Frist Wants Constitutional Amendment Banning Gay Marriage

Yahoo! ^ | June 29, 2003

[mrobison]

By WILLIAM C. MANN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The Senate majority leader said Sunday he supported a proposed constitutional amendment to ban homosexual marriage in the United States.

Sen. Bill Frist (news, bio, voting record), R-Tenn., said the Supreme Court's decision last week on gay sex threatens to make the American home a place where criminality is condoned.

The court on Thursday threw out a Texas law that prohibited acts of sodomy between homosexuals in a private home, saying that such a prohibition violates the defendants' privacy rights under the Constitution. The ruling invalidated the Texas law and similar statutes in 12 other states.

"I have this fear that this zone of privacy that we all want protected in our own homes is gradually — or I'm concerned about the potential for it gradually being encroached upon, where criminal activity within the home would in some way be condoned," Frist told ABC's "This Week."

"And I'm thinking of — whether it's prostitution or illegal commercial drug activity in the home — ... to have the courts come in, in this zone of privacy, and begin to define it gives me some concern."

Asked whether he supported an amendment that would ban any marriage in the United States except a union of a man and a woman, Frist said: "I absolutely do, of course I do.

"I very much feel that marriage is a sacrament, and that sacrament should extend and can extend to that legal entity of a union between — what is traditionally in our Western values has been defined — as between a man and a woman. So I would support the amendment."

Same-sex marriages are legal in Belgium and the Netherlands. Canada's Liberal government announced two weeks ago that it would enact similar legislation soon.

Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., was the main sponsor of the proposal offered May 21 to amend the Constitution. It was referred to the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution on Wednesday, the day before the high court ruled.

As drafted, the proposal says:

"Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any state under state or federal law shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."

To be added to the Constitution, the proposal must be approved by two-thirds of the House and the Senate and ratified by three-fourths of the states.

Frist said Sunday he respects the Supreme Court decision but feels the justices overstepped their bounds.

"Generally, I think matters such as sodomy should be addressed by the state legislatures," Frist said. "That's where those decisions — with the local norms, the local mores — are being able to have their input in reflected.

"And that's where it should be decided, and not in the courts."

[aristeides]

I'm saying the Supreme Court in Limon made it clear that Lawrence means that homosexual child molesters (unlike heterosexual child molesters) are constitutionally protected against unequal sentences. I suggest to you that if Kansas law treated heterosexual child molestation more harshly than homosexual, the Supreme Court would not have given such protection and would not have vacated the judgment. So, under Lawrence, homosexual child molesters enjoy special constitutional protection.

And a constitutional amendment against gay marriage might persuade the Supreme Court not to interpret Lawrence so broadly as to give special constitutional protection to homosexual child molesters.

[mrobison]

Robert Bork has been advocating a constitutional amendment for nearly 2 years:

STOP COURTS FROM IMPOSING GAY MARRIAGE
Why we need a constitutional amendment
The Wall Street Journal
by Robert H. Bork

Tuesday, August 7, 2001

Of all the contested terrain in the culture war, the subject of homosexual rights is the most awkward to discuss. Almost all of us know homosexuals who are decent, intelligent and compassionate people, and we have no inclination to wound them.

Yet "gay rights" have come to the fore and we must have a discussion, free of ad hominem accusations, about whether homosexual acts and relationships are to be regarded as on a par with the marital relationship of a man and a woman. The immediate problem is the homosexual activists' drive for same-sex marriage.

The activists want it as an expression of moral approbation of homosexual conduct. Nevertheless, it is clear that most Americans do not want to create special rights for homosexuals or to consider their behavior morally neutral.

For that reason, the activists have concentrated their efforts on courts, knowing that judges have pushed, and continue to push, the culture to the left. One of the last obstacles to the complete normalization of homosexuality in our society is the understanding that marriage is the union of a man and a woman.

The activists breached that line when the supreme courts of Hawaii and Vermont, purporting to interpret their state constitutions, held that those states must recognize same-sex marriage. The Hawaiian electorate quickly amended their constitution to override that decision. The Vermont Constitution was extremely difficult to amend, and so the Legislature capitulated and enacted a civil-unions law, marriage in all but name, as the less repugnant of the alternatives the court allowed. More state courts are sure to follow.

Many court watchers believe that within five to 10 years the U.S. Supreme Court will hold that there is a constitutional right to homosexual marriage, just as that court invented a right to abortion. The chosen instrument will be the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. After all, if state law forbids Fred to marry Henry, aren't they denied equal protection when the law permits Tom and Jane to marry? The argument is simplistic, but then the argument for the result in Roe v. Wade was nonexistent.

To head off the seemingly inexorable march of the courts toward the radical redefinition of marriage, the Alliance for Marriage has put forward the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment:

"Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or 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 first sentence means that no legislature may confer the name of marriage on same-sex unions and no court may recognize a same-sex marriage contracted in another country. We would hope that if people understand the principle behind the amendment, they would not try to contrive counterfeit forms of marriage. We would oppose such attempts, but are prepared to debate the matter in the political forum. So far as legislatures are concerned, the primary thrust of the sentence's prohibition is symbolic, reserving the name of marriage to its traditional meaning. But symbolism is crucial in cultural struggles.

The second sentence expresses the main thrust of the amendment. It recognizes that liberal activist courts are the real problem. If courts are prevented from ordering same-sex marriage or its equivalent, the question of arrangements less than marriage is left where it should be, to the determination of the people through the democratic process.

To try to prevent legislatures from enacting permission for civil unions by constitutional amendment would be to reach too far. It would give opponents the opening to say we do not trust the people when, in fact, we are trying to prevent courts from thwarting the will of the people. The history of the effort to obtain a constitutional amendment relating to abortion is instructive. There was a chance to get an amendment overturning Roe v. Wade and returning the issue to the state legislatures. Purists opposed to abortion would not settle for that. They demanded an amendment prohibiting abortion altogether. The result was that they got nothing. An amendment against judicial validation of same-sex marriages would similarly be doomed by pressing for too much.

Some proponents of gay marriage, such as Jonathan Rauch, have tried to split cultural conservatives by invoking federalism. Family law, he argues, has always been governed by the states. Though that is not entirely true, it is entirely irrelevant. A constitutional ruling by the Supreme Court in favor of same-sex marriage would itself override federalism.

Activists are already trying to nationalize same-sex unions: Same-sex couples will travel to any state that allows them to marry or have civil unions, relying on the constitutional requirement that states give full faith and credit to the judgments of other states to validate their status in their home states. They will attack the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which seeks to block this. One way or another, federalism is going to be overridden. The only question is whether the general rule will permit or prohibit the marriage of same-sex couples.

Traditional marriage and family have been the foundations of every healthy society known in recorded history. Only in the past few decades of superficial liberal rationalism has marriage come under severe attack. The drive for same-sex marriage ordered by courts is the last stage of the assault. The Federal Marriage Amendment is an attempt, and perhaps the only hope, to preserve marriage as an institution of incalculable value.

Mr. Bork, a former federal appeals court judge and solicitor general, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

[steve-b]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And those were a bunch of San Francisco drag queens flying those planes into buildings, working on terrorist plans against this country, laundering money, running North Korea, Iran, Indonesia and the Sudan, preaching about the heavenly joy of murdering Americans in mosques, and desperately working to destabilize the country here and abroad.
Life has gotten way too serious to put up with hysterical social conservative crap anymore.

***DING DING DING*** No more calls; we have a winner.

[steve-b]

If you echo the arguments of Islamofascists, people will rightly wonder whose side you're on.

[solomangrundy]

So again I must ask you, do you advocate that heterosexual child molesters be treated more leniently than homosexual child molesters? Do you have some reasoning for advocating that heterosexual molesters be treated more leniently?

[MeekOneGOP]

. . . Disgusting! There are a lot of pings for you -- this turned into a hot issue last night . . .

Yep. I hope you don't find those Pervert pics too offensive. By the time you've seen this reply, you've see those pics, uh, half a dozen times. Sorry. :O)

[Kahonek]

"If same sex marriage becomes the law of the land, it will be illegal for ANY church to refuse to perform the ceremony - regardless of religious belief."

You are being just plain silly. Churches decide who they want to marry and always have. They can discriminate based on religion, race, or eye color. There is no law forcing a church to marry interracial couples, atheistic couples, couples who come from a different faith tradition, or couples with brown eyes. Why do you think that orientation would be any different?

[NittanyLion]

So, under Lawrence, homosexual child molesters enjoy special constitutional protection.

As near as I can tell homosexual and heterosexual child molesters are subject to identical criminal standards and sentencing rules. Am I missing something?

[mrobison]

Name one church that has refused to perform a marriage ceremony based on any of the factors you mentioned that retained its civic authority to perform marriages after that refusal.

We'll wait.

[aristeides]

If heterosexual child molesters were subject to harsher penalties, I do not believe the Supreme Court would step in. I don't see how they could, under Lawrence. So this is one-way, discriminatory constitutional protection.

[NittanyLion]

If heterosexual child molesters were subject to harsher penalties, I do not believe the Supreme Court would step in.

Why not? I think they would.

So this is one-way, discriminatory constitutional protection.

So by equalizing the penalties applied to homosexuals and heterosexuals, we're discriminating? I must confess, this isn't making a whole lot of sense to me.

[aristeides]

All I'm arguing is that states should be constitutionally allowed to set these sentences more or less however they please, without any constitutional protections for particular sexual orientations, in either direction. I can easily imagine reasonable justifications for Kansas setting the penalty higher for homosexual molestation. I'm sure you can too. (I'm not saying I would agree with such justifications. I'm not saying that, if it were up to me, I would treat homosexual molestation more harshly. My brief is for the constitutional right of states to set such sentences as they please.) Under traditional rational review, the federal courts would have upheld such sentencing disparities. But now the Supreme Court has granted homosexuals, including homosexual child molesters, special constitutional protection.

[NittanyLion]

Name one church that has refused to perform a marriage ceremony based on any of the factors you mentioned that retained its civic authority to perform marriages after that refusal.

What in the world are you talking about? Catholic churches refuse to marry people all the time, and I suspect others do the same.

[aristeides]

Why not? I think they would.

Not under Lawrence. Lawrence is about the special rights of homosexuals. And the Supreme Court instructed the Kansas court to reconsider in light of Lawrence.

If the majority in Lawrence had decided the case under O'Connor's equal protection rationale, that might have cut in both directions. But they didn't.

[aristeides]

If you only equalize when the disparity is in a certain direction, that most certainly is discriminatory.

[NittanyLion]

Lawrence is about the special rights of homosexuals.

Lawrence is about the equal rights of people who commit sodomy, or more accurately, about constraints on government regarding those acts.

I don't understand how you can read "special" rights into equal treatment.

[NittanyLion]

If you only equalize when the disparity is in a certain direction, that most certainly is discriminatory.

Treating two people equally is to discriminate against one of them? Liberals make the same argument every day to advance economic redistribution schemes.

[mrobison]

Give me a specific example where one of the previously-mentioned factors was the basis for the Catholic church refusing to perform a marriage.

We're still waiting.

[aristeides]

If the majority in Lawrence had merely wanted to equalize in both directions, they could very easily have included O'Connor's equal protection rationale in the majority opinion. They explicitly refused to do that.

[Kahonek]

"Name one church that has refused to perform a marriage ceremony based on any of the factors you mentioned that retained its civic authority to perform marriages after that refusal.

We'll wait."

You are TOO much! This practice is practically universal! My colleague was not permitted to marry in his wife's Catholic church because he's not Catholic. My own (Protestant) pastor refuses to hold ceremonies for atheists. Churches can refuse to marry ANYONE for ANY REASON. If you're a Christian, you can't just march into your local synagogue and demand that they hold a ceremony for you. Check with a few of your local conservative churches about their practices (does your church marry ANYONE who asks?), or do some legal research before spouting off like that. You are being ridiculous.

Since most churches have come a long way on civil rights, I suspect there are very few that would refuse to perform interracial marriages. However, the point is that it would be perfectly legal to do so. Until about two years ago, interracial DATING was against the rules at Bob Jones University. I doubt there were very many interracial marriage ceremonies performed in the University Chapel.