Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Top Senator Backs Amendment Banning Gay Marriage

phredgreen · 06-29-2003, 01:55 PM

Quote:

<i>as seen here:http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle....toryID=3007639</i>

<b>Top Senator Backs Amendment Banning Gay Marriage
Sun June 29, 2003 12:57 PM ET
By Peter Kaplan</b>

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican leader of the U.S. Senate said on Sunday he supported a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist expressed concern about the Supreme Court's decision last week to strike down a Texas sodomy law. He said he supported an amendment that would reserve marriage for relationships between men and women.

"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," said Frist, of Tennessee. "So I would support the amendment."

The comment, during an interview on ABC's "This Week" program, comes days after the U.S. high court struck down sodomy laws that made it a crime for gays to have consensual sex in their own bedrooms on the grounds the laws violated constitutional privacy rights.

The court's decision was applauded by gay rights advocates as a historic ruling that overturned sodomy laws in 13 states.

Conservatives have expressed their fears that the June 26 ruling could lead to the legalization of gay marriages.

The marriage amendment, reintroduced in the House of Representatives last month, says marriage in the United States "shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman."

Amending the constitution requires the approval of two thirds of each of the houses of the U.S. Congress and approval of 38 state legislatures.

Frist said he feared that the ruling on the Texas sodomy law could lead to a situation "where criminal activity within the home would in some way be condoned."

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

Frist said the questions of whether to criminalize sodomy should be made by state legislatures.

"That's where those decisions, with the local norms, the local mores, are being able to have their input in reflected," Frist said.

i'm not even gay and this law concerns me. i just think our government has completely thrown the separation between church and state completely to the wind and is legislating anything they think might be "immoral" or releigiously (not socially) "indecent" to make thsi world a safer place for their god. this really worries me. it's getting out of hand. refer this website for more throught provoking arguments against our current government.