Pro-FMA Senators Say Failed Vote Still a Win
by Bill Fancher and Rusty Pugh
July 19, 2004
(AgapePress) - Despite the fact the Senate effectively voted against the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment last week, the author of the amendment counts the overall effort as a big victory.
The attempt to protect traditional marriage fell 12 votes shy of ending the Democratic filibuster and allowing a Senate vote on the amendment. Senator Wayne Allard, who crafted the proposed amendment, was impressed with the 48 favorable votes it received. He says protecting traditional marriage will be a long, drawn-out process and could possibly take years. But he believes it will get done.
"I think this is a very strong first vote," Allard says, "and I'm pleased. I can reflect back on when we were having votes on the constitutional amendment to balance the budget. That started out with few votes, barely up to 30, if I remember correctly. Then, over several years, it developed so that it passed out of the House and came within a couple of votes of passing out of the Senate."
Texas Senator John Cornyn is another FMA supporter who says the media are wrong to characterize the Senate vote as a defeat. Cornyn, who was a floor manager for the effort, says the proponents of the amendment succeeded on two important fronts.
"One," he says, "is discussing the importance of the American family and [of] preserving the traditional institution of marriage and its importance as a stabilizing influence on our society, and as an institution that's in the best interests of children."
Secondly, the Texas lawmaker adds, "I believe we've done our job by highlighting the threat to the rights of the American people by activist judges." But both Cornyn and Allard insist the fight for a federal amendment to protect the traditional definition of marriage has only just begun.
Meanwhile, marriage defenders at the grassroots level are hoping liberal lawmakers who contend that marriage is a state's rights issue will stand by their word and allow individual states to make and keep their own marriage laws.
The State of Michigan recently became the tenth state in the nation to allow its voters to have a Defense of Marriage Initiative placed on the ballot. The U.S. House of Representatives could vote this week to bar federal courts from hearing challenges to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA. That federal law defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman and says a state is not required to recognize homosexual marriages performed in other states.
Gary Glenn is president of the American Family Association of Michigan. He says if the states are allowed to define marriage without interference from the courts, he knows for certain that in his own state of Michigan, marriage will be defined as being only a union between a man and a woman.
According to Glenn, Michigan voters have provided more than enough signatures on a petition to have a DOMA measure placed on November's ballot. "We stand amazed at God's handiwork -- the miracle that happened," he says. "A million registered voters in Michigan have signed a petition demanding the right to vote this November and say that, in Michigan, marriage will remain only between one man and one woman."
Now Glenn is hoping his state and others will be given that opportunity, and that U.S. lawmakers will tell the federal courts to stay out of the matter. The states should have the right, he asserts, to decide at the polls how marriage should be defined, and they should not have to face interference from federal judges acting as advocates for the homosexual agenda.
The pro-family activist says Michigan voters have spoken loud and clear, and he has no doubt that they will do so again in November. "We're going to put in our constitution a clear definition of marriage as being only between one man and one woman," he says.
Glenn adds that he hopes the voters will also remember in November how their senators voted on the FMA.
