Year In Review: Senators Deep-Six MPA -- For Now
December 27, 2006

(AgapePress) - - Supporters of the Marriage Protection Amendment (MPA) are not distraught over the fact that the U.S. Senate has rejected the call for a vote on the measure. Sixty votes were needed to have the measure come up for an up-or-down vote; the move came up 11 votes short.

Despite that setback, supporters in the Senate are not going to "fall back and cry about it," says Senator Orin Hatch of Utah. "I think they are going to keep bringing it up," says the Republican lawmaker. In fact, according to Associated Press, the measure may come up next month in the U.S. House. It is an issue of "significant importance" to many Americans, says House Majority Leader John Boehner of Ohio. "We have significant numbers of our members who want a vote on this, so we are going to have a vote," he says.

The vote today (Wednesday, June 7) was 49-48, giving many pro-family groups that have lobbied for the MPA what they had hoped for leading up to the elections this fall -- a list of senators they say shows who is willing to fight to protect traditional marriage, and who favors homosexual "marriage." (Click here for the roll call vote)

Kansas Senator Sam Brownback says the 49-48 vote was "highly unfortunate" because Democratic senators opposed the amendment, despite what the people of their states had voted in earlier ballot initiatives.

"If the senators had voted as their states have already voted, the vote would have been 90-10 in favor of the amendment, as 45 states have defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman -- and that's what this amendment does: it defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman."

The Republican lawmaker says even though Democrats in the Senate have now managed to defeat a marriage amendment for a second time, the push to eventually establish the amendment will not stop. "We are making progress," he says, "and we will not stop until the institution of marriage between a man and a woman is protected and honored in the United States."

Not This Time, But Certainly Later
The chief counsel for Concerned Women for America (CWA) is not expressing optimism about the future of the amendment, but instead is chastising senators for avoiding the issue altogether. "It is inconceivable that the U.S. Senate didn't 'deem it necessary' to protect marriage by refusing even to vote on the amendment," exclaims Jan LaRue.

America, LaRue says, cannot function with radically different definitions of what constitutes marriage -- which could result if the issue is left to individual states to address. The attorney contends that if the nation's founding fathers could have imagined that rulings by activist judges would force same-sex marriage on U.S. citizens, "they would have established a uniform rule of marriage in the Constitution just as they did for naturalization and bankruptcy."

CWA believes a one-sentence amendment strictly defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman would leave no room for misinterpretation. Not only that, says LaRue, "it would remove cover from those in Congress who use their alleged concern for civil unions to prevent Americans from voting to preserve marriage."

But regardless if it be a single sentence or two, as in the case with S.J. Res. 1, Pastor Jerry Sutton of Nashville believes an amendment will eventually be approved. Sutton, who serves as pastor of Two Rivers Baptist Church and is one of three announced candidates for president of the Southern Baptist Convention, believes election day in November will be telling.

Sutton believes an old adage about politicians applies in this case: "When they feel the heat, they'll see the light," he says.

"This is not the last time that this amendment is going to be introduced to the Senate," the Southern Baptist pastor says, "and we'll keep coming back again and again because I am convinced that Christians in America are going to rise up and they're going to make their voice heard [at the polls]."

And the message Sutton expects to be delivered by Christian voters is "we are not compromising on what marriage is -- and we're not going to have this judicial approach to legislation crammed down our throats."

The Southern Baptist Convention meets next week in Greensboro, North Carolina, for its annual meeting. One of the agenda items is to elect a new president for the nation's largest evangelical denomination. Messengers to the gathering will chose between Sutton, Ronnie Floyd of Springdale, Arkansas, and Frank Page of Taylors, South Carolina.