Marriage Amendment Progressing Through U.S. Senate
by Bill Fancher and Jenni Parker
March 18, 2004
(AgapePress) - The effort to pass a federal constitutional amendment protecting traditional marriage is slowly moving through the legislative process.
Colorado Senator Wayne Allard, the author of the Senate version of the amendment, says he is pleased with the progress being made. "We've now had one hearing," he says, and adds that two hearings are planned.
"There will be one a little bit later on this month, and hopefully we'll have a markup towards the very end of this month," the senator says. A markup is the process undergone at the committee level to decide what language a bill or amendment will contain once it reaches the full Senate for debate and a vote.
One surprising thing Allard notes about the marriage amendment is that it is catching a favorable wind, even from some of those blowing hardest in the opposite direction. As a result, he says both supporters and opponents are helping to move the amendment through the process.
"We've had the support of the leadership here in the Senate -- I think that's helped it move forward," Allard says, "plus the fact that it's judicial activism that has sort of moved this up to the forefront."
The senator says he thinks the judiciary has been much more active lately than anybody anticipated, and as a result, the marriage amendment is being advanced quickly, "because of judicial activism. "That, I think, is primarily driving [the amendment forward]. It's driving the interest of the people," Allard says.
Although the Colorado lawmaker says this year is a very difficult time in which to try to get legislation of this nature scheduled, debated, and acted upon, he is confident that, as the year proceeds, progress will continue toward the goal of getting the marriage amendment through the Senate.
But while legislators work to establish the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman, elsewhere, that definition is being publicly undermined. Some clergy that support legalization of same-sex marriage have become caught up in the atmosphere of lawlessness created by city officials like the mayors of San Francisco, California, and New Paltz, New York, who have been handing out illegal marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
According to an Associated Press report, a minister and a rabbi said they would be performing same-sex weddings Thursday in front of New York's City Hall while dozens of gathered clergy members showed support. Brooklyn Rabbi Ellen Lippmann has plans to marry a lesbian couple, while Rev. Pat Bumgardner, the lesbian pastor of Metropolitan Community Church in Manhattan, says she will preside over the joining of two men, and then two women, to each other.
Bumgardner says the act of performing these "marriage" ceremonies will show solidarity for two Unitarian Universalist ministers who are currently facing criminal charges for officiating at same-sex weddings in New Paltz.
