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Senate
Hearing on Defending Marriage, Judicial Activism and Democracy
Meridian’s
Inside View, Part 2
Text by Maurine
Jensen Proctor
Photos
by Scot Facer Proctor
Is a Federal Amendment Necessary?
Is a Federal Amendment
necessary? “Yes,” said Maggie Gallagher, echoing the sentiments
of most of those who champion marriage and family.
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Nationally
syndiated columnist Maggie Gallagher. |
“Marriage is a
national issue because marriage is a key social institution. Without
a common, national definition of marriage, our marriage culture
will be fragmented as judges and public officials impose their own
definition of marriage, often against the law and the direct expressed
will of the people. A federal marriage amendment is the only way
to sustain a common national definition of marriage, which is worthy
of its status as a fundamental of civilization.
“Same-sex activists
themselves are ultimately calling for a national definition of marriage
that includes gay marriage, only they seek to use the courts to
create this over the will of the American people. Why won’t civil
unions do? “Portability,” is the answer most often given. If you
are married in Massachusetts you can’t be unmarried in South Carolina.
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Maggie
Gallagher makes a point. |
“A Constitutional
amendment is not a national crisis,” Mrs. Gallagher continued.
“Support for it is growing because Americans recognize this is the
only way to take the issue off the table to settle the question
of the meaning of marriage in our nation once and for all, so we
can move on to other things. The alternative is to let marriage
become a political football fought out in thousands of jurisdictions
large and small, legal and political, for the foreseeable future.”
Marriage is Critical
Pastor Daniel
de Leon, who represents the largest Hispanic Evangelical organization
in the country, 8,000,000 strong, said, “I live everyday in the
front-lines of Urban America, where the ills of society are magnified
greatly. People like myself, who provide a service to our community,
are often the ones who have to ‘pick up the pieces’ when marriages
and families fall. In my 30 years of counseling, I have often dealt
with grown children that still harbor hurts and deep-seated frustrations
because they did not have a mother and father.
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Pastor
Daniel de Leon of Santa Ana, California. |
“I am not here
because I want to be here. There are many problems in my community,
and I should be there working on them, not here far away in Washington,
D.C…I need to be here, to defend the most basic institution of society
for the good of all, on behalf of my community. Because without
marriage, we have no hope of solving the other problems we are facing
back home.”
Pastor de Leon
noted, “When I turned on my television a few weeks ago and saw what
was happening in San Francisco, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“I could not understand
how an elected official could ignore and violate the laws of our
state, and get away with it. I also could not understand why the
courts would not stop this—why they would refuse to require an elected
official to comply with the law of his state and to respect the
will of the people as expressed in our laws.
“It wasn’t just
that officials and judges were ignoring the law. It was much worse
than that. They were ignoring a law that is so fundamental to society.”
African-American
Community
Richard W. Richardson
of the Black Ministerial Alliance of Greater Boston echoed the same
sentiment. He has been in the field of child welfare for 50 years
and said “The recent decision of four judges of the highest court
in my state, threatening traditional marriage laws around the country,
gives us no choice but to engage in this debate.
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Reverend
Richard W. Richardson |
“To put it simply:
We firmly believe that children do best when raised by a mother
and a father. The dilution of the ideal—of procreation and child-rearing
within the marriage of one man and one woman—has already had a devastating
effect on our community.
He noted that
children are raised in a variety of family arrangements—foster parents,
adoptive parents, single parents. “People are working hard and
doing the best job they can to raise children. That doesn’t change
the fact that there is an ideal. There is a dream that we have
and should have for all children—and that is a mom and dad for every
child, black or white.”
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Mr. Hilary Shelton, Director
of the NAACP's Washington Bureau makes a statement. |
Hilary Shelton
of the NAACP said that they haven’t taken a stand on same-sex marriage,
but they “strongly oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment and all
other proposals that would use the Constitution to discriminate
and restrict, rather than expand and protect the rights” of people.
Conclusion
So the battle
to save traditional marriage is official and sides have been drawn.
The rally cries spoken on Capitol Hill yesterday will be echoed
across the land.
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View
of witnesses before the sub-committee. |
The cry for same-sex
marriage advocates is that you cannot write discrimination into
the Constitution.
Sen. John Cornyn
(R-Texas) said that overwhelming majorities across the nation support
traditional marriage. “In light of this extraordinary consensus,
it is offensive for anyone to charge supporters of traditional marriage
with bigotry. Yet that is exactly what activist judges are doing
today, accusing ordinary Americans of intolerance, while abolishing
American traditions by judicial fiat.
He said, “True,
the Constitution should not be amended casually. But serious people
have reluctantly recognized that an amendment may be the only way
to ensure survival of traditional marriage in America. Why is an
amendment necessary? Two words: activist judges.
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