[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 120 (Wednesday, September 29, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H7825-H7831]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          MARRIAGE PROTECTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Miller of Michigan). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from New 
Mexico (Mr. Pearce) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the 
majority leader.
  Mr. PEARCE. Madam Speaker, I thank the body for allowing us to speak 
tonight on this extremely important issue.
  The state of a society is an ongoing process. We tend to want to 
think that we can pass along our values and the rights and freedoms 
that we have in a current age to those in the next generation. For 
instance, I just think that I can pass along the right to my daughter, 
who can pass along to our grandson and granddaughter the rights to own 
a business or the rights to a public education, or maybe even the right 
to understand exactly what society is about, the good parts and the bad 
parts.
  Well, the Nation is involved right now in a discussion about what is 
best for America when it comes to marriage. The Massachusetts Supreme 
Court made a decision a couple of months ago that began to cause us all 
to think about what is the right definition for marriage, how should we 
change it, why should we change it, or should we change it.
  We have several Members here on the floor tonight to help present 
this discussion to this body, and I yield to the gentlewoman from 
Colorado (Mrs. Musgrave) who is the sponsor to the amendment to the 
Constitution that would declare marriage as simply between a 
traditional man and woman.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman to explain her ideas.
  Mrs. MUSGRAVE. Madam Speaker, the best gauge of whether the American 
people want the definition of marriage to be a union of a man and a 
woman is to look at elections in recent activities in the States on 
this subject.
  Madam Speaker, voters in 7 States have gone to the ballot box to 
enact either a State Defense of Marriage Act, to pass State marriage 
amendments, or to permit the State legislature to define marriage, thus 
preventing a State court from doing so. Each time the initiative passed 
overwhelmingly.
  The people of Hawaii voted with 69 percent approval to pass a State 
marriage amendment. The people of Alaska voted with a 68 percent 
approval to pass a State marriage amendment. The people of California 
voted with 61 percent approval to pass a State defense of marriage 
statute. The people of Nebraska voted with 70 percent approval to pass 
a State marriage amendment. The people of Nevada voted with a 70 
percent approval to pass a State marriage amendment. The people of 
Missouri voted with 71 percent approval to pass a State marriage 
amendment. The people of Louisiana voted with a 78 percent approval to 
pass a State marriage amendment.
  Madam Speaker, 44 States have recently enacted laws that provide that 
marriage shall consist only of a union of a man and a woman. These 44 
States constitute 88 percent of the States, well more than the three-
fourths required to approve a constitutional amendment, and they 
include 86 percent of the United States population. The American people 
have spoken on this subject. It is time that Congress send to the 
States the marriage protection amendment so that States can decide for 
themselves whether to ratify the policy that marriage is the union of a 
man and a woman. Marriage is what really matters to the American 
people, to the American moms and dads, to the American children. It is 
just common sense.
  Mr. PEARCE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Colorado 
(Mrs. Musgrave) for cosponsoring this amendments.
  We hear a lot of discussion in this Nation about tolerance and about 
diversity and we should hear all sides of the discussion, but I will 
tell Members that the same people who shout loudest about tolerance and 
diversity have been the same people who have attacked the sponsor of 
this amendment to the Constitution. She has had threats made on her 
life. She has had slurs and insults thrown into her face, and she has 
tolerated abuse no one should have for simply speaking in America.
  I worry in this same discussion about what the marriage is and what 
the family is and what it consists of, I worry that the opponents in 
this argument really do not want free speech, they do not want a public 
discussion. And that is what we are saying on this side of the aisle, 
that the discussion should be taken to the American people, that judges 
who are not elected should not make this decision; and that is exactly 
what is going to happen if we do not have the courage to make a stand 
and to identify what we think is the language which should amend the 
Constitution of the United States.
  Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for having the courage to 
withstand the death threats from the people who disagree with her, and 
for standing tall and for defining the moment in American history that 
is before us right now.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) to 
talk about this issue.
  Mr. PENCE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. 
Pearce) for leading this Special Order tonight. I thank him for his 
courageous leadership as a freshman.
  Madam Speaker, I associate myself with the remarks about our previous 
speaker. While we address the Speaker, we are nonetheless cognizant at 
times many millions of Americans look into our deliberations on this 
floor, and I think it is altogether fitting to recognize that a 
freshman, the gentlewoman from Colorado (Mrs. Musgrave), arrived in 
this institution and brought her support for traditional marriage to 
the floor of this Congress, and has turned her face like flint against 
the

[[Page H7826]]

wind and has brought us to this point where we are on the eve of an 
enormously important vote in the life of our Nation, and I commend the 
gentlewoman for her tenacity and courage. To a lesser extent, I commend 
the people from Colorado for sending leaders like the gentlewoman to 
this institution.
  That said, we are here tonight for the purpose of gathering 
thoughtful colleagues like the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) 
and those that will follow to consider out loud what will no doubt be 
lost in sound and fury on this floor tomorrow when the Marriage 
Protection Act, a constitutional amendment that defines marriage in the 
traditional terms as a union between a man and a woman, is brought to 
the floor of the House of Representatives.
  There are those, and it is almost understandable in a season where a 
national election is just around the corner, there are those who will 
say this is politics. The more initiated among us would use phrases 
like ``wedge issues'' to explain the value of tomorrow's vote. But I 
must say and I believe I speak for the heart of this President whose 
moral courage has brought us to this vote today, of the leadership of 
this majority, of Republicans and even many Democrats who will tomorrow 
stand for this constitutional amendment when I say this is not about 
politics. This is, as the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) said, 
this is about who we are as a people. This is about the foundations of 
our society. It is about what it is we will hand on to our children and 
grandchildren.
  In my judgment it all comes down to the simple belief, that is 
millenia old, that marriage matters. In one debate after another with 
some constituents in Indiana and in some national broadcast forums, I 
have allowed people who disagree with me on the need for a 
constitutional amendment. I have said if you do not think marriage 
matters to children, to communities, and thereby to the life of the 
Nation and to the vitality of our civil society, then I can understand 
why you would not be prepared to go to the necessary means of a 
constitutional amendment to defend it and define it in traditional 
terms.
  But if you believe, as I do, and as survey after survey shows us, 
that the overwhelming majority of the American people do, that marriage 
matters, that far beyond the conviction that I share and that millions 
of Americans share that it first matters because it was ordained by 
God, we see it even beyond those terms as an institution upon which our 
society was founded. Rightly understood, marriage and the family is the 
first and original unit of government. It is the glue of the American 
family and it is the safest harbor for raising children.
  None other than a predecessor who represented northeastern Indiana on 
this floor from 1976 to 1980, Dan Quayle, made this point when he was 
Vice President of the United States in 1992. Dan Quayle, against a 
withering assault, suggested in a national debate that the statistics 
proved that children who were raised, however imperfectly, in a two-
parent home with a mother and father did significantly better in 
avoiding all types of social maladies than children, who for whatever 
reason, no fault of their own or their parents, found themselves in a 
different circumstance.
  Dan Quayle's Murphy Brown speech became a national political joke, 
Madam Speaker, until after the election was over and the esteemed 
Atlantic Monthly Magazine pulled together a group of psychologists and 
sociologists and published in February 1993 that famous headline ``Dan 
Quayle Was Right''; because what Vice President Quayle said is even 
more true today, that children that are raised in traditional two-
parent homes find themselves, for whatever reason, but looking at the 
facts, find themselves able to avoid a host of social maladies that 
beset our children: teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, 
falling into gang violence or drugs, dropping out of school. Children 
raised in two-parent homes are significantly less likely to fall into 
those maladies.
  That is not to say that single parents are less significant to our 
Nation. My wife was raised by a single mom, and we laid her to rest 
early this year, and I honor single moms maybe more than any other moms 
in our Nation because they bear such an extraordinary burden with such 
dignity and grace.
  But in the development of social policy, you recognize good, better, 
and best, and the reality is the sociologists have spoken; the 
unflagging truth of western civilization and of modern American history 
is that marriage matters to kids and therefore is worth being 
preserved.
  My second and only other point before I yield to my colleagues is 
much addressed to all of us who will consider this debate on this floor 
tomorrow. I am a conservative Republican Member of this Congress, and 
yet I have noted there are conservative colleagues of mine who are 
troubled that we are bringing an amendment to the Constitution every 
bit as much as there are liberal Democrat colleagues of mine.

                              {time}  2015

  And so I wanted to take just a few more minutes to speak about why 
this Marriage Protection Act is necessary to amend the Constitution of 
the United States, because I truly believe that it is.
  Let me say from my standpoint, the constitution of a nation rightly 
understood as the supreme law of the land of which it is a part is a 
document, yes; but as John Locke first described, it is part of a 
charter between the people. What I would offer today, the question is 
not whether our charter will be changed, or whether marriage will be 
defined one way or another in our social contract. Rather, it is 
whether that definition will be brought by the people in an orderly 
amendment process to the Constitution or whether this issue in a 
constitutional perspective will be decided by unelected Federal judges. 
That is it.
  The point that I will make here in the few remaining minutes that I 
will take I hope, Madam Speaker, will make this point. This issue is 
coming to the fore. It is coming to our Federal courts. As I will prove 
in a few moments, the United States Supreme Court, which I venerate and 
respect, has in recent decisions signaled a willingness to extend the 
right of privacy to certain types of behavior which could very well, 
according to legal leading scholars, have laid the foundation to 
recognize gay marriage by a narrow majority of the Supreme Court.
  Here is the record. Activist lawyers and their allies in the legal 
academy over the last decade have devised a strategy to override the 
public opinion that I described earlier which is, by one reckoning or 
another, by referendum in Missouri recently, 71 percent of the public 
affirmed the traditional definition of marriage, survey after survey 
shows the overwhelming majority of the American people support it, but 
there has been an effort to use the courts much in the same vein as in 
Roe v. Wade in 1973 to redefine the laws of all 50 States through 
judicial fiat.
  They achieved their first success in 1999 when they convinced the 
Vermont Supreme Court that they should order the State legislature to 
legalize same sex marriage or create same sex civil unions. The 
legislature chose the latter despite strong public opposition. The 
activists won their second victory when they convinced the 
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to force that State to give full 
marriage licenses to same sex couples. Even though citizens of that 
State opposed same sex marriage and no law had ever been passed to 
authorize it, same sex marriage in Massachusetts became a reality on 17 
May 2004.
  The activists have, Madam Speaker, literally plotted a State-by-State 
strategy to increase the number of judicial decisions mandating same 
sex marriage. The goal is to force the same sex marriage issue on the 
Nation piecemeal and then to demand the United States Supreme Court 
order the holdout States to accept and do the same. It is a fairly 
transparent and ingenious legal strategy. And the United States Supreme 
Court has provided potent ammunition for these activists when they 
decided the Lawrence v. Texas case of June 2003. In that case, dealing 
with same sex sodomy, the Supreme Court strongly signaled that a right 
to same sex marriage could be found in the number of the Bill of 
Rights, in the so-called right of privacy of the U.S. Constitution. 
This, Madam Speaker, is precisely the same right that the late Justice 
Blackmun derived the right for

[[Page H7827]]

an abortion in 1973 in the infamous Roe v. Wade case.
  Again I say, this Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas in June of 2003 
signaled that a right to same sex marriage could be found in the U.S. 
Constitution. In fact, experts as varied as Laurence Tribe of Harvard 
and Justice Antonin Scalia agree that the court's decision points to 
the end of traditional marriage laws. Let me say it again. This is 
something of a consensus opinion when Justice Scalia on the right and 
the famed author and professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard on the left 
agree that the Texas case lays the foundation for essentially the 
redefinition of traditional marriage.
  Activists are attempting to build on their successes as we speak. In 
Vermont, Massachusetts, and in the Supreme Court in the Lawrence case, 
same sex couples are now challenging marriage laws in my State of 
Indiana, California, Florida, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, 
Washington, and West Virginia. In addition, lawsuits have been filed in 
Alaska and Montana to force those States to grant particular marital 
benefits to same sex couples. And while I support the Defense of 
Marriage Act strongly, according to many experts it provides a weak 
defense to these lawsuits. State and Federal courts are poised to 
strike down that law under the Constitution's equal protection and due 
process clauses and force recognition of same sex marriage.
  The only way, therefore, Madam Speaker, to prevent this core societal 
decision which, as the gentleman from New Mexico said, is central to 
who we are as a people, it is central to that which we would bequeath 
to our children and grandchildren, the only way to prevent this core 
societal decision from being made by unelected judges is to allow the 
people to speak on this issue through the constitutionally mandated 
amendment process. This process which requires, and we will attempt to 
achieve it tomorrow, two-thirds of the Congress and three-fourths of 
the States by votes of their legislature is the most dramatic 
grassroots political mechanism available to let the people speak.
  Let me close and yield back to my colleague with that point. We are 
in the people's House. Our founding documents speak of we, the people. 
Abraham Lincoln, standing on what would become the graveyard at 
Gettysburg, spoke of a Nation of the people, by the people and for the 
people. Yet there are those, and we will hear it on this floor 
tomorrow, I suspect, Madam Speaker, who will make the case that rogue, 
unelected judges know better than the people of the United States and 
that somehow what we are doing on this floor tomorrow in an amendment 
to protect marriage as it is traditionally defined is somehow contrary 
to our best traditions.
  I would offer to you as I close, our best tradition is that we are a 
government of the people, by the people and for the people. And when it 
comes to that institution which is marriage, which is so central to who 
we are, so necessary to the vitality of our society, we must hear from 
the people and that is what this majority will bring with our great 
leadership to the floor tomorrow for consideration.
  I yield back my time with gratitude to the gentleman from New Mexico 
and my colleagues for being a part of this very important starting 
conversation about the Marriage Protection Act.
  Mr. PEARCE. Madam Speaker, there are a lot of questions that I am 
given when I bring this subject up in the district that I represent and 
they are fair questions and they are good questions and I think that we 
have a responsibility to deal with some of those questions. Many people 
say, aren't you just infringing on the rights of the gays and lesbians? 
It does not appear that we are. What appears that we are trying to do 
is to say that gays and lesbians have the right to choose any life-
style they want but what we are going to limit is their ability to 
redefine what marriage is.
  Marriage is not defined by the Constitution. Marriage really is not 
even defined in law first.  Marriage was defined in nature first. It is 
in nature that we find that men and women come together to have 
children and in the process of having the children, the sexual acts 
that caused the children create bonds that cause the couples to stay 
together. Those bonds create the family that sustain and nurture and 
raise and defend and protect our children. This argument is not about 
what is right for any class of people except children. When we move the 
children out of the central focus, we begin to stray away from the most 
vital, important part of this discussion because it is through the 
children that we have the next generation, the generation that will 
work and sustain us, the generation that will produce succeeding 
generations.

  Those countries which have already admitted same sex marriages as a 
right and as a law, we find that in those societies that marriage is 
beginning to dissipate and disappear. Some would say, so what? So what 
is that the main structure, the main defense mechanism, the main way 
that children are born, raised and put onto the path in life that they 
should be put on is the family. So we cannot have a so-what attitude 
about it. We must understand that if we choose this, that it is going 
to radically affect our Nation and radically affect those things in 
society which keep our standards the way they are which make this 
Nation great.
  If it is the decision of the majority of the American people to do 
that, it is one thing; but if it is the opinion of some activist judges 
who wish to redefine the American culture, then I think America is 
speaking out right now and we have an obligation to listen to what 
America is saying.
  I would like to recognize another one of my colleagues, the 
gentlewoman from Virginia (Mrs. Jo Ann Davis) who is always involved in 
issues involving the family.
  Mrs. JO ANN DAVIS of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I stand tonight in 
strong support of the Marriage Protection Amendment, and I consider 
this debate among the most important of my tenure in this House. I also 
want to make clear up front that this amendment is about reaffirming a 
national definition for one of our Nation's, and the world's, most 
important institutions, namely, marriage. This amendment does not, and 
I repeat, does not interfere with the right of State legislatures to 
change laws for their States, nor does it deny individuals the right to 
make sexual choices. The right to marriage will remain the same for 
everyone, that is, the right to marry another individual of the 
opposite sex.
  I find it unfortunate that we must act today on something as 
seemingly clear as the definition of marriage, but activist judges have 
forced our hand in this important matter. You see, poll after poll and 
vote after vote at the State level have indicated that the American 
public overwhelmingly supports the definition of marriage as consisting 
of the union of one man and one woman. Indeed, 44 States have enacted 
laws affirming this very definition.
  Moreover, in 1996, an institution no less than this very Congress and 
then President Clinton enacted the Defense of Marriage Act that defines 
marriage for Federal Government purposes as the union of one man and 
one woman. Contrary to what you may have heard elsewhere, the notion 
that marriage is the union of a man and a woman is not controversial. 
However, activists in the judiciary, as evidenced by the Massachusetts 
Supreme Judicial Court deciding that there is no rational reason for 
restricting the benefits of marriage to heterosexual couples, seem bent 
on redefining marriage for an entire Nation in direct opposition to the 
wishes of the vast majority of Americans and with a flagrant disregard 
for the millennia-old institution of marriage that has been responsible 
for the successful propagation of the human race.
  Since ancient days in all corners of the globe, men and women have 
left their own families to join together and form new families for 
intimate companionship and, importantly, the rearing of children.
  To those opponents of this amendment who contend that marriage in 
this country is broken already, citing statistics that half of 
marriages end in divorce, I must say that I agree with you. Admittedly, 
our debate today does not go to the heart of the problem, but rather 
addresses a symptom after years of degradation of the institution of 
marriage in America.
  Certainly it is a great tragedy when men and women divorce and 
children are not raised by both a mother and a father. While there are 
millions of men

[[Page H7828]]

and women in this country who bravely and lovingly raise children by 
themselves, social science and our everyday experiences teach us that 
children raised without a mother and a father experience more poverty, 
more welfare dependence, more substance abuse, more physical illness, 
higher infant mortality, more homicide, more premature and promiscuous 
sexuality, more early unwed pregnancy, more juvenile delinquency, more 
educational failure, more conduct disorders and more adult criminality.
  It is also true that the future of marriage as a strong institution 
of America goes far beyond whether or not the Constitution is amended 
to reaffirm the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one 
woman.

                              {time}  2030

  That fact, however, does not mean that the Marriage Protection 
Amendment is unimportant. Rather, it is exceedingly important. For as a 
society, we will have no hope of strengthening the bonds of marriage 
without a unified national definition of marriage, a definition 
consistent with the understanding of marriage as a union of one man and 
one woman.
  Mr. PEARCE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her comments. 
They address the issue in a very sensitive and appropriate way.
  We have many people who say to me also, What does it matter? Gays can 
love each other. Should they not be allowed to marry?
  And it is a very compelling question, one that we should look at. I 
will tell the Members that emotions are not the basis for raising 
children. They are not the basis of relationships. If emotions are the 
basis of relationships, if love is the question, two brothers can love 
each other. Would we allow them to marry? But when we bring that 
argument up, our opponents say, no, no, we do not want to go there. But 
I am sorry, that is where we go if we begin to say that love, that 
emotions are the basis of relationships. If love is the basis, two men 
can love two women. Why not all four get married? One man can love five 
women.
  If we are going to do that, if we are going to allow emotions to 
determine that love is fine for the same-sex marriage, what we do is we 
give away the legal standing for prohibiting those things which become 
more onerous: incestuous marriage; the polygamists; polymorphism; or, 
even worse, the child-adult relationships that we have been able to 
keep so far as a thing that should not be approved in society. But once 
we give in to the rationalization that the marriage relationship is 
only about love, not about nature, we give up all the legal arguments 
that would keep us from moving into each one of those successively. One 
might say that is ridiculous, that no one would do that. But I will 
tell the Members that there are websites currently suggesting each one 
of those forms of relationships should be legalized, standardized and 
to be made public. So it is a very critical question here, what we are 
dealing with, and I think the Nation must be involved. We must not 
leave it to the decisions my friends say of the United States Supreme 
Court. My greater fear is that it is going to be one of the State 
Supreme Courts that makes the decision for the rest of the Nation, and 
I think that we see that potential time after time.
  We are joined tonight by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith), 
chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary's Courts, the Internet, and 
Intellectual Property Subcommittee. I appreciate his willingness to 
talk about this issue and give his insights.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith).
  Mr. SMITH of Texas. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New 
Mexico (Mr. Pearce) for yielding to me.
  Madam Speaker, judicial activism in America has reached a crisis. 
Judges routinely overrule the will of the people, invent so-called 
rights and ignore traditional values. So far, judges have censored the 
Pledge of Allegiance in public schools, removed the Ten Commandments 
from public buildings and parks, banned the acknowledgment of God in 
public schools, imposed taxes, and now they have changed the definition 
of marriage.
  Most Americans simply do not want judges to establish a new kind of 
marriage that is so different from the one that has served so many so 
well for so long. They want to protect marriage as we know it.
  But what should citizens do and their elected representatives when a 
few judges impose their personal views on the American people? We have 
a choice. Either let judges decide or pass the Marriage Protection 
Amendment. Either we act in Congress or courts will continue to impose 
their definition of marriage on the country. Judges should interpret 
the Constitution, not promote a political agenda. The people and their 
representatives, not judges, should set social policy.
  Madam Speaker, most Americans do not want to redefine marriage. 
Forty-four States already have enacted laws that provide that marriage 
shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. The 44 States 
include 86 percent of the Nation's population.
  We need to protect the right of the voters of these States to define 
marriage as they see it. This right is now threatened by activist 
judges who would overturn these States' policies. On behalf of the 
American people, we should vote for the Marriage Protection Amendment 
because it rightfully restrains judges who threaten our democracy.
  We often hear opponents say that a constitutional amendment goes too 
far too fast. But amendment supporters were not the ones who, for 
example, ordered Massachusetts to legalize same-sex marriage. It was a 
panel of activist judges by a four-to-three vote. It is time to return 
this debate on society's core institution to the democratic decision-
making process. Let us take this decision away from the courts and give 
it back to the American people where it belongs.
  The constitutional amendment process is an integral part of our 
democratic process, requiring approval from two-thirds of each House of 
Congress and three-quarters of the States by votes of their State 
legislatures. Passing a constitutional amendment will place this debate 
back where it belongs, with the American people.
  If we pass the marriage amendment, we will retain our understanding 
of marriage as the union of a husband and wife, ratified by the States. 
If we do not act now, the courts will redefine marriage. But it is the 
American people and their representatives who should determine how 
marriage is defined.
  Madam Speaker, that is why we should support the Marriage Protection 
Act, as I hope all my colleagues will do tomorrow.
  Mr. PEARCE. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman 
from Texas for his comments and appreciate his principled stand on so 
many issues.
  Madam Speaker, we have to admit that marriage is universal. People 
ask me when I make the comment that nature has defined what marriage is 
first, law simply tries to capture it in language: What does it matter 
that nature describes what marriage is? Basically, there is a design to 
all things. There is an order to the universe. Marriage is universal. 
What the left is trying to do is to upset that order and to take order 
completely away because there will be no order once there are not 
restrictions on exactly the definition of marriage.
  But beyond that, we must understand that when nature designs, any 
time we break a design, things just do not function as well. For 
instance, a car, that has a design to run on gasoline with oil in the 
engine. If we reverse the process and put oil in the gas tank and 
gasoline in the oil containment part of the vehicle, the design is not 
well served, and the machine simply does not work.
  It is very true in nature, too. Our bodies are designed with blood to 
run through our veins, the heart pumping blood. But if we take the 
blood out and replace it with water, we find that the design simply 
quits working.
  And it is the contention of many social scientists that marriage is 
one of the natural designs that simply will quit working if the design 
is not understood and adhered to.

  So it is very critical, as we look at these things, to understand 
that marriage is far more than just a current-day definition. It is 
something where men and women have come together throughout history in 
all nations. All nations of different government types, tyranny, 
freedom, they all have one

[[Page H7829]]

constant, that marriage is between a man and a woman and the family is 
better served, children are better served, when we have a clear 
definition of what marriage is. And children are the issue in this 
debate.
  I have a gentleman here tonight from Iowa who is a good friend and 
whose views I often wait to hear.
  Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King).
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New 
Mexico for be willing to come to the floor so regularly and stand up 
for the values that are so dear to this country, and I thank him for 
the opportunity to speak on this issue of marriage tonight.
  I would point out that, tomorrow, we will bring the Marriage 
Protection Amendment to this floor, and we will debate this issue, and 
it will be debated intensely on both sides. There will be Members on 
both sides, Democrats and Republicans, who will vote for and against 
this amendment tomorrow. Those who vote for it will tell us that they 
do not believe we need to go to this drastic step in order to preserve 
marriage. What they are really saying when their vote goes up is they 
do not believe the people should have the opportunity to voice their 
will, their votes, within their own States in the process that is set 
up through ratification of our Constitution that is for a 
constitutional amendment.
  The gentleman from Texas pointed out that the courts have overruled 
the will of the people. And a question I often ask is, how did we get 
here? What brought us to this point? We, the people of the United 
States, those of us who see these three different branches of 
government, those of us who view that they should be balanced branches 
of government, that it is the job of the people to establish social 
policy and that it is our job to reflect that here in this Congress and 
to promote that across this country, it is not the job of unelected, 
lifetime-appointed judges to direct the society that we live in, and we 
get into great trouble when we allow that to happen.
  We have allowed it to happen for a long time, Madam Speaker, and that 
long time goes back, by my measure, 42 years, to 1962 when a Supreme 
Court case, Engel v. Vitale, was brought before the courts. And that is 
the famous case, Madalyn Murray O'Hair's name comes to mind, where the 
Supreme Court pulled prayer out of the public schools. I believe they 
misread our Constitution. The Constitution does not provide that there 
cannot be prayer in the public schools. It simply provides there cannot 
be an established religion. And how we got to this point of this 
separation between church and State being imposed upon pulling prayer 
out of the public schools is a complicated and convoluted legal 
argument that cannot be sustained by a reading of the Constitution.
  A point was made in the Committee on the Judiciary the last couple of 
weeks, and I want to credit that to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. 
Hostettler), who said, when people on the other side are opposed to our 
amending the Constitution, saying leave it alone, do not amend it, 
leave it as it is, what they really mean is leave it alone and do not 
read it. When we read the Constitution, we have a whole different view 
of the document, that precious and sacred document, than we do when we 
read the news articles or listen to the arguments on the other side.
  But in 1962, prayer was taken out of the public schools by the United 
States Supreme Court. Then 3 years later, 1965, came a case that we do 
not talk about very much. It is a case called Griswold v. Connecticut. 
And that was a case where the State legislature in Connecticut had 
passed laws that said that there would not be the selling of 
contraceptives in the drug stores in the streets of Connecticut. In 
that case, Griswold took it to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court 
found that there was a right to privacy. The first known sign of a 
discovered right to privacy supposedly in our Constitution, and that 
said that married people should have a right to go buy contraceptives 
and take them back to the privacy of their home and that the general 
assembly of Connecticut had no business sticking their nose into that 
privacy between two married people.
  How in the world did we get from that right to privacy to where we 
are today? Incremental steps. The next incremental step was 1973, Roe 
v. Wade, where the Supreme Court found that this right to privacy was 
not just a right to go purchase contraceptives if they are married and 
bring them back to their home, but also a right to determine that that 
baby that was conceived would not be brought to term because the 
liberty of the pregnant female and the right to privacy superseded the 
right to life of that unborn child. An astonishing decision made by a 
Supreme Court to take that right to privacy and roll it into a right to 
abortion.
  Now, I go to a couple of other cases. Stone v. Graham, 1980. 1962; 
1965; 1973, Roe v. Wade; and let us leap to 1980, 7 years later, pulled 
the Ten Commandments out of our public schools. The gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Smith) spoke to that issue somewhat. Then, behind that came 
1994, the case of Madsen v. Women's Health Center, Incorporated, and it 
removed the demonstration rights of people who were pro-life from 
demonstrating outside abortion clinics. Another right pulled away. It 
is okay to strike, and it is okay to demonstrate. It is just not okay 
to do it if it is not in a politically correct fashion, according to 
the courts.
  Then there was a case in 1996, Romer v. Evans, where the Supreme 
Court overturned a constitutional amendment that was voted on with an 
overwhelming majority by the people of Colorado that said they will not 
impose special rights for certain classes of people at any level of 
political subdivision, and the Supreme Court said that the people of 
the State of Colorado had no business imposing their will on the 
political subdivisions.

                              {time}  2045

  That had to do with special rights for sexual orientation and gender 
identity. It removed the right of the people of Colorado, suspended the 
tenth amendment, because they found another value there that I cannot 
quite discern. That is 1996.
  2002, Newdow v. U.S., that was the ninth circuit, the infamous ninth 
circuit, that pulled ``under God'' out of our Pledge of Allegiance. 
That case correctly did not make it to the Supreme Court. The Supreme 
Court ruled that the gentleman who brought the case, Mr. Newdow, did 
not have standing.
  I think there had to be some relief there, because I have stood in 
the Supreme Court chambers and I think about what that would be like to 
reference ``under God'' in our Pledge or what it would be like for the 
Supreme Court to rule on a decision on whether there would be the Ten 
Commandments in school. I do not know how they do that.
  I stand in the Supreme Court chambers and I look up and I see Moses 
on the wall with the tablets. Maybe it does not seem so imposing to the 
Supreme Court, because the Ten Commandments on the tablets are in 
Hebrew, but we know what they mean. That was 2002.
  2003, Lawrence v. Texas, where the Supreme Court found there was a 
right to sodomy, a right to homosexual relations. As I read through 
that decision, and I read it through four times, five times, maybe six 
times, and my margin notes are in different colored ink and they get 
heavier and heavier each time I read through there, and I get more 
chilled by the breathtaking decision of Lawrence v. Texas, not just the 
simple description I have given; but in that decision it says that the 
people elected by the citizens of Texas to represent them in the Texas 
legislature have no business imposing their moral values on the people 
that elected them.
  The Lawrence decision, a six to three decision written by one of the 
Justices, really said ``do not impose your moral values in any case 
whatsoever.'' If the Supreme Court does not approve of the values you 
bring to the legislative process, they might just throw it out on that 
basis alone. Breathtaking. It is not a constitutionally founded 
decision; it is a will-of-the-courts decision; it is a legislative type 
decision. And in fact that was 2003.
  But I recall sitting in also in 2003, the date was April 19, 2003, 
Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger, the affirmative action 
cases at the University of Michigan. I went in and sat in on those two 
cases. For 2 hours and 30

[[Page H7830]]

minutes, I went to sit in the place where I could hear the most 
profound constitutional arguments, the United States Supreme Court. As 
I listened to those arguments, I heard legislative arguments.

  I know what a legislative argument is. I have sat in on them for 8 
years in my public life. We weigh unintended consequences. We weigh the 
result of a policy. But the Court's job is to weigh the 
constitutionality and the letter of the law and the congressional 
intent, not the result.
  So the only constitutional argument I heard that day was from Justice 
Scalia, who said, ``If we rule against you and it results in one 
minority in your school, 100 percent minorities in your school or no 
minorities, what possible constitutional difference can that make?'' 
Thank God there is at least one Justice that asks a constitutional 
question. We are here with a constitutional question before this 
Congress tomorrow.
  But the real question brought before us is under Goodridge v. 
Department of Public Health, Massachusetts Supreme Court, a four-to-
three decision that imposed same sex marriage on the State of 
Massachusetts.
  Now, anybody that has read Lawrence v. Texas and read the dissenting 
opinion that said ``if this says it does not have to do with same sex 
marriage, do not believe it,'' would be an exact quote from the 
dissenting opinion, I did not believe it before I got to that point in 
reading that particular case; and I do not believe today that Lawrence 
v. Texas does not address same sex marriage.
  I believe it set the stage. I believe they knew it was setting the 
stage. I believe that Goodrich v. Department of Public Health in 
Massachusetts that imposed same sex marriage in that State was a 
logical follow of Lawrence v. Texas. And we have 10 or so States or 
more that are bringing these cases through the courts working their way 
to the Supreme Court, where I believe the Supreme Court is poised to 
find a constitutional right to same sex marriage.
  If that happens, we cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube. The 
courts will have taken us from removing prayer from the public school 
in 1962, right to privacy in 1965, right to abortion in 1973, I will 
read the rest of these years quickly: 1962, 1965, 1973, 1980, 1994, 
1996, 2002, 2003, 2003, 2003, 2003. Do you get the pattern? This is 
accelerating on us.
  This demise of our civilization is going far faster than it did for 
Rome. It took 200 to 300 years for Rome. I do not think it can take two 
to three generations in this country.
  It is time for us to pass a constitutional amendment and slow down 
this activism of the courts and then save marriage, the very 
cornerstone of civilization. And then we can get to work with the hard 
work of winning back our schools, our educational institutions, and 
also our media in this country, so that we have good solid people 
grounded in solid constitutional values growing up in this country and 
taking over these roles that we are performing here tonight.
  I thank the gentleman for yielding. I appreciate the opportunity to 
speak before this country.
  Mr. PEARCE. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman 
for his comments,
  Again, I would reiterate this question is about children. To those 
who would ask what about the gays and lesbians who are affected, no one 
would choose for them the lifestyle that they have chosen. But we do 
contend earnestly to defend the right of the people to continue to 
define marriage in the traditional sense as between a man and a woman.
  There are those who would say, what gives you the right to limit the 
gays' and lesbians' freedoms? And the response is what gives us as a 
society the right to choose our desires over the needs of children? 
Because children are the question, and children are the objective of 
the marriages.
  There are those who say that traditional marriage is plagued with 
divorce and should we not fix divorce if we are so concerned about the 
traditional marriage?
  You would have to look at other arguments in the same vein. We all 
drive cars, and cars have crashes. Would crashes not argue against the 
use of cars? No, crashes simply tell us we should design better cars, 
we should drive more carefully, we should act with restraint, but they 
do not tell us we should not drive cars.
  Neither does divorce, no matter how heinous it is, and it is a deep 
problem in our society, but it does not argue against the traditional 
marriage.
  The people wonder who gets harmed if we make this change. If we 
redefine the marriage in society, who is harmed by that? I will tell 
you who gets harmed: the people of this Nation, who lose the right to 
define marriage as the union of a husband and wife get harmed, because 
even now in this country there are attempts to define and to codify and 
to put into law hate crimes legislation which would begin to chill the 
discussion about values that one family would like to pass on to their 
kids and to their grandkids.
  If courts rule that same sex marriage is a civil right, then people 
like you and me who believe that children need moms and dads, we will 
be treated like bigots and racists. Religious groups like Catholic 
Charities or the Salvation Army may lose their tax exemption or be 
denied the use of parks and other public facilities unless they endorse 
gay marriage.
  It gets to a point where in the classroom every description of 
families would have to include the whole universe of families, because 
we have already seen that happen. We have seen that the people on the 
liberal left would redefine even the way that we talk to our children.
  Public schools will teach young children that two men being intimate 
is just the same as a husband and wife being intimate. That is not 
something that many of us feel comfortable with, and that is not 
something that I think should be forced on us by an activist Supreme 
Court.
  If that is to be the way we are to govern and that is to be the way 
we live, it is right and proper that we would take that discussion to 
the American people. That discussion should be on every street corner, 
not in the closed chambers of the supreme court of some State, any 
State, or even the Supreme Court of the United States.
  The Supreme Court has made decisions before about values, and we have 
had to amend the Constitution to change that. The most notable example 
is when the Supreme Court said in the Dred Scott decision that the will 
of the majority cannot be used to tyrannize the minority. It is almost 
the same rationale that was used in Lawrence v. Texas.
  The will of the majority cannot be used to tyrannize minority, the 
court said, and we fought a civil war over it, because the will of the 
majority said slaves should be free and the Supreme Court said the 
slaves will not be free.
  Not to have learned their lesson after the Civil War was fought and 
after we amended the Constitution, the Supreme Court came back 100 
years later in the Plessy v. Ferguson case and said that if we could 
not have our way and mandate slavery, we, the Supreme Court, will 
mandate separate but equal facilities. Again, it took our society a 
long time to overcome those Supreme Court decisions.
  It would be much simpler and much easier if we would recognize right 
now that the American people should be the ones to determine this 
issue; and I, for one, am supporting the attempt of the gentlewoman 
from Colorado (Mrs. Musgrave) to amend the Constitution of the United 
States to declare in the minds of people for once and for all that 
marriage is a union between a man and a woman.
  I will stand and fight for any one person's right to choose their 
life style, but I will also oppose their attempt to redefine for all of 
America exactly what marriage is.
  Madam Speaker, I recognize that my colleague, the gentleman from Iowa 
(Mr. King), would like to address this issue again, and would yield to 
him.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to pick 
up on some of the things that I did not address in my earlier talk.
  I think we need to go back and look a little bit at the argument that 
there is a civil right or a constitutional right. I believe the courts 
are poised to either declare full faith and credit from the 
Massachusetts marriage to all 50 States in the Union; and, if they do 
not rule on that, I think they have got also

[[Page H7831]]

a chance they could rule with the full faith and credit, but also the 
equal protection clause. Either one of those imposes same sex marriage 
on all the States, even though a vast majority of the States have 
passed marriage protection language, either in their constitutions or 
statutorily; and some of them have done both.
  But a different way of thinking about this too is the argument is 
made that marriage is a civil right; therefore, you could not deny it 
to consenting adults.
  I want to argue that marriage is not a civil right. It is not a civil 
right for a man and a woman, it is not a civil right for two consenting 
adults, and, in fact, it is not a right whatsoever. It is a privilege.
  The reason I declare marriage to be a privilege is because we grant a 
marriage license. A license is something that gives you a permit. It is 
a permit to do that which is otherwise illegal.
  So we grant a marriage license, or we grant a license to drive a car 
or to fish or hunt or whatever it might be, because we want to promote 
a certain kind of behavior and we want to regulate a certain kind of 
behavior. And certainly it is discriminatory in favor of those 
activities that we license.
  So for the same reason, we grant a marriage license, a permit to do 
that which is otherwise illegal. It is not discriminatory, except that 
it is constructive because this cornerstone of civilization has been 
proven since the beginning of time to be the very element, that 
cornerstone of civilization through which we procreate, we pass along 
our religious values, our moral values, our work ethic, our very 
culture and civilization, all of the things that come through the 
marriage.
  The children learn from a father and a mother. Say, for example, a 
little boy falls down and skins his knee, and he runs to his mom and 
she says, Come here, honey. I will kiss it and make it better. That is 
a mom's role in a case like that.

                              {time}  2100

  And the father says, oh, come on, son, you are going to have to be a 
man one day. You are going to have to tough this one out. That is the 
other message. They are not really conflicting messages; they are 
messages that need to come from the ideal circumstances between a man 
and a woman in holy matrimony.
  Madam Speaker, so much of our history, so much of our culture, and so 
much of our civilization and our respect for our ancestors flows 
through marriage, and we know the things we learn there, because we 
revere our ancestors, we also want to be worthy of that respect from 
our descendants. Those values are taught through marriage, through the 
family, through the ideal way of raising children as a man and woman in 
the home, and that is the point I think is important to make, and I 
would be happy to conclude and yield back to the gentleman from New 
Mexico.
  Mr. PEARCE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa. A couple 
more questions. People ask, is it fair? What about benefits? Are gay 
couples, if they cannot marry, denied benefits? If medical proxies are 
not working, let us fix that problem. If people need health care, let 
us fix that problem, but let us not mess with marriage.
  Marriage is about children and it is about the best institution for 
raising children, and that is the issue. Kids are better off with a 
mother and father. The issue is not whether gays can be good parents or 
not; no one is talking about that. We are saying that children are 
generally better off with a loving mother and a loving father; and that 
is the role, that is the method, that is the paradigm that works best.
  Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the people who have helped me 
present this case to this body.

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