View Previous News

Select an EditionWednesday, July 02, 2003Wednesday, June 25, 2003Wednesday, June 18, 2003Wednesday, June 04, 2003Sunday, June 01, 2003Sunday, May 25, 2003Sunday, May 18, 2003Wednesday, May 14, 2003Sunday, May 11, 2003Wednesday, May 07, 2003

EMAIL ARTICLE      LINK TO ARTICLE      PRINT ARTICLE

Article Published: Wednesday, July 02, 2003 - 12:00:00 AM MST

Al Knight OTHER COLUMNS Jun. 25 - Worship diversity or else Jun. 18 - The high cost of congeniality Jun. 4 - Who needs marriage? al knight We need the Marriage Amendment By Al Knight The latest issue of Newsweek treats the magazine's readers to a giddy rhapsody about same-sex marriage. According to Newsweek, there apparently is no social, cultural or moral downside to homosexual marriage. In fact, about the only question that remains is when these unions finally will be legal. This news slant is hardly unique. In the wake of last week's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court striking down an anti-sodomy statute in Texas, the cultural buzz is all about the surprising sweep of the court's 6-3 decision and how it will lead to the recognition of gay marriage. The three dissenting justices in the Texas case, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, concluded that the court's decision simply sweeps aside the constitutional and legal basis for restricting marriage to heterosexual unions. Scalia, writing for the other two, asked, "What justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples?" He then went on to deride the majority's lame assertion that the case doesn't "involve" the right of same-sex couples to marry. "Do not believe it," he said. "This case doesn't involve the issue of homosexual marriage only if one entertains the belief that principle and logic have nothing to do with the decisions of this court. Many will hope that, as the court comfortingly assures us, this is so." Now that the court had taken what Scalia calls an "anti-anti-homosexual" position, the immediate issue for the country is not whether there is a right to gay marriage but rather how that decision should be made and by whom. There are only two options. The first is to let the courts do it, prodded on, of course, by dozens of gay- rights organizations and their friends. Dozens of such organizations have already petitioned the Massachusetts Supreme Court to find a "right to marry" in the U.S. Constitution, and it's widely expected that that court will do so, especially now that the U.S. Supreme Court has charted the way. If were to happen, it is fair to ask, why should a clear majority of Americans who oppose homosexual marriage simply accept the far-reaching consequences that would follow in the wake of such a decision? The simple answer is that every American has a stake in how marriage is defined, and the decision should not be left either to a tiny minority of the population or to unelected judges. Opinion polls show conclusively that the American public, while increasingly tolerant of homosexuals, does not believe this group has a right to define marriage for society as a whole. The Marriage Amendment now before Congress appears to be the only way the march of judicial activism can be halted and the public be given the opportunity to make the final decision. At several key points in the nation's history, Congress has had to confront the fact that the constitutional language had to be changed to accommodate public opinion and the changing social order. Such amendments were needed to abolish slavery, to give women the right to vote, to impose an income tax, and to limit a president to just two terms in office. The issue this time around is also quite simple. Does this nation wish to preserve marriage as the exclusive option of a man and a woman? The Marriage Amendment would leave to the individual states the related matters of whether same-sex couples could adopt, obtain employee health insurance, inherit and the like. Up until now, gay activist groups have been able to picture the sponsors of the Marriage Amendment as a hateful bunch motivated by little more than animus toward homosexuals. That won't work now. The Supreme Court decision and the pending case in Massachusetts demonstrate that the Marriage Amendment isn't some cause of a narrow group, but rather a broad-based reaction to real events. The amendment is no less than a broad recognition that a valued institution needs to be preserved mostly because it has served and continues to serve the interests of children. This belief, by the way, cuts across racial and ethnic lines. Hispanics and black Americans, if anything, hold this view more strongly than other groups, a fact that undercuts the oft-repeated assertion that homosexuality is analogous to race. So far, not even the compliant Supreme Court majority has been willing to go that far. Al Knight of Fairplay mailto:alknight@mindspring.com ) is a former member of The Denver Post editorial-page staff. His columns appear on Wednesday.

  RETURN TO TOP