Marriage Protection Amendment

MARRIAGE PROTECTION AMENDMENT -- (House of Representatives - September 30, 2004)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 801, proceedings will now resume on the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 106) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to marriage.

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Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, today, we gather in this honorable chamber, and as we gather, there is an attack taking place on the basic building blocks of our society, the traditional family. Since the dawn of civilization, a family has consisted of a union between a man and a woman. In a civilized society, that union has historically been joined through a legal process we call marriage.

Mr. Speaker, you can go anywhere on this earth or here in the United States and wake somebody up from a dead sleep and ask them to define marriage, and they will tell you that it is a union between a man and a woman. Yet, today, we are dealing with living with a court ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts which tosses aside the history of traditional marriage.

This judicial activism, better called social engineering, flies in the face of legal precedent, and as The Washington Post shockingly stated, "is done by judicial fiat." Not a single State of the 50 States in this union have any legislation or a constitutional amendment which changes the definition of marriage. This assault on traditional marriage continues as legal challenges are joined in most all the States of this Nation.

Mr. Speaker, I have had the dubious distinction of having presided over the dissolution of 20,000 marriages in my career of public service. I would venture to say that is more than anyone else in this House. I have listened to thousands of hours of testimony about the damage that can be done by the breakup of marriage to the children of our Nation. It is a shame that we have to go through this attack on marriage, but to add a further attack on marriage by redefining the definition of marriage would be an abomination to our children.

For those who say, let the States choose, I would point out that the amendment will be required to pass three-fourths of the States, so it is up for debate in the States of this union. The Bill of Rights amendments were ratified precisely to make sure that fundamental principles were explicitly laid out in our constitution. The marriage protection amendment would explicitly protect the institution of marriage before the courts so that we will not be socially engineered out of our rights as American citizens and to destroy traditional marriage.

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Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, 4 ½ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Weiner), the honorable Member who serves on the Committee on the Judiciary with great skill and distinction.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WEINER. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to ask the previous speaker, who said he had presided over the dissolution of 20,000 marriages, I just wonder, in how many of those was the cause of the dissolution some gay relationship?

I mean, I am prepared to own up when I am at fault. Am I responsible, as a gay man, for any of those 20,000 dissolutions? The gentleman said there were 20,000 dissolutions. Would he tell us in how many of those 20,000 dissolutions was the existence of a gay marriage or gay civil union the cause?

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WEINER. I yield to the gentleman from Texas for a response.

Mr. CARTER. About a half a dozen. But that was not the issue I was talking about.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. A half a dozen out of 20,000.

Mr. CARTER. If I have the floor, and I might speak, my point was the damage that the dissolution of marriage causes to the children of this marriage. I said nothing about gay marriages in my speech whatsoever.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I apologize. If the gentleman would continue to yield briefly.

Mr. WEINER. I continue to yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I apologize for assuming that the gentleman was referring to gay marriage. This is a debate about gay marriage. So when the gentleman talked about the dissolution of 20,000 marriages, I made, apparently, the incorrect inference that there was some relationship between what the gentleman was saying and the subject under suggestion. I withdraw the inference.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield.

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