Do you ever ask yourself why liberal positions like surrendering in Iraq, antipathy to school vouchers, or the constitution's favorite topic of discussion, the normalization of homosexual sex, are always deeply rooted in the constitution? And remember, this is the same constitution liberals otherwise lambaste as a work of America’s founders, with their dark and oppressive pasts. So does it not seem odd to most people that lefty groups like the ACLU always find full support for their leftist or liberal policy-choice in the words of a 200 year old document? Does it not seem odd that the founders intended something like abortion—a largely immoral practice—to be a constitutional right; or better, that the implicit evolution of the constitution forbids the administration of the death penalty—something the constitution happens to explicitly allow for by saying life may not be deprived without "due process"?
These are all, of course, rhetorical questions. Of course it is odd, and in many ways, counter-intuitive. So why do liberal organizations trying to advocate policy choices in the oligarchy courts—policy choices they know they would never get passed at the ballot box using the democratic process—choose to make their arguments rooted in the constitution? Shouldn’t the overt sentiments of contradiction and inconsistency persuade them to seek a different basis for their arguments?
On the surface, there are two answers to this question—one being more ominous than the other. The first, less devious, answer is that the judges imposing these liberal policy choices must at least claim to be engaging in their duty to safeguard and protect the rule of law rooted in the constitution. Thus, they must, at a minimum, pay lip-service to a document from which, in actuality, they rarely seek guidance. They only truly call on the constitution if it happens to support their presupposed policy-choice leanings—and that occurs less often than Democrats passing on a new expansion of government.
Nevertheless, the second, and more frank, answer is that even liberals see the need to seek support from some objective source of morality and law. Only then can they impose their policy choices on the masses with at least a small degree of intellectual honesty. Without this objectivity, they are merely compelling society to adhere to their own personal, and thus subjective, preference on various policies and issues. This is why they elect to label any policy choice they disagree with "unconstitutional" or "illegal"; they are tripping on their own moral relativism and the subjective, and thus illegitimizing, aura it promotes.
So since they argue that God may not even enter the mind of a policymaker, let alone guide him in his policy making decisions, the constitution is all they have left. It is the last avenue of appeal for some notions of right or wrong that transcend their personal opinion and preference. Thus, they are forced to hijack the constitution so that can claim to have some objective, and thus legitimate, authority over the society on which they seek to impose their policy choices.
This is clearly illustrated by the liberal attack on traditional notions of marriage. They make the odd claim that the Equal Protection clause demands, despite the obvious differences, that we legally encourage homosexual relationships in the same way we do so for heterosexual relationships—with things like tax breaks and expedited probate. Yet, the Equal Protection clause was only created for the purpose of granting equal rights to blacks based on their newfound freedom from slavery. The drafters did not even mean to promote equality among the sexes with this clause, let alone between different types of sexual conduct. But this undeniable fact does not deter liberals from invoking the constitution, because without it, they lack even a pretense to an objective, and thus legitimate, basis for their policy impositions.
But really, who can blame them? Saying something is "unconstitutional" sure does sound more persuasive than saying "I feel in my heart, and tummy…that is a bad rule."