ADF: Traditional Marriage Defenders Have Momentum, But FMA Still Needed
by Jim Brown
September 29, 2006
(AgapePress) - - The head of a pro-family legal group says the tide is turning in the fight to defend traditional marriage. Conservatives were eight for eight in court decisions to protect marriage this summer, and 20 states have already passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex "marriage." On average, 71 percent of voters in those states supported passing constitutional marriage protection amendments.
Alan Sears, president of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), says the tide has turned, but just for the moment. His group was involved in eight victories for marriage around the United States since the beginning of July; however, Sears contends, "We have to seize this wind of opportunity to proceed, to go farther." With eight states voting on marriage amendments this fall, he asserts, pro-family voters "must turn out. They must make their position known."
The ADF spokesman says his group and other marriage defenders are hoping that all of the states voting on the issue this fall will pass marriage protection measures. "We'll be in a position here in a few months, hopefully, to have half of the states with a constitutional amendment," he says.
Still, Sears insists that America "must have a federal marriage amendment to make [the ban on same-sex marriage] uniform across the states." Although liberals have failed in every attempt this summer to defeat traditional marriage, he asserts, the assault on marriage continues.
"The series of cases this summer were four-fold," the pro-family legal analyst notes. "One was on whether or not we could uphold our state laws -- we won those," he says. "The others were cases on whether or not the people could vote. In Tennessee and Arizona, they tried to block the people from even having a voice."
ADF attorneys were involved in the Tennessee case, in which the court ruled in favor of traditional marriage. And in the Arizona case, the state's high court echoed a lower court's decision, ruling that Proposition 107, Arizona's marriage protection amendment, does not violate the state constitution's "single subject" rule and therefore will appear on the November ballot.
And in two more states, Sears points out, homosexual marriage proponents sued to overturn the results. In that case, he says, "Nebraska and Georgia, the Eighth Circuit, upheld the decision of the voters. In every place the people have had the right to decide, they've done it."
Even the court that fabricated same-sex marriage, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, agrees that the people have the right to decide, Sears adds. Last summer, in what ADF called "a victory for the rule of law and the voter-initiative process," the MSJC unanimously shut down a legal challenge to a proposed state constitutional amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman.
In that case, the Massachusetts high court ruled that the amendment initiative does not violate the state constitutional prohibition on improper use of the initiative process to intervene in a court case to reverse the verdict. Meanwhile, in a historic victory in New York, that state's Court of Appeals ruled 4-2 against an attempt to redefine marriage, agreeing that the issue should be left to the state's legislature.
All indications are that traditional marriage advocates need to seize their opportunity to push forward while they have the momentum in the fight against homosexual marriage.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
