[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 17]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 23425-23426]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     MARRIAGE PROTECTION AMENDMENT

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                             HON. TOM DeLAY

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 30, 2004

  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I know some wanted to pick a fight here 
today, trying to get us to talk about homosexuality and all those kinds 
of things. We did not talk about them because that is not what this is 
about. What this is about is marriage and the definition of marriage. 
Marriage is the most enduring institution in human history--the unique, 
spiritual bond between one man and one woman. Marriage is a man and 
woman that can create children. It is the architecture of family and 
the most successful arrangement ever conceived for the protection and 
raising of children.
  A man provides something that a woman cannot provide, just as a woman 
provides something that a man cannot provide. Women can be great 
mothers, but they cannot be fathers. Men can be great fathers, but they 
cannot be mothers. The reason that one man and one woman are necessary 
to rear children is so that the children can receive the benefits that 
a man can give them and that a woman can give them. Boys and girls need 
men and women, moms and dads bringing into their homes every day the 
complementary and unique characteristics of their genders.
  Marriage is the basic unit of society, the very DNA of civilization, 
and if that civilization is to endure, marriage must be protected. 
Societies transmit their values through marriages and the families they 
create. A man and a woman come together in marriage to create children 
and rear them and hand down their values to them. Families come 
together to create communities. And these communities come together to 
create our nation. The preservation of our values as a nation starts 
with one man and one woman having children.
  If you destroy marriage and people do not get married, several things 
happen.
  First of all, you destroy the responsibility that comes with creating 
children. If you destroy marriage, men are let off the hook. Men can 
have the sex without consequences, without commitment, without the 
responsibility of raising the children. That has happened in our 
society and societies in Europe and other places. On the other hand, if 
a man has a commitment to a woman, the mother of his child, then he 
realizes the responsibility of trying to raise that child. So when you 
ask the question, what is the harm in destroying marriage, the answer 
is the harm done to children. Children born out of wedlock are more 
likely to suffer from a variety of social ills, from dependence on 
drugs to dropping out of school.
  The recent history of our inner cities shows what can happen when 
fathers don't marry the mothers of their children. We have seen fathers 
just having many children by many mothers, and leaving these children 
to mothers and grandmothers and aunts to raise. And then we see the 
deterioration of their lives because they are raising themselves 
because their mothers and aunts and grandmothers have to work in order 
to raise them to pay for the family. These kids, who are often 
essentially raising themselves, grow up without the values that would 
be handed down to them if they lived in a stable family of father, 
mother, and children.
  Gang violence can be traced to the pressures that have been put upon 
marriage and the family. Kids need a mother and father and stable 
family life, and when they lack these, they look for their identity 
elsewhere. Gangs can become the substitute for families.
  Of course there are great parents raising great children in 
arrangements outside of marriage. There are wonderful children being 
raised by gay people. There are wonderful children being raised by 
single moms. But these arrangements are not the ideal. The ideal 
remains marriage between one man and one woman.
  To those who say that whatever trouble that ideal is in is due in 
large part to hetero-
sexuals, I wholeheartedly agree. The last four decades, on the whole, 
have not been good for marriage in America. Take no-fault divorce. 
Divorce is a pressure against marriage. No-fault divorce undermines 
marriage.
  But I would submit that the rise of no-fault divorce, welfare 
policies that reward abandonment, the breakdown of the family, and 
every other challenge to marriage are not reasons to abandon that 
ideal, but reasons to hold up that ideal higher than ever.
  For as much as we may suggest that marriage needs us, in fact we need 
it!
  Society needs children to be raised by their biological, married 
parents.
  This isn't radical or even conservative: it's common sense, affirmed 
by a vast majority of our countrymen, who support the protection of 
marriage because they know from their own experiences that without this 
enduring and beautiful institution, they themselves would be lost.
  That is why the cultivation of the ideal family of mother, father, 
and children--an ideal established by nature, sustained by human 
experience, and supported by decades of social science--remains a 
compelling government and societal interest.
  Despite the challenges of recent decades, marriage remains absolutely 
fundamental to our society--too fundamental to allow a few judges to 
impose a radical redefinition of it over the will of the American 
people.
  But that is exactly what is happening.
  So when the Massachusetts Supreme Court redefines marriage out of 
thin air, we get a little concerned, because we have seen it before.
  And we have seen what happens when we don't stand up to activist 
judges. We did not stand up on the question of abortion, and there have 
been 45 million children killed, unborn children killed, because we did 
not stand

[[Page 23426]]

up to activist judges using the courts to legislate.
  Every leader of the groups that are opposing this legislation to 
protect marriage has announced to the world that they are going to take 
this to the U.S. Supreme Court. They are already doing it. There are 11 
court cases right now. Nebraska has been overturned, Washington state, 
Massachusetts. There is a huge, huge effort in every state in this 
union, even though 44 states in this union have laws protecting the 
definition of marriage.
  The opponents of this amendment to protect marriage are after those 
state constitutions, and when they get at those, or using the full 
faith and credit clause, they can go to the federal courts, and then it 
begins. Then the Defense of Marriage Act comes down. Then the United 
States Supreme Court, who has already signaled that they are going to, 
through Lawrence v. Texas, redefine marriage in this country, will 
amend the Constitution and redefine marriage.
  We have been left no recourse. Judicial activism does not understand 
the word ``restraint,'' nor does it respect the consensus opinion of 
the American people. The courts have forced on us this question of the 
future of marriage, and this amendment is our only hope of preserving 
it.
  We are starting the effort today. Yes, it may not pass today. I wish 
it would, but it may not pass today. But this is only the beginning, 
because this nation will protect marriage. This nation knows the 
consequences of destroying the definition of marriage as one man and 
one woman. If we lose today, we will come back. We will take it from 
here, and we will be back. And we will be back. And we will be back. We 
will never give up. We will protect marriage in this country.

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