In 1994, after a protracted and, at times, heated debate, the voters of Oregon narrowly approved the Death with Dignity Act, a measure that allowed physicians, under a very specific and regulated set of circumstances, to prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill patients.

Two years later, after conservative groups challenged the controversial law, the issue of physician-assisted suicide was again presented to the voters. This time it passed by a 60 percent to 40 percent margin.

Last week Attorney General John Ashcroft shifted his attention from “indefinite detention” and torture (water-cooler talk among law enforcement officials in post-9/11 America) to attack the Death with Dignity Act.

In a letter to the Food and Drug Administration, Ashcroft reversed the policy of the Clinton Administration and indicated that any Oregon doctor who prescribes lethal drugs to a terminally ill patient (i.e., any doctor who acts within full compliance of Oregon law) can face revocation of his license.

According to Mr. Ashcroft, assisted suicide is not a “legitimate” reason for prescribing drugs, and it is therefore the duty of the federal government to overturn the state’s law.

Now backtrack to the summer, when Western civilization faced a more perilous threat than terrorism: gay marriage. Conservatives at the time were concerned that the voters of some rogue American state might sanction gay marriage through a referendum, thus enabling gay people to use the “full faith and credit” clause of the Constitution to have gay marriage recognized throughout the country.

To protect Americans from such a calamity, a group called the Alliance for Marriage proposed — and conservatives across the country championed — an amendment to the U.S. Constitution called the Federal Marriage Amendment. This preemptory amendment provided that marriage in the United States “shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman.”

But its most attractive feature (to conservatives, anyway) came in the following sentence: “Neither this constitution nor the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples.”

In other words: no gay marriage — ever. Not even if every single citizen of a state were in support of it. The will of the people be damned.

Where they once found themselves the unyielding champions of states’ rights, conservatives now find themselves in the intellectually awkward position of only championing conservative states’ rights.

Here’s how it works: States’ rights as a philosophy is fine and dandy, as long as the state is a conservative one whose conservative voters are approving conservative referenda. Should any state’s voters have the audacity to pass, say, a law that would allow people to die with dignity or one allowing two men to marry, conservatives’ unwavering commitment to states’ rights goes by the wayside.

But there is another side to this, and it warrants a closer look. Let’s assume Ashcroft and the National Right to Life Committee are right to oppose Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. What if physician-assisted suicide is wrong? What if it is state-sanctioned murder? Is the federal government then obligated to intervene? I think the answer would have to be “yes.”

Now try this: What if a state codifies into law discrimination against gay people by denying them their Constitutionally afforded (per the Fourteenth Amendment) right to marry (as most states in the United States do)? Is the federal government likewise obligated to intervene? I have a feeling many who answered “yes” to the first question will respond with a resounding “no” to this one.

Why is that? Why do conservatives regard the federal government’s trampling the voters of a state who sanction discrimination against gay people as near sacrilege, while lauding it for trampling the voters of a state who, after careful deliberation, decided to enact a law to allow people to die with dignity?

The answer is that states’ rights has become something of a philosophy of convenience for conservatives that has everything to do with conservative ideology and nothing to do with states’ rights.

I certainly have concerns about the referenda rage sweeping the country. I think there is a very real danger in giving the largely uninformed American electorate such legislative authority. The possibility of the majority tyrannizing the minority is all too real, which is precisely why liberals have long advocated an oversight role for the federal government in the process.

If Ashcroft wants to challenge state laws he feels are in violation of federal law, he should do so. But he shouldn’t just do it in Oregon. He should do it in every state whose voters have approved insidious referenda restricting a woman’s right to an abortion or a gay couple’s right to adopt a child.

But he never will. And the reason is because the conservative philosophy of states’ rights is nothing but a ruse used to pursue a radical political agenda under the guise of an intellectual and philosophical commitment to states’ rights. Conservative opposition to the Death with Dignity Act and support for the Federal Marriage Amendment expose the philosophy of states’ rights for what it truly is: a façade.

Chris McCall ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in German and political science.