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."

[eddie willers]

ditto

[mrobison]

Ruth G. will probably try to define transvestites as women (or men), then circumvent the "man and woman" provision of a new amendment. We'll have to watch for that.

[Steve Eisenberg]

Did he think that people being gay were personal decisions or were they "just born that way." He agreed they were born that way.

From what I've read, this is much more true for gay men than lesbians. For example, see "The Man Who Would Be Queen" by J. Michael Bailey.

Did he think they were capable of feeling love in the way that he felt love for his children and his wife. He said they did.

This is tricky. There was an old psychiatric cliche to the effect that homosexual men had a problem with intimacy, period, while lesbians had a problem with intimacy with men. These ideas are hopelessly unacceptable in today's PC world, but I suspect that there was something to this.

Ben Bagley, the late, and gay, producer of wonderful record albums of forgotten Broadway songs, wrote something like the following in one of his liner notes:

I've been asked why I am so facinated by love songs. I think it is because I can't love myself.

[PhiKapMom]

Thanks for that great link! How can this be, we keep getting told on here this will go nowhere. Now the person who organized the Martin Luther King March on D.C. is heading up this effort for the Marriage Amendment.

You are right -- uniting with Blacks on this would be huge!
And we do need to unite behind one group!

[NittanyLion]

Life has gotten way too serious to put up with hysterical social conservative crap anymore.

Yep. A minute spent talking about inconsequential issues like this is a minute that can't be spent on the war on terror. Or perhaps a minute that could otherwise be spent figuring out how to minimize the amount of money I'll need to pay toward old people's prescription drugs.

It astonishes me to see the energy put into this topic while we're about to approve a trillion dollar spending increase and the Israelis are pulling out of Gaza.

[mrobison]

The budget and the Gaza strip don't mean much if the God-given institution of marriage is destroyed.

[Antoninus]

Your point? I'm well aware of what it takes. But when 75% plus of the population agrees with an idea, I'm not terribly worried about it.

37 states already have such amendments--one short of the number needed for ratification. Do you really think the vote whores in Congress will hold it up when the spotlight is shined on them? I think it's much more likely they'll sell out the sodomites in a heart-beat to appear "populist." The only worrisome part is the role the liberal media will play--but their ability to control the tenor of public debate is seriously on the wane.

Victory on this may not come easy, but we will have it.

[Cosmo]

Now if he would have used said balls with this prescription drug debacle.....

[The Red Zone]

Ruth G. will probably try to define transvestites as women (or men),

Or teen grooms/brides as "boys" and "girls" not "men" and "women" (waaaaaah, they didn't provide for that! so we gotta make up a new rule!)

[FreeReign]

This is mute,the SCOTUS has made the decision on the Constitutionality of this issue,any new law will be overturned.

Frist wants an amendment -- not a law.

[Antoninus]

However, we've seen what they can do with a clause they want to find in the Constitution.

Hey, I agree that they use rhetorical gymnastics to impose their own meanings on phrases in the Constitution. But how does throwing up our hands and surrendering help the situation? Perhaps if we use our only check on them and publicly rebuke their innane decision with a Constitutional amendment, they'll think twice before trying this nonsense again.

Doing nothing is not an option.

[Scott from the Left Coast]

Some of it is our fault (or the fault of their non-inclusive sympathisers), and plenty of it is theirs (they do have an "agenda", after all). But regardless, we don't choose the issues that define us, often forces beyond our control put us in the position of making choices. And usually forgetting the whole thing and reverting back to square one isn't amongst them.

[ApesForEvolution]

You and your fawtha miss the point completely of what gay marriage is all about to homo activists, the Constitution and America in general...

[Action-America]

Yet another law (even an amendment) is not the answer.  Rather than making laws to punish those who are sick, we need to cure the disease.

Think about it.

The reason that every species has a built in desire to have sex with the opposite sex is to insure procreation.  For that reason, such a sex drive is natural.  If a species had a desire to have sex with the same sex, it would lead to extinction of that species.  Therefore, such a desire is as unnatural as being born blind or developing cancer.  It's clear that just like blindness or cancer, homosexuality is an unnatural and unhealthy state, for which we need to find a cure.

It may be a mental illness or it may be a physical disease.  It may be a birth defect or it may be an acquired disease.  But whatever it's cause, homosexuality is a sickness that needs to be cured.

If we just punish the sickness, the only thing that we accomplish is to drive the sickness underground, where it cannot be treated.  On the other hand, if we cure the disease, there will soon be no offending act to punish.

It would seem that rather than continuing to punish those who have that disease, for years on end, it would be far more preferable to find a cure for the disease and be done with it, once and for all.

 

[NittanyLion]

The budget and the Gaza strip don't mean much if the God-given institution of marriage is destroyed.

You're telling me this proposed amendment (which will never happen, BTW) has a greater impact on your life than terrorism and a huge spending increase? I find that hard to fathom.

[DAnconia55]

This is going to be one ugly summer

From destruction comes rebirth.

Now is the time for W to throw off the old guard puritanism of the GOP.

He can gain swing voters and dem voters who favor economic freedom. And he can gain and hold the votes of the Young.

W can lead a reorganization of the GOP - structuring it into the party of the next 100 years.

All he has to do is ditch the blue hairs.

How many people, whether right or wrong, are scared of the media image (And to be honest the truth) of the GOP being entirely wrapped up with what people do in their personal lives?

How many people are driven the Demons by the GOP giving them this issue?

How many people think the face of the GOP is that of Fred Phelps?

Time to drive a wedge where it belongs! The Puritans cannot vote Demon no matter what. And the GOP can add A LOT MORE swing voters to the ranks while dumping the them!

Time to push forward a bold economic agenda, maximizing our freedoms!

[GovernmentShrinker]

And don't think the socialist leaders don't know exactly what they're doing with this. Conservatives as a group have shown themselves to be an easy mark for anything having to do with sexual liberty. As a result, the socialists spare no effort or expense to get thousands of their activists whipped into a frenzy over these things, because this quickly translates into millions of conservatives whipping themSELVES into a frenzy over these things. Then the socialists blithely march ahead with socialized medicine and other true horrors, while the conservatives are all busy hollering about gay marriage and the constitutional rights of eight cell embryos.

[The Red Zone]

I mean the amendment really needs to spell terms out in painful detail. Especially what a man or a woman are (probably in terms of born genital phenotype).

[ApesForEvolution]

You always seem to fall into the camp that thinks opening Pandora's box at every opportunity possible is always a good thing. Do think things through to their conclusion ever? Or, do you desire the conclusion?

[The Red Zone]

I mean the amendment really needs to spell terms out in painful detail. Especially what a man or a woman are (probably in terms of born genital phenotype).