Huckabee, Romney Expound on Traditional Marriage
by Jim Brown
September 25, 2006
(AgapePress) - - Two GOP presidential hopefuls used this weekend's Values Voter Summit in the nation's capital to curry favor with conservatives. The two governors -- one from Arkansas, the other from Massachusetts -- shared their position on the issue of same-sex "marriage."
Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is assuring voters he is committed to protecting the sanctity of life and traditional marriage. The former Baptist minister is looking to win the Republican nomination for president in 2008. While addressing the Values Voter Summit, he said conservatives need to be known for those things they favor -- not just the things they oppose.
"I don't like it when people say, 'But you're against abortion.' I say, 'No, I value life,'" Huckabee said. The governor also admitted he is "not real fond" when people try to tell him that he is just against same-sex marriage. "I tell people I'm actually just for keeping marriage in the only manner for which it's ever been known in any culture, in any civilization throughout all of history."
And in a statement that drew applause, he added: "Dear friends, until Moses comes down with two stone tablets from Brokeback Mountain saying we've changed the rules, let's keep it like it is."
America, said Huckabee, should not only protect the definition of marriage, but also promote "covenant" marriages. He explained that covenant marriages involve putting up roadblocks before people walk away from what should be a lifetime commitment.
It involves "a community marriage policy" in which pastors are urged to only marry people after they have gone through counseling and "are willing to fully understand the incredible commitment it is to be married," Huckabee said.
Then on a personal note, the Arkansas governor -- who has been married for more than 32 years -- expressed his commitment to his own marriage. "I can tell you this: that there's no commitment, no promise, no endeavor in which I've ever been involved that's been more challenging than that." Then jokingly he added: "And if you think it's been challenging, you ought to ask my wife how challenging it is married to me."
Huckabee also said he is not against divorced people, but that divorce robs people of their dignity and trust, and it impoverishes many women as well.
Don't Leave Marriage to States
The second presidential hopeful, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, renewed his push for a federal marriage amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Romney reminded those attending the Values Voter Summit that American society is built on the foundation of the family unit. Romney says one year ago the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court struck a blow against that unit when it permitted homosexual marriage.
"We, as people, as willing to be tolerant and open," Romney said. "Even if we disagree with choices other people make, we espouse freedom and we respect people for their right to make their own choices in life."
But the governor had critical words for the highest court in his state. "The court focused on adult rights -- they said if heterosexual couples can marry, then to have equal rights homosexuals have to also be able to marry," he said. That court's mistake, Romney continued, was "they should have focused on the rights of children -- because marriage is primarily about the development and nurturing of children."
Romney said he is most upset with people who say they believe in traditional marriage but want the issue left up to the individual states. Again, said the governor, that is a mistake.
"Marriage is not an activity like gambling -- [about] which you can say, if you don't want it, it just goes on in one state or another state," he said. "Marriage is a status."
He offered a scenario that has occurred in reality. "If people come to a 'Las Vegas of same-sex marriage' [like Massachusetts], and then they go home, they still believe they're married. And then they represent themselves [to their community] as being married," he stated.
And that, he said, is who marriage in one state affects all of the states. "Therefore, we have to have a federal standard that says marriage in this country is a relationship between one man and one woman."
Romney says John Adams would have been quite surprised to learn the Constitution he wrote was being interpreted as requiring people of the same gender to marry. He says America will become a stronger nation if it rises to the challenge of fighting attacks against the foundation of family.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
