By CHRISTOPHER MANION
On Tuesday, November 29, the U.S. Senate passed HR 8404, the “Respect for Marriage Act,” which had been passed by the House last July. The bill now awaits the signature of the president.
According to the official website Congress.gov, “the bill repeals and replaces provisions [of the Defense Of Marriage Act of 1996] that define, for purposes of federal law, marriage as between a man and a woman and spouse as a person of the opposite sex, with provisions that recognize any marriage that is valid under state law.”
Before Congress voted last July, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth wrote to Members stating the obvious:
“People who experience same-sex attraction should be treated with the same respect and compassion as anyone, on account of their human dignity, and never be subject to unjust discrimination. It was never discrimination, however, to simply maintain that an inherent aspect of the definition of marriage itself is the complementarity between the two sexes. Marriage as a lifelong, exclusive union of one man and one woman, and open to new life, is not just a religious ideal — it is, on the whole, what is best for society in a concrete sense, especially for children.”
But the Left isn’t interested what’s best for society, especially for children.
They want to control both. If that fails, they’ll simply destroy them.
In the Senate debate, Mike Lee (R., Utah) insisted that the bill was unnecessary, noting “the lack of political will anywhere in the United States to prohibit same-sex marriage.” But Lee focused on the core reason that motivated the Left to pass this bill under the cover of “equality”: The Left considers Christians not as equals, but as the enemy.
“Unfortunately, we are aware of case after case where individuals, charities, small businesses, religious schools, and religious institutions are being hauled into courts to defend themselves for living out their faith,” Lee said on the Senate floor.
To reveal the malicious intent of the bill’s sponsors, Lee offered an amendment that, in his words, “would prohibit the federal government from retaliating against any person or group for adhering to sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions about marriage.”
His amendment, which required sixty votes for passage, failed by a vote of 48-49.
Its failure is proof that the Left intends to mount a full-scale attack on its political enemies using the power of the Federal Courts and the Department of Justice. As Congress.gov points out, “The bill allows the Department of Justice to bring a civil action and establishes a private right of action for violations.”
Remember the Obama administration’s offensive on Catholics and Catholic institutions, using the “HHS Contraception Mandate” as its pretext?
The damage wrought by this bill will be much worse. It empowers the vile, violent LGBTQ crowd to harness Biden’s willing Stasi to drive the faithful into the catacombs.
A Long, Long Time Ago . . .
Sixteen years ago, when the Defense of Marriage Act became the law of the land, the widespread public support for marriage was reflected in the bill’s margin of victory. In the House of Representatives, 342 voted in favor of the law and 67 opposed it. In the Senate, 85 voted in favor, with 14 opposed.
At the time, the Heritage Foundation noted four governmental interests defended by the bill: (1) defending and nurturing the institution of traditional, heterosexual marriage; (2) defending traditional notions of morality; (3) protecting state sovereignty and democratic self-governance; and (4) preserving scarce government resources.
Since the “Respect for Marriage Act” repeals the Defense of Marriage Act, it also removes all of those protections. In fact, it sets up families, traditional morality, and state sovereignty as targets for a massive, lethal attack.
Rest assured, the secular Left will now use (4) “scarce government resources” to attack and destroy (1) traditional heterosexual marriage, (2) traditional morality, and (3) state sovereignty and democratic self-governance
This bill represents an attack on America itself.
A Most Curious Coalition
MSNBC, the “left of the left” in broadcasting, opposed DOMA 24 years ago, and cheered those who voted against it by publishing their remarks.
We aren’t surprised to find Cong. Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) among them: “I rise in strong opposition to this ill-named ‘Defense of Marriage Act’ and I do so on the basis of conscience, Constitution, and constituency,” she said on the House floor.
Cong. Neil Abercrombie (D., Hawaii) had a special ax to grind: “I understand some of the people who are sponsoring this bill are on their second or third marriages. I wonder which one they are defending,” he growled.
Cong. Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.), who’s still around and still clueless, said, “The arguments against gay and lesbian marriage are essentially the same argument that we used to hear against black-white marriages.”
Cong. Gerry Studds (D., Mass.) also invoked civil rights, with a twist. Studds had raped a 17-year old House Page in 1983, and was duly censured by the House but not tried in court. Nonetheless — and this should tell us about Massachusetts — he was still alive and in Congress to vote against DOMA (he died six months later, reportedly of AIDS).
“We are going to prevail, Mr. Chairman,” said Studds. “And we’re going to prevail just as every other component of the Civil Rights movement in this country has prevailed.”
The comments of opponents of the Senate version of the bill are illuminating indeed. Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) opined: “This bill isn’t conservative. It’s Big Brother to the core. My judgment is this is a subject that the federal government ought not stick its nose into.”
And Sen. Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.) agreed: “Whether senators are for or against same-sex marriage, there are ample reasons to vote against this bill because it represents an unconstitutional exercise of congressional power.”
Most interesting are the comments of Joe Biden (D., Del.) ten years after DOMA was passed. “We have a law, the Defense of Marriage Act,” he told Tim Russert. “Look, marriage is between a man and a woman and states must respect that. Nobody’s violated that law. There’s been no challenge to that law. Why do we need a constitutional amendment? Marriage is between a man and a woman. What’s the game going on?”
The game is simple. Biden was elected as vice president two years later, and the goalposts started moving, big time. By the 2020 primaries, Biden was firmly in the pocket of Bernie Sanders and Faucahantas Liz Warren. The goalposts moved further left, and were then just burned because the rules just got in the way.
The observations of Senators Kennedy, Wyden, and Biden might well come back to haunt the oversexed Left. Consider California. In 2008 that most liberal of states passed a proposition, which is now a part of the Constitution of California, stating in its entirety, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California” (Article I, Section7.5, later ruled unconstitutional by the Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals).
For all we know, a future petitioner might reach the Supreme Court arguing that, like “abortion,” the word “marriage” doesn’t appear in the Constitution either. And as a unanimous decision delivered in in 1958, the Supreme Court ruled that it has the last word on interpreting the Constitution, period.
In the meantime, hard times are coming.
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