moral fight into a federalism frame that sounds principled, neutral, even modest.

The subtext is sharper: decentralization can function as delay. When states control recognition, equality becomes a patchwork, and patchworks are politically useful for those trying to preserve the status quo without saying so outright. Federalism becomes a respectable proxy for resistance, a way to oppose national protections while claiming to defend constitutional order. The appeal to the Founders also performs a kind of rhetorical time travel, suggesting that legitimacy flows from 18th-century design rather than from current constitutional interpretation or lived reality.

Context matters. Biggert’s era in Congress overlaps with the escalation around same-sex marriage (state bans, “Defense of Marriage Act” fights, and eventual Supreme Court interventions). In that climate, invoking the Founders signals membership in a familiar coalition: social conservatives and institutional traditionalists who prefer state-by-state fights because national resolution risks an irreversible loss. It works because it trades on America’s reflexive respect for origins, laundering a contested social position through the language of constitutional humility.