system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I do not believe that the Constitution should define United States law. CMV.

The recent gay marriage debate in the Supreme Court highlighted what, in my mind, is an absurdity in US politics today. The justices are using a 150-year-old revision to a 200-year-old document to decide what should be done about an issue that only started gaining steam in the last 20 years. I think that this focus on deciding everything by the Constitution is unnecessary. 

My main points:

 - The framers of the Constitution did not intentionally include any passage that related to gay marriage or other modern-day issues. Argument about these issues relies on points included for entirely different reasons.
 - The Supreme Court--our highest level of justice and arbitration--does not agree on the constitutionality of various things. Each side justifies their positions using the Constitution, but it seems like they decide what is Right, then use the Constitution to back their claims up.
 - People today are just as capable as they were 200 years ago. Why are we forcing an old system to meet our needs rather than updating it?

I'm not particularly set in this view, so it likely won't be too hard to change. CMV.
gpt
One important thing to note is that the constitution is not a static document. It can be amended, and has been as the times have called for major reformation of our governing system. The constitution therefore never actually fully prevents change, it just embeds within our system an inherent conservative tendency to sustain old policy over adopting new policy. All in all while at times this might seem frustrating, it is probably a fairly good thing. It prevents temporary tyrannies from making huge and debilitating changes to our system. As much as it prevents you at times from making the change you want, you also have to consider all the changes those you disagree with would have pushed through had there not been that 2/3 barrier to reform.

To briefly deal with your points:

>The framers of the Constitution did not intentionally include any passage that related to gay marriage or other modern-day issues. Argument about these issues relies on points included for entirely different reasons.

This is only true if we are applying an originalist interpretive framework. Instead if we are relying on precedent, which is the dominant method of constitutional analysis, we are using near parallels to make consistent legal rulings. While this abstracts us from the text of the constitution somewhat it enables us to maintain consistent, moderate and relevant legal decisions.

>The Supreme Court--our highest level of justice and arbitration--does not agree on the constitutionality of various things. Each side justifies their positions using the Constitution, but it seems like they decide what is Right, then use the Constitution to back their claims up.


It is worth noting that there is far more agreement than disagreement in constitutional interpretation. It only appears like there is no consensus because both the public and the court focuses most attention at areas that are unresolved.


>People today are just as capable as they were 200 years ago. Why are we forcing an old system to meet our needs rather than updating it?

It's not that people aren't as capable today as they were 200 years ago, but about what type of majority should be necessary to make institutional changes. It took 2/3 to ratify the initial document and it takes 2/3 to amend. In this way we insure that there are certain rights that cannot be restricted by a mere 51% of the population.