D.C.'s Expansion of Marriage Harms Marriage and Family Restoration

On March 3 the Washington, D.C. City Council will permit same sex unions, despite the federal requirement for 30 day in-session Congressional review by both Houses of Congress, ignoring procedural safeguards intended for such a purpose.

Brian Brown and Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage in D.C. write: The history of liberty is largely the history of procedural safeguards, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter famously wrote. But gay marriage right now is movement of people who believe that they are right and you are wrong, so their rights count but other people's don't. Brown has much to say furthermore about political bias, and judicial overreach in recent events toward expanding marriage in the Prop 8 case in California. What most people don't recognize is that the same thing is happening all over again in the D.C. lower courts. D.C. law gives voters a limited number of days to collect enough signatures to overrule politicians' decisions like the imposition of gay marriage. D.C.'s constitution--its charter--gives citizens of D.C. the right to vote on City Council decisions. Now the city council is holding that this doesn't apply to gay marriage because protecting marriage as the union of one man and one woman would somehow violate the city's Human Rights Code, passed by the legislators. The legislators, in other words, are saying elected politicians can vote to take away D.C. citizens' constitutionally-given right to vote. Read the entire comment at http://nomblog.com/787.

Expanding marriage harms marriage, democracy, the rule of law, and civility. It harms marriage by watering it down and weakening it. At a time when social science research overwhelmingly reveals that children thrive when they have a mother and a father married to each other, law is needed to strengthen marriage from easy divorce, not expand it to mean something completely new and different. Expanding marriage harms democracy when the people are disregarded as unnecessary to the law making process. Expanding marriage harms the rule of law when elected officials and the legal process are discarded to rush a new expansive rule through in an elitist fashion. Expanding marriage harms civility when the legal process is taken so slightly and hastily. PRN Newswire boasts that D.C. seeks to set a record at same sex marriage legalization. Read the article at: http://www.smartbrief.com/news/lgbt/industryPR-detail.jsp?id=3372A0BD-F05A-4288-B5AB-0EBA18796B0C

According to the National Organization for Marriage, almost 80 percent of Democrats in West Virginia want the right to vote for marriage, and to guarantee it in their state's constitution. Thirty states now do so, defining marriage as one man and one woman. Ten more states have protected it with a defense of marriage act or ruled through case law that there is a rational basis between the state's interest in marriage law, and stabilizing and strengthening marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Some states remain unclear on their expansion of marriage. Maryland's Attorney General recently wrote an opinion in this regard, where he notes that recognition of marriages involves not only the application of state law but also the balancing of interests of the respective parties and the state. The MD AG's opinion documents the history of Maryland law with regard to recognition of marriages, and also the current legal thinking on the issue throughout the country as it addresses the various issues and situations that could arise in Maryland requiring a judicial nightmare of case-by-case resolution. Read the article here: http://wjz.com/local/gay.marriage.recognition.2.1516502.html . Family stability, however, is accomplished by maintaining marital stability through marriage laws.

Marriage is not a political football, nor a cliché’ to be expanded with little thought or caution. Rather than rush to same sex unions in D.C., or anywhere else, lawmakers should be considering how to strengthen marriage toward family restoration for a stronger society.