US senators vow to block gay marriage

LeadMagnet

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Mar 26, 2003
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WASHINGTON - Alarmed that the gay marriage movement in Canada may spread south of the border, a group of Republican senators has embarked on a campaign to rewrite the U.S. Constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

"In response to those who are trying to destroy the legal status of marriage and force their will on the American people, a constitutional response is necessary," said Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas.

The campaign, sponsored by the Alliance for Marriage, Sen. Brownback and other Republican senators, says children are best served by a union between a man and a woman, a view gay rights groups vehemently reject.

"We ought to be defenders of [heterosexual] marriage. A lot of things have changed in the world, but that one has not changed and science backs it up," said Senator Jeff Sessions, a Republican from Alabama.

The new drive to define marriage in traditional terms comes after the House of Commons, in a non-binding vote on Tuesday, narrowly endorsed gay marriage, rejecting a 137-year-old definition that defines the institution as the union "of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others."

MPs voted 137-132 against a Canadian Alliance motion to maintain the traditional meaning. The vote follows a series of rulings by Canadian courts allowing gay and lesbian partners to marry.

In Washington, Senator John Cornyn of Texas said he wrote to his Senate colleagues urging them to support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which does not now define marriage.

His campaign was immediately attacked by gay rights advocacy groups, which complained the constitutional amendment would discriminate against same-sex couples, especially those with children.

"I find it to be a mean-spirited attack on gay families," said David Smith, spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, a gay advocacy group.

"It would mean that children growing up in gay families would never receive the security and protection that a civil marriage provides."

The senators were "out of step" with public opinion on gay families, which are thriving and raising healthy, happy children, he added.

In the U.S. Congress, the House of Representatives has already introduced a constitutional amendment to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman, but the initiative has not gone far.

The Senate has not made a similar move.

But Matt Daniels, president of the Alliance for Marriage, insisted at a news conference yesterday that Senate support for a constitutional amendment is growing.

"The process is well under way here but it will be in a slower and more deliberate way [than the House]," he said.

Last week, Roman Catholic bishops in the United States threw their support behind amending the Constitution while condemning legalized same-sex unions.

Amending the Constitution is not an easy process. It requires a two-thirds vote of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and approval from at least three-quarters of the 50 states.

So far, most Democrats and some Republican lawmakers oppose the amendment.

The controversy over gay marriage in the United States is expected to emerge in some form during next year's presidential election.

It is also developing into a legal issue, with state courts in Massachusetts and New Jersey facing decisions on lawsuits from same-sex couples demanding the right to marry. This year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas law that made homosexual sex a crime.

Although this week's vote in the House of Commons is not binding, it is widely seen as the first test of a federal bill that will make Canada only the third country in the world to legalize gay marriage, after Belgium and the Netherlands.

All 63 Canadian Alliance MPs voted to maintain the traditional view of marriage, along with 53 of the 150 Liberals who voted, 10 of 14 Tories, three of 23 Bloc Québécois MPs and three of four independents.

Twenty-nine MPs did not vote.

The 53 Liberal MPs who voted for the motion chose to ignore pressure from Jean Chrétien, the Prime Minister, and Martin Cauchon, the Justice Minister, to side with the government.

Courts in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec have already struck down the federal ban on gay marriage as a violation of the equality guarantees in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The bill legalizing same-sex marriage has been sent to the Supreme Court of Canada for a legal opinion on its constitutionality before it is introduced in the Commons.

The traditional definition of marriage is based on an 1866 court ruling in England, in which Lord Penzance wrote: "I conceive that marriage, as understood in Christendom, may ... be defined as the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others."

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sandorski

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Oct 10, 1999
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Somewhat related

excerpt: Toronto ? Two gay men who are legally wed in Ontario say they were refused entry into the United States after a U.S. customs official at the airport wouldn't accept their customs clearance form as a family.
 

Insane3D

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May 24, 2000
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"In response to those who are trying to destroy the legal status of marriage and force their will on the American people, a constitutional response is necessary," said Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas.

"We ought to be defenders of [heterosexual] marriage. A lot of things have changed in the world, but that one has not changed and science backs it up," said Senator Jeff Sessions, a Republican from Alabama.

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OMG!! OMG!!! The GAYS are coming!!! The GAYS are coming!!! They are going to destroy our precious marriages! :Q:Q

:frown: