Ohio Activist: Same-Sex 'Marriage' Advocates Don't Want Voters Deciding
by Rusty Pugh
October 7, 2004
(AgapePress) - An Ohio family advocate says supporters of homosexual "marriage" know that when voters are allowed to decide, traditional marriage will always be upheld.
The numbers on the "for" side from recent referendums protecting traditional marriage are telling: Hawaii (69.2 percent), Alaska (68.1 percent), Nebraska (70.1 percent), Nevada (67.1 percent), Missouri (70.7 percent), and Louisiana (77.8 percent). Next month, Ohio will be among as many as 11 states allowing voters to cast a ballot on an amendment to their state constitution banning same-sex marriage and civil unions. The latest attempt by pro-homosexual activists to stop the vote in Ohio -- by using the courts -- has failed.
Phil Burress of the Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values says homosexual marriage proponents know that the courts are their only chance to further their agenda -- because the people will not.
"When we started circulating these petitions [to get the measure on the state ballot], the other side hired several attorneys and activists to keep us off the ballot, to deny the people the right to vote on [whether] marriage should be between one man and one woman or [between] homosexuals or multiple partners," Burress says. "Then, as soon as they possibly could, they launched legal battles in 42 different counties."
And while the glut of legal battles may have seemed overwhelming, Burress and others like him did not retreat from the challenge.
"Thanks to Alliance Defense Fund and some of the other [pro-family, pro bono] attorneys out there, we had lawyers in every courtroom facing these people -- and we won in every situation, even up to appeals court," he says. "We are so dead-center right on this thing that even judicial activists can't rule against us."
Marriage traditionalists in Louisiana were not so fortunate, however. A district judge in Baton Rouge ruled earlier this week that the marriage protection amendment approved by 78 percent of Louisiana voters on September 18 is unconstitutional, thereby invalidating the peoples' mandate -- for now. Pro-family groups are hopeful that that judge's opinion will be overturned upon appeal.
