Rational Basis

Unsurprisingly, the district court judge found no rational basis behind denying gay marriages state sanction.

Douthat, acknowledges the weakness of the general conservative apologia in attempting his own, which, when stripped of pretension, amounts to little.

Von Hayek would suggest an indirect defense. He taught it was wholly rational to respect our cultural inheritance -- which he viewed as the product of a complicated evolutionary process -- as such. In his frame, to argue that a, for example, commonly-held traditional moral view is without rational basis, one has to assert deep understanding of the complicated interconnections binding us together as a society, and therefore the consequences that flow from upholding or rejecting that view. No person can rationally make that assertion.

That said, Judge Walker was not simply disregarding tradition. After all, our founding fathers envisioned a politics in which reason displaced passion.