[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 106 (Thursday, July 18, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H8010]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        OMISSION FROM THE RECORD

  The following is a reprint of remarks in their entirety, both printed 
and omitted from the Record of Thursday, July 11, 1996, at page H7447:
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, to close for our side, I 
yield my remaining time to the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. 
Studds], my friend and colleague.
  (Mr. STUDDS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. STUDDS. Mr. Chairman, somebody may wonder why I or my colleague 
from Massachusetts, Mr. Frank, have not taken greater personal umbrage 
at some of the remarks here. I was thinking a moment ago that there 
might even be grounds to request that someone's words be taken down 
because my relationship, that of the gentleman from Massachusetts and, 
I suspect, others in the House, was referred to, among other things, I 
believe, as perverse. Surely if we had used those terms in talking 
about anyone else around here, we would have been sat down in one heck 
of a hurry.
  I am not taking this personally, because I happen to be able, I hope, 
to put this in some context. I would ask those, anyone listening to 
this debate this hour of the morning, to listen carefully to the 
quality and the tone of the words over here and the quality of the tone 
of the words over here. I would also ask people to wonder how in God's 
name could a question like this be divided along partisan lines. There 
is nothing inherently partisan that I know of about sexual orientation. 
I do not believe that there is some kind of a misdivision of this 
question between the aisles, and yet there is a strange imbalance here 
in the debate and the tone and quality of the debate.
  I want to salute some of the folks who have spoken over here, the 
distinguished gentleman from Georgia. We have talked about this before. 
I marched, although he did not know it at the time, with him in 1963 in 
the city with Dr. King. I was about as far from Dr. King as I am from 
the gentleman from Georgia when he delivered that extraordinary speech.
  Two years later I marched, although the gentleman did not know it, 
behind him from Selma to Montgomery. A few years after that, when it 
was the first march for gay and lesbian rights in Washington in 1979, I 
was a Member of Congress too damn frightened to march for my own civil 
rights. Actually, I changed my jogging path so that I could come within 
view of the march. I thought that was very brave of me at the time.
  But what I know is, because I had heard people like the gentleman 
from Georgia and because I am of the generation, and there were many, 
who were inspired by Dr. King is that this is, as someone has said, the 
last unfinished chapter in the history of civil rights in this country, 
and I know how it is going to come out. I do not know if I am going to 
live to see the ending, but I know what the ending is going to be. 
There is, as the gentleman said before me change, there has always been 
change.
  As I observed earlier, the men who wrote the Constitution, to which 
we all swear our oath here, many of them owned slaves. Slavery was 
referred to specifically in the Constitution. People of color were 
property when this country was founded.

                              {time}  0145

  Women could not own property. There could not be marriage between the 
races. Many things change over time, Mr. Chairman, this, too, is going 
to change.
  I would like to pay tribute, special personal tribute to the 
gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Lewis], to Dr. King, to all those of both 
parties and no parties. There was nothing partisan about that movement; 
there is and ought never to be anything partisan about this, the final 
chapter in the history of the civil rights of this country.
  I wish I could remember, I used to know the entirety of that ``I Have 
a Dream'' speech, but we will rise up and live out the full meaning of 
our Creator. It may not be this year and it certainly will not be this 
Congress, but it will happen. As I said earlier, we can embrace that 
change and welcome it, or we can resist it, but there is nothing on 
God's Earth that we can do to stop it.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. STUDDS. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend for 
yielding to me.
  We are in a great debate. I would hope that people reading the 
Congressional Record, watching this debate, would compare the tone, the 
sensitivity, and the reaching out of my friend's words, and then read 
the earlier words of the gentleman from Oklahoma, the words which were 
denunciatory and denigratory of the gentleman from Massachusetts and 
myself, and I would hope that people would compare the spirit of the 
approach, compare the attitude toward others, compare the way in which 
things are debated.
  I would say, as someone who has been included in this denunciatory 
rhetoric, that I would be very satisfied to have people in forming 
their judgment listen to the words uttered by the gentleman from 
Oklahoma, and listen to the words of my friend, the gentleman from 
Massachusetts. I think we are helping people form a basis.
  This notion that a loving relationship between two people of the same 
sex threatens relationships between two people of the opposite sex, 
that is what denigrates heterosexual marriage. The argument that we 
have denigrated marriage or the institution of marriage or any other 
formulation says that two people loving each other somehow threatens 
heterosexual marriage. That is what denigrates heterosexual marriage. I 
thank the gentleman for yielding.

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