On Thursday, the US House of Representatives failed to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA). The vote fell short of the two-thirds supermajority needed for passage of a constitutional amendment, although it did pass with a healthy majority of 227 to 186.
Representative John Conyers managed the debate for the minority. While it is proper for him to lead on the issue as the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over FMA, the symbolism of having an African-American as bill manager was also quite effective. He understood this and continuously introduced FMA opponents as longtime civil rights proponents.
Toward the end of the debate, when the more senior and compelling speakers take to the House Floor, he introduced African-American Congressman John Lewis: “No one has been closer in this Congress to Dr. Martin Luther King than he.” Representative Lewis began, “This nation has worked hard to take discrimination out of the Constitution, and today, we want to put it back in. I can recall just a few short years ago that there were laws inscribed in some state constitutions saying that blacks and whites could not marry.” He then added a personal note. “For one who faced death, who was beaten and left bloody and unconscious at the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery, Alabama, in May of 1961; for one who had a concussion at the bridge in Selma on March 7, 1965, demonstrating, trying to end discrimination, segregation and separation, this is not the way.” He closed, “We want to go forward. Today it is gay marriage; tomorrow it will be something else.”
FMA supporters countered civil rights arguments with African-American representatives like Sanford Bishop, Jr. “I am clear on this issue because the values I share…are deeply held for God, country, work, and family. Moreover, these families' values are those of the traditional family based in our Judeo-Christian principles.” Majority Leader DeLay also explained he has received countless letters from African-American preachers who fiercely oppose same-sex “marriage,” and who stand in unwavering support of the FMA.
USCCB president Wilton D. Gregory sent a letter to all members urging them to support the measure. “Our concern for preserving marriage as the union of a man and a woman is not simply a Catholic concern. We share it with believers and non-believers, Christians and non-Christians alike, simply because this understanding is part of the common moral heritage of humanity.” He added that it is “precisely this moral heritage that must be protected today from a small but vocal minority that would alter the definition of marriage by making same-sex unions the legal equivalent of marriage.” Other religious leaders and pro-family groups worked tirelessly for passage of the measure as well.
Just as in the aftermath of the Senate FMA defeat, proponents viewed this as a battle they had only begun to fight. “This is only the beginning, I am telling you, because this nation will protect marriage,” Congressman DeLay concluded. For our sake and the sake of our civilization, let us pray he is right.
St. Thomas More, pray for us!
© Copyright 2004 Catholic Exchange
Craig Richardson is the founder of the recently launched Catholic Action Network, an organization committed to calling Catholics to authentic and faithful citizenship particularly on issues of life and family.
Overall, the debate was spirited, passionate, and the gulf between the two sides could not have been wider.
The House debate was much more candid than the Senate’s July deliberation, especially from those opposing the FMA. One reason is that members of Congress represent smaller geographical districts than do senators, who represent an entire state. Statewide, constituents roundly support traditional marriage, whereas pockets of gay “marriage” support exist in certain regions, most predictably in urban areas. In addition, unlike the Senate, there are several openly gay members of Congress (including Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts) who are not afraid to speak from personal experience against what they feel is flagrant discrimination. Finally, the Senate effort received more national focus than Thursday’s House debate. The Senate was the first chamber to address the issue and it did so in the middle of the summer. The House debate followed the Senate vote and the House vote occurred mere weeks before the national election and on the eve of the first presidential debate.
The candid deliberations resulted in an honest exchange on what are two distinct and widely divergent worldviews. On one side are FMA proponents who honestly and sincerely believe that traditional marriage is under attack from a small minority that is using the courts to impose its radical views on the nation just as they did with abortion more than thirty years ago. Proponents argue that gay “marriage,” if accepted, will destroy traditional families and eventually cause a breakdown of our civilization along the lines of what is happening in the Scandinavian countries and other places.
FMA opponents’ first line of defense is to paint proponents as “right-wing” partisans who want to amend our sacred Constitution to score “despicable” political points just before the elections. Once we look past this cheap shot we see their rejection of the traditional marriage worldview. They have framed the issue as a civil rights struggle in the same tradition as the fight to win equality for African-Americans that began in earnest during the 1960s.
Congressman Frank was present during most of the discussion and he clearly views traditional marriage as discriminatory. He admitted he was gay and then claimed he and his friends “are not assaulting marriage. Since when is it an assault on something for people to say, you know what; we have been excluded from this institution.” As human beings, “we feel love. We feel it in a way different than you.” Also, when it comes to marriage, “we see the joy it brings,” and we “see the stability it brings to society. How does it hurt you if we share in it?” For Representative Frank, this is the heart of the issue: “What is it about the fact that two women in love in Massachusetts want to be legally as well as morally responsible for each other and live together and keep their home? Why is that an assault on you?” He then asks FMA supporters why they “have changed his love into a weapon.”
Majority Leader Tom DeLay managed the bill for the majority and he answered the question of how gay “marriage” harms America. He noted that this is not about discrimination against gay people. “What this is about is the family and the definition of family, so I will define it for you: a family is a man and a woman that can create children.” He adds, “Peter and Paul cannot create children. Mary and Jane cannot create children.”
He continues that marriage is also “about responsibility,” and it is “how we create communities.” It is also “how we transfer our values to our children, because if you destroy marriage and people do not get married, several things happen: first of all, men are let off the hook. Men can have the sex but not the responsibility of raising the children,” which he pointed out is already happening in Europe. Men in committed relationships understand the responsibility of raising children, but more fundamentally, they provide something gay couples cannot. “Mary and Jane can be great mothers and there are many of them that are great mothers,” and “Peter and Paul can be great fathers,” but “Peter and Paul cannot be a mother. And Mary and Jane cannot be a father.”
With the family as the building block of our nation, “each family can transfer its values by families coming together as communities and transferring those values to those communities. So when you ask the question, what harm is it, the harm is if nobody gets married and they are having children out of wedlock.” These kids “are more likely to have all the maladies of societal ills, whether it be quicker [to get] on drugs [or to be] dropouts.” When this happens, we do not transfer our values “to communities and from communities to states. Our values as a nation start with one man, one woman, having children. That is what is at stake here.”
Congressman DeLay identified other recent attacks on marriage like divorce and welfare, and while recognizing that single moms and same-sex couples can raise wonderful families, he says this is not the ideal. “The ideal is established in our Constitution and in our society. We want the ideal.”
A constant criticism from opponents was “for heaven sake, why now?” Majority Leader DeLay answered by saying that we faced a similar issue with abortion. “We did not stand up before and there have been 45 million children killed, unborn children killed, because we did not stand up to activist judges responding to a strategy of using the courts to legislate. Every leader of the groups that are opposing this legislation has announced to the world that they are going to take this to the US Supreme Court.” Opponents are going after state constitutions that ban gay “marriage,” and after those, they will focus on the Federal courts, and then “DOMA comes down. Then the United States Supreme Court, who has already signaled that they are going to, through Lawrence v. Texas, redefine marriage in this country, will amend the Constitution and redefine marriage.”
