[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 36 (Monday, March 22, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2835-S2836]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                MARRIAGE

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I want to say a few words about a hearing 
we are going to have tomorrow in the Senate Judiciary Committee on the 
subject of marriage. I know the last thing I thought I would be doing, 
coming from Texas to Washington, DC, would be talking about traditional 
marriage, but such are the times we live in.
  Earlier this month I chaired a hearing in the Judiciary Committee's 
Subcommittee on the Constitution regarding the U.S. Supreme Court's 
decision last summer in Lawrence v. Texas, as well as the Goodridge 
decision from the Massachusetts Supreme Court that resulted from it, 
and the subsequent explosion of the marriage controversy across 
America. I thought we had a very thought-provoking discussion, a 
bipartisan discussion, and one that will continue at our hearing 
tomorrow where proposed constitutional language is the subject.
  At the hearing earlier this month I was moved by the sentiments of 
Pastor Daniel de Leon of the Templo Calvario Church in California and 
Rev. Richard Richardson of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 
Boston, who we were honored to have in attendance.
  Both testified they would rather be at home than having to defend 
traditional marriage here in Washington. But it is because of the work 
they do in their own communities, because they see the results of the 
decline of marriage in their communities every day, that they believe 
traditional marriage is so important and worth defending.
  This is a discussion we will continue to have in the coming months. I 
believe it is vital that we have a national discussion on the 
importance of this institution, and a discussion based upon the facts.
  In recent months, a lot of people have spent time talking about the 
benefits of marriage for adults. They have talked about hospital 
visiting rights and inheritance problems, even though many of these 
issues can be solved simply and quickly by statute or arrangements that 
can be achieved by simply signing a few simple documents.
  This discussion, in terms of the benefits to adults, has included 
discussion of Government benefits, even though with these benefits come 
burdens, and the actual financial ramifications of these benefits are a 
matter for future debate.
  Today it is time to turn the debate to what I believe is an even more 
important issue--that is, the benefits of marriage to children.
  It is easy for some people to step back and say: The same-sex 
marriage controversy doesn't affect me. But the facts, demonstrated by 
experiments in other countries, show us otherwise. The facts show us 
this issue affects everyone, but especially children. None of us can 
pretend to ignore this issue, and none of us can afford to be neutral 
on this subject.
  Scandinavia has treated same-sex households as marriage for more than 
a decade. This practice was instituted in Denmark in 1989, in Norway in 
1993, and in Sweden in 1994. The direct reaction was relatively small. 
Very few people were actually interested in being part of this new 
arrangement, and to this day the number of participating individuals 
and households remains low.
  The greatest effect was not on those who had sought the new 
institution but, in fact, on society at large. Sad to say, there has 
been an enormous rise in family dissolution and out-of-wedlock 
childbirths in these countries since they embraced the institution of 
same-sex marriage.
  Today, about 15 years after Denmark created this new institution, a 
majority of children in Scandinavia are born out of wedlock, including 
more than 50 percent of children in Norway and 55 percent of children 
in Sweden. In Denmark, a full 60 percent of first-born children have 
unmarried parents. In Scandinavia as a whole, traditional marriage is 
now an institution entirely socially separated from the idea of 
childbearing or child-rearing. It is regarded as an incidental union, 
not an important one.

  Respected British demographer Kathleen Kiernan drew on the 
Scandinavian case to form a four-stage model by which to gauge a 
country's movements towards Swedish levels of out-of-wedlock 
childbirth.
  At stage one, the vast majority of the population produces children 
within marriage, such as in Italy. In the second stage, cohabitation is 
tolerated as a testing period before marriage and is generally a 
childless phase such as we currently have in America. In stage three, 
cohabitation becomes increasingly acceptable and parenting is no longer 
automatically associated with marriage. While Norway was once at this 
stage, recent demographic and legal changes have pushed it further into 
stage four, along with Sweden and Denmark. In this fourth stage, 
marriage and cohabitation become practically indistinguishable, with 
many children--even most children--born and raised outside of 
traditional marriage. According to Kiernan, once a country has reached 
this stage, return to an earlier phase is highly unlikely.
  As you can see, the dilution of marriage is passed on to children, to 
the next generation, and the devaluation continues. And in America, the 
results could be even more significant than in Scandinavia; after all, 
we are already facing the problem of too many single-parent households, 
particularly in inner-city communities.
  When the ideal of traditional marriage is removed, when cohabitation 
and marriage are equally regarded, and when childbearing is no longer 
something that ought to ideally come within the context of traditional 
marriage, I fear the problem of single-parent households will only 
worsen.
  While many single parents do a very good job day in and day out 
raising children against long odds, no one considers it the best 
arrangement for raising children--with good reason. Indeed, we have a 
wealth of social science research from hundreds of sources over the 
course of decades which consistently reflects both the positive 
ramifications for children of a stable traditional marriage, and the 
negative effects of family breakup.
  Marriage provides the basis for the family, which remains the 
strongest and most important social unit. Countless statistics and 
research attest to this fact. It is not ideal to raise children outside 
of marriage. While everyone is free to choose his or her own path, no 
one wishes divorce on children but, rather, a happy and stable home.
  In America, we have made the decision that we ought to particularly 
encourage and support those who marry and have children. This is not a 
partisan issue. As one of the most distinguished Democratic Members of 
this body, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, observed more than a decade 
ago, we must stop ``the breakup of family inevitably'' as best we can:

       [T]he principal social objective of the American national 
     government at every level . . . should be to see that 
     children are born into intact families and that they remain 
     so.


[[Page S2836]]


  We don't raise our neighbor's children as our own, but we do help all 
the children in our community every time we affirm and reinforce 
marriage--through our speech, through our action, through our culture, 
and through our wallets. It is a position reinforced through our laws 
and our practices, and I believe it is a good one. Government cannot be 
neutral, should not be neutral, nor should it pretend it is possible to 
be neutral when it comes to children and families.
  Most Americans take for granted that traditional marriage as we know 
it today will always exist. But that is sadly proving to be a mistake. 
We see in Scandinavia why that assumption is a mistake.
  Across this country today, renegade judges and some local officials 
are attempting to radically redefine this traditional institution. 
Lawsuits seeking to dismantle traditional marriage have already been 
filed in Federal court and State courts in Massachusetts, New York, 
Nebraska, Utah, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Georgia, West Virginia, 
Arizona, Alaska, Hawaii, New Jersey, Connecticut, Oregon, Washington, 
California, and Vermont, as well as my home State of Texas. According 
to the New York Times, we can expect lawsuits in 46 States by residents 
who have traveled to San Francisco in recent weeks to receive a 
marriage license, then return and claim the validity of that marriage 
under the laws of their home State.
  Louis Brandeis famously described the States as ``laboratories for 
democracy.'' But he was, of course, referring to representative 
government in the States and not to the courts. Given how this 
litigation has spread, it appears that judicial activists bent on 
experimenting with the institution of marriage will have every possible 
opportunity to do so.
  The American people are not persuaded that this radical redefinition 
of marriage is needed or that it is a good thing. When given the 
opportunity in the voting booth, they have always supported traditional 
marriage clearly and forthrightly.
  While The New York Times recently described the law on this subject 
in California as ``murky,'' the California family code clearly defines 
traditional marriage in an initiative enacted by voters themselves 4 
years ago by 61-percent majority.
  Rather than believing this discussion is altogether a bad thing, I 
believe there is a lot of good to be had out of a national discussion 
on the issue and importance of traditional marriage, supporting family 
life as providing the best hope for raising children. Those of us on 
the side of traditional marriage, though, must not flinch in the face 
of those who would try to characterize our efforts as some hateful or 
hurtful position. Indeed, I believe advocates of traditional marriage 
must not back down. We must not allow those who will try to paint our 
motivations as discriminatory because, in fact, they are not.
  What we are seeking to preserve is the fundamental bedrock of our 
society, the wellspring of families, and an institution that is in the 
best interest of children. That is what we are for. Those of us who 
have the honor of serving in this body and in government have a duty to 
act to protect this positive social good and not ignore this issue 
until it is too late.
  Some activists believe traditional marriage itself is about 
discrimination, that all traditional marriage laws are unconstitutional 
and must, therefore, be abolished by the courts. Indeed, that is what 
the court in Massachusetts said. These activists found friends in four 
justices in Massachusetts who were legislating from the bench and who 
contended that traditional marriage is ``rooted in persistent 
prejudices'' and represents ``invidious discrimination.'' Those are not 
my words. Those are the words of the four justices who struck down 
traditional marriage laws in Massachusetts.
  Indeed, these justices even claim that traditional marriage is not in 
the best interest of children. They accuse others of wanting to write 
discrimination into the Constitution. Yet they are the ones writing the 
American people out of our constitutional democracy.
  In the face of similar arguments, Hawaiians and Alaskans a number of 
years ago took preemptive action when they were faced with State 
constitutional challenges to their traditional marriage laws. Citizens 
of Nebraska, Nevada, and other States have also taken preemptive action 
under their State constitutions before suits were even filed.
  Interestingly, in the hearing we had just a couple weeks ago, we 
heard from Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning, who said that while 
his state has a Constitutional Defense of Marriage Amendment, even that 
amendment has now been challenged in Federal Court by the American 
Civil Liberties Union, who claim that this state constitutional 
provision itself violates the Federal Constitution.
  The threat to traditional marriage is now a Federal threat, and a 
Federal constitutional amendment is the only way to preserve 
traditional marriage laws nationwide before it is too late.
  America needs stable marriages and stable families. The institution 
of marriage is just too important to leave to chance.
  Unless and until the American people are persuaded otherwise, we have 
a duty, as their representatives, to defend the laws they passed and to 
not let those who would take the law into their own hands reshape 
society according to their whim.
  We can be confident in the fact a constitutional amendment is the 
most representative process we have in American law--requiring, as it 
does, two-thirds of the Congress to pass a constitutional resolution 
and three-quarters of the States to ratify it. It is the most 
democratic form of lawmaking we have in this country, bar none.
  The burden of proof is on those who seek to experiment with 
traditional marriage, an institution that has sustained society for 
countless generations. The experimenters must present their case to us 
that the radical new social unit they propose is good for the 
community, good for families and, most important of all, good for 
children. Thus far, the lab for this experiment has already been run in 
Scandinavia, and it has produced nothing but disastrous results.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence 
of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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