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| Senate to vote on Marriage Amendment June 6th. Please pray Religious conservatives are trying to increase support for a proposed constitutional amendment that would limit marriage to the traditional one man, one woman concept. A vote on a Senate bill dealing with the amendment is expected to take place on June 6. "The amendment is not against anyone. It's to protect marriage," said Cardinal Justin Rigali, the Roman Catholic archbishop for Philadelphia, during a conference call briefing on Tuesday. He added that the "institution of marriage is suffering." The legislation to prohibit homosexual marriage, most recently introduced by Republican Wayne Allard in the Senate and Republican Dan Lungren in the House, has been a favorite issue for religious conservatives for several years. But the legalization of homosexual marriage in Massachusetts and the gender non-specific policies of several other states plus the District of Columbia have increased the stakes of an already intense legal fight. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which was signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton on Sept. 21, 1996, allows each state to prohibit same sex marriage and 45 states have done so, according to the pro-homosexual Human Rights Campaign, with either laws or state constitutional amendments. Any amendment to the U.S. Constitution would require a two thirds passage in both the U.S. House and Senate. It would also need to be ratified by three fourths of the nation's state legislatures, but the 45 states that have already banned homosexual marriage on the state level are seven more than the 38 that would be needed to amend the U.S. Constitution and enact a national ban. However, the federal Constitution has been amended only five times since 1951. The most recent case -- the 27th Amendment, dealing with the pay for senators and House members -- was ratified on May 7, 1992, but had originally been proposed on Sept. 25, 1789. The language of what is popularly known as the Federal Marriage Amendment states that "marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman." It further clarifies that "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 or groups." The second clause of the amendment could eliminate the legal benefits of domestic partnerships and civil unions for heterosexual and homosexual couples. Vermont is the only state with legalized civil unions that apply to homosexuals. Bishop Harry R. Jackson, senior pastor of the Hope Christian Church in Lanham, Md., said the various pro-homosexual policies around the country mean that marriage is being "devalued." "This devaluation needs to not spiral south," he said, urging passage of the amendment. Rigali argued that it is "not only a question of religious principles," which he said "figure in prominently." "We're talking also of the tenets of civilization for thousands of years," he added. However, Brad Luna, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, argued that "the Constitution provides equality for all Americans." He told Cybercast News Service that the marriage amendment that conservatives want passed "would destroy that equality by re-writing the Constitution and treating one group of Americans different from others." Luna said Americans are not interested in such an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. "Affordability of health care and the war in Iraq -- those are the issues that they want the U.S. Senate and the Congress to be prioritizing as the top issues," he said. "This issue of the amendment ranks dead last on a list of priorities for voters," said Luna. |
